Too Pooped to Post

watching mike sand all day wore me out...

Re Muddling the Re Muddled Re Muddle

I challenge you to say that three times fast.

This tongue twister about sums up this phase of the restoration. The back addition on the house has seen numerous changes through the years, some minor, and another quite major one. Now I was about to add another major one to it's history - though hopefully one a bit better than a "re muddle".

Studs cut and ready for window framing

Window framing finished

With the sill repaired it was now time to make the necessary changes to the walls. The north side wasn't too bad, other than re framing for the twin double-hung windows for above the sink. As you progressed towards the porch however, the studs (I use the term vaguely) became a patchwork of pieces, as doors were added, windows filled in, etc. I salvaged many original studs from the interior wall that was removed and was able to use them in the wall reconstruction. When the next guy in the future opens up the wall to do his re muddling, it will be hard to tell what was original and what were my changes.

The plan of attack was to work on a section at a time and get it sheathed so I wouldn't need to support anything which worked out well, especially doing most of this myself.

New sheathing started, windows temporarily fitted

Because the original pine plank sheathing had too many issues with all the changes, I decided to replace it all with new sheathing and salvage what I could of the pine for other uses. The above picture you can see at this point I've covered over where the new door will be. I later went back and framed the doorway from the inside and cut the doorway out, then installed the new door.

South end with new framing and sheathing continued

Once I was up to the old porch section, the back wall framing didn't need much to work with, but the side wall was a lost cause. With the framing done to fit the octagon window besides not being at all square, and the fact that I was going to be framing for a new double-hung, I decided to just take it out and start over. Now this wall is level and squared up to the back wall and to the main house - and a few more studs than before.

North side new sheathing

With the south end completed and new window fitted, it was on to the north end to complete the wall reconstruction. This end was a breeze, just replace the sheathing and added a few filler pieces to re size the framing for the new window.

Walls, door and windows complete from inside.

With the walls completed, I removed the windows that were temporarily installed so I could wrap the structure in Tyvek. I actually wrapped the outside corners first with roofing paper for added security and at the inside corner I ran a piece down half on the addition and half exposed for the main house. When I redo the siding on the main house I can tuck this flap underneath the new siding and that way this critical corner will be nice and tight instead of having a seam here. Then everything was wrapped in the Tyvek paper and taped with the special Tyvek tape. The windows were then installed permanently using the rubber membrane tape around the framing, folding the Tyvek around to the interior, then topped with foil tape after the window was shimmed and secured.

Much, much better now...

Somebody's Been Eating My House....

With a plan in hand, it was time to start making the necessary modifications to the back of the house. First on the list was to remove the back entrance stairs and get all the aluminum siding off to see what we were really up against. Of course this place always comes through with surprises.

In the left pic you can see where the original porch was closed in and not even sheathed with wood. You could put your foot right through it. The original cedar clapboards were removed previously except on the north end and the small section of the main house. Nothing to alarming from the distance, BUT......

This Can't Be Good.

So after taking off the clapboards and trim, the story was revealed - some body's been over for dinner.... and they brought the whole family.

... no wonder this corner felt "bouncy"

So like every other project (why should this one be any different) - it just got unexpectedly bigger. After studying it a bit, all was not so bad, those pesky termites didn't stay for dessert. Looking at the construction, what was ate up was the first four feet of the outer floor joist, actually a doubled up one. There are 4 support beams which run from the stone foundation of the main house and tie to the brick footers. Then the floor framing rests on top of these beams. Nothing major in the floor had been touched and best of all they never made their way up the corner studs. So ended up just a matter of replacing the damage. Plus I didn't even need to support the corner of the house while making the repair.

I was able to stagger the joint from old to new since it was two 2x10's sistered together for this end joist/ledger making for a strong transition. There will be a 2x8 on the outside for a deck and another 2x10 on the inside to support the new floor sandwiching this all together - making this corner stronger now than when it was built.

Note: the cinderblock is just filler between the original brick footers that was added sometime in the past to block drafts.

Much better now.

Clear As Mud

For those of you at home following along, I'm sure at this point you are confused as ever about the layout of our house - lord knows I was. I drew up a few plans in PhotoShop showing the three major changes the house has undergone:

1906

The first drawing shows to the best of my knowledge the original 1906 floorplan of the 1st story.

1971

The next drawing shows the 1971 conversion into two apartment. All major changes from original are shown in red. Note all the radiators are changed out from the larger tube to smaller thin tube units. A wall is constructed through the foyer and back stairs is walled off to make a first floor apartment. The back porch is enclosed and half the mudroom used to make a bathroom for this apartment. Also the gas fireplace in the foyer is walled off. And we won't even go into the destruction that was done to the cosmetics....

2006

The final drawing shows the plan we have come up with to put back some of the original details and change some other (in red). In the foyer the staircase bench will be rebuilt, the fireplace restored, original style radiator back, and of course the wall long gone. The dining room will also see an original style radiator back and the window seat restored. In the parlor the radiator here will be located back in it's original location and also replaced back to an original style. Also here I will be adding a fireplace / wood stove. The kitchen will see the biggest change with the pantry and original mudroom footprints combined to make a larger kitchen. The original porch footprint will become a powder room, especially since the plumbing is already there. A few more radiators will be installed and a few windows added to the back addition. Also there will be a built in pantry cabinet and shelves around the heater chimney, and a built in hutch will be added. Between them and the powder room will be a closet for the dishwasher (and freezer if we use the monitor top fridge). The sink will move to the opposite wall to make room for this hutch.

I Did It - EBAY

Well the time had come to put together a kitchen plan. The problem is how do you plan a room when you have nothing to plan with?? And you can't just go to HD or Lowes and say... OK, I'll use that, that, aaaand that. With the idea of doing a real 1930's kitchen, the challenge became to gather all the essential pieces of a kitchen on a limited budget and in a limited amount of time. So after coming up with a "general" idea of a layout and a wish list - the EBAY hunt was on!

And all I can say friends is I did good - REAL GOOD!

The purchase that started it all - a 1935/36 Magic Chef gas stove. Great deco styling, complete with timer, 4 burners, oven and broiler. Plus two storage drawers. Condition wise - gorgeous. The pilot will be sent out for a rebuild and I'll be taking care of the valves, gas lines, etc. Follow along this coming summer when I restore all these kitchen pieces....

The next piece was a must have as soon as I laid eyes on it. It's an original pine built-in step out hutch that was salvaged out of a house in NJ. At 9 feet it goes from floor to ceiling and fit like a glove between the basement door and back stairs. It was a bit pricey, but well worth it, since it is the focal point of this side of the kitchen - and check out all the storage! Once finished it will look like it was built with the house.

The next find was an original 1929 American Standard cast sink. A true kitchen classic here with excellent porcelain and at 52 inches, plenty of room for pots, pans and a nice sized drainboard. This was a key find so I could get started on re structuring the addition walls. The plan was to mount this on the back wall with two double hung windows above looking into the back yard. Now I had measurements to work with. Just needs the cool faucet with the soap dish mounted on top!

Like the built in hutch, the next two pieces were a "yea.... that's IT!" as soon as I saw them. I had been toying with getting an older oak Hoosier and building an island with wainscoting sides and butcher block top. They would have looked good ( I already have an icebox), but have any of you seen a metal style Hoosier plus a 1930's island of any kind??? And they are a matching set! Heavy duty metal construction with enamel tops, these bad boys will out live me. With the deco stove, these 3 pieces really make for that 1930's feel. The nameplate says:

The White House Line

Janes & Kirtland, N.Y.

Of course you need a place to eat, so here is a 1930's enamel top kitchen set, complete with pull out extension and silverware drawer... and a huge bonus - 6 original matching chairs! I sometimes will see 4 but never ever have come across a set with 6.

And here's the only non-EBAY find, but a local yard sale score. A neat early roaster that needs a little TLC, but cleaned up will sit nice in a corner. Plus bottom has storage and overall will really add to the "look" I'm going for.

and finally a 1931 Monitor Top fridge......but

then I stepped up to the optional 1930 two door model - and yep, after a little tweek'n she purrs like a kitten and can chill with the best of 'em. And what about the first one?? Who cares - only cost me a penny! Does need some work though.

Back to the show

All that was left now was to demo the butler stairs and upstairs hall. No real surprises here. I did the upstairs hall since this would be the ideal time to run all my wires for thermostat, doorbell, smoke alarms, and 3-way / 4-way switches for the various lights that will be switched between here and various locations downstairs.

At this point when you walked in the front door, it was possible to see all the way through to the back door - maybe we were taking the concept of the modern "great room" a bit to far! But really, at this point you're thinking "what the *#$! was I thinking???!"

.... Can I put this back together???

nice mantel, but... is something missing?

So ends the first phase of the work downstairs - I now have a "clean" slate to start putting things back the way they were, or at least should be. I have already started accumulating pieces including a great oak mantel that fit like a glove and an old Humphrey gas insert. It appears there originally was a full size insert that covered the opening, but the Humphrey will fill the void for now.

During the demo I did find some neat items (other than underwear) mostly under the stairs where paper items fell between the riser and step joint. One in particular was a library slip that was dated 1966 and gave me what was most likely the 2nd owner's last name - Anderson. Also thrown in the walls during construction were several milk bottle caps... better than beer caps I suppose. I put one back in the wall in an envelope with a note telling about how it was found and a date.

mik caps, button, Johnson & Johnson can

.

library slip, valentines, x-mas tag, paper doll, matches,

Gillette blades, hair pin, receipt (1947)

game pieces

Hall Who??

Lloyd Norris Hall married Louisa Belle "Lulu" Dutton on September 5, 1905 at Twin Oaks, PA (on the Dutton farm). After getting married they soon had a house built in the young town of Ridley Park, PA. Most likely ground was broken that fall with stone work being completed. After the winter season, framing was completed in the spring of 1906 (the walls are filled with maple seeds!). Sometime later in 1906 the house was completed and the newlyweds moved into their first and only home - and now 100 years later - our home.

Norris & Louisa Hall wedding (seated in rockers)

September 5, 1905

Chester Times - June 21, 1952

L. Norris Hall Dies at 73

L. Norris Hall, prominent Delaware Countian and widely known steel merchant with warehouses in Philadelphia, died at 3 a.m. today in Taylor Hospital, Ridley Park. He would have been 74 on July 14.
Mr. Hall entered the hospital on Tuesday, June 10, following a stroke suffered the day before in Ocean City, N.J. He drove his car, however, from the shore resort to his Ridley Park home, with Mrs. Hall. Pneumonia complicated his condition following admission to the hospital. For the past week his right side was paralyzed.
Until his illness, Mr. Hall had been president of the board of managers of Taylor Hospital. He was a leader in the hospital's recent campaign for funds to enlarge the institution.
A resident of Ridley Park since 1905, he had been a real estate assessor in the borough, later serving 12 years as tax collector and four years as burgess.
Active in Church
Ridley Park Methodist Church had Mr. Hall's devoted interest. He served for 25 years as superintendent of its Sunday school. Mr. Hall had been president of the church board of trustees and chairman of the finance committee.
Mr. Hall was born July 14, 1878 at Mt. Hope, near Village Green. His parents were the late Samuel H. and Sarah J. Hall. He attended public schools in Aston Mills and Village Green, Darby Friends' School, Drexel Institute and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Showing an early interest in telegraphy, Mr. Hall became telegraph operator at Glenolden station on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Later he operated signal towers for the railroad between Philadelphia and Washington. He then joined Western Union Telegraph Co., and in 1903 he was appointed to operate a special private wire from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh for the Carnegie Steel Corp.
From telegraph operator, Mr. Hall became a steel salesman for Carnegie, and during World War I, he was in charge of all export steel shipments to the shipyards of Japan.
Established in 1921
In 1921, Mr. Hall established his own steel warehousing firm, L. Norris Hall, Inc., with headquarters in Philadelphia. The firm supplies miscellaneous iron and steel products to industrial plants in the Philadelphia Metropolitan area.
Always deeply interested in the welfare of his neighbors, Mr. Hall was active in a number of community agencies. Years before Delaware County was organized for Red Feather campaigns, Mr. Hall and the late Carl Hennicke, of Ridley Park, with the assistance of Boy Scouts, collected funds and purchased food, fuel and clothing for needy families in the borough and Ridley Township.
Later he was a founder of the Community Welfare of Ridley Park. More than 50 Christmas baskets were assembled at Ridley Park borough hall each Christmas by this organization and delivered to needy families.
Chester Kiwanis Club was a special interest of Mr. Hall's and he was a past president and was an active supporter of it's boys and girl's work. One of his most recent benefactions was to donate steel for construction of stands in Chester's Little League Park, 9th and Ridley Creek.
Bank Official
Mr. Hall was vice -president and a director of Ridley Park National Bank. He was a 32nd degree mason and a past master of Prospect Lodge 578, and a director of Delaware County Chamber of Commerce.
In 1905, Mr. Hall married the former Louise Belle Dutton, of Twin Oaks, who survives.
Other survivors include a son, Wallace D., of Wynnewood, a vice-president of L. Norris Hall, Inc., two daughters, Mrs. Leroy Layton Jr., of Aronomink, and Mrs. A. Wesley Hoge, of Ridley Park. Another son, Gilbert N., is deceased."

L. Norris Hall - 1940

Rather interesting man, eh? Did the man ever sleep??!

What's Cooking in the Kitchen?

Not a thing for a long long time...

At this point we knew the first floor would be a total gut. No surprises here.













This time I was surprised not to find any gas lighting - it was all electric only. I lucked out with the linoleum flooring, which at the Glenolden house took me days to get up. Here the old one piece floor was at the bottom of the layers with 3 more on top. When it was installed, only the perimeter was glued so when I got under it with pry bars, all the layers came up together with little effort. I took it up in 4 foot sections and what I thought would be a day or two job - took an hour! I'll take any good news at this point....

The pantry had long since lost it's built-ins, but when I removed the panelling, there was still some original pine left that I was able to salvage.

Unfortunately it was February and there was one lonely radiator in this section of the house. It was chilly enough, but taking everything down to studs made this part of the house down right COLD! The back addition off the house had some siding issues and daylight could be seen through some points. With everything ripped out, I quickly did a patch insulation job until I came back to rework the walls. The first floor still ended up struggling to get out of the 50's half the time - complicated by heater issues that I'll cover later.

By far the busiest area of the restoration will be back in the kitchen/pantry area. The original kitchen room is a 12 x 12 room with 5 doorways, an over sized window and a radiator, plus the heater chimney that chases through one corner, and an angled ceiling where the gas fireplace flue runs through the ceiling - not much to work with here! Even with a separate pantry room, we quickly realized this setup just won't work today no matter how much we wanted to preserve the originality of the house.

I decided the best idea was to open up the kitchen, pantry, hall, and half of the bath into one kitchen room, and then make the 8 x 6 section that was originally the open porch into a smaller powder room. I didn't need the 8 x 12 bath back there now. Since the back had been re muddled so many times, I didn't feel bad about doing this to the house. I figured I would have to add a piece of steel to reinforce the end joist after removing the back wall - but as it happens in these old houses, you never know what to expect to find.

As it turned out the last joist served nothing more than a nailer to keep this dividing wall in place and actually was no supported by much at the ends. As a bit over kill, I did double up the joist and add some support at the chimney end, so there should be no problems with any settling.

With the back opened up, I now had a clean slate to design a kitchen in - but this would prove to be quite a challenge with an unusual footprint to work around. Plus what started out as purchasing a vintage stove to use in a modern "vintage look" kitchen would turn into a full authentic 1930's kitchen!