Stained Glass Class -- Putting Those New Skills to Good Use

There hasn't been much blogging done around here, although we've continued to plug away at the house. Work-work and clients have been taking up a lot of my time. (Thank goodness for that, really; it's been a tough year with the economy and all.) I also started a beginner-level stained glass class. My dream is to be able to replicate some of the original stained glass window designs we have in the house and carry the theme through to other windows. Here's an example of one such window:

And here's my first class project.

 

Stop laughing. It's a cute little mushroom. Admittedly, my second project was better:

 
However, I am probably being a little over-ambitious on my third (and current) project:

 

Those are some darn tiny little pattern pieces. 

When we moved in, we found an old dresser in the basement, and a drawer full of stained glass pieces. It looks like it originally came from the large window in our stairwell, and I think most, if not all, the pieces might be here. When I feel confident enough, I will try to reassemble it:

It will go in a wooden frame and hang in the window. I imagine it will look fairly similar to how it once did.

In the mean time, I have completed one repair project. I found this table lamp on Craigslist about five years ago. The glass is not original, and was not even cut to size.

So I made a nifty template, gave my shiny new glass cutter a trial run, and replaced the panels with a warm butterscotch glass I liked much better.

Plus, it complements the colors of our stained glass windows!

Okay, okay, you forced it out of me. I actually cracked the fourth panel on my final cut, and need to buy some more glass. For now, that side is facing the wall so you can't really see it.

Fan and Antique Art Deco Sconce Lights Finally Installed

Well, the rewiring of the living room took longer than planned--doesn't everything?--but we now have a new fan, antique sconces, and a new push button switch to match the one Ted installed in the dining room.

With the discovery that there were once sconces above our fireplace, we were quite excited to find vintage replacements on eBay. The patent date on the back of these says 1926, one of the three possible dates our house was built (1925 and 1928 being the other dates we've seen). Perfect.

Ted rewired the sconces and installed them last night. (If you're in the Chicago area, Marshall Electric offers some great deals on supplies.) I wanted to use flicker bulbs, but they really didn't produce enough light. Instead, we're using 40 watt (at least I think they're 40 watt) amber bulbs.

The effect is really cool.

The pattern on the surface of the bulbs creates wavy patterns on the walls and ceiling. It kind of reminds me of vintage theatre lighting:

And when you switch on the light of the new overhead fan, the whole room takes on a soft, cozy glow. Even though it was nearly 2 o'clock in the morning when we finished, we had to run outside to see how it looked from the street.

We had discovered that in the forties, a previous owner had removed whatever fixture was on the ceiling and capped it over, removed the sconce lights and plastered over the wall, and removed the only light switch in the room and plastered that over, too. That left only four--or is it five?--floor-level receptacles for plug-in lamps. For the life of me, I can't figure out what their motivation was. It looks so much better now.

Cleaning Our Antique Light Fixture, Pulling More Wire, and Another Conduit Mystery

Well, much to my disappointment, the antique light fixtures we won on eBay still haven't arrived at our door. Granted, one of them I paid for just last week, but it's been a few weeks since we sent payment for the other. What's that seller's excuse? Grrr. I want to get these installed soon, because my cousin is coming in town in a few weeks and she hasn't seen the place yet. I want to distract her from the disastrous bathroom and the super outdated kitchen with pretty, sparkly lights.

Well, I can't really complain too much. We still have to finish pulling new wire through the conduit before the lights can be installed, anyway. So that's what Ted and I did today. With a little help--as always--from Seamus.

I think I've gotten over my fear of rewiring; I'm no longer hyperventilating and thinking "OMG, I'm working with electricity!" Because really, I'm not. I'm just the Girl Friday, the one that chants "heave, ho!" and feeds the wires into the wall. Ted is the one who knows what he's doing and can hook everything back up again. Of course, I nag him to test and test and test the lines again to make sure they're not live. But that's me; I worry cuz I care. And because he humors me, he tests them again in my presence, even though he's already tested them several times and maps everything he discovers in our "Box House Book."

So, pulling old wires and replacing them with new has become fairly routine. We'll be ready to install the dining room chandelier and the front hall light when and if they ever get here.

And while we're at it, we're replacing all the cloth wiring along that circuit. That includes the wire leading up to the light fixture in the front stairwell, the stairwell that leads to both the front door of our unit and the tenants' door upstairs.

The stairwell is lit by two gorgeous matching light fixtures, one on each level, that are probably original to the house. Seriously, the lights are what really sold me on The Box House. I walked through the door and fell in love, just like that. Here's one of them:

But look closer; some moron in the past painted the ceiling without bothering to either tape up the canopy piece or loosen the screw to drop it enough to paint under it. What a mess. (Click on the picture to enlarge and truly understand my annoyance.)

I was really nervous to try to remove this paint, because I was terrified I'd also remove the gold paint underneath. The lamp is some kind of pot metal with a red, green and gold polychrome paint job. What I finally did was to get a shallow bowl and fill it with an inch of warm, sudsy water--I just used dish soap. Then I let the canopy soak in the water for fifteen minutes or so. This seemed to soften the paint enough that I could remove it with my fingernail. It was tedious, and underneath the splashed on white latex was a layer of slopped over taupe-colored enamel--the dreaded enamel that seems to cover the wood trim in the bedrooms, and is nearly impervious to strippers. Luckily, for once, it didn't seem to adhere to this particular surface. I was able to scrape it off with my fingernail as well. Voila!

I don't think these lights have been taken down in decades; here's what it looked like when I started to wipe away the dust with a damp cloth:
Granted, some of that is sawdust from when we refinished the stairs--that stuff gets everywhere.

I had decided not to take the panels out to clean the glass. Each is held in place by a foldover metal tab, and I did not want to risk bending the old metal in case it snapped. So I used a damp sponge and warm, sudsy water to gently wipe the whole lamp down. To get the moisture out from behind the metal grill work when I was done, I used a can of compressed air to blow it out. All in all, it worked very well. It's possible to see more detail on the surface now, and I'll take another picture when I get the light back in place.

We did encounter another mystery while pulling the wire. We thought it would be a straight shot from the dining room ceiling fixture to the ceiling box in the living room, a distance of maybe 20 feet max. Afterall, there are no other fixtures that it could be powering. However, the wire we pulled out was more than three times that length. So the conduit was not straight, and was traveling off somewhere else, to power what, we're not entirely sure yet.

We first double-checked the remaining wall outlets in the living room, including the one in the floor that powers our old electric fireplace. No luck. None of those wires were connected.

So now, our best guess is that there's another electric box or two hidden behind the plaster. The most likely scenerio, since the conduit seems to be heading in that general direction, is that there were two sconces above the fireplace, in typical bungalow fashion. And just as we found a dip in the plaster where there was once a lightswitch, careful inspection above the fireplace shows a few dips in the plaster that might have been the location of sconces.

Arrgh, I neglected to take another picture of the fireplace to show y'all, and the only one I seem to be able to find on the hard drive is this one from Christmas. It'll have to do. In the space on either side of the mirror there is a suspicious swirl of plaster, no doubt covering up newspaper-stuffed electric boxes.

We need to do some investigation as we did before, possibly some test drilling to find the boxes, but I'm so excited at the thought that we might have discovered another vintage detail buried by a previous owner.

Fan Installation Step One, or Eliminating One Electrical Fire Hazard

Mom has spent the last week in Texas, visiting my brother and his family. Ted and I had planned to have a new ceiling fan installed in the living room as a surprise for her return. But like all projects at The Box House, what we thought was a simple matter quickly grew complicated.

At present, there are no ceiling fixtures in the living room, although there is a (capped) box in the ceiling for one. There are also no light switches, just half a dozen receptacles for plugging in floor and table lamps. We want to install a ceiling fan/overhead light combo, and have it controlled by a switch.

The fan. Hampton Bay 54 inch Sauterne in Antique Umber.
We picked it up on clearance at The Home Depot.
If it looks good in place, we'll get one for the upstairs unit's living room as well.

The first step for the fan project was to trace the existing wiring to the ceiling box. With walkie talkies in hand, Ted worked upstairs testing wires and I controlled the switches in the circuit box down in the basement. Here's what we found out:

The ceiling box in the living room and the ceiling box in the dining room are on the same circuit, as is one receptacle in the living room (the rest are on another circuit entirely). Unlike the other receptacles, this one looks like a later addition. Some previous owner had cut into the baseboard trim to install it instead of cutting into the plaster, which would have to be patched around any cuts. Grrr. It upsets me every time I see a "shortcut" like that. So while the rest of the receptacles are a few inches above the baseboard, this one is in it.

Arrgh. Can you believe a previous owner cut into the baseboard like this?

Anyway, we know that the wires go up from this baseboard receptacle to the box in the living room ceiling. The problem is this: The wires leaving the baseboard receptacle are BX cable, the other end of the wires coming into the box in the ceiling are in conduit. Somewhere in the wall there is a hidden box where the BX and conduit meet--a definite hazard, since we don't know where it is. Electrical code (not to mention common sense) dictates that electrical boxes need to be accessible, not hidden behind plaster.

A view of the ceiling, with the old wires coming out of conduit.

Our guess is that in the past there was a ceiling fixture and a light switch to control it. At some point, the fixture was removed and the ceiling box capped, the light switch was removed and the box in the wall plastered over, and the wires were dropped down to a new receptacle in the baseboard.

So here's where we put on our forensics caps and searched the wall for evidence of a hidden box. There was a patch at about switch height where the wall was ever so slightly rough, and when we ran our hand along it, it dipped slightly. I had never noticed it before.

There was only one way to know for sure if this was our hidden box, and that was to do a test drill; and so Ted drilled a hole into the wall where we suspected the box was. Voila! We found it.

A few test holes.

We removed enough plaster to reveal the box, and discovered--to our horror--that a previous owner had filled the box with crumpled newspaper before plastering over it. Ted's best guess is that they did this to create a supportive surface for the plaster. It's bad enough that they plastered over a box; did they have to fill it with a highly flammable material first? If the wires deteriorated and sparked (which we found evidence for in another room before replacing those wires), there was a nice wad of material to get a good ol' fire going.


We pulled the paper out, which nearly crumbled in our hands, and smoothed out the bits to see if we could catch a date.

Turns out it's an advertising circular for Sears, with the address of the location on Lawrence Avenue in Chicago where my grandfather was a display manager for many years. (He would have gotten a kick out of that.) We couldn't find an exact date, but based on a few of the products advertised, including an 8 mm Revere 80 projector, our best guess is that someone in the late forties/early fifties wadded up the paper, stuffed it in the wall, and plastered over the box.

Here's a partial bit of the ad circular we found in the wall. If someone can help us date this camera more precisely, we'd appreciate it.

Bella and the bits of paper from the wall.

The discovery of this box in the wall makes one step of the fan installation easier to accomplish--adding a light switch to the circuit. The box is already there. But now I've been Shanghaied into helping Ted rewire the line, which includes pulling the old cloth wires out and threading the new stuff through.

The taped wires lunging out of the wall made me think of a hydra, its many heads rearing up.

We won't have the fan installed by the time we have to get Mom from the airport, but the project is turning out to be more interesting than I first suspected. I wonder what other treasures (or hidden dangers) are in the walls of this old house.

Ted pulled the drawer of our sideboard all the way out to access some electrical equipment we had (temporarily) stored in it; it took all of five seconds for the kittens to discover the new hiding spot. Our six-month-old kittens now weigh a hefty ten and eight pounds, although they're still only half grown. I don't think we'll be able to call them "kittens" for much longer.

Worth Getting Up in the Morning

I am feeling rather creaky today, still a little stiff and sore from the carpet pulling adventure. But it's hard to feel truly cranky when waking up to this. This is one of the living room piano windows on floor one. The house faces southward, so we have light streaming in for most of the day. The window opens, too, so on warmer days we'll be able to get some great breezes coming through from all directions.

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Burn Baby, Burn!

Unfortunately, the fireplaces at the Box House are decorative only, which is a bit disappointing. Our condo has a fireplace, and even though we only used it a handful of times each winter, I like the option of having a fire. Eventually Ted and I may get a gas-burning stove to put in the corner of the living room and satisfy our fire fetish.

Floor one of the Box House still has a decorative fireplace insert, original to the house. I'm not sure exactly what these things are called, and numerous keyword combinations on Google and eBay yielded nothing. I can't find anything quite like it. (If you know the proper term for this, please tell me!)

It's made out of cast iron with a polychrome painted surface. (The middle bedroom downstairs has sconces in the same medieval theme, but they are covered in heavy layers of paint, which obscures all detail.) The seller's agent, who is also a granddaughter of the Previous Owner, does not remember the fireplace ever working.

We spotted another of these fireplace inserts in the basement when we first looked at the place, and when we made the offer we made sure to have it written in that this would not get thrown away, as we might want to reinstall it on Floor 2. That one is pretty rusty, however, and would need to be stripped and repainted before it could come back upstairs. It has one red bulb, and one white, which I imagine give a sort of static reddish glow.

Because we plan to have the floors sanded next week, we haven't moved any furniture in. Nearly all of our possessions are piled in the basement and on the back porches. The only furniture upstairs, if you can call it furniture, is a mattress and a T.V. Ted and I camped out in the Floor 1 living room a few days ago. We rented both Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and the later remake, The Money Pit, for an inspiring double-feature. (There's a strange parallel in both films as the new homeowners spend their first days on a mattress on the floor--it was a life-imitating-art-imitating-life moment.) As I brought in the snacks and a bottle of port, Ted shared his surprise--he had, unbeknownst to me, gotten the fireplace insert working! Unlike the rusty one in the basement, with its red and white bulbs, this one had been fitted with a spinning disc to simulate live flames. Mere pictures won't do it justice, so I've uploaded a movie.

Although there's not a bit of warmth coming from it, after a few glasses of port it definitely seems more lifelike.

Floor Sanding Options

Today we had a couple of flooring contractors come to the Box House to give us estimates on what it would cost to sand and refinish the floors in both units, as well as the front entry stairwell.

The floors in the main rooms of the top unit (living room, dining room, entryway) were recently "done," but I'm not sure if it was a "professional" or one of the Previous Owner's family members. In any case, he or she didn't bother going under or behind the radiators. The wood there is quite dark, while the rest of the area appears to have only a thin coat of varnish over bare wood. (The stairs are the same way. They have pools of darker stain in the corners, but the rest of the tread is quite light.) The three bedrooms upstairs are covered in ancient carpet.

Living Room of the Top Floor Unit. Sure, it may look good at a quick glance, but what you don't see is how the floor's only protected with a very thin layer of varnish. We also want to get it back to the original color, which is a little darker.

In the downstairs unit, the floors hadn't been sanded at all. Most of the floor downstairs is in decent shape--certainly better than many of the rental units I lived at in my younger days--but there are several boards that will have to be removed and replaced due to previous damage. Boards near a radiator in the bedroom off the kitchen appear to have water damage, and there are holes in the floor of the dining room. There's also a large dark stain we believe to be cat urine, but from what the contractors told us and what I've read on other house blogs, we may be stuck with that unless we replace those boards, too.

Both contractors who stopped by had been recommended by our buyer's agent. J.E. had previously recommended a mortgage broker and a lawyer who we were very pleased with, so we're willing to start with his recommendations here.

The first guy gave us an excellent price, one we can certainly live with, and even said he'd rip out and haul away the gawd-awful carpeting and replace the damaged boards for free. His quote included two layers of varnish; if we wanted more, it would cost more. But even then, it seemed a good price. However, there is a major language barrier and he was only here about 10 minutes or so. I'm not entirely convinced he really saw the full scope of the project, and I'm not entirely sure what we'd be getting. For example, it was difficult to convey that we wanted the floors to be a color complimentary to the rest of the trim.

The second contractor was here for 45 minutes, and she went over every room in detail, discussing which boards should be replaced, measuring everything with her tape measurer, giving us a bit of history of old floors. (The most interesting thing I learned is that they are no longer able to get wood flooring at the same length as was commonly installed 80 years ago. One of the floorboards that needs to be replaced is over 15 feet long; they'll cut only the bad section out at a length that can blend in easily, but leave the rest in place.) She's to send us a full proposal by Monday. My gut tells me it won't be as good as the other, probably nowhere near as good. She's talking about having two crews out here for upwards of two weeks. I'm sure the floors will look spectacular, but will we be able to afford it?

There's always the option of doing it piecemeal, one unit at a time as we can afford it, but right now we have all of our stuff in the basement, and it would be easy to work on the floors. The other option is to do it ourselves. *Shudder*