New York Renovator

As we Northeasterners have been crawling out of our hibernation, spring slowly arrives. My spring flowers are now blooming. Spring came early this year for Upstate New York– i.e., no snow in April! Usually, we don’t allow those sporadic 70-80 degree days to fool us. We know a snowstorm could (and has) happened. But this year- nothing! What a treat! Still, most of April was chilly, and I balked at doing anything outdoors.

But now it’s May. And we’d better get going on the growing season or else nothing will be ready. Autumn’s frosts are just a few months away.

Lilac buds! At last!

And tulips! Beautiful!

The kids and I have a few projects set up for this year. For one, I have GOT to get my dining room, kitchen, and bathroom electrifed. *sigh* Even if I have to use conduit. I have been waiting until I can gut the walls to run electric wiring… there is NO WAY I’m going to snake wiring through these plaster-and-lathe walls. But right now, I still can’t gut the rooms (not unless I win a million bucks or something!). And I can’t have wires hanging all around us. So I may just grab some conduit and plug things in, until I can renovate. I’m not too pleased about this choice, but we’ve been without electric for almost two years now, and it’s getting kinda old.

We’re also enlarging our vegetable garden beds.

As you can see, we have two large beds surrounded by gravel. We used to have four beds, but it was impossible for me to maintain it. I was gardening more square footage than my house– too much for me! Well anyway, I surrounded the beds with gravel for a few reasons– to keep the zillions of weeds at bay, to help with drainage (our property has an underground stream and it is always soaking wet), and to retain heat (slightly increasing our growing season time). Now that the kids are older and can help with the gardens (plus, they eat a lot more!), we’re widening the beds. This means that they have to dig out a linear foot of gravel all around the beds. I will install new boards to enclose the beds and we will add more soil. Those old boards are 150 years old, having been taken from our attic floor for the garden, lol! Yeah, we sure do know how to recycle.

The extra gravel that we are getting from the garden will go toward our next project- a new drywell system on the other side of the house. Like I said, there’s a lot of water around here and we experience flooding in our basement. It’s gotten better since the my town cleared out a drainage pipe across the street, and since we installed a drywell on the other side of the house. You can read about our project here and here. The kids found a few old coins during their dig. This side of the house we’re going to conquer may reveal even more treasures, as this side of the house was traditionally the well and garbage heap.

So that’s all I have on my plate for this year. I work at home now, leaving me very little time to devote to renovations. I’m still hoping to renovate the whole house, but especially the kitchen, which has fallen apart (literally). More to come!

Old houses often have water problems. Mine sure does. Last year, the kids and I worked all summer on building a huge drywell area, to lead rainwater runoff from the roof away from the foundation of the house. You can read more about it here and here and here.

It has helped our water situation, somewhat, although we so still get backup water from the sump well. I think the reason for that is the undergorund water table is very high around here, and there is only so much we can do to deal with that. Nonetheless, I’ve been mulling over more of my options. I cannot really prevent the water from coming up and into my property, but I can divert it. So we are going to build French drains around the perimeter of the house, one side at a time. (we are doing the digging ourselves, with shovels).

Perhaps the best article I’ve read on building a French drain, and understanding water flow, is here at Ask the Builder. I’m not quite sure where to have the drainage area, because there is the chance of exacerbating the water problems if I don’t extend the French drain system far enough away from the house; I’ll just be creating a pond from all that runoff!

So… I’m doing more research and thinking. I may have to tear up a section of the asphalt driveway to do this. The driveway is very old, and was installed much too close to the house anyway (it’s only two feet away from the house walls!) I have some tough decisions to make. But I think this will be our autumn project before school begins for the kids. And we have to go camping sometime soon before then, too!

Our drywell project is completed! We sweated it out on one of the hottest days of the summer to finish it. I’ll keep the narrative brief, with photos:

Below: Filling with rocks.

We elimated our “rock pile” with this project. Our rock pile was a collection of various rocks, bricks, broken asphalt, and broken cinder blocks, all piled around a crummy Mountain Ash tree. The pile was begun by previous owners before we moved here, and we just continued the tradition. It was quite a large pile. The yard looks so much better without it now.

Below: Filling with dirt.
God made dirt, dirt don’t hurt.
Replacing the packed down mounds of dirt to the trench was the hardest part of the job.

It’s done! Only needs a cleaning up (and probably a little more dirt around the barrel).

The kids are beaming. They did a really great job.

Today we progressed more on our drywell project. The hardest of the project is behind us!

Last week, I bought a very large plastic garbage barrel (I could not find a regular rain barrel) and drilled a 4-inch hole in the bottom side.

The kids laid about a foot’s depth of rocks at the bottom of our hole. We set the barrel in and they buried it.

The youngest likes to test the trench.

The kids spent an afternoon filling the barrel with small “river” rocks (smooth stones about the size of their fists). We have quite a collection of rocks on hand, in our “rock pile.” They finished burying the barrel. We are leaving a foot of space at the top for when we fill it with gravel.

Today, we tested out all the pipes and fitted them together. First, we made sure the pipes were sloping the adequate amount.

We had to cement a total of three pipes together (one short one was solid and the other two are perforated). We did have to use an elbow joint to accomodate for the bend in the trench. After this, we did the arduous task of wrapping landscaping fabric around the perforated pipes, to prevent loose dirt from clogging the perforations. The fabric tore easily so we had to be very careful. I do wonder how long this fabric will endure under all this soil.

In the trench at the end of the final pipe, there is a gap of about a foot. The kids packed large stones in this gap and all around the end of the pipe, to help keep the pipe in place. The ground is due to shift, but hopefully the rocks will keep the pipe from shifting too much.

My eldest was foreman of the rocks until a very large one fell into the hole and smashed her thumb. I was concerned it was broken, but it looks like it is just swollen and has a big cut. Thank God it wasn’t anything more serious. Poor girl, she was in agony, so we ended our work session for the day and I went into first aid mode. She is much improved after a cold pack– and is excused from her night to wash dishes, aw!!!

All that is left is to surround the pipes with more river rocks, then cover the entire thing with soil! The kids have done a “smashing” job so far!

We’ve been really pushing ourselves, working all day on our projects (and eating nothing but leftovers, too). We have two teams going: one group is out in the trench for our drywell (the Outside Crew), the other is inside working on the plaster/lathe removal and wall/chimney repair (the Inside Crew). Here’s some great progress we’ve been making!

The Outside Crew has been digging, digging, and digging. At 47 inches below grade, the rocks are smaller, but there are still plenty of them. The bigger kids are having a hard time getting down into the trench to dig, so the smaller guys take turns scooping dirt into a bucket. We hope that next week we will have our materials (rain barrel, PVC pipes) and do a dry run on our drywell system. The crew has done a marvelous job calculating the slope of the trench (1/4 inch per foot for a 23 foot run), and it looks good. Next week, we’ll test it out. If it works, we’ll lay the rocks and gravel, glue the PVC together, and fill in the trench. Yippee!

Here are the kids in the trench for a photo op.

Time for a funny picture:

The Inside Crew has removed all the plaster and lathe now (unless we suddenly decide to rip out more walls). Today, we removed the decrepit old carpeting, pad, and half of the underlayment to see the condition of the original pine flooring. We are not sure if we are going to refinish it so as to keep it exposed, or go with wall-to-wall carpeting. Can’t decide yet.

The floor, for its age (150 years) is in marvelous shape. I just can’t decide what to do yet. We like the warmth of carpet, but I hate to cover this nice wood. I do love wood floors. And keeping it wood would be much less expensive than w-w carpeting. Hmmm….

The Inside Crew has also completed the removal of that ugly half-wall that hung down from the ceiling. The wood and junk has been removed from all around the chimney, too.

Lots more to do, but ain’t progress wonderful?

…is another man’s treasure?

We have only just begun digging our trench, and the kids are going wild after finding one man’s…well, you tell me what you think this is:

That’s a multitude of broken clam shells, iron nails (from the 1800s), old ham and chicken bones, lots of broken glass and potteryware, an old iron coat hanger, an old eye-hook door lock, miscellaneous iron whatnots, a plastic toy figure, a petrified carrottop, part of an old clothespin, and a partridge in a pear tree. Not pictured is a 15 foot long rusty old dog tether chain.

The boys did find a Mercury head dime from 1918, in relatively good condition (value: 80 cents).

We have yet to find the pot o’ gold. Well, there’s plenty more digging to do, so, you never know…

I have to say that I have the best kids in the world. Every mom probably says that, but I really mean it! They are working so hard on our drywell project that they make a mom and dad proud.

This exceptionally beautiful, cool, dry weather is perfect for outdoor work. The kids have been digging and digging and they’re at 41 inches deep now! It has not been an easy task. The soil is heavy, wet, compacted clay. Rocks the size of soccerballs are buried in the soil, too.

Here are some photos of our hole.

Here’s our rock group. Believe it or not, we are still finding old bricks in here. I cannot believe all the bricks we constantly find buried on this property. Where did all these buried bricks come from?

This is a definite team effort.

I’d say we have about 8 to 12 inches more to dig down. Here’s hoping we don’t hit water before then. After the hole is done, next project is digging a trench for the outflow pipes. That should be easier. We hope!

Thank God the weather has been so nice. When it finally does rain again, we’ll continue our chimney/water damage repair inside. And soon we plan to take a few days off and do some traveling again!

We are digging a hole outside the house, in an inside corner where two exterior walls meet. The corner is a juncture where two very steep gable roofs meet. During a rainfall, thousands of gallons of water come rushing down the roof right into this inside corner. My old stone foundation can’t handle it anymore, and has begun to cry into the basement.

We cannot install gutters beacuse the fascia (this is the original 1855 fascia) is angled, and the boards are too soft from age now, anyway. The only thing we can do (short of installing new fascia and siding, which is impossible right now) is direct the water. We are making a drywell. But it is an inverted drywell system.

We are digging a 5′ x 3′ hole where the water from the roof falls. Then we will dig a narrow, deep trench from the hole out to the open yard. Once everything is dug, we will insert a large rain barrel with a 4-inch hole in its side toward the bottom. A long perforated pvc pipe will be inserted into this hole and laid into the trench we dug. We will then fill the rain barrel up with the tons of rocks we have around the yard and top these layers off with a few inches of gravel. The trench will be filled in with gravel and dirt.

My theory is that the rain barrel will fill up with roof runoff water. The pvc pipe will direct and disperse the water out into the yard, where the soil will absorb it. Thus, we will direct most of the roof runoff water from this inside corner and away from the foundation.

I looked up drywells online, and found this cool video at ThisOldHouse.com. The only thing is, the homeowner in the video has gutters and is dispersing his water via pipes to a drywell. I am doing it inversely, by collecting water in the barrel first and dispersing it via pipes.

Well, what does all this detailed explaning have to do with buried treasure?

My son found an old 1900 Indian Head penny while digging. It is in very poor shape, but we can read the date and see the Indian head. It is a very exciting find for a youngster.

This is what an Indian Head penny looks like in good condition. My son’s is very worn and discolored.

Discovering treasure is also very helpful for this parent who needs to find ways to constantly motivate her budding PhDs to keep digging. Heh.