Electrical Fire Hazard -- The Unexpected Discovery of Old Wire

The electrical breaker boxes for our house were updated in 1973, according to a receipt we found in the basement. Conduit to power extra outlets / light bulbs was strung along the basement ceiling at the same time. While the boxes were professionally installed, it looks like the previous owners added the conduit themselves. (It looks like a hack job and wasn't on the receipt.)

We're considering upgrading the service and having the basement rewired. So we peeked into some of the connecting boxes and were horrified at what we discovered. Our best guess is that the electrician left behind a pile of old cloth wire that was removed during the breaker boxes upgrade, and the previous owners decided to reuse it in new connector boxes. That's 1920s wire going through 1970s  boxes.

Old cloth-wrapped wire going through sharp-edged conduit.

Old, uncapped wire, held together only with old tape.

Oh, yeah, we're going to have to remediate this sooner rather than later.

Basement Decluttering

I never thought I'd see the day, but Ted has decided he can finally part with all of his physics and astronomy homework from college. (He was a double major.) I've helped him move those big, heavy boxes of paper three times in the last nine years.

Hello, extra storage space!

Behr Masonry and Concrete Stripper

We're going to turn the old coal room (one of two in the basement) into a summer bedroom (it's much cooler down here). This room is also Ted's office. We cleaned it up pretty well, and set up our 1930s bed against the far wall.

There's a nice view of the garden, too.

As with my office, this room is going to need a little help. We want to keep at least one foundation wall of the brick and concrete exposed, and not repaint it. The only problem is, it's been painted an ugly yellow on the top, and an even uglier green on the bottom. We also plan to tile this room, so the green chipping paint on the floor--yes, the floor was painted--needs to come up. We've tried numerous stripping products, including SoyGel and PeelAway, and nothing seems to work. It's frustrating, and has led to more than a few arguments spirited discussions on whether or not we should even leave the brick exposed at all.

At Home Depot this week, we spotted a product by Behr specially designed to strip masonry and concrete. What the heck, what's another $30? We decided to give it a try.

We slathered a test spot on the floor, on the concrete wall, and on the brick. We left it on for about an hour and a half, rewetting the surface once because it did dry out very fast. We then scrapped up the paint with a plastic scrapper, then took a wire brush and water to work it out of the grooves. It only took a few minutes at that point. Here's the floor:

And here's the concrete wall:

And here's the brick:

We're seriously impressed with how it cleaned the concrete; we should be able to further clean it and then use a terra cotta colored concrete stain. The brick was more difficult to scrape the paint from, and there's still quite a bit in the grooves. Maybe a second coat would help. If not, I'll take it back as far as we can, and dry brush a "white wash" look to it, so it will look kind of old worldish, but not yellow.

Overall, this is the best product we've come across for stripping paint from masonry and brick.

*In answer to a few e-mails I've received, my mom made the quilt on the bed for me and Ted. It's a double-wedding-ring pattern.

Basement Office By Night

Is it charmingly rustic, like I have myself convinced it is because I spend half my waking hours here, or does it really still look like a basement? The room is doubling as a guest room, is unheated, but comfortable enough on all but the coldest days, and then I have a space heater. I like the exposed brick on the top half of the wall. The bottom half is half-painted green, half bare concrete. I was considering getting concrete paint in a warm terra cotta color to paint it over, so it looks even and complements the rest of the wall. Has anyone used concrete paint before? Thoughts?

The other half of the room has my desk. I had removed the grotty old drywall without putting anything else up, so the wall boards are still visible. The ceiling boards have been removed, too. Eventually, new boards will be put up.

For now, my budget is $0 -- any suggestions for making this room more cozy in the short term, or does it look okay? We hope to have a houseful of guests in early October, and I don't want the person who sleeps here to feel like it's a basement. At least there are two decent-sized windows.

What Happens When You Don't Use the Right Mortar

It's a real problem in Chicago. Very few contractors who do masonry work on old buildings use the right kind of mortar for the job. Whenever you need to repoint or replace the mortar on your historic brick building, you should have a sample of the original mortar analyzed so that you can create a mortar with the same components. If you don't, all sorts of horrors can happen.

When we tore down the gypsum ceiling boards in our basement last summer, we exposed about 85 years of efflorescence on the interior wall. When moisture travels through the brick, it carries water soluble salts along with it, which end up evaporating on the surface. Ours wasn't too bad, a bit thicker in some spots than others, but overall probably acceptable for such a length of time. I used a shop vac to clean up most of it, and our basement walls looked like this:

Well, after a long winter and an even longer, damp spring, there seems to be a fair amount of efflorescence collecting in a single spot above one of the front windows.

That's a lot to collect in less than a year. Most of our basement after 85 years didn't have this much. So we went around to the front of the house to take a look at what was going on. What you're looking at here is some really cheap patch work done on the exact opposite side of this wall; we found tubes of Quikrete in the basement, and we think this is what the previous owner used when they said The Box House had been recently tuckpointed.

Whatever they used, the result is that the building is not breathing properly in this spot. The bricks are not able to expand and contract as they're supposed to against the rigid mortar, and moisture is somehow being forced through the brick.

There are earlier repairs to the brick as well; we're not sure when these were done--our guess is maybe 40 years ago when the last owner bought the place--but it looks like a better attempt was made to mach the mortar to the original at that time. At any rate, there are no problems to the brick where these earlier repairs were made. However, it is beginning to crack in certain spots--nowhere near as much as the most recent mortar repairs are cracking--but enough that we'll have to address it soon.

But here's the real problem, and thank goodness it's on the garage and not the main house.

On this entire corner, the PO used Quikrete or some kind of rigid cement to patch the mortar. The mortar does not move at all. So as the bricks here are expanding and contracting, they are literally crumbling against the mortar. If we let it go long enough, we'll have this web of mortar and no bricks. We're going to attempt, very soon, to repair and remortar this ourselves as a way to practice for the bigger task of repointing the house.

Most masonry contractors, when they tell you they can match the mortar, mean they'll match the color. Period. By not using the proper materials, or trying to work with a buildings original materials, such contractors are literally destroying the face of the city. Ever since we learned about the importance of the right mortar at a recent masonry workshop, we've noticed building after building across Chicago crumbling away. It's very sad.

Do you know what's also sad? The fact that the dang squirrels cannot wait until September for our neighbors apples to ripen; instead, they've been leaving half-eaten apples all around our yard. They usually take a bite or two, toss it over their shoulders, and grab another one.

Messy little buggers.

Haiku to Our Washing Machine and Dryer

Joy! A new machine.
Fresh socks and clean underwear!
Wash, rinse, tumble dry.

Yeah, I suck at haiku. But the replacement of our very ancient washing machine and dryer was an event worth celebrating in poetic verse, perhaps the single greatest improvement we made at The Box House in the year we've been here.

I remembered as I was taking a photo of the set this evening for the ad listing I'm writing for the rental unit, that I had never made mention of the new machines--although I had complained bitterly about the old ones, I think.

There were two sets. One on the right:


And one on the left:

I took both these pictures during our final walk through. We didn't test the machines, but saw that the previous owner's granddaughter, who lived in the building, was using them. As it turned out, only one dryer worked, but you had to tape the door shut or lean a heavy weight against it to keep it closed. One dryer didn't really work at all. One washer worked well enough, but clothes never smelled fresh. One washer worked for very small loads only. The washing machine output hose drained directly into sink, something I wasn't used to but could deal with. What I couldn't deal with was the nasty-smelling stocking that was being used as a lint filter. And the flexible dryer house that was supposed to be sending the hot air outside? Broken. Who knows for how long. But it was obvious steam had been doing a number on the paint; you can see how everything in that corner was peeling away.

And underneath, behind, and beside each machine there dwelt a hairy spider. Shudder.

But the tinkers took the old machines away...

And not a day goes by where I don't give thanks for the new machines.

Ooh. Shiny.

For the curious, we went with the LG extra large capacity set that was on sale last fall from The Home Depot. Pricey little things (although less so with the coupons), but look at the color! Bahama Blue. We'll have to design the rest of the room around it.

Famous Book Covers as Posters

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

My B.A. was in English Literature, which I earned from the University of Iowa. While I concentrated on Medieval and Renaissance lit (yeah, I know, it wasn't a particularly marketable focus), I did study a wide range of European and American authors of the 20th century. I would take classes devoted to a single author (Hemingway, Fitzgerald) or to a particular movement or genre (magical realism, Caribbean authors, Harlem Renaissance). For four years of my life I would read almost non-stop; during my heaviest semesters I would read 8 to 10 books or plays a week. I've not had that kind of luxury since, and these days I'm lucky if I find time to read a novel a month.

So anyway, last night I was trying to come up with some interesting art for my office. I've been lugging around the same framed paintings and prints for years, and while I love them, it may be time for a change. So imagine my delight to discover that AllPosters.com sells posters of classic book covers. I think I want to get the one of The Great Gatsby for certain, but I have space for two more, and I can't quite narrow it down. Should I get Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? How about Kerouac's On the Road? Or something whimsical like The Wizard of Oz? The choices seem endless, and I wish I had more wallspace.

But first, we will have to finish the basement remodel, whenever that will be...

Happiness is a Working Toilet

For Jean, who requested (demanded) a new post.

It took us one year and three hours to get our antique toilet in the basement working again. I'm not sure why some house projects manage to get done immediately, while others languish for months on end. Our Standard Low Tank Toilet project dragged on forever.

A nifty relic from our house's early origins, the toilet sits in a corner of the basement in its own little room. It's legendary on our block. At the block party, several neighbors laughingly asked about it. The previous resident had hosted a movie night in the basement for the dads on the block, and everyone remembered the "scary toilet." And I have to admit, it was a bit of a scary little room--dark, spider-infested--and the toilet was pretty unsanitary-looking, with an ancient wooden seat that had hosted untold generations of residents. *Shudder*

We took the toilet apart, I'm embarrassed to admit, a year ago this week with the intention of evaluating its functionality and giving it a thorough cleaning. All gun ho, we tore into it, deeming it repairable.

And then it sat there in pieces. For months on end, we'd trip over the box of parts, cursing it and promising to get to it "this week." We bought a nifty new toilet seat back in April or so, and made a trip out to the amazing Clark Devon Hardware in June for replacement parts. I even proclaimed on the blog then that we'd have the toilet working in "a day or two." Ha! A few months ago, we tore out the old drywall, got rid of the spiders, and scrubbed the room down with disinfectant.


But still the tank parts sat in a box, gathering dust.

Other house projects got in the way over the year, more pressing matters like leaky roofs, leaky basements, broken heating systems, and random tenant issues.

But finally, finally, we found time to work on it this month. And when we did, it took all of three hours to put the toilet back together again. I cleaned the heck out of the porcelain, preserving the old Standard label, and polished the metal bits:

Ted did the actual repair and re-assembly. DEA Bathroom Machineries was very helpful for this; they have an online repair guide for old toilets, with illustrations. This is what the system more or less looks like: Tank Diagram.

Anyway, one of these days (*cough, cough* years) we'll finish this room with tile and fresh drywall. But for now, the toilet itself is very clean and very usable--even if the only wall we have to block the view at present is a temporary folding one, since I tore the old one out.

Please enjoy the following video, which is music to my ears. The toilet repair project has been one of the most satisfying of all. It's so much nicer having to walk only ten feet from my office, rather than down the length of the basement, up the stairs, and into the unit above.



Now, instead of our galvanized shop sink, we just need a vintage Standard sink to match! We had found one in an alley nearby, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for, and it found a new home with Denise at The Bungalow Chronicles. Be sure to visit her and check out the installation!

New Windows for the Basement, Work We Contracted Through Angie's List

We cheated. We didn't replace the basement windows ourselves. For only the second time this year, we hired a contractor to do some work on The Box House.

Earlier this past spring, we removed the overgrown yew bushes from around the house, giving them away on Craig's List to whomever wanted to dig them out. When the trees were gone, we discovered that our basement windows were essentially falling out:

That's not quite true. We knew they weren't in great shape, but from inside the basement, you couldn't really tell just how bad. Note in the next picture how there is greenery growing behind the glass. (Hmmmm, on closer inspection, I think that's some wayward late-season mint. We had it growing everywhere, and enjoyed an abundance of mint juleps over the summer. The storm window is no doubt acting as a green house.)

Regrading the yard helped with some of the garden encroaching inside, but with the bushes gone, anybody walking by could see how bad the windows were. Blow on them too hard, and they'd fall off. In fact, after a storm we'd go outside, pick them up off the ground, and set them back in place. Pull them off yourself, and you could rob us blind.

Of course, the rooms where Ted and I have our offices, and spend a good part of the day, had security bars. Unfortunately, if there was ever an emergency from within, these bars would prevent our escape.

The old windows were quaint and old-fashioned. They swung up and inward, attaching to a hook on the ceiling.
Unfortunately, the windows and frames were kinda rotted, the glass was thin, and they leaked like crazy. You could feel a breeze coming in through the closed windows. Restoration wasn't worth it for a number of reasons; the windows weren't really quality to begin with, and we wanted egress windows that we could open quickly and easily--without struggling to open them and hook it to the ceiling just to get out.

We knew we were losing a lot of heat through these windows. At the end of last winter, when we moved in, we worked in the basement in our winter coats because it was so darn cold. So we wanted to replace all the windows and get them hooked into the security system before winter settled in again, and knew we couldn't do it ourselves quickly enough. Besides, they are oddball sizes and needed to be custom made.

After interviewing several companies and gathering estimates, we settled on Scientific Window of Chicago, which we found on Angie's List. Although they said it would be six or so weeks before they could install the windows, they were here in three and a half. A crew of four came in and got it all done in a day.

We chose slider windows. They can be opened to let air in without having to maintain clearance in front of them, and the glass can easily be popped out for quick egress. We didn't really lose much in the way of light coming in.

Overall, we're pretty happy with the work. It was freakin' expensive to replace everything at once, don't get me wrong. But to replace 13 custom-sized windows ourselves would never have gotten done. Anyway, heating cost savings in the next few years should balance it out. It's not quite as cold in the basement with the winter winds now properly blocked.

This pic with Ted is before they finished cladding the exterior with aluminum.

The finished product:

Sometimes, it's worth hiring out the work.

Basement Office Progress, Kinda Sorta

Do you ever worry that your "temporary" solution to a home improvement project will become permanent? I'm sure that's what really happened with many of our Previous Owner's weird fixes. They didn't mean to do a half-assed job; they simply didn't have time to go back for a more permanent solution.

But I swear, my basement solution is only temporary! Sometime in the next year, we'll get around to finishing it properly.

My office used to be the workshop. There was a grotty old workbench still sitting below the south window when we moved in, as well as an assortment of ugly cabinets, shelves that were falling apart, and, oddly, an old shipping crate for a harpsichord that had been converted into a low shelf. And my gosh, it was filthy. Dirt, spider eggs, and more dirt everywhere. I'm only sorry I didn't get a picture!

Well, we ripped out the old ceiling boards, which had an inch-thick layer of coal dust and tore down some of the drywall. There is one wall left, which we won't tear out until we work on the electrical. I washed down the walls and scrubbed the floor. We replaced the windows, which I'll blog about shortly, and I set up the day bed--perfect for napping on the job--with the super discounted Tommy Hilfiger bedding I bought. And then I tackled the remaining drywall with the same mint green paint I used in the storage room.

Here's a before of the wall:

Here's the after:

The drywall is in total crap condition with holes and gouges, and it was never installed properly and doesn't reach the ceiling. But until it's replaced, at least it will be clean. It was actually hard to get the paint to cover in some areas; I think the wall was used as a way to clean paint brushes of excess paint or solvent. The wall had some ugly splotching.

I got some simple curtains at Target for both windows and tension rods to hang them (this photo is taken with my back to the desk; for an office, it's not looking too officey in these pics, is it?):

And then I used some of the scrap carpet left over from recarpeting my mom's other house to cover the concrete floor:

What we still need to do for this room, besides the electrical and new drywall for the two inner walls, is to install new ceiling tiles, paint the lower half of the concrete walls with masonry paint, strip the gray paint off the solid wood lintels, figure out a way to buff the bricks and remove some of the paint to give them a more whitewashed look, and decide what we're going to do about the floor--I'm thinking Mexican tile with scatter rugs.

But for now, it looks pretty homey, doesn't it? (I'll settle for clean.)

I just hope it's temporary.

Basement Windows, or Why I Will Never Complain About Our Spiders Again

Our basement windows are in terrible shape. They are the kind that swing up and inward, attaching to a hook in the ceiling to stay open. They are as old as the house and completely inefficient. Many are broken or rotting and they leak like nobody's business. They were never meant to seriously hold back the elements, and it gets quite cold down here. And while the previous owners installed heavy-duty security bars that do keep people out, they also prevent us from using the windows as any sort of egress. Although we can't turn any of the basement rooms into bedrooms unless we create full-sized egress windows, we do have our offices and workshops down here, and we'd like to stay warm and be able to squeeze out in case an emergency of some sort prevents us from using the stairs to the exterior.

But the biggest problem with the windows is that they let all manner of bugs inside.

We fought a long, valiant battle this year against the spiders that infest the basement of The Box House, ridding ourselves of thousands (I'm not kidding) of egg cases. How did the previous owners stand it? By summer's end we were definitely down to a handful of the creepy crawlies. I suspect we'll see a reemergence in the spring, but it can't be anywhere near as bad as it was.

In the last few months I've (reluctantly) squished or tossed outside more spiders than I have in my entire life up to this point. Ick. I've found them walking across my keyboard, sitting next to me on the sofa, peering at me from the rim of my coffee cup, and popping out from behind the washing machine. It's like some seventies b-grade horror film. Attack of the Basement Beasties, or something. Some of the spiders are quite large, too, big enough to put up a good fight as I try to scoot them out the door.

But none of The Box House spiders are anywhere near as big as this Golden Orb Weaver, photographed in Australia recently:


Yes, that's a bird. The spider is eating a bird. You can go to the original story to see more of the gruesome pictures.

I will never complain about our arachnids again.

Waste Not, Want Not: A Tale in Mint Green

When I was in junior high, my dad said he would paint my room whatever color I wanted. I chose chocolate brown and mint green, thinking it would look like an Andes Chocolate Mint, one of my favorite candies at the time.

My dad, bless his heart, came back with a can of flat, dirt brown and another of Granny Smith Apple green. I was ungrateful in the way that only a 13-year-old girl can manage. I grumbled, I complained, I wrung my hands and sobbed. I tried to get my mom on my side, but she was smart enough to stay out of it. Despite all my dramatics, there was no changing things. Dad just growled at me and said, "The paint's fine, we're using it."

I was stuck with these colors throughout most of junior high and high school, until I convinced my brother to change rooms with me my junior year. His was painted in shades of navy and baby blue, much more pleasing colors overall. Even though he was less-than-thrilled with the brown and green color scheme, he was willing to swap because the window to my room opened a few feet from the garage roof, and after a bit of practice he was able to swing out onto the roof and escape down the mulberry tree to go off to whatever mischief it is that teenage boys in suburban Chicago go off to.

As an adult now, I realize I was battling my dad on a few fronts. The first was probably simple pride, or stubbornness. He didn't want to go back to the Ace Hardware and admit he got the wrong colors. I understand that. I hate admitting mistakes, took. The other front was financial. Paint is expensive. He would have had to shell out money for more paint, doubling the cost of the project. Why do that when the paint he bought was perfectly good? So what if it wasn't exactly what I had in mind?

Fast forward 27 years, and I'm standing in the basement of The Box House, staring at one of the walls in the storage room:

About 25% of the walls down here are made of tongue and groove boards. They're pretty cool, although they are all covered with paint, a blah, dingy, dirty whitish yellow. Two of the walls in Ted's office are comprised of these boards, the other two are brick and concrete. We are toying with the idea of stripping his walls to show of the wood grain. I think that it would look very cool. (The walls in my office are/were plasterboard.)

Stripping the walls of the storage rooms would be a waste of time and effort. But they are so dingy, and it would help me feel like I can keep our stored items cleaner if I could paint the walls.
If I had my choice, it would be a pleasing neutral color, something that reflects what little light filters into the back of the basement. But with all the other expenses going on with the house right now, it doesn't seem prudent to buy several gallons of paint to paint a room no one else will ever see--in fact, once we cram all of our stuff back in, we won't see the walls, either.

Now, the previous owners left behind nearly thirty gallons, quarts, and jars of paint. We've been grumbling about this, because the paints are, for the most part, too old to bother with or are some gawd-awful hideous shade, like mustard brown. We need to get them to the recycle center to dispose of properly.

But poking around the cans of paint this week, I did find nearly a full can of mint green paint! It's pretty much the exact shade of my childhood fantasy room. There isn't a single mint green painted surface in this house, so I'm not sure what it's doing here. I tested it out on a few surfaces. These pictures were taken at night, so the lighting isn't at its best. However, if you close your eyes and picture the cool minty goodness of that delicious layer in an Andes Chocolate Mint, you'll have it.

For the bottom picture, I dashed on a few streaks of white paint, which I also found in the basement, to give it some extra texture.

While I am sort of grooving on it, Ted is not overly impressed with the color. And I find myself saying things like, "We've got the paint, it's perfectly good paint, and we should use it rather than throw it away and buy something new." Dad, if he were here with us now, would probably laugh at me, because I now sound just like him.

Ah well, at least I finally get a mint green room. I'm thinking of painting the door and window frames a delicious chocolate brown.

Bones, Bullets, and 17 Bags of Poo Later...

See that?

Actually, you probably can't; it's a terrible picture. But that is the crawlspace under the back porch stairs of The Box House. After three weekends worth of effort and 17 bags of cat poo later, I'm gonna declare it cleanish.

In addition to a few scattered bones, we did find an assortment of treasures in the crawlspace that, had they been from a more recent era, I would have called junk and simply tossed away. But their very age indicates they probably belonged to the original owners, and as such, are a tangible connection to the early history of the house.

There are a few bottles, one of red nail polish with a bakelite cap, another that once held pickles from Marshall Fields, and one that contained some kind of "oil". There's a child's toy tea cup; several glass marbles; an old metal flashlight; a bit of carved gesso and gold-painted wood, perhaps from a mirror; an old bullet; what might be a lamp from a 1920s car; a lead figure, sadly, without his head; numerous fuses; and a finial in the shape of an acorn are among the more notable treasures.

I plan to tuck them all into a box and keep them somewhere on the property; maybe I'll even tuck a note inside about how we found them, and bury or hide the box for a later owner to find.

The next step in dealing with this open dirt crawlspace is to create a vapor barrier; I'm not quite sure how we'll go about it yet, with all the wood framing. But before we do anything, I'm going to take a metal detector back there to see if there's anything else of interest we might have missed.

What cool things have you found in your old house?