Weekend #3 - April 9-11

After completing removal of the wallpaper off the walls, it was time to move to the ceilings.  I've searched high and low for the reasons behind why they put wallpaper on the ceiling.  I had all kinds of theories - I was certain it was hard to paint before rollers were invented.  I thought maybe it masked the dust and smoke that might be produced from a coal stove or other early forms of heating for homes.  I also considered it could be replaced when it got too dirty....

After everything I've read about wallpaper on the ceiling, it turns out it was merely a fifth wall for decoration.  Early wallpaper ceilings depicted elaborate scenes like meadows or angels singing in the clouds.  Wallpaper design gradually transitioned into more patterned prints or medallion-type designs with ornate details.  By the early 1900's when this house was built, the Classical Craftsman style had become the style of choice in American homes.  This style was practical and promoted clean lines and a move away from the ornate and sometimes gaudy details of the Victorian Era houses.  There were certainly some patterned wallpapers on the ceilings in the Myrtle House, but the last few layers were all white...and of course, they had been painted over.

I had to work at Ballad on Saturday morning, so I drove up on Friday and my Dad and I started working on the ceilings in the backroom and the dining room.  The dining room ceilings had the most stick (read: the hardest to remove).  We worked for a couple of hours until we were both sweaty and exhausted.  It didn't feel like we accomplished much.  

Lesson #3:  Sometimes progress is slow.  

Saturday was a day off!  Scott's Dad turned 70 years old on April 7th, so we spent the day with the Orsburn family celebrating his birthday.  

On Sunday, the work crew of Scott, Carla, Brody and Gaven returned.  We had three tasks:  prime the walls in the backroom for skim coating, work on removing the wallpaper from the ceilings and try out some ceiling repair in the backroom.

One of the hardest issues with the plaster and lath system is the weight of dried plaster.  The dried keys in the lath can crack and break, which allows the weight of the plaster to crack or sag in some areas.  The lath in the ceiling in the backroom clearly had some broken keys and cracks.  The plaster had started to lag in some areas.  We wanted to try to pull the ceiling back up into place rather than replacing it with sheetrock.  Scott did some research about repairing plaster ceilings and discovered magical plaster buttons.  These little 'buttons' are screwed into the problem areas and sort of 'button' the plaster back into the lath.  Plaster buttons can be used anywhere, but we have only used them on the ceilings in the Myrtle House.  

I didn't take a picture of the ceiling after all the plaster buttons had been put in.  (Refer to Lesson #1).  It made a huge difference though.  I would estimate in some placed, the buttons pulled the ceiling up an inch or more.  As of the time I am writing this post, the ceiling in the backroom is finished and it is flat and perfect.  The plaster buttons definitely did their job.  

Brody and Gaven worked on taking wallpaper off the ceilings in the dining room.  You can see the evidence of the patterned wallpaper above their heads in the picture below.  I will say, my Mamaw would have enjoyed this weekend.  Brody and Gaven had the radio turned up and were hosting a sing-a-long while they worked.  I caught glimpse of them singing Zac Brown's "Knee Deep" while working over their heads scraping wallpaper.  I could just envision Mamaw sitting in the dining room watching Brody and Gaven work with her styrofoam cup of black coffee or cold Coca-Cola singing along. She always loved to sing and it was even better if she had a group to sing with. 💖    

The advantage of only working on the house on the weekend is I have all week to research things before we jump in.  I looked up all sorts of videos on "how to skim coat plaster walls".  I was nervous about this part of the project.  I've never done anything like this before and I really did not want to mess it up.  As any good student would, I took notes and watched the videos more than once.  I emailed them to Scott so he could watch them too.  Here is the snippet of my email to Scott:

"Just some videos I watched in preparation for moving into the chapter 2 of our reno.

See Jane Drill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mob1K_P_L8U

 

This fella has an English accent and background music.  The comments on this video are pretty funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey0Xj9Xe2xg

 

This is a video for repair of holes in plaster.  These walls look like ours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4oI2SsOAC4"

And my notes:

Since my You Tube tutorials told me to paint the walls with PVA primer, that's exactly what I did.  It was watered down, so it was very runny and messy.  We only worked in the backroom - because by this time, the backroom had become our trial room for all new skills.  

After the walls were primed, we mixed up some joint compound - written as "plaster" in my notes.  We worked together to skim coat the wall to the right in the picture above.  We worked and worked at that wall.  

The compound was difficult to get used to.  I had to learn to manage a hock full of wet joint compound and trowel.  I knew it was going to be a learning experience and I tried hard to keep that mindset on that first room.  I am so disappointed I didn't take any pictures of our first wall.  Goodness, it was rough.  I am happy to report we improved significantly by the time we got to the next room.  😊

I also began the task of cleaning out the basement.  I haven't taken any pictures from the basement yet, but I remember it as being a very scary place as a child.  NO ONE went down to the basement.  It was dark and dirty.  There was sure to be monsters or something vile down there.  There is a reason my family did not clean it out before they sold it to us.  😂  The following is the text I sent to my mom, Robin, and Lynn describing our adventures from the weekend:

"I'd like to thank Karen and Robin for leaving the basement clean out for the new owners.  Before I knew it, I had grabbed a dead mouse (I think, maybe it was a small rat?) by the tail.  It was stiff as a board, under a rusty paint can.  Shout out to Mamaw for just throwing a whole box (unopened) of rodent poison under the stairs to the basement.  I'm pretty sure I would have chosen the same delivery method.  Haha! There is an entire box of cleaning supplies down there.  I didn't do anything with that, but they appear to be vintage cleaning supplies, based on the bottle labels.  I will go back down next weekend."  

Little did I know, the adventures in the basement were just beginning.  

That wraps up the abbreviated Weekend #3.  

This week's post included references from the following websites:

The history of wallpaper:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the-deception-of-wallpaper/476295/

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/tpsd/wallpaper/sec2a.htm

https://www.oldhouseonline.com/interiors-and-decor/decorated-ceiling/

Plaster Buttons:

https://www.oldtownhome.com/2012/4/17/Toolbox-Tuesday-Plaster-Buttons-to-Fix-Your-Crumbling-Ceiling

Weekend #2 - The Wallpaper Weekend

April rolled in and the weekend of April 2-4 brought together our first weekend with a team of workers!  

I was off work on Friday, April 2, so Brody and I headed to JC early to get started on the work for the weekend.  The goal of the weekend was to take down the wallpaper throughout the house.  

If you're keeping up with lessons, today I present Lesson #2:  A wallpaper steamer is worth every penny.

We picked up a wallpaper steamer on Friday morning.  We really only needed to get through the layers of paint to the wallpaper and the steamer took the paper right off the walls.  Steam, scrape, done.  Actually, it was more like scrape, steam, scrape, done.  

We did find some interesting wallpapers along the way.  Most of it was so old, it was difficult to tell what the patterns were.  Some of the wallpaper had been on the walls so long, the patterns were bleeding into one another.  The good news: the steamer took the many layers of wallpaper and whatever was left of the glue holding it in place right off the plaster.

The Friday work team included Brody, Gaven, Karen and Robin and me, of course.  :) We started in the backroom, which really became our starting point for all projects.  It is a smaller room with lower ceilings so it felt like the right space to start projects and try things out.  We quickly learned that we needed an initial scrape off the layers of paint and the steamer was much more effective.  The steamer over the paint really just made it a sticky mess and gunk-ed up our scrapers.  Brody, Gaven, Karen and Robin were assigned the job of scraping paint and I came behind them with the steamer to remove the wallpaper.  It was a dirty job.  Scraping stirred up all kinds of 100 year old dust (and probably asbestos).  Steaming was a very hot job.  It wasn't easy work, but we managed to get quite a bit done on Friday.

Gaven removing the closet hardware in the backroom closet.

Robin scraping in the front room.  You can see there were vertical stripes in the wallpaper at some point.  There was also a large border at the top of the room.  I imagine it was very grand with rich colors.  I also imagine it made the rooms feel smaller but much taller than they already are with the vertical lines.

More of the living room wallpaper removal.

A tiny bit of history here - I mentioned in an earlier post that Mamaw and Papaw rented the house from the Hancock Family from 1959 to 1973.  Mom and Robin said Ms. Hancock would not allow them to paint or do anything to the walls for a long time while they were renting.  

I've borrowed a picture from my Mom's facebook page that shows the wallpaper.  It is difficult to see, but it appears to be pink flowers with some darker burgundy running vertically.  This was my mom and her younger brother, Denny, celebrating their birthday.  (You've already seen the room named "Denny's bedroom, so you've kind-of already met him.). They were born on the same day, 7 years apart.  This picture was taken in 1965 - Mom was 15 and Denny was 8.   

Mom also shared this picture, where you can see the flower pattern of the wallpaper a bit better.  This features Denny in his cowboy outfit.  This picture doesn't have a date, but Mom thinks Denny was about 5 or 6, so it would have been the early 1960's.  

Back to 2021...

I'd also like to highlight some important advice from Brody and I -  when you do hard physical things all day, you should reward yourself when your work is finished for the day.  😊

On Saturday, Scott and my Dad joined the work team.  We did much of the same work - scraping, steaming and scraping some more. 

Brayden stopped by for a little while to help.  Most of his help on this day was in the line of "moral support".  😉

Brody and Gaven working in the dining room.

My cousin, Chris, also stopped by for moral support.  He was on his way to play golf.  He checks in every couple of weeks to see how things are coming along. 

Sunday was more of the same: scraping, steaming, scraping.  The work team was diminished to only Scott and I.  We finished removing all the wallpaper from the house, with the exception of the bathroom and kitchen.  

Denny's Bedroom

Mamaw's Bedroom

The Front Room

The Backroom

The Dining Room

The wall below was in possibly the worst shape.  It had various stages of repair.  It also is the wall that has the place where the coal stove entered the chimney.  If you look closely at the photo, you can see the "paper plate" covering the hole.  I really wanted the corner where the fuse box is cleaned up as well, so the decision was made to replace this wall with sheetrock.  When that decision was made, the effort to remove the wallpaper was quickly abandoned.  

Scott and I were the lone survivors for the work group photo on Sunday afternoon!  😊

 

We left feeling pretty good about the weekend - and very dirty from scraping and steaming wallpaper.  Next up, skim coating!

The Work Begins - March 27

The first day of real work was on March 27.  Step one of the plan was to strip all the wallpaper.  Some of it was pulling away from the wall and there were places cracks had formed in the walls that needed repair.

We started with stripping wallpaper off the plaster walls in the backroom.  It kind-of became our experiment room.  We found layer after layer of both paint and wallpaper.  There were at least 7 layers of wallpaper, possibly more.  The only room that didn't have multiple layers was Denny's bedroom, which was stripped years ago by my family.  As you saw in the "Before Pictures", the wallpaper in Denny's bedroom came down pretty easily.  

I had to work at the hospital on the 27th, so Scott was working at the house solo.  It was a painstaking process of scoring, spraying, scraping, scoring, spraying, scraping.  He made a spray bottle of fabric softener and water and used that to spray down the wall before scraping.  It was the beginning of some important lessons in stripping wallpaper.  By the next weekend, we were much smarter.  

This is the only picture I have from March 27th.  Refer to Lesson #1 (Take good pictures.).  It was Scott working in the backroom taking wallpaper off.  This was the only room that really got any attention on weekend #1.  It was slow going.  Turns out, there was a much easier way.  

I want to talk a little bit about plaster walls here because I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The walls and ceilings of the Myrtle House are entirely plaster, with the exception of the kitchen (which we haven't dug into yet).  

Plastering is an ancient building technique that dates back to the Egyptians and their pyramids!  It has been used throughout history to create strong structures that are well insulated and fireproof.  Plaster was used for interior and exterior walls in homes during the 19th and early 20th centuries.  In the Myrtle house, as with many others of this time period, the plaster is laid over lath.  Lath is a series of small boards running parallel to the floor in tiny intervals attached to the interior studs and ceiling joists.  In the process of plastering, the lath is covered with a thick paste created from lime or gypsum, water, sand and animal hair.  The tiny spaces between the lath boards create space for the lime or gypsum plaster material to hold.  When the wet plaster is first applied it squishes between the lath boards, creating what is called a 'key'.  They key holds the plaster in place as it dries and hardens.  

Lath boards in the bedroom

A piece of plaster that fell out of the lath pictured above.  You can see the key running right across the middle.  

The original plastering process was three steps: a scratch coat, a brown coat, and a finish coat.  Each layer had to be applied and allowed to dry before the next layer was applied.  It dries as a solid whole piece that feels similar to dried cement.  When something interrupts the piece, for example, a nail for a picture or settling of the foundation of the structure, it can cause a crack to run through the entire wall.  

I will talk a bit more on plaster as we move through the process of skim coating the walls and repairing the plaster ceilings.  Because plaster is part of the historic character of the house, we really wanted to keep it and restore the walls as they stand.  So far, we've been able to do that, minus one wall.  More on that soon! 

The historical information about plaster for this post came from the following:

https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS4161

https://www.marekbros.com/sites/marekbros.com/files/plaster-assemblies-chapter-01-history-of-lath-and-plaster.pdf

March 26 - Day 1 - The Before Photos

We closed on the Myrtle House on March 26, 2021.  The structure is a two bedroom, one bath, 1296 sq foot home.  The front of the home has a wrap around spacious covered front porch.  There are two front doors; one leading to the formal living room/sitting room and the other leading directly into a bedroom.  The home has 10 foot ceilings and large openings between rooms, making it feel roomy.  There are hardwood floors throughout, except in the kitchen and bathroom, which are linoleum flooring.  The tax records claim this home was build in 1935, but I am pretty sure that is not accurate.  I will go into that a bit more in a later post.  

I really wanted to capture some "before" pictures on day 1.  I wasn't quite fast enough - Scott started pulling down wallpaper before I got the pictures.  We were certainly excited and ready to get to work!  😀

As I'm look at the pictures now, I am realizing I didn't do a great job of getting pictures that really reflect the before condition of the house.  Lesson #1:  Take good pictures.  

Caption/explanation is above each picture below.  

The front room:  The front door is to the left of the piano from this angle.  I really need to get some pictures of the front door.

The front room looking into the a second front room of the home.  This was Mamaw's bedroom.  The front door is to the right of this picture.  You can see the cased opening with dark wood.  This is a Classical Craftsman molding, typical of homes build from 1900 through the 1930's.  You can see the edges of the trim are clean shapes, well defined and simple.  This was a hallmark of early 20th century homes breaking away from the ornate styles found in many Victorian style homes build before 1900.  

Mamaw's bedroom: This room is on the front of the house.  When I was a kid, my mom and my Aunt, Robin, built a closet in this room.  In this photo, you see a window - this window looks out to the covered front porch.  There is another window to the left of what can be seen in this picture.

This is Mamaw's bedroom looking toward the dining room.  The aforementioned closet can be seen on the right with accordion doors.  These doors are decidedly not Classical Craftsman.  I would guess they were added somewhere between 1985 and 1990.  

The doorway leads to the dining room.  This doorway holds pocket doors on both sides.  These fascinated me as a kid.  

Below is the dining room.  There is a doorway off to the left that leads to a bedroom.  The doorway straight ahead leads to the kitchen and bathroom.  Behind the mirror is a "paper plate" that covers the hole where the old coal stove used to enter the house.  It links into the chimney that runs up through the middle of the house.

The other side of the dining room is pictured below.

This is one of the bedrooms.  This room was known as Denny's room.  Denny was my mama's brother.  When my mom was younger and her whole family lived in this house, this room was shared by her and her sister.  The other front door comes into this room.  

At some point, mom and Robin decided to redo this room and took all the wallpaper off the walls.  They hung new wallpaper with a border around the middle.  As you can see, it all came down rather easily for Scott.  

The next group of photos is the infamous back room.  Scott didn't believe me that it actually existed.  No one really went to the backroom, except for my Mom, Robin and Mamaw.  It was the place where everything was stored, including Christmas presents.  Several of us lived in the back room over the years.  The initial residents of this room back in 1959 were my uncles C and Mouse.   

The closet in the back room.  Mom and Robin built this closet too!  I heard that others contributed to the construction of this, but I think Robin was the driving force. 

These are the doors to the backroom.  The door on the right leads to the other bedroom.  The door on the left leads to the bathroom.  It doesn't currently open, but we are working on that.  😊

The five panel doors were very common in early 1900's homes.  I need to take some pictures of the door knobs.  Refer to Lesson #1 mentioned earlier.  Good pictures are key in this adventure.  I guess good pictures are key in any adventure. 

The kitchen is located in the back of the house, opposite the back room.  The trim in this room was painted white, which is good since the walls are paneling.  Scott and I are pretty sure this house was built before indoor plumbing was in houses.  The ceiling in the back room, the bathroom, and the kitchen is only eight and a half feet, compared to the ten foot ceilings everywhere else.  The white door on the left in this photo leads to the pantry.  

The cabinets over the stove were hung by my Papaw.  They are solid cabinets.  We are hoping to keep them.  The doorway in this picture on the right leads to the dining room.  

The cabinets above the sink were also hung by my Papaw.  In this picture, you can see the door to the carport on the back of the house on the right.  The door to the bathroom is on the left of the sink. 

Below is the pantry.  When I was a child, my cousins and I could spend hours in the pantry, organizing and reorganizing Mamaw's canned food.  This pantry was always FULL.  It was the perfect place to store cold food in the winter - like the Banana Pudding when there wasn't room in the fridge.  There is no vent for the HVAC in there, so the winters were very cold in the pantry.  The dryer is also in the pantry.  

The only bathroom in the house is between the kitchen and the back room.  When I was a kid, there was a claw foot tub in this bathroom in the same place where the shower is now.  I hated that tub as a kid, but I sure do wish it was in there now.  The door on the left leads to the back room.  Yes, that door is white on one side and dark stain on the other side.  Remember the dryer in the pantry?  The washer hook ups are in the bathroom on the wall to the left in the picture below.  

The bathroom from the other angle is below.  The mirror was tilted my entire life.  My uncle, Denny, had polio as a toddler.  It left him paralyzed and eventually in a wheelchair.  Having the mirror in the bathroom tilted made it possible for him to see into it.  It was also perfect as Mamaw aged and she could sit in the bathroom and see herself.  

I think that covers the indoor Before photos!  I will try to get some better pictures of the house hardware to add at a later time.

Work began on Day 1, with the removal of wallpaper in Denny's bedroom.  Scott and I did a walk through of the house inside and out and made a punch list of work to be done.  We were ready to hit the ground running on Day 2.