Drywall...

There was a lot of drywall work to do on this house.  Much of the house had wood paneling which we removed, and it will be replaced with drywall.  Some of the drywall was removed due to being moldy from water leaks in the past.  And since we exposed the original taller ceilings, we needed to cover those with drywall as well.

Hallway prepared for drywall.  Stacks of drywall waiting to be hung. The vintage phone stand found elsewhere in the house was placed in its new location.

Kitchen downstairs. Cement board installed for tile.

Upstairs hallway

Upstairs bedroom

Upstairs HVAC duct raceway insulated and ready for drywall.

Interesting Old Wallpapers

Throughout this remodeling project, we found neat old fragments of wallpaper.  This house never had plaster; instead every room and ceiling was wallpapered.  There was a thin cloth that was nailed to the wood shiplap walls, and the wallpaper was glued to the cloth. We removed and saved wallpaper fragments where it was feasible, and we may frame or use them for artwork in this house in the future.

Here are some of the wallpapers that we uncovered:

 

New Plumbing Begins

When we purchased the house, it had two kitchens and two bathrooms (one on each floor).  The plumbing was a mixture of old rusty cast iron pipes and plastic PVC pipes.  Many of the pipes and drains leaked.  On top of that, during the first winter that we owned the house, there was a major freeze that caused our pipes to burst.  We had to redo the entire plumbing in the entire house.

Because we had to redo the plumbing in the entire house, this allowed us to be more creative and flexible with the layout of the house.  We moved the downstairs kitchen to a different room, and we added a Jack-n-Jill bathroom upstairs.  And because we were gutting the house; it opened up the walls and made the plumber's job much easier.
 
Hmmm, why did the plumber have to cut through the structural members?  Turned out the inspector said that this plumbing job was not acceptable, so it ended up getting redone anyway.  We ended up with cut structural members for no reason!  We are not very happy about this.

The plumber had a very difficult time installing the shower base and making it level.  Three attempts and three shower bases later, we have an installed shower base.  I guess the third time's the charm.

The sink drain in the upstairs bathroom also gave the plumber a hard time.  Three attempts later, and it looks like its done.

Attempt #1: Looked good to me, but the inspector didn't agree.

Attempt #2: The drain was outside of the wall.  What kind of sink will work with this especially in a small bathroom?

Attempt #3:  This one is a keeper.

The bathtub drain is not lined up at all with the drain installed by plumber.  I guess he'll need to figure that out when he installs the tub.

Plumbing under the house.

Each time the plumber had to redo the drains, he made new holes in our siding.

Let's just hope that we don't have any leaks after all of this.

Duct work for the HVAC units

Since the house never had any central heating or air conditioning, it had no duct work at all. All new ducts and returns had to be installed.

Ducts in raceway from attic to below the house.

We did not want the ducts to take over the entire attic because we may want to finish out the attic in the future and create a finished third floor.

The attic includes a stairway from the second floor, hardwood floors, and two windows (one on each side of the building).

 We asked the HVAC company to install the upstairs ducts under the attic floor.  The HVAC guys created custom ducts to fit between the ceiling of the second floor and the attic floor. 

 Custom ducts running in the ceiling.

The ducts for the first floor were installed under the house. 

New HVAC units were placed outside on the platform that we built on top of the old brick walls which once held up a wood cistern.

Major Rebuilding...

The bathroom addition added in the 1910's added one bathroom on each floor.  When we reconfigured the duplex, the larger apartment would have a bathroom on the first floor but none on the second.  We decided to add a small Jack-n-Jill bath to the second floor to serve the two bedrooms there.

To increase space in the Jack-n-Jill bathroom, we removed a chimney that was no longer used.  The chimney no longer went up to the roof, so it was completely useless.  We saved some of the bricks from the chimney to use for landscaping, and we gave the rest to our neighbors so they could build a brick patio.

We decided to use pocket doors to save space.  The bedrooms are already small, and we didn't want to take up more space with the bathroom doors.

Doorways to two of the bedrooms upstairs had to be closed off to separate one apartment from another. 

Doorway to bedroom was closed off.  Note the stacked wood; it was originally used to frame the lower ceilings in the house. When the lower ceilings were removed and the original tall ceilings were exposed, we reused the wood for the framing in the house.

The original kitchen for the downstairs apartment was very small, and the dining room adjoining it was very large (about 3 times larger than the kitchen itself).  Since modern kitchens are large, we decided to make the dining room the new kitchen for the downstairs apartment.  We decided to make the original downstairs kitchen into a laundry room and downstairs storage room for the upstairs smaller apartment.

Door closed off between the small original kitchen (in the back) and the dining room.

The original dining room downstairs had too many doors.  It had one door to the original kitchen (which was closed off), one door to the living room, one door to the bathroom next to it, and one door to the hallway.  We decided to close off the door to the bathroom as well.  This allowed us to make the bathroom downstairs larger with only entrance from the hallway instead of one from the dining room and one from the hallway.

Closed off door to bathroom (on right) from the dining room.

New floors are built where the termites ate the original wood floors.  Since this will be the kitchen, we will install tile floors here.

Rewiring the Entire House

When we bought the house, it still had its original knob and tube wiring.  This type of wiring was installed in houses between the 1880's and the 1930's.  The wires were added before plastic was invented, and the wires were covered with cloth instead of plastic for insulation.  The cloth had worn down over time and was frayed and gone in places exposing bare wire.  Since them, the house had wiring added over the years as needed for lights and and outlets.  The wiring was in very poor condition, and did not look like it was professionally done.  Needless to say, it was a major fire hazard.

This does not look very safe.

The electric panels were also very old and completely insufficient for the load requirements of modern appliances.  Originally the house had a 70 Amp and a 100 Amp panel; one for each apartment.  We replaced the old panels with two modern 200 Amp panels.  The 200 Amp panels will be sufficient for the new central heat and air conditioning system and the electric hot water heaters.

Old electric panel

Since the house was being rewired, we added wiring for tankless electric hot water heaters.  Tankless electric hot water heaters provide instant, unlimited hot water, and they take up very little space and don't require venting like that gas ones do.  We also wanted to save energy, so no water will be heated unless it is needed.


During the rewiring, we decided to add some recessed lights in the downstairs kitchen, living room, and bathroom.  The downstairs level has shorter ceilings, so the recessed lights will provide lighting without taking up ceiling space.  We also had most rooms wired for ceiling fans with separate switches for lights.  The ceiling fans will help reduce air conditioning costs.

New yellow wires next to old knob and tube wire.

There is still lots more to do before the final electrical finish out, but the wiring is finally taking place.

Reconfiguring the Duplex

One of the first things we wanted to change about the house is the front facade.  The second front door that was added to change the house into a duplex, and that really took away from the curb appeal of the house.

 Before: note the two front doors.

There was a window that we found in the house that was a precise match to the downstairs windows.  So we replaced the second front door with that window.

After: only the center front door remains.  The original facade of the house is restored.  Some cracked and water damaged siding was replaced on the front as well.

 We plan to keep the house as a duplex due to its large size, but we will re-organize the floor plan.  One part of the duplex will use the front entrance, and the other apartment will use the back entrance.  Luckily, the house has both front and back stairways, so this allows us to split it up in this way.

The back stairs are very narrow, and their ceiling height was only 5'7".  Because this is a historic house, the stairs are grandfathered and can be used as is.  However, we chose to increase the ceiling height to meet modern code requirements.  After several people have hit their heads on the ceiling going down the stairs, we decided this just needed to be done.

Before: the ceiling is low in the stairway.  

 After: the ceiling was cut back to meet the modern code requirements.  Note the new railing that was added to match the original.

Preparing For Heating/Air Conditioning

The house has no air conditioning or heat.  It was heated with space heaters and air conditioned using window units. This means that there are not ducts in the house.  We plan to add central heat and air, so this means the all new duct work will need to be added, as well as air returns.


We investigated various heating/air conditioning options to try to minimize the number of ducts needed and to minimize the space lost due to adding ducts.  We looked at using mini-split heat pump units which are completely ductless. We originally favored this option because it allows you to adjust the temperatures separately for every room thus saving energy.  But we decided against this option.  We received some negative feedback which indicated that it was very difficult to find experienced technicians who could install these units correctly.  The failure rate of these units if very high if they are not installed properly; they also have more failure points than the traditional HVAC system.  We also looked at using small duct systems including Unico and SpacePak, but we found these systems to be very expensive.  So their cost prohibited us from using them.  


In the end, we decided to go with a traditional HVAC system.  So we knew that we would have to come up with a location where the ducts and returns could go from the attic to downstairs.  So we decided to give up a portion of the upstairs kitchen.  That unit is smaller, so the kitchen could also be smaller.

Raceway from attic to the bottom of the house was created to run the ducts and returns.

We also needed to find a place for the outdoor HVAC units.  The house still had the original brick walls that were previously used to hold up a cistern.  The cistern was no longer there, but the brick walls remained.  We decided to repoint the old bricks and then build a platform on top of them for the HVAC units.  The other option would have been to knock down the old brick walls,and place the units in their place, but we wanted to keep the old historic brick walls.