Salvage score: cast iron bath tub

I was driving around at work a few days ago and noticed that there was a company clearing trees around a few abandoned houses.  Correctly assuming that this meant the houses would be demolished, I stopped and asked the driver of an excavator (who was conveniently the company owner) if I could check around the house for any woodwork, windows, or the like that I could salvage.  He said it was no problem, and to just let him know what I might like.

The house was something of a mess, and almost all of the woodwork, windows, and flooring were water damaged.  The cabinets were falling apart, though they looked to have been cute once-upon-a-time.  But then I walked into the bathroom and saw a nice, deep, old tub, just like the one in my mom's house.

I went back and talked to the company owner again, and he agreed that we could have the tub.  I then mentioned that I had no way of getting it out myself; I was obviously working, and my husband was at home watching our baby.  Since the house was being demo-ed the next morning, I didn't see any way to remove it.  He (very generously!) said that his crew would take it out and set it off to the side for us.  Awesome!  He also mentioned that they were contracted to demolish a duplex in Mishawaka, and would we like to look at it before they took it down?  You bet we would!  He said there were old kitchen cabinets, woodwork, doors, and windows in it.  He took my phone number and said he'd call me when they were a little closer to the demolition day.

I'm going to stop back by the destruction site today and offer him some cash for his time and effort.  Cast iron doesn't have a high scrap value, so I'm confident it will be more than he would have gotten for the tub at a scrap yard.  I'm hoping that maybe we can establish a good working relationship, and maybe we'll call us before he works on any old house.

Maybe my Aunt Virginia is right and I should have been a Sheeny Man instead of a cop (though I seem to be doing okay at both at the moment!)...

I'm still hoping that if/when we build our "new" house, that we can do it with as much recycled building material as possible.  I don't want a new-looking home; I love the character and quality of old houses.  It also saddens me that when old homes are demolished, so much usable building material is just wasted and tossed into a landfill.  Maybe "sickens" is a better description.  Our society and culture place such a high value on all things new, that I think people forget that there is nothing wrong with things that are old.  Old things still work. Old things are much easily repaired by the layman.  Old things often don't require electricity to do the same job.  Many old things are crafted with much more attention to detail and with a higher standard of quality, and are often beautiful as well as useful.

I like old.  I like knowing that other people have used and found joy in the same things I use.  I like when items have a story to tell, or when I can tell a story about where I acquired them.  It's so much more interesting than just going to the store and picking something out.  I like knowing that I saved just one more thing from the landfill.  Recycling isn't just for cans and bottles!

Kitchen mini-reno sneak peek

New floor, new fridge, new dishwasher!

We're winding down on phase 1 of the mini-renovation in the kitchen.  The floor is no longer scary, and we have a working dishwasher and a fridge that actually fits in the space designed for it.  I'm happy with the way it looks, and it completely changes the character of the room, even though the cabinets and countertops are still the same.  Removing the cruddy wallpaper and paneling wainscot will help even more, but we won't do that until it's warmer outside and we can open the windows to ventilate.

We went with SwiftLock Sierra Slate laminate tiles from Lowes.  I had my doubts, since it got iffy reviews, but we bought 6 boxes and figured if it didn't work out for us, we'd just return it.  The semi-cruddy reviews were due to the planks being bowed.  Even after letting all the flooring sit for about 10 days, there was a noticeable curve to each plank.  But as we slid the planks together, we found if we tapped the long edge with a hammer to help engage the tongue and groove, we had no problems.  The seams are not even visible.  It's so much nicer than the el-cheapo temporary laminate we had in there before.  The planks don't slide around; they all fit snugly together.  It was more difficult to install, since we had to line up the "grout lines" in order to make it look like tile instead of a haphazard mess, but Shayne and I are both very happy with the results.

The only issue I have is that it's more modern than the rest of the house.  It's not so modern that it's jarring to walk into the room, but it's obviously newer than the 1920s.  I knew that was a hazard when we started this project, but creating a more period-appropriate kitchen by replacing the cabinets and unearthing and refinishing the wood floor just isn't in the budget now that we're going to move.  I wanted to do something that was appealing while being totally reversible by a future owner (if desired).  While it's not the kitchen this house deserves, we didn't ruin anything either.  And it does look nice, and I think it's the best we could do while working with the existing cabinets.  It's just not the kitchen I had dreamed of for this house.

In the next "phase", we're going to add baseboard to match the rest of the house, remove the wallpaper and paneling, paint the walls, and install toekicks.  It should be warm enough to open the windows during the day for a few hours within a week or two, so we'll be moving right along.  In the meantime, Shayne is going to install the molding in the upstairs bedrooms, and I'll get busy sanding and staining the few bits of woodwork that are still painted in the hallway.

Oh house, how I want you to be finished....

The tagline of this blog should be...

Instead of, "How our old house changed our lives," our tagline really should read, "How we unfucked our old house, one catastrophe at a time."

Seriously, sometimes I wonder if the people who owned the house before the folks we bought it from did anything right.  D across the street said that Mr. F was "handy".  While I commend them for not letting the house fall down, I have to wonder, fairly often, what were they thinking?!

When we had the dishwasher installed, we found that the water supply and drain lines were both the same diameter of pipe.  That made the supply line too big and the drain too small.  Also, both were some sort of cheap flexible plastic pipe commonly used in trailers and campers, not braided line for the supply and a strong, flexible hose for the drain.  Don't even get me started on the pipe arrangement for the dishwasher supply and drain.  Our installer also noted that the supply lines for the back porch bathroom was clear plastic tubing of the type normally installed for ice makers.  He said it wasn't designed for long-term, full-time use, and he was surprised that in its 20 years of use, it hadn't yet cracked.  What's even weirder is that they ran copper supply lines to the washer out there.  Why use copper for part of it, and cheap, crappy plastic for the rest?

Because of the goofy plumbing, he couldn't actually hook up the dishwasher supply line.  We have Shayne's plumber friend coming over tomorrow to straighten everything out.

Seriously, people.  Is it so hard to do things right the first time?!

Demolition auction score!

A few weeks ago, Indiana University at South Bend (IUSB) had a demolition auction of 30 houses that they were razing to make way for a parking lot.  Almost all of the houses had been used for student housing before they build their current apartments, so they weren't in good shape from a historic standpoint.  But there were some neat features and details that were auctioned off, including woodwork, built-ins, kitchen cabinets, plumbing, and flooring.  I was unable to attend, due to my work schedule, but my wonderful mother went for me.  She scored us a set of built-in cabinets ($165) and a house-full of woodwork ($25).  She also networked with some salvagers who would be happy to sell us anything that they recovered.

Yesterday, Shayne and I went to "our" house (1026 Bellevue) and claimed our built-in bookshelves.  They were ridiculously easy to remove, though they had been banged up a bit by folks who had won other items in the house.  During their removal, I found that the bookcases had originally had lights installed.  We had to rip out the wiring, but the little light fixtures inside are still intact, and we may restore them at a later time.  We also saved some baseboard of an unknown wood species (for some reason I think beech, but I don't know why), but almost all of the doors had so many holes for handles and locks that they weren't worth saving.  There was a neat old closet cupboard that I would have loved to take with us, but we don't have the space to store it.  We also didn't have space in the truck to transport it.  It was BIG.

Salvaging always makes me sad.  I'm glad that we (or someone) is dismantling the houses so that the materials can be reused...  But to see them torn down to make way for a slab of asphalt just seems silly.  I could probably write an entire pity-party post, but I'll spare you all my mental anguish.

When we got home, the original plan was to store the built-ins in the garage for some future house.  Though they were only about 2' wide, they wouldn't fit in the doorway between our living and dining rooms.  But I asked my ever-so-patient husband to bring one of them inside for me, "just to see something."

After a bit of furniture shuffling, we now have two new additions to our living room:

(Please excuse the grainy picture.  The lighting this morning is not the greatest)

It would be ideal if they were twice as wide, but I think they look nice.  To casual observation, you don't notice that they're not part of the room.  I'd center them on either side of the window, but each cabinet has a hole on the side where the doorway woodwork is supposed to fit.  I can just see our cat and baby thinking that they are the greatest new place to hide...

Here's to another bit of rescued house history!

Ready? Or not?

Having my best friend living in Japan, just about 150 miles southeast of Tokyo, has made the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor event in Japan just a little bit personal for me.  The area she is in hasn't been badly affected by the disaster, though there are rolling blackouts, possibly contaminated water, continuing earthquakes and aftershocks, as well as the potential of a nuclear disaster fairly close by.  For me, it would be like all of this is happening in Chicago.

And I don't know about you, but that seems just a little too close for comfort.

I look at my supplies in the basement, the shelves of food, mylar bags of water, stacks of batteries, canisters of propane, and my camping supplies, and I feel deeply that it just isn't enough.  Granted, we are better prepared than many.  Some folks, through necessity, ignorance, or complacence, have only enough food for a few days or a week.  Others have built fallout shelters in their backyards.

How much is enough?  Is it a year's supply of food?  Raising your own meat?  Living off the grid?  I don't really know what level of preparedness would make me feel "ready".  Maybe I never will.  Lord knows, I have no plans to build a bunker!  If things got that bad, I'd be ready to meet my Maker and be done with life here.  But there's a middle ground, somewhere between tin-foil-hat-crazy and la-de-da-oblivious, that I'm searching for.

And so we slowly build up supplies, buy ammo, grow veggies, can food, and learn new skills.  I may not ever be "ready", but I'm doing what I can.  And in the meantime, those shelves of food and bags of water might just come in handy.

Do yourselves a favor, folks: Prepare.  Have a plan.  Don't just be another victim waiting on FEMA to come save you.  We all know how well that works out.  Be prepared.  You just never know.