This cOld House 32

Doors, doors, doors.

While we were on Vacation, Bob got most of the doors finished. The pictures are (left to right, top to bottom,) The screen door for the back hall, the double doors from the old garage to the driveway, the walk through from the new garage to the old garage, the back hall door, the dining room patio doors, and the front screen doors.

I met with a geotech/soils engineer this week and we will be having some testing done to try to pin-point where the water seeping into the basement is coming from. (And more importantly, whether it can be mitigated through some manipulation of the land - swales, drains, etc.) This is really the first step towards addressing the rest of the landscaping. We want to get rid of the bunkers, and while doing so improving the water profile of the property. No question adding plants and trees back will help, but if we can do more, now is the time to incorporate earth movement into the plans.

The work that Durable Slate did before we left, particularly the flashing and copper work around the main chimney, failed to hold water while we were on vacation. We came home to water damage in the attic bedroom, Master bedroom and even some in the living room. That is to say that the leaking, worse than we'd ever experienced, went down through three floors. They sent a guy out as soon as I reported the problem but he was unable to do anything about it because it was raining... (Duh.) A crew will be out today to either finish the work up there, (I was under the impression it had been finished as we'd been charged in full for it,) or to dry it in properly.

We now have a way up to the new patio as Dave has finished the steps from the front porch. I'm eager to get the rest of it completed, which is minimal. (Soldering the seams in the copper counter-flashing, general clean-up including power washing the adjacent brick, and re-pointing said brick, trimming out the electrical and maybe restoring the powder room window.)

I've bugged the new landscaper about getting me a plan this week, which he has promised, but I don't really think it's going to happen. The property is still a mess, the weeds exploding while we were on vacation, and the grass growing tall in spite of my request for mowing.

The pool seems to be holding it's own... although with the prodigious rain it's within an inch of overflowing... (into the laundry room.) Like I keep saying, this house has some seriously bad water mojo.

Rob and Co. are working on Dan's Manspace, (the old garage.) They are building a plywood floor over top of the concrete. There is a 6 inch difference from the bottom of the steps to the house over to where the floor drain was. (The one we capped which went directly into the storm sewer.) This will now be flat, although it will still have some slope to it.




And what's up with THIS place????

This cOld House 29

What's new this week? We met with Dick about the landscaping last Monday and although we lined out where the retaining walls were to go, the ensuing rains washed out all our work. Back to the drawing board.

We finally saw the roofers. They came last Monday and Tuesday and then disappeared. As bad as the concrete crew have been about showing up, the roofers are even worse. To compound this problem, when we first got the estimate (in December,) we were told that the roof was essentially sound and we were not advised to replace it. Instead we were told that it could (and should) be repaired using re-claimed slate to match. However, when the installer came out last week he said we should replace the whole thing and we should NOT use salvaged slate. So I called the office and said what gives? Your estimator and your installers are giving me two diametrically opposed opinions. So on Friday we had TWO estimators show up. We came up with a modified plan and I'm waiting on numbers to make a decision.

Bob Sr. is hard at work on the doors. It's beautiful weather now so working outside is wonderful. He's making the new screen doors (which he built from scratch,) fit up front today. It's a bear to get them in right since the opening is neither plumb nor square, and they have to swing, too. Still no decision on the back half of the house, (whether we have to take out the windows upstairs as well as the dining room,) and materials are looking to be a problem. 10 X 10 oak beams are hard to come by. We may have to use pressure treated and wrap it in oak or cedar.

The new garage is looking like a new garage. Dan piled a bunch of junk into it last weekend. The lift door was installed last week. They guys doing it didn't inspire a lot of confidence. The door weighs about double what a regular door weighs. They assembled it like they usually do but with the garage being brand new and no power in it yet they failed to secure a way out. There was plywood screwed from the old garage side in the cut opening between the two and the door was too heavy for the guys to lift up manually so they essentially locked themselves in the garage and had to break down the plywood to get out. All I heard was a bunch of cussing and hammering but when I saw the mess (and damage) in the old garage I figured out what happened. The blue pipes in the front are part of our elaborate drainage system that we hope will end our water problems in the garages and basement for good.

This is the final sand coat on the stucco where the old garage doors were. The guy doing it was having a heck of a time matching the texture of the existing stucco until I explained that the existing was original to the house and began its life as a smooth finish. When I described the ivy we've heard covered the place he finally understood. I told him to go ahead and just do a smooth sand coat. Dan and I both love the color of this stuff but sadly it's a little out of the vernacular for our house. But seeing this color has galvanized our decision to go with a slightly warmer cream color than we currently have. And we may use this terra cotta color somewhere on the inside... I was thinking the dining room.

Last but not least, we have a mason diligently working to build the parapet wall on top of the garage. I picked brick last week and found a hand made brick that mimicked the age and condition of what we had. The color was close, only a couple shades lighter. I think it'll work out ok. We are still deciding about what to do on the top of the wall. I wanted it scalloped, and it will be stucco, but we don't want to have to paint every year, which is what will happen if we stucco the top. Rob suggested limestone on the top and it's pretty expensive. We're still looking at options.

This cOld House 26

It rained Monday, so the roof leaked and the roofers are behind another day. The masons are scheduled to come first and fix the chimney, before the roofers replace the slates or metalwork, presumably because masons are not so light on their feet, so whatever damage they do can be addressed by the crew after them. I got a call from the scheduler late last week indicating that I may actually have some work done this week, provided the weather holds. The good news is that I am the very next job on the list. The bad news is that they since they are in Columbus, and they don't send the weather-dependent crews out-of-town unless they have a level of comfort that they will be able to work a whole day, and it's scheduled to rain all week, we won't see them until next week, and I'll be moving the buckets around for the next little while.

The garage door arrived today to be sent off for painting. There is nothing to attach it to in the new garage yet so I guess it's just as well. I am eager to get it installed to secure the space now that we have the cut out done between the old and the new. Rob met with the concrete guy to pin him down on when we will begin to move forward on the top and back fill. I also got him to move the 'bridge' (plank that stretched form the front porch to the top of the garage, over the eight foot drop,) that was such an attractive nuisance to Naomi. (Pic is of said bridge, not garage door.)


We are quite happy with the sump pump and drain system we've been working on. The drain in the laundry room appears to be working pretty well. It's wet, but at least it doesn't run all the way around the room to the old drain anymore. The new drain keeps the stream out of the way against the cracked wall where it enters. Tommie likes it, as he'd rather drink from the floor (or toilet) than his bowl. And the sump kicks butt. A couple of weeks ago, as Rob sheepishly fixed the downspout pointing into the hole in the side of the house, he was perched on a ladder in front of the discharge. It throws about 2 gallons in a second or two of 55 degree ground water. It nailed him good!

Remember Dan's irrational desire to build a conservatory over the patio linking the living room and dining room? (His rationale: it would give us water-proofing around 17 windows, take care of the leakage down the outside basement walls in that area, give us a nice buffer to the rooms without sacrificing light and - this is new - act as a corridor to the new guest cottage for when the girls are in college and we are running a bed and breakfast. (Don't get me started... ) Well if we had more money than God, I suppose this would work. Rob found the link. I often accuse that whenever he's on the job site, the bill goes up by $4,000 (something always pops up, like another leak or some additional work,) but this time it's more like $104,000!

The floor guys put the last coat on the girls' bathroom floor. This now makes the room fully functioning, and tomorrow the girls will take their inaugural dip. (Tonight's date night.) We still have some issues up there - the window, the medicine cabinet/mirror, and the challenge of fitting a shower curtain to the oddly shaped opening. Rob and I think we have that one licked, although you never know until a theory is tested in practice. He needs to do some cutting and gluing, and I need to do some cutting and sewing.

The hole between the old garage and new garage looks good, although it's few inches shorter than we'd like because we were getting a little too close to the old window which was filled in with concrete. The wall is very thick. You can see the slab that they push out of there... it's about 10 inches. We need a little caterpiller to lift it out of the garage.




I hope to have pictures of the roofers, or the concrete guys soon. No luck today.

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It rained last night. When I was searching for a witty quote about water to open this entry, I couldn't find one that adequately described what was going on. However, I can relate to this one, (at least the first half of it):

I hate water ~W.C. Fields

(Actually the whole quote is, "I hate water - fish f*ck in it." ~W.C. Fields)

Status report. I have been told that the roofers are supposed to come today to dry-us-in. That is, they won't actually fix anything yet - we are still about a month away for that, but I have been advised that the chimney and the valley over the art room will be temporarily stanched. They will also look at the tarp over the window in the girls' bath and see if they can seal it. (Still leaking there.)


This is the leak around the chimney. I didn't bother to go up into the upper attic to show the leak on the backside as well... basically, the chimney, embedded in the corner where the two wings of the house meet, is functioning as a hole in the roof. God knows it doesn't actually function as a chimney.


This is the leak in the art room. We poked a hole in the plaster ceiling because it was so close to the light and we didn't want any build up around the fixture that would lead to short-circuits and death by fire. It has worked pretty well, because not only are we not dead, but the light still works too.


This is the leak in the basement. While it is much much better than it was, and the seepage from the old boiler platform and the crack in the floor has been stopped, it seems that the sump pump has not completely licked the problem. We are still leaking out of the pinholes in the concrete steps down to the lower basement. (We also have the leak coming from the outside wall of the coal bin, but are confident that when the new garage roof is finished, that one will be eliminated.)


Here's a new one. When Rob set the lid last week, he kind of pushed the downspout snake out of the way, which ripped it open. When they knocked off the flying buttress on the corner of the front wall to make room for the new garage wall, they left a hole. These two holes are in very close proximity, allowing the cascade of water off the roof to be directed into the hole in the side of the house. I know there is a Socratic chain here, but I can't put it into words... maybe hole in downspout + hole in house + water in downspout = water in house.


And finally, the sump pump did NOTHING to improve conditions in the laundry room, which flooded much worse last night (thanks to the melt as well as the rain) than it did even in the record breaking downpour we had in January. Korrect Plumbing will come take a look at adding a new drain, or another sump pump at this level. I think our choices will be either a sump pump for $1,500, or trenching the back yard and adding a french drain (like we did around the crawls space,) for $15,000.

Update on the pool: Phil the pool guy stopped by to take a look. He remembered the pool from when the Messicks lived here, (PJ - pre-johngineer) and said the pool is in pretty stable shape. We will have to have it drained and cleaned in the spring, and also have the broken valve replaced and the lines pressure tested to see if there was any damage other than the cracked valve from the freeze. That's kind of good news to us.

Tommie-Cat is getting fat. He used to free-feed at his old home, but there were 7 cats there and from what I understand, he wasn't very high on the totem pole. The vet told me to limit his food and it's been problematic. Because he likes to party all night, I've been locking him into the kitchen. When I got up Wednesday morning I found he had attacked the challah bread that was on the counter and also yarked all over the kitchen. Yesterday he helped himself to a good portion of the ground turkey I had just browned when I went to change Naomi. The vet warned me that a heavy cat is more prone to health problems but I'm to the point now where I feel like I'd rather have a dead happy cat than a live nasty one. Besides, I figure he'll trim down once he gets outside in the spring/summer, like the rest of us. Eat on, Tom!

Water, Water, Everywhere 16

It is so hard to write this post. I feel like I've been ranting for weeks with no end and none today since we are at a particularly low point. I wish I'd never seen this house and that we'd bought the charmless house in Wisteria that looked like it had an overbite.

Water is running down the chimney flue in the attic on three sides. I have four garbage cans stationed up there and have pretty well given up capturing it since it changes course every few minutes.

Windows are leaking in the girls bedroom, bathroom, the guest room, the attic room, our bedroom and then I stopped looking.

The basement has water running all over the place, every floor at every level is wet.

I just need a quarter acre tarp. Maybe one of those big tennis court bubbles.

I wonder if Dorothy Lane Market delivers Killer Brownies?

I am cursing Johngineer, knowing that he had to have been lying through his teeth when we asked him about the water worthiness of this house.

This Wet House 15

This is Dan's civil engineering project - a small canal set to drain the moat around the new garage.

It has been raining for three days straight.

We have been taking on water for two and a half days.

I went up to the attic bedroom to clean Tommy's cat box and discovered it full of mounds of clumps. I thought "Wow that cat pees a lot," and then I saw the tell-tale holes made from a drip-drip-dripping action. Sure enough the beam and ceiling above was wet. The good news is that the cat box and litter pretty well caught all the water. We have a garbage can in place now.

We have at least two roof leaks and water is seeping in the cracks of the floor/walls on three levels in the basement/garage. We discovered another leak at the bottom of the stairs from the kitchen to the front hall, but that will be fixed when the new garage gets a roof. Likewise on one of the two leaks in the old garage.


The big chimney has copper all around it and it looks (from where we were standing,) as though the seam is cracked. If this is the case, it's a quick fix, if not it means a bunch of copper work, and either way the entire chimney will need to be re-flashed. That is not very bad news, since it means that the actual slate is still holding and so far the only problems we've had are copper related.

The basement is also somewhat easy to fix. This house does NOT have a sump pump. That's rare for the age/location. We can add one fairly inexpensively, (under $500,) and it looks as though that is what we will be doing. What I'm not sure of is if one will do the job or if we will have to do two or more since the ground water is seeping in on three different levels.

Our true problem is that the house is built on a hill and the whole back and side yard slopes towards the house. So all the ground water runs to the house, then hits it and goes down, creating hydrostatic pressure, which then forces the water up wherever it can manage to go, such as minute cracks in our basement floor, walls etc.


Adding an element of danger is the fact that the swimming pool is located fifteen feet outside the dining room and although it was drained at least a foot down when it was winterized, it is now within an inch of overflowing. If it overflows, the water will go directly into the basement. Since the pool currently looks like a biology experiment, Dan has taken it upon himself to set up a siphon with the garden hose this afternoon to take the level back down out of the danger zone. We hope.

The electricians left on Friday after a very long day where they were pushing to get everything done. They got kind of sloppy near the end and we have a long punch list for them. Glen finished the tile in the girls' bath, but there are a couple of spots where the grout looks low - I'll ask Rob's opinion on Tuesday. Rob started replacing the drywall in the bathroom and even got a good coat of mud on. He'll need to put a couple more on and then sand the floor and then I think we'll be ready for paint. We are holding off altogether on the window until we make a decision on replacing or repairing. The plywood is on the inside of the frame and there is water leaking in underneath the damaged sill. Not sure what we'll do to weather proof that until the roof guys come out and lay the new copper in a month.

I've had a reminder in the last couple of weeks about verbal vs written instructions and I'm going to have to be much more careful about documenting stuff.

I'm getting irritable from having subs traipsing in and out all day every day. We aren't expecting the flexicore (garage roof) to be installed for another month and we are about done with plumbers et al for the inside project so I'm expecting some peace and quiet in the next few weeks. And I'm looking forward to it.

This cOld House 6.1

As is often the case, I spoke too soon...

As I was blissfully blogging a few short moments ago, Dan was enjoying a glass of scotch, watching TV and listening to the soft pitter-patter of rain, er, hang on, that sounds like a small stream, is that the TV?? (mute the TV) uh, that sounds awfully close, is there water running somewhere?? er, are the windows leaking?? HOLY SH*T!

There was in fact a steady flow coming in under the wall in the corner of the living room, draining to the crawl space underneath. It was POURING into the house, creating a lovely water feature, splishing and splashing this way and that.

I donned a raincoat and proceeded with flashlight and umbrella out to the suspect area to find that the downspout was CLOGGED and the entire front southwest quarter of the roof of the house was draining into our crawl space.

NOTE: Yes, the gutters were cleaned TODAY!!! I'll be following up tomorrow to check if they also say they did the downspouts.

Dan and I returned with a pair of pliers and unclogged it, reattaching the snake that pulls the water four feet away from the foundation. That slowed the interior stream to a fast drip.

We saw signs of this problem when Rick fixed the floor a couple of weeks ago. There is a sill plate, (piece of lumber) between the poured foundation wall of the crawl space and the brick and stucco wall of the living room. The sill plate had completely rotted away. At the time we all just thought, well, the wall isn't moving so I guess there's not much we can/should do about that.

I'll be needing a bid from Rob to excavate the entire exterior of the living room and waterproof it. Particularly the gap left where that lumber has rotted away.

Dan and I, drenched from our impromptu repair, stood dripping in the living room, laughing hysterically. I believe we are going mad.