New York Renovator

Remember those really cool (and super-expensive) granite countertops that were ALL the fad a year ago? (Actually, they are still very popular, but concrete countertops is what is filling the wealthy homes now). A NY news story says these granite countertops have been known to emit radon and, most likely, radioactive material.

Karl Konarzik is testing this East Amherst kitchen for Radon. While the homeowner’s worry is possible Radon in the granite countertops, Karl puts his testing device in a cabinet.

While some other radon tests have been conducted on the surface of the granite counter tops, Karl told us, putting the testing machine at face level is a more accurate way of testing the radon’s effect on your health

Radon is an odorless, colorless gas that emits radiation that is found in granite, marble, and other rock formations.

Oopsie! Who came up with granite countertops, anyway?? Always seemed extravagant and inefficient to me. But then again, I’m a dish-dropper. Hehe.

I’ve been mulling over renovating the house. We are gearing up for another renovating season. I’ve been thinking a lot about selling the place and getting something newer (or, at least, more modern than 1855). I’ve paid attention to overall trends and have been watching various stories that crop up from time to time about the quality of newly-made homes. I love browsing the forums at Bob Vila and other such websites. I have gotten a good glimpse into the main woes of new home building.

Not only is is prohibitively expensive for most people to build new, building new does not mean quality building, either. I have been surprised at what I have found, because I always assumed that newer buildings, for all their new materials and new methods, were better quality and more reliably built. This is not so.

I’ve seen an overwhelming amount of complaints from new home buyers. Most of the complaints concern shoddy roof construction, shoddy wall construction, faulty foundation concrete mixings, and plumbing woes. Some of the issues are serious issues. New home materials may be new, but builders seem to be cutting corners with both material quality and workmanship.

I suppose the only truly “perfect” home is built by the homeowner himself. He has a vested interest in building that home to last a thousand years (not unlike the superiority of homeschooling to public schooling). It is just natural that the owner would build for himself a better product.

But who can set aside all that time to build one’s own home? Not many.

Older homes have the benefit of having stood the test of time. Most older homes, especially homes built pre-World War II, were “over” built, which means they were built to last a long, long time and built well. It is usually the “remuddling” of next-generation owners who saw a structural support here or wire something into two circuits there. And many of the old houses were not built by speculators, but built by the people who would live in them, care for them, and raise their own children in them. Older homes were built to last and stand the test of time.

I think Americans should begin giving more thought to renovating and recycling the homes that exist. Of course, some homes cannot be renovated for various reasons. But most old homes can. The recent housing crisis and the current economic instability should be warning us to be wiser and smarter with our lifestyle choices.

As for me, as much as I would love a brand-new log home with cathedral ceiling, updated electric, and plumbing that works, I like my old home. some days I look around me and am ready to run out the door screaming. But I have one of the nicest properties in my area, and my house is a big old beauty. Here’s hoping I can do it justice. Without killing myself.

OMG!!!!!!!!! and I thought my house was bad! You have GOT to go to ThisOldHouse.com and see some reader-submitted photos, appropriately called “Home Inspections Nightmares.”

I can’t put up the photos here, but you have GOT to look at this:

If you can’t find a PVC joint that fits,
blow-torch the blasted thing!

The perfect mouse trap– call it the Zap-A-Rat!

This looks like what the previous owners did to support our sewer-line pipe! (except my house has a stick not a tower of bricks, heh heh).

Been there, done that. (Even though we plugged our leaky sewer pipe properly and added a p-trap, the downstairs toilet blows bubble when the upstairs toilet is flushed– it’s because the idiots never installed a vent trap for the plumbing here).

Classic “DUH.” Not even I am that dumb. Wow. When you’ve stopped gasping, here’s another.

Oh this is what the honeycomb in my walls looked like, although this is in someone’s chimney.

There’s more, lot’s more. I think they have about 100 photos. Fasten your safety-belts.

I am betraying my age a little with that title. It’s a terrible spoof of an old Eric Carmen song that seemed it be in every TV satire skit of the 80s.

Anyway…

My son had his birthday party recently, in the Dining Room. I love my Dining Room (even though it’s not remodeled yet), but it does have some major design challenges. It is a “tween” room: that is, it is between the Kitchen and stairway to the upstairs. It is also the only way to get to the garage (in the back of the house) from the inside of the house. And it is a way to get to the Front Entry Hall. And it is the only way to get to the downstairs bathroom (an ickky little room that was formerly a closet). And it is the only way to get to the Basement. My Dining Room is a “tween” room. Thus, it has FIVE doorways, plus another doorway leading to a small coat closet. And FOUR windows. It has almost no wall space.

I’ve tried to “ground” the room by painting the walls a deep red. I love the color. The old trim in the room is painted glossy white. The floor still has the old gray indoor/outdoor carpeting that was here when we ought the place. I won’t make you sick by describing what the room looked like when we bought the house– just painting the walls has made it much more tolerable.

The ceiling was covered by that junky, 70s-style cardboard drop-ceiling stuff. It’s in 1-foot squares. This makes it very easy to determine the square footage of the room– I just counted those squares!

But I hate drop ceilings, I hate cardboard on my ceiling–this room is a disaster. Eventually we will gut this room (well, it’s half-gutted already due to my electrical wiring work in process) and do it right. For now, I have to be content with the pretty red walls and glossy white trim. I also did something unique to my ceiling a few years ago. It helps me cope with that cardboard ceiling stuff. We wallpapered the ceiling.

I had found this amazing textured wallpaper about the same time I had discovered the old tin ceiling in the garage. I got the bright idea of papering the ceiling! It would cover the cardboard tiles that I hate so much. Here are a few pictures.

The wallpaper has been up for a good six years now, and it’s still sticking (even with all the bouncing from the floors above it). I painted the ceiling the lightest pink, to give a warm radiance in a very chilly room. The room is about 250 square feet, and it has two tiny little heater vents and a huge cold air return vent. That, combined with all the doors and windows, and the fact that this is the north side of the house, it’s mighty chilly in here. I close it off during the day because it makes the rest of the house so cold. We eat dinner very rapidly in here!

My point in describing it is to show that creativity can go a long way in making a room tolerable until you can restore it. You’ll see in the pictures that I have Christmas garland at the crown of the wall. I don’t have crown moulding for the room yet (not until I gut it), and the wallpaper seam looked awful there after its installation. Garland is a little tacky but it is not tackier than the wallpaper seam showing! Overall, it gives a festive look with something that would otherwise be driving me crazy.

Textured wallpaper is hard to find at home improvement stores, but you can order it through them, or order it online. It works!

The electricity in this house continues to drive me crazy! I just can’t figure it out.

Half the electricity in the house is still out. I have been very slowly redoing what I can. But we still have only a cobbed-together kitchen light with two outlets. We are still without lights in the Front Entry, the Dining Room, the Laundry Room, the Breakfast Room, the upstairs Hallway, the upstairs Bathroom, and one of the bedrooms that we call the “Spare Oom.” So far, the only new circuitry I have put in are the Living Room, the girls’ Bedroom, the Master Bedroom, and the boys’ bedroom.

For the sake of brevity, I shall quickly explain my goal: in order to get lights for our Dining Room, I have to do the Front Entry first. And in order to do the Front Entry, I have to do the Upstairs Hallway. The switches I want for these rooms are all near each other, and the holes in the plaster walls are all open to accomodate the new lines.

So, I decide today that I am going to put a switched light in our upstairs Hallway. I remove the old fixture and test the wires (as I always do) to make sure there is absolutely no voltage surging through the wires. I am devastated to discover a mass of tangled wires behind the fixture, and some wires are still live. ??? Wha? I had shut off and removed this circuit a month ago. It should have no voltage!!

I suspect that the original installers used lighting fixtures as extra junction boxes. I am no master of electricity, so I don’t even know if this is possible. But this one fixture has three cables attached to it… I completely disengaged the switches for this Hallway fixture long ago. They were on Circuit #18. This circuit is gone– removed from the service panel! So I open up the fixture and find energy… I try to see where this fixture wiring is getting its energy, and when I shut off Circuit #15– the kitchen light with two outlets–one wire from the fixture wiring goes dead (but the third cable still has power from another place). So… this Hallway light was originally being fed from two or three circuits??? (Circuits #18 and 15 and something else?) Can this be? Or could the switches have been on one circuit and the light fixture on another circuit?

Whatever the case, I have absolutely no control over the old electric in this house, and it makes me terribly jittery. How can I disengage a fixture’s wiring if I don’t know where it is coming from and to where the electricity continues? (we have found junction boxes in the walls and ceilings and this kind of circuitry may be no different). And what if I disengage it anyway only to discover that I have disconnected a connection that makes the meager remainder of the house electrified (as what happened with my mouse-chewed wire)? It seems that the electric in this house is not in “sections” as is standard practice now (a feed cable running from the service panel out to sections of the house), but rather is in a loop (a “feed” wire running through all sorts of places, electrifying anything and everything it goes through, and then back to all sorts of other places in a “neutral” loop. It is crazy and how can I replace this kind of wiring without losing everything beyond it in the looped circuit???

Since I can’t afford to lose the small amount of electricity I have left in the Kitchen, I have chosen to leave everything alone until I can redo the wiring in one big sweep. And that means tearing down ceilings and some walls.

ARG!

I’ve had some good conversations with some electrical inspectors today and yesterday. I guess one could say things are looking “brighter.” They’ve helped clear up some problems I had, and they’ve been very patient with my constant streams of questions.

I have finished wiring the Living Room and the girls’ bedroom. I am thrilled! I have yet to install the switches, receptacles, etc. But all holes are drilled, all plaster is punched out, all wires are strung! Oh joy!

Because of that mouse-chewed wire, I now have to rewire the Kitchen, Bathroom, Laundry Room, and Dining Room light. I realized tonight that of the entire house, only two rooms have its ceiling lights operational– the boys’ bedroom and the small half-bath downstairs. Ugh. Three room’s lights died long ago, and we’ve had problems with two others– we’ve merely tolerated it thus far. But since the collapse of the remaining, I am out of lamps!

Also, a new development has arisen in which I discovered a live wire hanging from the Living Room ceiling. Lord knows how long it was there, encased in the plaster and lathe until I uncovered it. It is the old knob-and tube wiring from the early 1900s, just buzzing away freely.

I discovered it when I scoped the area using a nifty new volt tester (they make a sound when they pick up energy).

The Lord is looking out for us, no doubt about it. This dangling wire is right under my daughter’s bed.

This wire is somehow connected to the same circuit as the other half of the house– the half I thought I wouldn’t have to rewire… but now looks like I must. Sigh. The only way to disconnect it (that I know of, so far) is to turn off that circuit. The wire goes willy-nilly around the Living Room ceiling and then disappears into the murky abyss between the floors and behind the stairwell. This tenuous system of aged electricity is falling down around me. Oh well. It is high time we redid it. One hundred years is long enough, wouldn’t you say?