Busted Basement Window Well

One of the things we noticed immediately upon moving in was water in the basement. Not just some dampness but standing water from the storm 12 hours earlier. In the 3 weeks we have lived there we have had massive amounts of standing water every time it rains, definitely not the 'seepage' we were told. It was so wet that the carpenter ants had fashioned the rotted wood into canoes and were waging naval battle against the mice in their insulation fortress. 

Clearly the mice have an upper hand

The water isn't everywhere, mostly just the front of the house. During the dry times I have done some reconnaissance and found the likely culprits for the major sources of water:

1. Lack of gutters causing water to just fall right against the foundation. 
2. Poorly graded driveway holds the water against the foundation. 
3. Poseiden - God of the Sea, is angry that I keep throwing rocks at his house
4. A below grade basement window with a rotted sill and busted well. 

Hadn't realized that we purchased a house with an in-ground pool

We have #1 queued up to be fixed around mid-August. Not that I'm afraid of heights but I can imagine the spectacle of me trying to hang gutters. More likely the spectacle of the fire department coming to rescue me from being stuck hanging off partly installed gutters.

#2 will be something that we deal with "Later^TM". Again another one for the professionals. 

That leaves us with 3 and 4, as well as various cracks and whatnot that we can deal with later, hopefully. 

As seen in the above picture that pit is the perfect area for water to pool up and then leisurely follow the foundation down until hydrostatic pressure does it's black magic and teleports the water into our basement. I tried an experiment and just put a couple inches of water in the well and it drained faster than our bathroom sink. No joke, the sink has a pipe that is too small and the water doesn't drain well. 

I'm sure he is involved somehow too

I decided to build up around the well just to stop a majority of the water from pouring in. It doesn't have to be fancy, just functional until we can get the whole driveway replaced. Luckily there is a pile of old bricks that were left at the house and they seemed up to the task for holding back waves. Now I am no mason but it can't be that hard, right?

After thoroughly cleaning as much dirt and poison ivy roots from the well as I could, I dove into the sill area. There was so much silt from constant drainage over the years that there was a small jungle growing in there. I wish I had taken a picture of it, pretty sure we were in a partial Jumanji situation. 

Left unattended this was bound to happen

I didn't have any mortar for the bricks, wood to make a mold for concrete, knowledge or tools to do either. So I did the next best thing and just mixed up some old concrete that was left in the shed and started pouring it everywhere. 

Pro Tip: Concrete isn't designed to just pour on stuff and work. 

Somewhere in my mind I knew this but decided things could not be worse than they currently are. The amazing thing though is that you can pretty much do whatever you want to your house, as displayed by a lot of the existing work. I poured concrete all over the well and then started squishing bricks in wherever they fit. Amazingly it worked, kinda. 

It matches the house, sagging slightly in the middle

So there you go. Definitely not pretty but functional and a darn sight better than the crumbled concrete that was there before. Once it has cured I plan on going around the perimeter of the foundation and sealing everything with some finishing cement and waterproof paint, so this isn't the last we have seen of the busted window well. 

- The Porter -

Moving Cabinets and New Appliances

There are a multitude of projects that I need to work on in this house. Fixing supports in the basement, foundation cracks, water leaking, etc, none of those will make the house look better. Just safer. Meh.

Instead of dealing with those minor issues we decided the first thing we needed was to do was replace the old appliances. Normally old appliances wouldn't be an issue but we had a bad experience with an old exploding gas stove before and didn't want to repeat the process. Also I pulled the handle off the freezer the first time I tried to open it...

Oops. Hulk Smash.

In addition to needing to replace appliances that looked hip in the 90s there was something missing from our kitchen. Great amount of cabinet space, nicely slanted counter tops, but no dishwasher. First world problems.

Also a bookshelf on the island

The stove I call Mr. Burns

Thus we embarked upon removing the cabinet next to the sink. I decided to pull the old switcheroo and put the cabinet under the island and then move the bookshelf next to the sink. It took a little work because the cabinets were attached to the counters with what can only be considered the strongest adhesive ever. For that we needed to enlist the help of a friend who 'has a tool for that'. Things went well until we started to move the cabinet and it did not. Congratulations, we found the air vent that was installed under the cabinet. This is when we learned that the people who installed these cabinets thought duct tape was for duct work.

You almost can't see the improperly installed ducting under the cabinet.

Best way to deal with stuff like that is to just rip it out and throw the sharp hacked piece of metal away. We figured we could just cover up the vent with the bookshelf and deal with it later. This is what impatience gets you.

Bookshelf didn't fit so we just cut part of it off.

What we didn't anticipate was just how sloped the floors were. We knew there was a bit of a slope, you can feel it when you walk. It is as though you need sea legs to navigate our house. I fear my children will grow up to be pirates, unable to walk on land without staggering around like they can't hold their grog.

Best use for drill bit sets; spacing for counters.

I built a handy frame to deal with the space between the cabinet top and the island figuring that a set of 2x4s would work just fine. The inch and a half slope from the left side of the cabinet to the right disagreed. Luckily an inch and a half is the exact width of a 2 inch by 4 inch piece of wood. What is that you say? A 2x4 is surely 2 inches by 4 inches. What manner of witchcraft is this that a 2 inch piece of wood fits snugly in a 1.5 inch space?

The lumber industry hates us. Turns out Paul Bunyan thought it would be fun to start cheating people out of half an inch of wood so he could get more cuts from a single tree. America started a campaign against the lumberjacks, but their slogan was the downfall of the movement. 'We want the full 2 inches of wood!' just didn't rally the troops the way they hoped. Now we meekly accept that when we ask for a 2x4 we are getting a 1.5x3.5 piece of wood while the dude at the lumber mill sneers at us.

No more drill bit box stand and if you look closely, level!

The only way to deal with the slope was to hide it. I feel like this will be a recurring theme in a lot of my repairs, hide the problem. So I put some nice pre-primed wood around the edges and unless you are looking at it, you can't even tell that the floor is a low grade slide.

The final part of the project was to deal with the particle board backing of the cabinets. The original plan bounced between adding a Formica backing, painting it white, ripping the whole kitchen out and burning it in the driveway; but we settled on magnetic primer underneath chalkboard paint. Might as well make a play area for the kids.

The dishes wash themselves!

The wee-one already loves ripping the magnets off the board

For now the kitchen is complete. New appliances, migrated cabinets, hidden sloping, chalkboard. I think its time to deal with the rest of the house.

- The Porter -

Buying an Antique House

Recently the wife and I decided to upgrade to a larger house. Living in 1000 square feet with no parking had lost its luster after this past winter. With a second wee-one on the way the time was ripe for selling and moving.

Cue the Porter House!

Don't judge a book by its cover. Unless the cover is rotted and leaning to the right....

Built in 1830 for Teamster Joseph Porter, this nearly 2200 square foot behemoth is full of old world charm and quirks.

And by quirks I mean a bunch of stuff that has been poorly maintained and fixed with what I term 'slapdashery'. Sometimes a fresh coat of paint, or several coats of poor quality latex paint in this case, is not all a house needs to be freshened up.

Things that need to be rectified include a mishandled conversion from a two-family back to single, non-vented plumbing, skylight that is just a storm window sitting on shingles, 184 years of water damage to the sill plate, rotted rail tie retaining walls, flooding basement, laundry vented into the basement instead of outside, tons of finishing work, and much much more.

This house has all the potential to be amazing, it just needs love and attention to undo all the mistakes and then fix them properly. This blog is going to detail my misadventures of learning how to properly restore an antique house.

Up first, preparing for new appliances and making space for a dishwasher.

- The Porter -