Nothing Could be Planer

No, I didn't spell "Planer" wrong, it just a play on words that reflect my last week's work. I have been busy planing the floor boards. A long and tedious job. With may years of finish and paint on the boards, it takes it toll on the planer knives, and sharpening them takes a bit of time, and a skill I am also slowing learning. Anyway, I have manged to get two batches of flooring done, about 270 broad feet planed, and much more to follow. As I am using a 10 year old 12 inch portable planer, I think it's going along rather well.

Once they are all planed, I have to joint on edges, then size the boards to make them square, then cut in the tongue and groves for laying them. Lay them, and we can stain them in place, apply the protection and we should be done. Easier said then done, but we at least we have a plan.

Here are a few pictures of my Sussex shop set up and the work I have completed this week.

I made an extension for may portable planer bed to better handle the 11 foot boards.

This is what 100 + year old pine looks like cleaned up, still a bit rough looking but has tons of character that we want to keep in the house.

The first batch of flooring set aside.

The second batch added to the pile. I can see progress.

I am ready to start my next batch of flooring.

Here are the unplanned boards I have left.

More Surpises

Well the kitchen and dining room are down, and as we have found throughout the house, more interesting wiring configurations. I'm being polite. These little surprises are not really bad, once the weather gets better and we pull down the walls, we'll have a better look at were everything goes and to get it cleaned up and safe. Here is how the last half of our week went.

Dining room exposed.

Nothing a few garbage bags and a shovel can't handle.

Our dining room surprise. Mike Holmes would have a cow if he saw this many hidden boxes.

Interesting wiring configuration. One of the wires don't go anywhere, it just stops at the wall.

The kitchen pulled down, lots of wires, old and new.

A special treat, a vent pipe not going anywhere. Gratefully it was capped off, and not venting to the void between floors. Gag.

Pulling down the House

Well not really pulling down the house, just the ceilings on the first floor. I've managed to pull down the living room and the hallway. I knew there was old lath and plaster in the living room and hall but the amount of dirt and grit that builds up over a 100+ years is amazing. Precautions were taken, tyvek suits with hoods were warn, respirators, goggles, work boot, and gloves to protect from falling debris and boards with nails. Here is what we were left with after the ceilings were pulled down. A few surprises but not too bad, at least now we can clear them up safely.

Living room, south east corner.

North end of the living room, with load bearing beam.

Hallway with two layers of plaster removed.

Hallway cleaned up.

A little surprise by the hall light, a hidden junction box.

Here is ReBecca, pulling nails after vacuuming all the old material out from between the floor joists. It brought back memories of the Star Fighter exercises we did in Germany. For those who remember, closed up to top high and ready for work, just another day at the office.

A slow but productive week

Well another week has passed and sometimes I wounder what we've done. This week was a slow one, as it started off with a snow fall that took a few hours to clean the driveway. We did manage to get a few of the little things done so we can start to pull down the ceilings. I changed out the lights in the living room, dinning room, hallway, and kitchen. ReBecca continued to prime and than paint the upstairs bathroom. And finally I pulled down the old kitchen cupboards so we can get at all the ceiling.

Here are a few boring pictures of the changed out lights.

The upstairs bathroom is coming along, I took the pictures while the paint was still wet, that is why it looks a little shinny.

Finally a before and after look of the kitchen.

New/Old Door

As we move forward with our reno we will soon be taking down the ceilings on the first floor of the main house and in an attempt to keep some of the dust and debris contained we installed an old door between the house and the addition. I also spray foamed around the jamb to help keep the dirt on one side.

The house side view, before the door stops were installed and no spray foam.



The addition side with stops and foam.

Bathroom Facelift

The upstairs bathroom will be removed later on so we don't want to put too much into it yet. ReBecca has started to give it a make over. She has removed old peel and stick tiles from behind the toilet and sink as well as the floor. Here is what she as to work with as she starts this face lift.

Before she started.

Removing the tiles on the back splash.

Starting to clean up the floor.

Floors and Nails, Floors and Nails

Well, we finally got the floors up and back to my Sussex shop (the Searsville shop isn't up and running yet). There were a lot of nails, the old square ones, and several newer ones holding them down. And one thing I learnt watching all those home reno and New Yankee Workshop shows is there can still be hidden dangers in the the wood. At least dangerous to my tools. I found quite a bit of material still in the wood and it would have caused havoc to my planer and jointer blades, as well as my router bit for cutting in the grove and tenons. But thanks to a simple $20.oo metal detector I have reduced the chance of damaging my tools. I know it's not perfect but I'll take what I can. It took ReBecca and I about 10 days to pull up all of the floors, and pull the nails. It took me anther 3 days to scan each board for hidden nails. There are 87 boards all just over 11 feet and range from 4 to 10 inches wide, 40 boards 6 feet long and 20 shorter ones 3 feet long. Here is what we have to work with for flooring and what we pulled out and found.

The boards on the saw horse are from my office.

These are from the living room.

This large pile is from the master bedroom, the dressing room and upstairs hallway.

These are from my office closet and I already planned them to see what I have to work with. Very nice.

This is what I found after scaning each board.

This is the pile of nails we pulled out at the house.

Another great find.

When I was pulling up the boards in the living room, particularly under what we think was the area were a kitchen may have been, I found more old news papers. Not as old as the one from upstairs but still it tells us when a renovation was done, at least when the floor covering was changed.

Here is the living room before we pulled up the boards. On the left side of the room was what looked like an old dividing wall, probably was a load baring wall, not too sure.

Most of it was covered with hard board, except one end were you can see the original floor covering. We think this may have been part of the old kitchen at one time.

When I pulled up that old flooring this is what I found. Several old news papers dating back to 1938. Most of them are from 1944 and 1946.

The Saint John Citizen 8 June 1938.

The Star Weekly, 14 May 1938.

The Telegraph-Journal Saint John, 13 July 1944.

The Farmer's Advocate, 22 August 1946.

Taking up the Floors

One of the big projects we can do that doesn't cost too much is re-do the floors boards upstairs. Three of the rooms and the hall all have the original floor boards. One room already had them removed and plywood was laid. As well the living room had plywood on it, and once we lifted it we found the original floors. They will be used to finish the three rooms upstairs as I will be cleaning up the boards, cutting in tongue and groves, this will leave me short a few boards per room. As well some of the boards didn't what to come up without a fight. Here are a few pictures of what we found as the sub-floor and a few surprises we found under them.

I took this picture just as we started pulling up the floors these nails did not come easily. As well these are only from a few boards, we have two large coffee cans full of these vintage nails now.

This is the master bedroom, we don't know why there is a hole in the middle of the floor.

Here is the dressing room, I had to leave the boards in the closet because they go all the way into the the closet in the master bedroom under the framed in walls.

In the dressing room under a loose board we found out what the ceilings in the living room look like. More work next project? Also I found an old wire lying there, I was happy to find it wasn't live and that the other end was under the boards in the master bedroom, I was able to pull it out of the way.

The sub-floor in the spare room was in rough shape, but not too bad.

The hall didn't seem like a big job but still took a while. Almost as many nails as the other rooms.

Here is my office, were we found a big surprise.

This plug box was just tucked under the boards and is still live. Our first surprise.

The second surprise was this junction box feeding the light in the kitchen below. An easy fix when we pull down that ceiling.

Finally the living room, it was strange to find flooring paper under these boards, but on the left side of the picture you can see were there was a wall at one time and under the layers of floor covering was tar paper. Very strange.