On Monday the window that Lee installed back in February had its trim installed. We hired out this work because Lee hates ladders.

We used SPF [Spruce Pine Fir] engineered wood for the trim, as it is extremely stable and comes pre-finished. The window trim was actually assembled on the ground using pocket screws and then fastened into place after all the shingle siding was cut back sufficiently. The missing cedar shingle siding was then restored under the window.

Most of the new trim has the exact same dimensions as the original. The large butt-jointed boards on the sides and top are wrapped in a casing to create a reveal effect. The sill trim had to change slightly, as the original wood windows had an integrated sill that extended back under the sashes. Our new aluminum-clad windows have their own sill, so the trim adds a surface-applied “sill” made of 2×4 SPF with a beveled top surface. This sheds water and mirrors the sloped sill of the originals. We’ve decided that the new sill extends out a little too far, so Lee is going to plane it down a half inch or so before we primer everything.

Unfortunately, Horace Greeley was right: “Common sense is uncommon.”  Old homes are often great demonstration grounds for this sort of thing. Decades of hacked solutions to immediate problems layer onto neglect and complacency .. perhaps some pictures sum it up best:

This interior wall separates the back bedroom from the kitchen/laundry area.  It had lath but no plaster on the bedroom side.  The horrible veneer side was on top of that.  When we pull off the lath, that strange zig-zag pattern of cross bracing appeared.  What’s even more strange, is that the outside wall immediately to the left has the same zig-zag bracing behind the fiberglass bats.  I’m thinking perhaps a sheer wall .. but since nothing in the interior has been obviously “load bearing” I don’t know why this inside wall has the bracing too.  The outside walls on the second floor didn’t have this.  Also, sheer bracing is usually let-in by cutting notches in the vertical 2×4′s, not the other way around.

Obviously I will be taking comments from people more in the know than I am.

The second light fixture I am going to keep also. Well maybe one that is in better condition. Lee doesn’t like it as much as the globe. But he told me that it was because almost every light fixture in the house is this one. Guess they got a good deal or lacked creativity or they were the cheapest they could find at the time.

The third picture is the window sash weight. Its pretty neat looking. Almost all the the old windows sashes still work. I don’t know that I had ever seen one before.

The fourth picture is the window latch. So very neat. We are talking a lot about whether to replace the windows or keep them.

When we bought the house we did not think there was any lath and plaster.  The main floor living room is knotty pine paneling, the bedrooms are plastered plywood (a trick used in the 1930s to avoid the cost of lath and plaster).  Upstairs the ugly veneer paneling abounded.  As it turns out, the whole second floor was lath and plaster at one time.  During a renovation sometime in the 80s the lath and plaster was ripped off the outside walls, the wiring was updated, and R11 fiberglass bats were added to the second floor walls and ceiling.  The veneer paneling was nailed onto the outside walls and glued over the lath and plaster interior walls.  The staircase was also revamped using drywall.

This image gives a good overview.  The strips of lath wood are visible behind Robin.  The plaster is all over the floor.  The knee wall on the left is undamaged plaster, as the 80s era insulators could get behind it through an access door and thus left it alone.  For anyone with the misfortune of a lath & plaster removal job, I recommend respirators, goggles, and overalls.  Even if your plaster doesn’t contain asbestos, there are decades of dirt, mold, and animal droppings that will cloud into the air and burst out at your eyes.

Another shot of the same wall.  Note the stud framed wall on the far right.  This was part of a closet addition, likely also from the 80s, which covered up sections of plaster and the original chimney.  Yes, that massive floor-to-ceiling structure is the chimney.  It ends a few inches from the roof sheathing.  Guess what?  The chimney was also broke off in the 80s during a re-roofing job when the woodstove was also removed.  The book “Renovating Old Houses” would call that ‘remuddling’.

The grey concrete circle in the chimney makes us wonder if there was original a wood stove on the second floor as well.  The chimney needs to come out too.  It’s out of plumb and probably too small to run a stovepipe through.  When we knock out the first section we’ll know if it had 1, 2, or 3 flues.  I’m voting for 3: a cookstove on the first floor, a woodstove on the first floor, and a woodstove on the second floor.  Then again, the two on the first floor could share a flue.  Now there’s a fire hazard.