New York Renovator

Whenever I have had a professional carpenter, plumber, electrician, or whoever over to the house, every one of them inevitably says, “Oh, new homes have problems, too!” That always surprised me because I assumed that new construction was more durable, cleaner, better built with better technology. According to many professionals out there, this is not true. I am appalled, because newer homes *should* be built better. With newer homes, you don’t have to hack into support beams to retrofit plumbing pipes or electric wiring. New homes are insulated and already have coaxial cable and new windows and bright, shiny roof decking with no mold. What makes new homes so shabby? Poor craftsmanship?

Old homes are built well, I’ll give you that. 150-year old houses were built at a time before the spotted owl goons could shut down entire forests, when home builders could carve 12-inch beams out of home grown oak and walnut woods.

But when it comes to “modern” comforts (like central heating!), old homes are woefully lacking. If you have always loved in a newly built home, you don’t have any idea of the drafts that blow your napkins off the table, of the icicles that form on the INSIDE of the house… here are a couple typical Old House problems. I also offer my opinions and/or advice, for kicks.

1. Critters
Old homes almost always have critters– bats, squirrels, mice, chinch bugs, ants, carpenter bees. We have pretty much seen it all. An owl in the hot water exhaust pipe, possums in the basement, raccoons in the garage, bats in the house, mice and honeybees in the walls…. yep. How i wish I had been blogging when we discovered bees in the wall! One day, I looked out my window and saw a tornado-like swarm of bees swirling around an upstairs window. All of a sudden, the wall was covered in bees, all squirming to enter a rather large hole in the siding. I found out later that some brilliant National Grid guy had replaced my power cable anchor, screwing in the new anchor to a new area on the siding but NEVER CLOSING UP THE ORIGINAL HOLE. It became a nesting place for all sorts of creatures.

Barn owl in the water tank pipe.

We had no idea how to get rid of the bees…. when we pounded the wall in the bedroom, 20,000 bees erupted in angry buzzes. We eventually had to rip open the walls on a frosty autumn day (the bees were stupid in the cold). We vacuumed them up and tore out the honeycomb. A lot of the comb was still good, so we ate it.

2. Mold
Old homes have mold. I HATE mold. Mold comes from leaks, and old homes have lots of leaks. We’ve had our share of mold from chimney leaks, ice dams, holes in the walls, etc. Mold is tough to remove. I quit trying to clean it when it invaded the wall cavities– instead, I gutted the living room and replaced everything. Sometimes, I still smell the faint odor of mold…

Ice dam damage. These leaks create mold inside wall cavities.

3. Plaster dust
As long as there’s 1 square foot of plaster in an old house, the place will be dusty. Eep, I dislike plaster very much. I dislike dusting, too…

Attic cellulose insualtion also creates a ton of dust.

4. Crooked walls, crooked floors
This doesn’t bother me as much, unless I am renovating and I need to somehow wedge a perfect 90 degree section of drywall into a 85 degree corner! I don’t mind that all my pictures tilt a little. I do not like my bookshelves tilting so noticeably, though!

5. Bouncy floors
Bouncy floors make me nervous. There’s something very creepy about bopping up and down in my desk chair when one of the kids walks by. So far, the floor seems none of the worse for wear, but I have detected some cracks in the joists below. If I ever get another house, maybe I’ll choose one that has solid concrete floors. ANYTHING that doesn’t feel like you’re walking on a waterbed as you cross the room, lol.

Support posts help alleviate bouncy floors.

What could you add to the list? I’m sure there are more quaint little things about old homes that I have missed here. Feel free to add your own two cents.

In the next post or so, I’ll talk about the benefits of living in an old house!

I just looked at the clock. Aghast! I have wasted 1 entire hour!!!

Where? HERE. Lovely Listing. It’s the latest “Cheezeburger” site. Like we needed another one. Egads, i waste enough time on the LOL Cats and LOL Dogs and “There I Fixed It” sites! LOL.

This one made me crack up.

Uh. FAIL.

Do you think anyone will notice the real estate photo has been touched up a little?

Are your eyes twitching, too?

THIS. IS. SO. COOL. But I live near the Adirondacks, so maybe it’s just a local “thing.”

I actually think this is pretty neat.

The caption read “Time to Purge.” Bwahahahha!!

see more Lovely Listing

Ah, the amazing things you can do with flexible tubing, lol.

OK I’ve wasted enough of your time, too. Some of these are pretty funny. MUST. GET. To. WORK.

Have a great week!

It’s been about 15 years, but we finally got the new windows! Hurray for us! We’d ordered them a long time ago, and they came in yesterday. We didn’t get replacements for every window in the house (sheesh, this house has a ton of windows!) but there are enough for now. I’ve never installed new windows so it will be quite the adventure.

Oh wait. I did install a window before– a brand new window. In the kitchen! How could I forget! It was only two years ago.

This was the original window in the kitchen. It was installed in 1972, when the previous owners remuddled the kitchen into an orange and brown 1970s funk extraordinaire. The window was wood with an aluminum frame. I had warped so badly that I could not open it. Imagine– the only tiny window in the entire kitchen and it’s stuck shut! Painful, indeed!

We removed the piece of junk in summer of 2010. What a glorious day.

I ripped open the wall (which was severely rotten from water damage) and discovered some water damage and poor remodeling from previous owners. They had cut into floor joists to fit plumbing pipes and the beam that held up this part of the wall was about as strong as swimming pool safety fences. I decided to rebuild the entire section of the wall.

It was my masterpiece. I built it to perfection. The window frame not only had to house the window, but it had to hold up this portion of the wall, which was sagging. I made the frame very sturdy.

This is one of the greatest sights for a DIY homeowner.

The running gag around the house was that a tornado could rip through the town and level every single house, but my window frame would still be standing.

I never got photos of us installing the actual window because it took the entire family to haul the thing into the opening, level it, shim it, and nail it down. As soon as it was up, though, Livvy hopped up for her inspection.

I installed trim in a Greek Revival design that reflects the rest of the house.

The new window gives off a lot of light. It’s glorious having such a bright, airy kitchen!

Of course, the new windows I just got for the living room are a totally different animal than this kitchen window. The new ones are vinyl REPLACEMENT window– the kitchen was a “new construction” window with nail flanges. For a vinyl replacement window, you have to fit the boxy frame directly into the existing window frame. I’ve never done it before. I’ve already done some studying and have watched some good videos about the process. *cracks knuckles* We’ll probably get the windows installed next week. I’ll be sure to let you know! We have to install a few on the second story of the house, so I would sure appreciate your prayers!

Goofy is my mascot. He’s a small resin character and he sits in my desk. He tends to flop over easily. But I still love him.

This morning, Livvy hopped onto my desk and sat in front of my computer monitor as she usually does 200 times a day.

Goofy seemed a little miffed. He trotted from his place at the back of the desk to oppose Livvy.

Humph says Livvy. I belong here, she says. Move.

Livvy 1, Goofy 0.

A glutton for punishment, Goofy made another stance to defend his territory.

WAP.

So guess who’s king of the desk now? I miss Goofy. He was a lot smaller and I could see the monitor when he was here…..

In a previous post, Plaster vs. Drywall, I battled the snob appeal regarding plaster and lath walls. In this post, I’m once again picking up the sword and combating the “old windows versus replacement windows” argument. As an old house owner and a person who has lived in old homes all my life, I’ve had my share of old windows experiences. Most of them have been bad. Yes, people, I HATE old windows. New windows rock.

I love old stuff as much as anyone. My favorite old house style is Federal style, so you know I’m an old house lover. My own house, a Greek Revival, was built in 1855. I have researched the history of the building and its original owner (and owners after that). I know that of the original windows to my house, only two remain. Both are in terrible condition.

One of the original 9/6 windows, behind a storm window.

The other windows to the house were replaced in 1910 or so. Most of those windows are still in place. They are BARELY in place, but they are all still here. The house has a total of 15 windows, and only two windows had ever been replaced since 1910, the kitchen got an aluminum replacement window in 1972 and the upstairs bathroom window got a crank-style Anderson window in the late 1980s.

When we moved here, we could only afford to get 5 windows replaced, the ones that were broken or cracked. We got very inexpensive vinyl replacement windows. They’ve been in place since 1997. Even though they were the cheapest window we could get and even though they are over 14 years old, I LOVE THEM.

Yet among the “old house experts,” old windows are somehow superior to new ones. Old house folks are always saying that old windows are better than new ones because… well, just because. Old windows look better, they say. They say there is no difference with heat loss between the two, that old windows are more historic, and they are just “better.” I say: BAH.

So I’m here to debate the “old window” snobs. I think new windows are great, and old windows — especially MY 100+ year old windows — need replacing. And there’s nothing wrong with replacing old windows with new ones.

Snob appeal says: When it comes to insulation factors and heat loss, old windows play a small part and do not lose THAT much heat.

Reality Check: What planet are you from?!

My old windows rattle, shake, and leak. Cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer blow through the holes all around the frame. True, the glazing on parts of the window is flaking off (another problem with old windows) so air leaks through some of the windows (but glazing is not the problem with some of the others). Old windows are made of glass– thin, 1/8-inch thick glass. This house has 15 windows that are 32 inches by 62 inches– that’s 13.78 square feet of windows for the entire house. Which means that approximately 207 square feet of the walls here was covered by 1/8-inch glass. Brrr. Just yesterday with temperatures falling into the single digits, the old windows were caked with a thick layer of ice. The ice melted during the day and water was everywhere. I have to lay a towel on each windowsill to prevent the water from running all over the floor. Even with storm windows on some of the old windows, we still get thick ice on the glass. So for me, ALL my old windows, the ones that have storm windows and the ones that do not, develop thick ice on the glass when it gets cold. None of my vinyl replacement windows have EVER developed ice, not ever.

My old window. Don't let the snobs tell you there's no measurable heat loss difference between old and new windows!

Vinyl replacement, on the other hand, has two panes of glass in each sash. When we installed vinyl replacement windows in our dining room, the change was remarkable. Before, my hair would blow around at the dinner table on a particularly blustery day; new windows stopped that. Before, we could almost hear our neighbors in their homes discussing with each other how to kill my flower gardens and hack at my trees; after the new windows were installed, I live in blissful ignorance of their schemes. Windows will never really be very good at keeping out the extreme temperatures, no matter what kind of material they are made from. But vinyl replacement performs better than the old glass. That’s a fact.

Now let me temper this argument with a few points. YES, storm windows installed over old windows help reduce heat loss. YES, vinyl replacement windows will most likely not last 100+ years. Old wooden windows were *usually* made from “old-growth” wood, the hardiest and strongest part of the wood. I don’t know if the original builder of my home made his windows from old-growth. This home was always a “middle income” home in a “middle income” community. The biggest expense the owner made was to install black walnut trim in the living room (which, incidentally, had to be removed because it was soaked with lead-based paint from other owners who had painted over the wood!). Everyone’s mileage may vary because everyone’s house and windows and weather is different.

But in my experience, I have noticed a considerable difference between the old windows and the new. The old windows would stick in the summer and freeze up in the winter. The glass is thin. In all the windows, the glass is so old that is has melted and has drooped from gravity and weather changes. Some people like this kind of “character,” but I don’t. I like to SEE out of my windows, thanks.

Snob appeal says: Old windows look better than vinyl replacement windows. It’s better to keep your rotten old wooden windows than replace them with vinyl windows.

Reality Check: I don’t care how ugly vinyl windows look, rotten wood windows look worse.

It’s true that most “old house” building materials were build with better quality than the trash manufactured today. But there does come a time when you just have to say goodbye to certain things. Moldy plaster and rotten windows are some of them, in my opinion.

I KNOW! I KNOW! I am going against the entire old home snob community when I say these things! But please realize that I am addressing the 99% of us who are middle-income and who own non-state-historic-site houses. We just don’t have the cash to pay for elaborate repairs to old windows or spend millions on new custom wood windows. Those days are gone. For most of us old-house homeowners, vinyl replacement windows are terrific. They are more weather-resistant, easier to clean, have screening, and open and close easier.

Snob Factor: Vinyl replacement windows might look ugly and out of place in an old home. Old windows have more character and appeal.

Reality Check: Character and appeal are code words for “expensive” and “high maintenance.”

I am all for curb appeal and beauty in an old home. But just because SOME replacement windows look ugly, it doesn’t mean that ALL replacement windows are ugly. I have seen some wooden windows installed improperly and look horrible. Just because a window is wood or old doesn’t make it beautiful by default.

I think that my vinyl replacement windows look great. If a millionaire dumped brand new, gorgeous wooden windows into my lap, I’d take it. Heck, yeah. But that hasn’t happened, and I have some kids that need to eat. So we buy vinyl replacement windows and they look pretty good!

My 14-year old vinyl replacement windows still look fabulous! This photo taken after we had gutted and were restoring the room, in 2010.

Snob Factor: Removing painted old windows contaminates the house with lead dust.

Reality Check: Painting new coats of paint does not cover the lead, it chips off and exacerbates the lead problem.

Lead paint removal is a touchy topic. Every state regulated lead-based paint in old homes differently. Here in New York State, a homeowner can remove lead-based paint articles VERY CAREFULLY from the home. If you hire a contractor, expect to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the high-tech removal and disposal system.

I have tried both methods: leaving the old windows with their lead paint AND removing them for vinyl replacement. Removing them — WHEN DONE CORRECTLY and SAFELY — is much, much better than keeping the toxic articles. I sleep better knowing that those old time bombs are out of my house and far away from my kids.

Most windows in old homes were painted with oil-based paints that contained lead. You try to slap new paint onto those old windows, that paint is going to come off in no time. And every time you open and close the window, the paint is scraped and lead dust goes into the air. I don’t care what the “experts” say– all that opening and closing the window removes the new paint and just makes dust spew everywhere.

I personally believe it’s best to get rid of the stupid things altogether. No more dust, no more peeling, no more painting every couple of months…. Old windows that are coated with lead-based paint are best removed, in my opinion. The windows MUST be removed safely, however. Make sure you know your local regulations. Some towns even offer financial aid for the removal of these toxic items.

So if you decide to replace your crummy old windows with vinyl replacement, I say good for you. Have a couple of gurkha cigars and enjoy, guilt free! Don’t let the Window Snobs influence you! Shop wisely– get high-quality windows from a reputable company and install them properly. They will last a long time. Mine have.

I’ve taken the teeniest, tiniest leap into building an official home office here. I’ve been working at home for over 3 years now, with a little desk and bookshelves showhorned into a corner of the living room. It’s so messy and my living room has become engulfed with stuff that I’m desperate to organize.

Well, I finally found some inexpensive kitchen cabinets suited for a home office. They are Aristokraft, in saddle oak. They are very plain, and are made of particleboard. But I don’t care– I don’t need a solid wood desk and the simple style suits me. The cost of the three cabinets with countertop was a fraction of the price of a new desk (one of those cheapo Chinese-made junk desks).

All I’ve got done so far is the bottom half. Eventually, I will build the top hutch portion when I can wrastle up the funds. For now, the base will have to do. Livvy likes it.

The area looks quite empty and sterile. Oh, I have plans, though! I am going to build my own hutch. It will have two narrow bookshelves and a pair of cabinets. Eventually, I will create a huge built-in bookshelf along the wall. I intend to convert the room (living room) into a library, with big wall bookshelves and a gas fireplace.

I also plan on installing crown molding along the top of the ceiling and placing LED white lights in the tray. It will give the room lovely ambient lighting.

The garage, once I have renovated it, will become the new family room where we will have sofas and chairs and the family’s huge assortment of musical instruments.

But before I rebuild the garage into living space, I have to build a barn in the backyard, to hold our power tools and auto equipment. Oh yeah, I’ll be busy for a long time. And then , of course, I still have to renovate the upstairs of the house and the downstairs bathroom….

Sheesh, who knows, maybe by the time I’m finally done renovating, I’ll be too old to maintain such a big house. I can then turn around and sell the place for a nice profit. It sure would be nice to enjoy the fruits of my labors here, though. I’ve spent most of my years living in a dumpy house!

Does it drive you nuts when framed pictures and other things are crooked? I used to be compulsively straightening things around the house, but mysteriously, everything always just went *tilt* as soon as I turned my back. I finally gave in about a year ago, after wearing myself out for almost two decades, haha!!

I took this photo and it just reminds me of the futility of having anything “straight” in an old house. LOL

That, my dear friends, is our new bifold door! Oh hey– it may not look like much, it’s definitely not as glamorous as a new clawfoot tub with shiny brass fixtures… but it’s MINE. And it’s FINALLY in the doorway. I’ve been waiting to have a bifold door here for… oh, just 15 years or so. Finally got it up.

Throw the confetti, I’m having a party. Who knows, maybe this is the start of a wonderful chain of events! Maybe we can get that 1.6 gallon toilet installed upstairs, ya think? It’s been taking up space in its box in the garage for over two years now….

Wimpy water pressure at the shower can be frustrating and baffling. At times the pressure may seem adequate but other times the pressure may barely ooze from the shower head. While you cannot adjust the water pressure to the shower directly, you can adjust the water pressure for the entire house, check for impediments in the shower water supply and install an aerator to improve shower water pressure.

Understanding Water Pressure
Water pressure is measured by “pounds per square inch,” or “psi.” For most plumbing systems, optimum pressure is 50 to 80 psi. Pressure lower than 50 will seem too weak for most people, but psi higher than 80 may cause damage to pipe joints, seals and fixtures. Pressure throughout the building waxes and wanes as the plumbing fixtures are used. For example, the shower pressure may seem fine at the moment but may dip to an anemic trickle when the washing machine fills or the toilet is flushed. This happens because other fixtures draw on the supply and water is diverted across the plumbing system. Additionally, a fixture loses one pound of water pressure for every 2.31 vertical feet in the system. A shower on the second floor would thus lose 10 or more pounds.

The Pressure Regulator
The water supply pressure regulator is located in the basement, where the underground water supply pipes enter the basement. Some regulators sport a pressure gauge that measures the psi for the entire water supply system. Adjusting the regulator is a simple task. To reduce pressure, use an adjustable wrench to loosen the locknut, usually located on the top of a small, metal bell-shaped device. Slowly turn the small screw on top of the locknut in a counter-clockwise direction. To raise water pressure, turn the screw in a clockwise direction.

Shower Water Pressure
Water pressure in the shower depends on a combination of things: distance from the main supply, the size of plumbing pipes and plumbing system additions such as a water softener or filtration tank. Generally, if the other fixtures in the building have good water pressure but the shower water pressure is consistently weak, the shower head or shower water supply pipes are clogged. Debris and mineral deposits from the water sometimes form inside the pipes, developing into clots that impede water pressure.

Adjusting Shower Water Pressure
In a case where the pressure to the shower is consistently low, the supply line to the shower should be inspected and impediments removed. The culprit is usually at the shower head. A small screen, called an aerator, may be filled with debris such as rust or small particles of sand or dead sea mud…. Soaking the shower head in vinegar removes the mineral deposits. A water-saver shower head often exacerbates low pressure problems; replacement of this type of shower head will boost pressure immediately.

When I gutted the living room in 2007, I bit the financial bullet and networked the room for Ethernet wiring. Except for drilling a small hole through a 12-inch support beam and 4-inch thick studs, the experience was pretty enjoyable. What I essentially did was create one Ethernet port for each wall in the living room. I ran Cat5 Ethernet wiring inside the wall studs and created a “port” or “Ethernet station” on each wall. One of the walls I made into the “master station.” This area would hold the master computer, the router, and the face plate that would hold all the Ethernet port cables. I scratched a rough diagram showing one of the ports and the master area. It’s pretty rough, but it gives you an idea of how simple it is to network a room.

As you can see from the diagram, I basically created “extension cords” of Ethernet wiring within the walls. Previously, the other computers in the room were connected by wires that I had to string on the floor, across doorways and through the living room. It was terribly messy, and dangerous.

This is the face plate after I had wired the Ethernet. The top two ports are telephone (RJ11) jacks. The others are Ethernet (RJ45) jacks. I left one blank because I didn’t need it filled at the time.

Ah, but now I have cable Internet, with coaxial wiring. I had fun yesterday, and learned how to wire a coaxial cable jack to my master face plate.

You’ll notice that the other two ports have Ethernet cables. These cables go to the router and to the switch, which is a device that acts like an extension cord for the router. Most routers have only 4 ports in the back, but I need many more connections. The switch is a big box that can hold more connections. The one I have holds 16 more Ethernet connections!

Eventually, I want to make the entire house wired. Currently, the computers in the upstairs rooms use wireless. While wireless is pretty handy, I don’t like using it for main computers. It takes up a lot of bandwidth when everyone is on together. Wireless is also a PAIN to configure and if there’s interference from airplanes, CB radios, microwaves, whatever, it can be frustrating when downloading stuff. Wireless is also less secure than wired connections.

The hardest part about home networking, in my opinion, is getting the wiring through the walls. Even when we gutted the walls, it was still hard to drill holes through such big, old lumber. Wiring the upstairs is easier because you can string the wires up into the attic and simply drop them down into the wall cavities without drilling horizontally through studs. When we renovate the upstairs, I will be adding a few Ethernet ports to each of the bedrooms.

We’ve had our home network system for a few years now, and I’ve never regretted it. The only thing I regret is not adding more ports!

You learn something new every day. Huh.

I was sitting in my office today, typing merrily away, when my lights flickered. Then, they flickered again. ?? I’ve been seeing this happen a number of times recently, and while I wasn’t exactly WORRIED, I wanted to know what was going on. Since I did all the home electric wiring myself (and it’s been working fine for several years now), I guess I’m still a little nervous. It’s a silly thing to worry about— if I wired something wrong, I’d certainly know by now! But I also like to know WHY things happen.

My neighbors next door use a lot of power-sucking appliances. They seem to have commercial carpet cleaners over a lot (we have basement water problems around here, if you recall, and woe to the poor folks who have finished basements ). As a matter of fact, the carpet cleaner truck is outside my window right now, roaring at a high decibel for the second time this month. I wondered if perhaps the carpet cleaner machine is sucking the electricity… since I am “after” them in the power grid lines, it makes sense that my electricity would experience a slight transmission delay. Looks like I’m correct! I found this little FAQ at a power utility company website:

Q: My lights dim when my neighbor operates his power tools.

A: The voltage going into your home constantly changes depending on electrical loads used by you and your neighbors. The neighbor’s power tools may cause your voltage to drop.

Aha!

So if you see your lights flicker and you know that your neighbor is running a homegrown industrial lights machine or is cleaning their carpets, it’s just a temporary blip in the electricity transmission.

I don’t care about the lights flickering, but I do care about how the voltage fluctuations might affect my computers and other sensitive electronics. I think I need to get more surge protectors, just in case.

I’ll pass along a tip I found while researching this issue: If it happens often, you can call your power company to upgrade the transformer, or perhaps they’ll give your neighbor his own transformer on a pole. That way, he can slurp energy without draining it for everyone else down the pike.

P.S. Just in case you’re wondering, your neighbor’s mega-power-slurping does not affect your bill in any way. It just affects the flow of voltage transmission, which is why it’s important to use surge protectors for your electronics.