Weekend # 10 - Memorial Day Weekend

The final weekend of May was a bit disjointed.  Scott and I went up on Thursday evening and he worked at the house all day on Friday.  Two big items on the to-do list for this weekend:  sanding the walls and finishing the ceilings.  The picture below is the dining room ceiling.  It was still wet.  

Since we finished the skim coating, it was time to sand it all.  He rented an industrial sander with a vacuum on it in an attempt to minimize the dust from sanding joint compound.  Obviously, it is difficult to capture sanded walls in a picture.  You'll just have to take my word for it.  The walls were sanded smooth as silk.  I could hear the trumpets playing in the distance...

We were in Knoxville on Saturday because we had to go to a wedding.  Getting all dressed up was quite a different feel from what we normally do on the weekend.  I felt like Cinderella going to the ball.  Picture for documenting that we don't always look a mess.  It was a lovely wedding and we had a great time getting all prettied up and going out in Knoxville.  💙

Sunday, we were back in Johnson City working at the house.  Cinderella had officially returned from the ball, for sure.  Here is the picture of the weekend work crew:

It's obvious my prince had turned into a toad and my chariot had turned into a pumpkin at midnight!  :)

Anyway, I digress...

Sunday was spent sanding.  Scott operated the industrial sander and I was relegated to sanding by hand in all the edges and little crevices around the trim.  My poor shoulder just thought it was relieved at the conclusion of skim coating.  

I had a big hand sander with sandpaper that I changed with each new room.  I also had a sanding sponge to use in smaller areas.  They were equally challenging.  

Scott also got an arm workout running the sander.  Holding the sander and working it across the walls with pressure behind it had to be equally as hard.  

Below are some really good before and after pictures.  The first picture is before sanding.  You can see the rough finish and excess joint compound.

This is the after picture after sanding.  These are from different areas, I think.  You can still see a difference between them.  I'm having a hard time remembering even taking the pictures.  😊

The best news of the weekend:  we finished all the sanding and started primer painting!  Of course, we started in the back room.  We knew we were painting on white walls, so we had gray tint to be added to the primer paint.  This really gave us a good look at our new walls. 

And the angels sang...hallelujah!

We did primer painting in the backroom only.  We realized the woodwork needed to be cleaned up - between the dirt from the everyday living for many years, the addition of scraped wallpaper, topped off with a sprinkle of sanding joint compound, the woodwork needed cleaning before we did any more painting.

We accomplished a lot over Memorial Day Weekend:  finishing the ceilings, sanding all the walls and priming the back room.  

It was good we were able to get in 3 days of work over Memorial Day weekend even without working on Saturday, because we were on vacation the next two weekends!  Lucky for us, our work crew was ready to jump in and take over while we were out of town.  Stay tuned for the vacation report and the work crew of Nan, Pap and Robin!  💜

Weekend #9 - May 22

Weekend #9 was a short weekend, with a work day only on Saturday, May 22.  I actually had to work at Ballad on Saturday morning, so that left Scott to get going at the house on his own.  

The goal for the weekend was to get the ceilings up.  Much thought went into what type of ceiling to put up.  I knew we didn't want to do a popcorn ceiling.  We also couldn't do flat ceilings because, well...the ceilings are no where near flat and in a 100 year old house, they just aren't going to be.  We decided to do a knockdown texture, which gives a sort-of marbled look and helps to hide imperfections.  

Of course, it required a new tool, the knockdown knife.  😊

Scott used a drywall hopper to apply the compound to the ceiling.  He allowed it to dry just a bit, then went back over it with his knockdown knife flattening out the peaks and creating the marbled texture.  

It went rather smoothly, I believe.  Fully according to plan.

Okay, maybe it didn't go exactly according to plan.  The best news:  he started in the backroom, which has been the starting point for everything.  The backroom has an old piece of carpet covering the floor, so the carpet took the brunt of the drama.  That carpet is going into the trash at the end of this project, so it didn't matter.  Because it was drywall mud, it came right out of Scott's clothes in the wash.  Thankfully, he had an extra set of clothes to change into.  

It is incredibly hard to take a picture of a ceiling.  You'll just have to take my word for it - the ceilings turned out beautifully after the initial mishap.  

When I finished working at Ballad, I joined Scott at the house.  He worked on ceilings and I finished the last of the finish skim coating.  

Did you hear that?  We FINISHED skim coating the walls.  What an epic moment this was.  My right shoulder couldn't have been happier!  

We headed home on Saturday evening and spent Sunday at our house in Knoxville.  We haven't taken many days off since the start of this project on March 26.  It is a real treat to be at home on a weekend day.  

Here is the picture of the weekend work crew.  We are still smiling (although I think we are looking a little tired here)!

More info on the knockdown texture can be found here:  https://www.bobvila.com/articles/knockdown-texture/

The Front Door

In an earlier post, I promised to take some pictures of the door knobs and the front door.  Since I haven't posted those yet, I thought today we could take a detailed look at the front door.

A doorway is often thought of as a passageway - it separates inside from outside.  When you walk through the door, you are transformed, entering a new space or leaving a space behind.  Doors provide a transition point.  Even the sound of the door makes opening and closing can transport you in time and space.  

This is the main front door that leads into the front room of the house.  I can hear this screen door slamming in my memory and suddenly it's summertime and I'm 10 years old running through the house.  I can hear Mamaw fussing about me, my brother and my cousins running through the house.  I can see my Mom, Robin, and Mamaw sitting at the table with a cold Coca-Cola in a styrofoam cup, a plate of sliced tomatoes and an aluminum pie pan of cold biscuits.  The Young and the Restless or some other soap opera (which they referred to as 'the stories') was always on the television.  

When I was young, the house did not have central heat and air, so in the summer the doors and windows were open and there were box fans everywhere.  Mamaw propped box fans up in the windows and in the doorways between the rooms to move the air through the house.  Even today, when I hear a box fan running, I always think of Mamaw's house.  Since the front door was open, the screen door was the only thing keeping us in or out and it transported us A LOT.  The handle has been replaced more than once, but this screen door has been hanging here forever, proudly proclaiming "W" for Williams.  

I've done enough research for this blog and this house to know the front entry door is most certainly an antique.  We've talked before about the blending of Victorian and American Craftsman styles at the beginning of the 1900's.  This door is further evidence the house was built before 1935.  This is a single panel wood entry door combining the clean lines and sharp corners of the craftsman style with just a touch of the ornate detail of the victorian era (see photo below of detail around the glass).  

Interior side of front door

The door knob is also a combination of the Victorian and American Craftsman styles.  The Victorian knobs were similar in shape, but held much more ornate detail and swirling patterns.  The Victorian style also boasted large backplates, as opposed to the tiny backplates we have today.  I was able to find similar door knobs and backplates on ebay and on antique hardware store sites.  The dates for these are all around 1900.  These door knobs are throughout the house, with the same backplates.  Nearly every door has a skeleton key hole.  I believe they are some kind of copper.  The deadbolt on this door was clearly added later.  😉

The two photos below are a bell system, which was also popular in Victorian era homes.  On the outside of the door was a button that could be pushed.  Other models had a knob or a turn-key mechanism that could be twisted.  Turning the key or pushing the button struck the bell on the other side, indicating a visitor.  In some old houses, this system ran through the house as a signaling system for the butler.  

I was able to find a nearly identical turn key doorbell on an antique site.  It is circa 1900, which further supports my thoughts about the birth date of this particular house being well before the tax records indicate.  

Mom and Lynn were able to verify for me this door bell had a button.  Lynn said you pushed the button and the door jingled like a bell.  🔔

We are planning to do some cleaning up and polishing up of the front door, but it will remain as it is.  If you know much about me, you know I love a colorful front door.  But this one - it is staying as it is, just polished up a bit. I am hoping to replace the bell button if I can find something perfect.  Otherwise, the door will remain rich with history and opening to a new space and a new adventure.  💜

Research for this post came from the following websites (among others):

• http://www.psychologycentre.co.nz/the-symbolism-of-doors.html
• https://www.historichouseparts.com/antique-half-glass-oak-exterior-door-circa-1900.html
• https://www.build.com/product/summary/1518222?uid=3561794&jmtest=gg-gbav2_3561794&inv=1&&source=gg-gba-pla_3561794!c1045498305!a55076960521!dc!ng&gclid=CjwKCAjwt8uGBhBAEiwAayu_9UTh10US4NWoZnEkasXdeqKJoCM2RALSQJZs_p7ZmDFpK3IyQF1BYRoCPtUQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
• https://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/solid-brass-beaded-oval-door-plate-in-antique-by-hand
• https://archive.curbed.com/ad/17101030/history-of-the-doorbell-nest-hello
• https://www.eddonaldson.com/victorian-rotary-door-bell-360-493.html
• http://www.kristinholt.com/archives/17472

Weekend #8 - May 13-16

Weekend #8 got an early start with Pap taking the trim off the wall in the dining room and removing the trim around the door to Denny's room.  We made the decision to rebuild the wall in the dining room where the coal stove used to be.  The wall was in pretty poor condition, so skim coating it wasn't really an option.  We also needed to deal with the awkward breaker box.  Below are a couple of 'before' pictures to give you an idea of what we were working with.

We had previously attempted to take the wallpaper off.  As you can see in the picture above, it was challenging because there were also large places of paint on plaster and some sort of concrete mix.   Part of the wall is brick that has been covered.  The breaker box is in the corner and had a tiny crevice built into the corner that needed to be closed off just for the sake of aesthetics.  The breaker box itself needed to be centered in the frame, so we decided to just clean up the whole thing by hanging sheet rock.  

On Thursday and Friday, Pap began prepping the areas by taking off the trim and prepping the wall for the sheet rock.  Photo credits to Nan!  I'm grateful she is willing to take progress pictures when we are not there.

He also took the trim off the door to Dennys bedroom.  We decided to hang sheet rock on this wall as well with the goal of leveling it up.  You can see how crooked the door was in the second picture below.

I insisted on 'delicate demo' (thank you Erin Napier) so the trim could be put back after the new wall was installed.  So that meant we ended up with a pile of trim with nails in the dining room floor to work around.

Scott and I arrived on Saturday.  The biggest item on the to-do list for the weekend was getting the new wall up.  The wall was mostly Pap's project, with a little assistance from the work team.  Scott and I started the finish coat of the skim coat on the walls.  

Removing the trim did show off some of the brick chimney that runs behind this wall.  The chimney is shared (I think) with the fireplace in the bedroom.  This led to a lengthy discussion where my Dad and Scott successfully convinced me not to tear out the plaster and have an exposed brick wall in the dining room.  See the exposed brick below.  It took them a few minutes to convince me not to show off this brick.

I finally agreed to move forward with the sheetrock wall after I realized the chimney is shouldered behind this wall, so it wouldn't have been brick to the ceiling all the way to the corner.  

Just a few feet in from the left side of this wall is a cover plate for the pipe from the old coal stove.  As we have worked on the house, we have decided it was definitely built prior to 1935 as listed on the tax records.  Some of the old paperwork we have indicates it may have been built as early as 1908.  We are fairly certain the house was built without indoor plumbing.  We believe the back portion of the house was added when the plumbing was brought inside.  The room pictured above would have actually served as a dining room/kitchen with the coal stove.  The coal stove likely was used for cooking and heating, and possibly laundry.  The door to the kitchen on the right of the picture above was probably the back door to the house.   

The stove pipe emptied into the brick chimney through the hole seen below.  In the picture below, Scott was sealing the hole so we could hang sheet rock over it.

The hole was covered with the plate pictured below.  I spent my entire life thinking this was a paper plate glued to the wall at Mamaw's house.  It is actually called a flue cover plate or a flue stop.  It is a metal plate designed specifically to cover flue holes like this one.  Scott pried it off the wall and soot dumped out, down the wall and on the floor.  

You can see the brick of the chimney in these photos.  The chimney actually comes from the basement, where there is a coal furnace.  It is still there today.  I will try to remember to take some pictures and share them here.  

The hole was sealed up and the sheetrock went up over it.  Goodbye, flue hole!  

We had also made the decision to sheet rock the wall around the door to the bedroom to help get the door frame shored up.  They were able to get all the sheetrock hung before the weekend was over.  

In the meantime, Scott and I were working on the finish coat of skimming.  The finish coat is a thinner mixture of the joint compound we used for the scratch coat.  It is basically a second coat over everything we had already done.  

Skim coating is pretty physically demanding, exhausting work.  The finish coat is supposed to be the smooth finish, filling in the rough spots of the scratch coat and smoothing it out, so it requires you to work with the compound a bit as you put it on the wall.  By this time, we were feeling pretty good about our skim coating abilities, even if it is a bit messy.  There are lots of YouTube videos and step-by-step tutorials on how to skim coat in 15 minutes or less, but I am 100% certain good skim coating takes time and patience.  

On Sunday, we had run out of skim coat mixture and I didn't want to mix up anymore, so I switched over to priming the ceilings to prepare for the next weekend.  

I managed to get all the ceilings primed, even though my arms were already spent and I was completely over working above my head.  I was grateful to have it done, though.  

It was an incredibly productive weekend.   I am so grateful for Nan and Pap and their help with the house. I will close out this post with the weekend work crew picture for Weekend #8!  💜

References for today's post:

https://www.oldhouseonline.com/kitchens-and-baths-articles/kitchen-appliances/history-of-the-kitchen-stove/

https://www.monroecopost.com/news/20200409/from-historian-coal-furnaces-and-ash-piles