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Restoring Old Buildings-Step by Step
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Step Two- think Safety!Last year a person was killed while working on an old building.. he apparently demolished the wrong beam and it collasped on him. I'll most likely spend the next week or two THINKING about SAFETY and developing a srategy for dealing with it without killing myself.
For example, the roof is sagging but rises up in the middle around the chimney and the stairway wall. How do I reinforce the roof while removing the chimney? How do I lower the high spot in the roof, requiring a bearing wall be cut, while making sure it doesn't all collaspe? Maybe I can jack up the sags to match the middle?
Of course, when I did the leaning 3 story tower the only thing holding it up was a shed it was leaning on, which had to be removed. There are solutions!
Think SAFETY, and take the time to PLAN carefully.
You're so right, Foxtower. I hope you also have some backup, someone who will holler if things don't go well or at least come looking in a timely fashion.I was working on the roof of a 2 story wing of a building we were restoring in Raleigh, NC when it fell many years ago. It connected to a 4 or 5 story main building. The only reason I wasn't hurt was that the foreman, Pollack, was a real stickler for safety - with good reason. He'd been shot in the back by an idiot using a .22 caliber nail gun on a plywood partition once.
On this particular job, we had the hysterical society & a team of engineers trying to salvage a building that should have just been torn down. He drilled us on getting off that wing in a hurry - straight through the big building, out the windows & down ropes. Only a few of us were allowed up at time. One day it went & I'm not sure I used the rope much, but was on the ground & around the building before all the dust settled.
With the demise of the building, so went the job. I never did find out why it fell in, but I was always happy that Pollack had taken the time to make sure we knew exactly what to do. It's something I've always been exacting about when falling trees, too. I always know where I can run & make sure I have clear paths.
I guess you have some good metal pipe for bracing? I'm always a little leery of wood posts. I've had a couple break or bow badly in different situations. We usually tried for round metal jacks when propping up buildings. Weight can shift around without it making much sense sometimes. Later you find out that a seemingly solid beam had a crack or rot that you couldn't see at first.Sometimes, propping up to take a bow out wasn't really an option, either. A lot of the old beams warped over time & the only way to put a flat floor in was to cut wood in to make the floor straight. One time I remember we had to scribe a 2x6 - there was over 5" of dip in the center of the floor, but the beam was solid. They turned that building into a tack shop & I got to visit it many times over a couple of decades. It didn't seem like it bowed any more, but it was occasionally noticed & commented on.
No metal bracing.... any posts I use will be built up using laminated 2 by lumber... That's still several steps away. Now is the time to think (while focusing on getting the garden in)
Step Three- lose weightWhile I could stand to lose a few pounds, no, not me, the building. Every pound I can remove now takes stress off the structure later when it's time to jack it up. Today I took off all the doors, five old solid wood doors, three of which can be restored, and a few homemade pine closet doors I can use when I build something to hold the windows which I'll remove next. I may be able to restore seven of the eight windows. A good Winter project! Finally I'll remove the chimney down to the roof line.
Of course, Step three is closely related to Step Four-"get naked". If you'd like to think Step Four is about an old fat guy who am I to discourage your vivid immagination?
One thing I forgot to mention is the budget. At what point does building new cost less than restoring? Is resotration "worth it"?
Based on the addition I built a couple years ago for my ex, I could create a new 24x26 one story building with vinyl siding and no interior for about $6500. (no labor cost) Then of course my taxes would go up. If I was to recreate the 1 and 1/2 story farmhouse as is with cedar shakes it would cost about $10,000.
If I demolish the building it would cost about $3000 to remove the debris and $2000 for labor (back hoe, etc). Yet I would never choose this option.
When I restored the Fox Tower ($3000, well below the $10,000 spent to restore the other tower in town) cost wasn't a consideration because of the Historic Value of the building. While the farm house has little Historic Value, it would be a waste not to try and fix it. Yet my budget is limited.
If I can restore the building for $5000 in materials it will be worth it to me.
Current cost- Two trips to the dump- $5.00
Is there any market for some of the stuff you're pulling out? Some people go nuts for old doors, trim, floorboards & such.
Not really. For example the solid maple flooring is so moldy and smelly it's unsalvageable. Anything I can salvage gets put back in the building like the doors and Windows.. if I succeed.
That's a shame. Old maple flooring is beautiful.
Time TravelingI tore down some bamboo print paneling in the kitchen yesterday and discovered the wall behind had eight layers of wallpaper on it. Since I'm in no hurry I peeled off bits here and there until I had a history of the decor in the kitchen.
It started with a pale green uneven tile look with occasional flowers. Was it 1925 or 1940 when it was first done? Can't tell, but that one wall has General Mills paper wallboard on it. I liked the second layer the best, a red and black and silver art deco design with rectangles and curves made by Sears. After those it was floral, beige bricks, kitchen shelves, a boring beige medallion, red leaves and finally a vertically striped floral design.
I like finding little bits of history, an added bonus is one is so inclined to enjoy while renovating.
Wow! 8 layers is a lot. I would have thought it would have peeled off from sheer weight. You are tearing the walls out & not just peeling off paper, right?
Tearing down the walls is the next step. Today I figured out how to remove the windows with the frames intact. The newer frames have aluminum slides, while the old ones have pulleys and weights. Along with the original green tile design wallpaper today I found the trim in that room was also first painted a pale green, looking more and more like it was pretty nice in 1925 with pale green walls and maple floors.
Tearing up the linoleum I found 1950 newspapers underneath, which dates the maple flooring to 1925 since had the farmer put in the maple when he moved in in 1940 I doubt he would have covered it so soon.
Time traveling continues: In 1950 news, one article talked about the possible poison cloud across Europe in the event of nuclear war, the classifieds listed "jobs" and a seperate category titled "jobs for women", and new Hudsons were on sale!
Sash weights are a real find in this day & age. They're perfect for hanging on the back of chain harrows, but I haven't seen any around in years.I've never been fond of aluminum in windows. It tends to create issues due to condensation due to the temperature differential. Pella made an aluminum double pane window with wooden interiors. Pretty to look at, but I warned my stepfather against using them. They were cheaper than Andersons & prettier than the all vinyl ones, so he used them any way. Everyone pretty much cursed them continually. Junk. The wood discolored from the condensation in the winter badly.
I've installed some very nice vinyl window rails. They're perfect if the trim is a bright white. You can barely see them & no one ever notices they're not wood. They fit the wood sashes well - very energy efficient - but were only for smaller sashes. The ones with springs in them to replace sash weights didn't impress me, as I recall, but that was 20 years ago.
The floor sounds awesome. A regular archaeological dig.
Is it wired with the old single strand electric inside the walls, too? I remember finding live wires with paper & other flammables laying on them. Scary stuff. The first one I found when I was a kid helping to tear out the old walls in a bathroom. I was told it couldn't be live & luckily tested it with the head of the hammer. Scary.
Having figured out how to remove the windows intact, this morning I removed all the windows and spent the after noon cleaning up. The old pulley window frames are little more than templates for making replacements as they are seriously dry rotted. The newer windows with the aluminum slide are salvagable.I still have a fire going burning all the lead painted wood. If I took the wood to the dump it would cost $25 a load... and they would burn it!
The last part of this step is the chimney.
Speaking if which- now three loads to the dump with glass, linoleum and assorted trash- cost to date: $15.00
Step Three- now complete!Today I took down the brick part of the chimney down below the roofline to the block part of the chimney. It seems that upon close inspection the chimney is sinking. Not surprising since it sits on a four foot high wooden frame on top of the floor joists.
The bricks are of course reusable... the 200 or so should make a nice landing at the bottom of my deck stairs. I don't remember where I got the 2 and 1/2 inch masonry chisel, but it came in handy beating on the mortar to get the bricks lose.
I slapped a temporary patch over the hole. It would be nice to pull of the seven heavy layers of shingles, but where I'm not certain if the buiding can be recovered a new roof, plus disposal of all those layers, would cost about $1200... so I'll wait until I see what a few hundred dollars in support can do first.
Seven layers of roofing represents a DIY project gone seriously wrong. A ninety year old building would need no more than four layers, but by putting each layer over the old layer the roofing couldn't sit flat. No doubt the homeowner thought the roof just had problems, when in fact he created the problems when he didn't remove the old layers. The new shingles could no longer lay flat, and indeed, now the roof is full of waves that don't allow the water to run off easily, thus creating leaks.
Anyway, Step three was all about losing weight without challenging the structural integrety of the building. For example I didn't remove door frames which could be contributing to support. In Step Four, Getting Naked, I'll continue to remove weight carefully while revealing the structure (and strutural problems) hidden underneath the walls, ceilings and floors.
Again, think safety! I've seen a home depot commercial featuring a couple so excited about remodeling they attack a wall with a sledge hammer. In real life thats a good way to get killed.
7 layers of shingles? That's ridiculous. I'm surprised they stayed on. Must be a pretty simple roof with a lot of tar. A third layer isn't really good. I've put those on a couple of times & they're a mess. Never last too long.
Step Four- Getting Naked; I've started exposing all the structure. What a messy job it is pulling off the sheetrock along with the cellulose insulation! Now it gets somewhat riskier, like when I pulled a piece of door trim that had to br broken in half to be removed because of the weight on it.
Shortly after I started this morning I heard a loud thump downstairs. Turns out a piece of sheetrock I'd poked a hole through earlier while searching for a route to get the extension cord upstairs wasn't being held on by much!
While most of what I've uncovered so far starting at the peak looks pretty good, I did find rotted rafters around the chimney.
A nasty dirty job thats going to take a while!
Worked about 11 hours this week and I've completed half of one room. It's a dusty job, and if I worked every day I'd be doing laundry three times a week... better to pace myself.Cost to date with another dump run $20.
A couple more days and the upstairs is about halfway done. I'm getting into a pattern of using the sawsall to cut "t's" and "l's" in the sheetrock, tearing that down and piling it outside for use as fill later, then cleaning up. Then I deal with whatever cellulose insulation falls down. If it's clean I'm bagging it for possible reuse now that I have room to store it, if not, to the dump. Then cleaning up. Last I pull all the nails for recycling. Then finally cleaning up. I guess a lot of time cleaning up....
What cellulose insulation remains in the walls I'm covering with plastic.
A couple families of bees thought I was opening a condo! Had to chase them out while I'm working in there.
Cost to date- add $15 for plastic and $5 for staples, plus another dump run = $45
Alright smarty pants! The point is to demonstrate the cost for those DIY'ers that never renovated an entire house, which is low while doing demolition, and will increase exponentially when actual construction starts.
Oops... almost forgot, add garbage bags at $5 (while I prefer to reuse garbage bags and just empty them in the hopper the dump wouldn't take kindly to dumping blown in type insulation and "frosting" the entire transfer station!) Cost to date= $50
No, I might tease you, but I'm rooting for you. We buy our tough garbage bags with feed in them. While I do have some plastic ones, I've had the same box for years. Rarely need or use them.
While humid it was in the sixties and perfect working weather today!Just finished the second floor. While the first half took four days, the second half plus removing the chimney down to the first floor, only took two days.
It's a well known DIY phenomenon.... once you figure out how to solve the problems you suddenly get much more efficeint. I liken it to chair caning. The first chair is a bear as you try to figure out how long to soak the cane, how to keep the pattern on track etc., etc. The second chair is much easier, and by the third chair you're an expert! Just a metter of doing enough to get good at it!
"Getting Naked" has already revealed some serious structural problems. The chimney was added after 1925, and not only was a bearinhg wall compromised, but a bit of floor was left hanging with only the floor board holding it up! The list of spots to be repaired before I try jacking the building is growing...
Add another dump trip and more garbage bags- total is now $60
Even as Step Four progresses (only two rooms left downstairs!) I've been revisiting my plans for how to fix it, especially after finding more and more problems.Today I started calculating structural elements, starting by answering questions like "How much does it weigh?", ""What size beam or girder do at need at such and such a point to lift it?".
Using a wonderful reference book I bought when designing a building was merely a long term goal, I calculated the total weight at about 15 tons, then added a 25% fudge factor so if I base my calculations on 20 tons I should have more than enough.
Yes, now is when all that math. algebra and trigonometry I flunked in High School (yet aced in college!) comes into play. While in this day and age there may be an "ap" for caculating how much a build weighs, by understanding the math not only can I calculate the total weight of a 90 year old building, but I can also extrapolate the weight at certain stress points and begin to develop a strategy for repairing it.
From what I've found already, my first repair ideas had to be discarded and I'm back to the drawing board.
How to Design and Build Your Own House
That's neat doing the math. The only calculations I ever did regularly were just tables for joist spans based on average weights. After that, it was a matter of 'feel' or memory with a tendency to over-build, but I've only designed simple buildings. Houses were always done by an architect. When remodeling a place, since I knew what was there originally & worked, figuring out what to replace it with was generally easy.About the only time a question really came up was when we'd open up a lower floor by removing bearing walls & need to replace them some sort of beam. That was pretty easy until the 90's when prestressed fabricated beams became available. A header made of 2x's on edge with plywood or a steel flitch plate sandwiched in between was one thing; there were rules of thumb & tables for pulling out x feet of 2x4 bearing wall & what it needs to be replaced with.
But the new beams had to be calculated & often had a lot more give in them, a real PITA. The last custom house I built was typical of new house construction. No one wants something simple & architects seem to be on drugs. Lots of cut up roof lines & odd rooms. This one had a walk-in closet over the center of an over-sized 2 car garage. No posts in the center of the garage, just one big beam going across it that was all specked out by the architect right down to the manufacturer. I built it out to those specs, then had to go back, box it out because the bow down was really obvious & ugly, but supposedly solid enough. I also had to build in a screw jack on top of it for the corner that sat over the center of the beam. After about 6 months, it finally settled into place.
That house had me fighting with the framing inspector a lot in other places, though. The walls were prefabbed panels, 2x6 with polyethylene styrofoam sandwiched in between so there was no need for plywood sheathing on the corners & he objected to that.
(The house was a sealed one. Literally, we ran a pressure test on it at the end. No air flow except through the HVAC system. No, I wouldn't have wanted to live in it either.)
Inside, we didn't use regular 2x joists, but new (at the time) I beams made out of OSB & plywood. The inspector had his hand out & made a big deal over plumbing cut outs for the master bath that had the tub cantilevered over the front. The holes would have been OK if they had gone straight through, but they had to angle & the plumber gave himself a bit of leeway, so they were 1/2" too big.
I'm so happy to live in KY with more than 10 acres. I can build anything with no inspection needed now. In MD, the inspectors used to check if they saw a load of construction material dropped off. Anything over $500 required a permit & inspection. Fascist pigs.
One building inspector I met typically rubber stamped DIY projects as we not-pros tend to overbuild. Some places are an inspection nightmare. In Massachusetts you just about need a permit for a dog house, and in Southern Maine the building inspector would come by after a project was done and claim a remodel wasn't up to par because it wasn't up to the latest standards. He made me put in new windows in rooms that weren't even part of a remodel, though I refused to add interconnected fire alarms after the walls were closed in!
Here inspections are now sensible. Last year the inspector came once for my deck when the footings were in, and never returned. Of course I do have a reputation after the tower was restored.
When I built my ex wifes house (over three years while she lived in it without plumbing) the occupancy permit needed only one electric light and one flushing toilet and only the plumbing was ever inspected, though he did look at the foundation two years ago when I added her addition. Guess they're starting to get more serious, which is a good thing when you have idiots using poisonous pressure treated lumber for interior construction because it costs a few cents less. Indeed, many of the structural problems I'm encountering are because of changes that were made that compromised structural integrity because the "carpenter" didn't understand the math.
The farm house falls under the category of a "repair" and isn't subject to inspection here, as opposed to places even in Maine that would require me to hire an engineer for such any project involving the foundation (or in this case, the lack thereof!)
A lot does depend on the inspector & their boss & how they interpret the rules. The head inspector for Baltimore County was OK, but he had some crumbs working for him. One was the framing inspector I mentioned. Luckily, an appeal to him usually got them reined in.A lady electrical inspector was a total waste of space. She red tagged one house because she showed up while the floors were being sanded. She wouldn't wait to air it out or use a dust mask & she was the one that was 2 days late. Then she made us comply with new electric codes that went into effect the following year.
In Harford county, they just didn't seem to like anyone building little stuff, but were pretty easy on larger jobs. There was a huge fight about them nailing a lot of people for those little storage sheds. They finally got slapped down, but it took a couple of lawsuits. Sounds a lot MA.
A few pieces of pressure treated lumber isn't really poisonous inside a properly ventilated house, but the only place we ever used it was in basements & it was really needed as sill plates in many. The new stuff has salts in it that will eat regular nails, though. I much preferred the CCA treated over this newer stuff. It lasts a lot better if my jump standards are any indication.
Whenever possible, I built decks out of SunWood, a brown Wolmanized treated lumber. I haven't seen that around in decades though. It was hard to find & filthy to work with at first. We used to scrub it or powerwash it before using it. Stood up well, but never seemed to catch on. A house in a woods that I put a huge deck on about 25 years ago sold a couple of years ago & the new owners know Mom, who gave them my number. They wanted to add on to it & loved the wood but didn't know what it was.
The worst treated wood I've ever seen was that fire proofed plywood. A splinter from that used to infect your hand & it ruined the plywood. Baltimore county decided that all townhouses had to have it 4' back from the dividing firewalls for 5 or 10 years. They finally quit when the lawsuits started rolling in. Seems the treatment process caused the plywood to rot out in less than a decade. It was a real mess & put more than a few contractors out of business.
I knew a couple of others that went bankrupt because they did foam insulation that turned out to be full of formaldehyde. New products can be tough on the working folks. It's advertised on TV, the customer wants it, a multi-national company sells it, the gov't approves the work & materials with an inspection, & yet the contractor is at fault? That's just wrong. The customer shouldn't be allowed to sue the delivery man that just did his job.
We can certainly commiserate about building inspectors!I've never heard of "Sunwood" and never used "fire proofed plywood", but then New England tends to be far off the beaten track when it comes to "new and improved" building products.
We do have the new pressure treated, which does require copper coated flashing and double dipped galvanized fasteners, or ceramic fasteners, or if you have more dollars than sense stainless steel fasteners. I haven't seen any noticable deterioration that would make it last less then 15 to 20 years. While using it for a sill plate is expected, when people with kids use it for floor joists thats just asking for trouble.
Our litigous society... slimey lawyers will go after whoever they can get!
Yesterday while it was cloudy, cool and just a bit humid I got most of the last room done including around the basement entry. I was still too scared to walk down there among the caved in walls and bent posts so today being a perfect day I started tearing up the floor in a couple places. Somehow psychologically it was easier to get down there and remove the steel drum collection with an open space above me. I discovered the basement walls were made of 2x3's and pine boards nailed to the floor joists a couple feet away from the sill along one wall, and through the center of the house. You can see in the photo where the bottoms of the retaining walls have been pushed in while causing the cedar post "foundation" to sink. By opening the floors I can start filling it in and at least stop any addition sinking.
That's a major project. I sure hope you have someone checking on you regularly.
If the dog gets hungry enough he'll start tormenting the neighbors, providing I succumb where he and the cat can't eat me!
Treasure! Once again the story is of a poor family. I didn't find a single penny, just worn out toys, lots of buttons and assorted bits of life long ago in rural Maine. The "Natural Remedy" tin is filled with green pills for constipation. 
Step Five- Building muscle
I've completed losing weight, spending about $90 on trash bags, plastic and trips to the dump. I still need to expose the sill by removing flooring, but first I need to make sure the feeble bent and rotted joists don't fall into the basement. I'll add fill and then more temporary posts where needed to build muscle.
You're on a regular treasure hunt, aren't you? That's cool.
Haven't heard from you in a while, Foxtower. Everything going OK?
No, Winters coming and the building is barely hanging on!At this point of Step Five the cost has risen to $140 after destroying a couple skil saw blades removing the oak floor and buying 2x6's and fasteners to start repairs.
I did manage to salvage a little of the oak from the bedroom. After exposing the pine board underlayment I could find the "supports" (or not), and started by adding support on a front corner just hanging off in the air. I only lifted the corner 1/4 inch, just enough to get some weight on bricks sitting on gravel over the packed sand. However temporary at least it got some support now!
I'll continue shoring up near the existing support points, be it a cedar post or dirt. I hope to add additional support to the front and the center bearing wall and then close the project down for Winter.
Thanks for the update. I was beginning to wonder if the house had tumbled on you. Glad to hear you're just busy.:-)
Today was drizzly so a good day to finish clearing the junk out og the old farmhouse. While not quite out all the metal and trash is piled up by the a door ready for a couple trips to the transfer station.
The building is a 24 x 26 foot 1 and 1/2 story saltbox built in 1925 and moved here in 1940. It stinks from mold and old age, one end is sunk down about a foot, typical of old buildings here in Maine that were put on cedar post "foundations" with poor drainage, and a dug partial basement was added in 1940 with the entrance cut through load bearing beams and consequently the floor is severely buckled.
Don't know how many "steps" it will take to recover the building, or even if it's possible, but since I live in a "building code free zone" when it comes to old buildings, I can do whatever I want and see what happens.