Five Useful Things I learned Getting Work Done on My House
Never have I ever been such an architect as now
Intro
I love old houses. Instead of building new five-over-one luxury condo blocks, I wish we could build more old houses instead. That’s sadly impossible, but it’s fun to think about, and inspiring too. I mean look at the balusters they made back then:
Built in the 1920’s in what at the time was a modest working class neighborhood in the Greater Boston area, even simple houses like this one have some artifacts of an era when affordable craftsmanship was not an oxymoronic concept. The single stain glass window is one. These are ubiquitous in houses of this ilk in New England, and if you look around for them, you’ll notice no two are exactly alike. Some are 4x4, 3x4, 3x5, 6x4, some rectangular and some square. Ours is square and 5x5.
Then there’s the deep dark “old growth” wood trim. Today, you can still buy mass produced profiles for this casing and apron, but not this crown. Replicating that requires a custom millwork setup and in these parts, 8 linear feet of it runs about $500.
Store-bought crown profiles available today, with their clunky proportions and timid projections, come nowhere near the grace and elegance of those of yesteryear. Crowns are the top…the pinnacle! They should be heroic! 21st century crown, you are an embarrassment.
Oh, the affordable housing of one hundred years ago! When affordable housing meant affordable houses. Today, “affordable housing” — a lexicon conveniently politically co-opted by governments and developers alike — means one thing and one thing only: half-a-million-dollar condos, relentlessly squeezed along neverending corridors. These corridors share a typological ancestor with the corridors of asylums…in time they may yet drive each of us insane, us creatures of the twenty-first century, us apartment dwellers.
There are four times as many people on the planet as there were one-hundred years ago, I suppose something was bound to change.
Still, they made a beautiful little staircase in our little old (new to us) house. All the more remarkable considering that in the time it was made, that generation had less wealth, hardly any electricity, far fewer tools, and even far fewer comforts. Granted, they had fewer rules…no building codes to govern dimensions of stair rises, runs, and landings! (This stair is now illegal…in more ways than one.) And they had more skill, the skill to build things that lasted 100 years and counting.
Buildings now? Well, the FTC flatly notes in a consumer advice memo (emphasis mine) that “Coverage for workmanship and materials on most components usually expires after the first year.”
If construction quality is a leading indicator of societal decline, we are in major trouble.
But I’m not succumbing to complicity in the face of decline, as far as the built environment goes anyway. Quite the opposite. We want this crazy little house to last another 100 years, with air conditioning, and basement beams that aren’t caving in. So, we put some architectural drawings together, my architect wife and I, and hired the most reasonably-priced quality contractor who bothered to pick up the phone for us. This saga has been taking place over the past seven months and has been a pretty wild ride, full of tears, joy, and copious layers of 100-year old plaster dust. I’ve been a professional design architect for over eleven years; but it has been an immensely educating process, being up close and personal with the work and the outcomes like this. So, here’s a selection of some things I’ve learned. (With perhaps more to follow on this subject in coming posts.)
#1: 2D drawings are good for pricing. 3D drawings are good when something actually needs to get built as expected.
Good for pricing:
Great for builders:
Right about the time we started getting into finish carpentry and siding, I had a breakthrough when realized the best way to communicate design intent was to digitally model every relevant material assembly with real dimensions, then hand off annotated screenshots to the general contractor (GC). A GC might have a general idea about how to build something from the 2D plan pricing set, but by the time they get in the field with the trades, things get wild west pretty quick. Decisions are made on the fly, details are changed, grace and elegance may be sacrificed. We achieved great results by modeling our shingle siding with lapped corners (the GC originally wanted to do some weird PVC edge thing), a gap at the base to match the original historic condition, and mahogany wood railing cap. Certainly enough 3D complexity that the 2D elevations didn’t capture all the key corner conditions. These 3D images probably saved hours in verbal explanations and hand waving…both between us and the GC, as well as between the GC and the guys actually building it. I don’t want pictures of the outside of my house on the internet so I’m not showing the final result…but it looks pretty fly!
#2: So. Many. Leftover nails.
If you’re an avid DIYer, go ahead and ask your contractor to leave all the extra materials for you. You probably paid for them anyway, and the scale of extra stuff that piles up on these jobs is significant. If you don’t ask, the GC’s default is to take these things away, presumably to be returned for a little cash or used on another job.
We’ve now got boxes full of nails, caulking, flashing tape, aluminum rolls, and much much more.
#3: Beware of peeling wallpaper.
It unfortunately may be a sign of a moldy, water-damaged plaster mess just below the surface. Yes, this was painful, especially in terms of the unexpected added costs for remediation and refinishing. But it was good we caught it while other work was getting done and before painting. It was also a nice opportunity to see how they framed and sheathed dormers in the 1920’s. And there was real horse hair in the plaster! This photo was taken after the water damaged plaster had been bagged and removed, and various disinfectants applied. Luckily, we caught the source issue (flashing absent in the dormer walls) before the leak caused deeper structural issues. Incidentally, this is another testament to the resiliency of old growth wood.
#4: Some discoveries are happy, though.
We had two. First was a pair of (child’s?) skis the contractors pulled out during the demo phase. I suspect these may have been left by an early owner of the house as a time capsule artifact. The workers left them on a bush, where I rescued them from an incoming rainstorm. Someday these’ll make a nice ornament on the porch, once we get around to figuring out how to fasten them. (I am also trying to determine how old they are. If you can help me figure that out, please reach out. They were made by Northland Skis in Minnesota and sold by James W. Brine in Boston or Cambridge.)
Second was the beautiful wood floors under a thick layer of carpet that blanketed the entire second floor. The carpet came up relatively easy…that was the rewarding part. More difficult was ripping out hundreds of staples and tack strips, which we did painstakingly ourselves with pliers, so as to avoid the risk of a less-careful demo crew damaging the old wood.
#5 About that crown…
Long story short, we learned that old wood trim is at risk of being destroyed during the window replacement process. One does not simply remove and replace windows. If you or someone you know love your old wood trim and are thinking of replacing your windows, talk to your architect about engaging the right craftsperson for the job.
Oh sure, we got our trim profiles back…our GC was honest and owned the things his crew damaged, so he covered the cost of the custom replacement crown and the other casing pieces. It’ll get painted and will look just like the old one, which had also been painted. Even better maybe, since the paint will be crisper, sharper, newer, less VOC-ier.
But beneath that Acadia White OC-38 will be this “new growth” wood, “sustainably managed and harvested”. That one year warranty’s got me a little skeptical about this so-called sustainability, but I guess that judgement can be made by the person that stands in this bedroom 100 years from now. Think of it! It is 2125, and this trim is either holding strong, rotting away and falling loose, or long since crunched by a bulldozer to make way for the hermetically sealed housing tower this imaginary dweller-of-the-future occupies.
Until then, I’m going to do my best to keep sustaining the remaining unsustainably harvested wood that’s holding strong in my new old house.