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So I've got some spergin' to do about restoring/refinishing wood flooring. Since we're kinda stalled out on big ticket projects (kitchen and bathroom), I figured we could at least get moving on fixing up the floors in the coming weeks while the house is still empty. Some background for folks who haven't ventured into my project thread: my fiance and I bought a 1910 Victorian that's largely in its original state in terms of interior details and layout. All the original floors remain, though some are covered by lovely carpet, and are in varying states of wear. All of them need work, some more than others. Since floor refinishing is a pretty low-skill task (if tedious), it's something that we want to DIY, and fiance's mom and stepdad are coming next month to help out, and I'm thinking having them help with the floors so we can get all the dusty sanding work out of the way before we do other poo poo like paint walls and move in furniture. I'm pretty sure that the flooring on the first and (most likely) second floors are finished with shellac. Despite my reservations, we set some slightly damp soil samples out on newspaper on the dining room floor under the huge window to dry them out for free soil testing day (results: lead contamination!), and came back to find that there was enough dampness to leave big milky white spots on the floor, which is the telltale sign of shellac. The marks went away just fine, though, and that was after having wet crap on the floor overnight. I get the sense that the floors haven't really been taken care of in decades, so good chance of shellac. I started doing research on flooring finishes, and have determined that more shellac is the best option for a number of reasons, including  historical authenticity . Basically, it's quite easy to work with, natural and non-toxic, is particularly great for spot fixing and maintenance because you can just add more shellac, which will blend with existing shellac, and it brings out all the good warm tones in your woodwork. Downsides are the white water stains (though now I've learned you can fix them with denatured alcohol), and it's not the most durable option out there. Fiance disagrees with me, saying we need to keep our options open and stuff, and is worried about the water stain issue, and seems to be leaning towards newfangled polyurethane or whatever. If I can just put denatured alcohol on the stain and then add more shellac, that's not a big deal. Honestly, I love the idea of having a floor finish that you can spot fix that easily.Do any of you guys have experience working with shellac? Is it secretly a terrible idea? Also, some pics:  Fancy parquet flooring in the foyer. You can see that the floor is kinda beat up, but otherwise in decent condition.  Closeup of flooring and baseboard on second floor. Seems to be in decent shape, just scuffed up and worn. Carpet in the bedrooms needs to go. Hopefully the floors underneath aren't too hosed up. Worried about that carpet padding adhesive residue.  Attic floor is pretty hosed, though. Looks like pine (all these old houses had pine floors upstairs). Definitely needs to be aggressively sanded down and totally refinished. In another room, the previous owners started painting the floor with what looks like wall paint. More poo poo for us to sand off.
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May 22, 2018 01:35
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eddiewalker posted:The prehung doors are so cheap, what’s the point anything else as a homeowner? Rip down to framing, measure the rough opening, buy the next width up and a bunch of shins. Yeah, but they don't make the kind of doors I need in prehung form - if I could get solid wood Victorian five panel doors in weird sizes like 27" x 84" I'd be all over it. My options for new doors (and I need several) are hoping some doors of the right size and style turn up at the local construction salvage yard, or having them custom made.
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Jun 4, 2018 00:27
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Pretty sure I'm going to end up taking one of my existing doors, strip all the awful paint, finish it how I want, and then ship it to Lancaster so an Amish carpenter can use it as a template to make the four of them I'm missing in the exact non-standard sizes I need (frames and jambs and poo poo are all still there - just need the doors themselves), also in wood and finish that matches all the remaining doors. The vast majority of prehung options I found were unacceptable. I did manage to find the right five-panel design, but they were all made out of MDF and composite stuff.
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Jun 4, 2018 05:29
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So I came across this photo while sleepy and bleary-eyed, on my phone and without my glasses, and for a moment wondered why we were posting NASA photos of the space shuttle servicing a satellite in the home spergin' thread.
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Jun 6, 2018 05:35
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peanut posted:Hose/sprinkler with hot water? Only if you want to make your driveway into a slip n' slide of ice 
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Jun 29, 2018 00:35
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Oh my goodness, restoring that old floor would totally be worth it if the majority of it is in good condition (like no major past water damage) and SO much nicer than laminate (and amazing for added value to the house of you want to sell down the road). My fiancé and I recently bought an old Victorian and just finished restoring the floors in the attic. Various previous owners had painted, painted, carpeted, painted, painted, and then painted this poor pine plank floor. It looked disgusting, and so filthy and messed up that we feared that there was water damage or something. But nope, floor was perfect underneath all that paint. With the help of relatives and heavy duty sanders rented from Home Depot (and purchase of an orbital and a mouse sander), we sanded off all the layers of paint, then conditioned and stained the wood and gave it a few coats of polyurethane. It looks brand new now. Our work wasn't perfect (first time we'd restored a floor), so if you know where to look you can see some gouges and unevenness from sanding, but it still looks fantastic. If you're worried about wrecking the floor with a big sander (they can be unwieldy), you can use a smaller sander with finer grain sandpaper (like starting with 80 grit instead of 50) which will be safer but will take exponentially longer and be unbelievably tedious. But if you're just sanding off adhesive and not six layers of paint, you might be able to get away doing it that way as to reduce risk of damaging the floor if you're inexperienced with giant floor sanders.
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Jul 15, 2018 23:00
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jerry seinfel posted:So anyway here's some more I swear, this is the exact same as every single flipped house we glanced at online (I say glance because as soon as we got past the exterior and saw the telltale gray walls, polished floors, gaping open floor plan, and completely incongruous new kitchen, we moved onto the next listing because we were not interested in buying a flip). I mean, other than the out-of-place HGTV trend kitchens, they were all pleasant-looking houses that would appeal to lots of people, so I get why flippers make those choices. We looked at a VERY cool house that had previously been flipped. It was an old Edwardian-style American foursquare with all original stained glass and gorgeous tiger oak woodwork (including pocket doors) that had all been amazingly restored. And then we got to the kitchen... which was all stark white and super modern. In and of itself, it was lovely and had a highly functional galley layout and plenty of counters and cabinets, but dear god it just did not work in that house. The redeeming factor was that it was a closed kitchen so we could have closed the doors and just not looked at it while enjoying the rest of the house. The reasons we did not buy this house, despite the sore thumb kitchen, were because it was in the wrong municipality (bad schools and high taxes) and also hilariously overpriced, even with the seller (who'd bought it from the flipper and got swindled) selling it at a loss. Also it was a flip. My colleague and his wife recently bought a flipped house in a hot neighborhood because they wanted to be said hot neighborhood and they wanted a move-in ready house that was already fixed and they didn't have to do work on. No flip house horror stories yet (their flipper has a good reputation), but now they're tired of all the cheap finishes and want to replace them, so they're doing work on the house anyway.
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Aug 23, 2018 19:23
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mutata posted:Thanks! I'll try chipping. Could it be some form of whitewash or limewash glaze maybe? I was going to say it looks kinda like German Smear, but that treatment usually goes over the mortar too. And it's nearly impossible to remove. Since the mortar is so clean on your house, I'm wondering if that's just how the bricks came, like if the plaster look is intentional and baked into the brick to make it look vintage or something (it really does look like imitation reclaimed brick - I'd know because my dad used reclaimed century-old factory bricks build the chimneys at my parents' house and lots of them have that sort of faded buildup on them. To test, you might try chipping or even sand blasting an area of bricks in a less visible spot.
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Sep 7, 2018 13:44
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Jaxyon posted:So I have a Craftsman style home (about 100 years old) and while the interior isn't super original, I'd like to add some built-in shelving on one of the walls in my living room, because I want the shelves and I think it would be cool, as well as it fitting the house's style. No idea of the cost (not quite there yet with my repair/built-in projects in my old house), but you'd want to call an old school carpenter if you want it done right. Ask around on places like Angie's List, NextDoor, and Thumbtack for recommendations and leads.
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Oct 7, 2018 01:25
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Attire Irony posted:
Yes. I don't think I understand how tearing out the existing floor, laying subfloor, and then installing new flooring is going to be less of a pain in the rear end than just sanding and refinishing the existing floor. If the floor is in good condition and hasn't been messed with much (other than having had carpet laid on it), then you won't have to sand much (definitely not as much as we did to remove six layers of floor paint from our attic floor). If you are worried about fumes around the baby, consider finishing with shellac, which is naturally derived and nontoxic (it's the only approved finish for wooden children's toys, I believe). It's not as durable as polyurethane and more involved to work with, but zero fumes. I, for one, am highly sensitive to fumes, so next time we refinish a floor in our own house, we are using shellac because I can't deal with the polyurethane fumes. Also period appropriate for our house.
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Nov 2, 2018 18:56
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My basement is mostly sandstone and it's in pretty dire need of repointing. I've done research but haven't started any work. My take is that for stacked stone foundation walls, especially when you have soft stone, you need the old fashioned lime mortar without Portland cement. The stones move (settling, plate tectonics, etc), and the soft lime mortar moves with them and has somewhat of a self-healing ability, and is a sacrificial component - it's padding and filler for the stones rather than glue. Portland cement is super hard and will crack when the stones and ground move, and oftentimes cause softer stone (like my sandstone) to crack or spall or break. Does the same thing to old soft bricks. When I get to repointing, I'll definitely be going out of my way to obtain old fashioned lime mortar. Don't want to take any chances.
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Nov 5, 2018 02:14
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TheReverend posted:I should tell this guy to fuckoff yeah? We got a basement waterproofing/moisture mitigation quote for 18k, work would include interior French drains and a pair of fancy-rear end sump pumps. Our basement is sandstone and is persistently damp in the summer, wetter when it rains, like puddles in the corner. It is also huge (hence the need for two sump pumps). Haven't acted on it because I want to see how/if repointing improves things first. We fitted our gutters with LeafFilter for like 2k, so that should help a bit keeping gutter overflow away from the house perimeter.
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May 10, 2019 04:20
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TheReverend posted:I have a 1979 basement. It's poured. Look into LeafFilter. We got it after seeing it at the local home and garden convention because we have large trees around the house and our gutters are near inaccessible at 29' and very close to the neighboring houses. It's hard to tell so far if it's helping for basement moisture because we have additional issues (like the walkout stairway funneling rain and mud into the basement), but it solved the issue of having to regularly access and clean the gutters (dangerous), or hire someone to do it (expensive).
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May 10, 2019 18:56
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Hey guys, would it be advisable to put interior wood stain on treated but otherwise unfinished exterior decking? Backstory is that I got several free cans of pecan wood stain that our friends across the street ended up not using (wasn't quite the right color). The exterior decking is the flooring for both our porches and it looks kinda cheap and out of place on our Victorian. Eventually, we'll redo the porches with proper tongue and groove porch flooring, but until then, I figure I can at least try to make the porch floor look slightly less like a regular deck.
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May 20, 2019 18:21
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I grew up in a house with mostly casement windows and now own a house with double hung sash windows and I much prefer the sash windows. They are not further exposed to the elements while open and if you don’t have an exterior screen fitted, you can pop in those handy $5 screens from Home Depot when the window is open. I also like the fact that you can pull down the top sash and get some good ventilation going, and general ease of use (especially true of the old style counterweighted sashes - enables you to raise a 30lb sash with your pinky finger).HycoCam posted:You can easily replace the old casements with single or double hung windows. Personally, I have strong dislike for casement windows. For a while I thought they were going away, then the whole egress thing became a code issue and now there is one in every bedroom. Oh no  But double hung windows are easy to escape from... was the problem that they weren’t big enough or too high from the ground? I think my perception is clouded by having enormous double hung windows in the bedrooms (some are almost 6’ tall) that all have super low sills.
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Feb 5, 2020 21:48
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Toebone posted:I've got an 1830s greek revival house, with original windows. To keep the windows open you need to prop up the sash with something; I'm planning on getting some 1" dowls and cutting 1-foot lengths to keep near each window. Any other, perhaps more elegant, ideas that I should consider? Are they typical double-hung windows? Without pics my guess is that they’re supposed to be hung with counterweights but that some idiot may have cut and disposed of the cords. If you look up at the top inside of the window frame, do you see a pulley or signs of hardware and a hole there? Here’s a shot of one my old (but not THAT old) windows (that still has the cord but is still painted shut because  ): If you remove the stops you can take out the lower sash and open up the access plate (a removable block of wood in the bottom insides of the frame). Might be hard to see if it’s been painted a bunch. If you open this you will possibly/hopefully find the counterweights and old cord. You can get new cord (or chain) and re-hang the sash. It’s not terribly difficult and there’s plenty of YouTube instruction (how we learned to do it). Hopefully you won’t need new hardware, but if you do, you can get what you need from https://houseofantiquehardware.com. Here’s a diagram:  Now, if it’s NOT a hung sash, you could probably remedy it by tightening/shimming the stop so it keeps the sash up by tension (rather than counterweighting). It’ll make it slightly more difficult to operate because it’ll be tighter, but also less drafty. An additional option is to get those $5 pop-in adjustable-width screens that fit in the opening. It’ll do double duty of holding the sash up (if either above solutions don’t work out) and providing a screen (if you don’t already have an exterior fitted screen on the window or something). Not the prettiest but I love them.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:16
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The college hovel I lived in had a garage hot tub which had been there since the late 90s or early 00s. Garage was not for parking because it was full of crap (like a hot tub and a couch and a beer pong table) and had a manually operated door, but also a floor drain, so it was perfect as a gross hot tub party room. Where I grew up in the SF Bay Area, they were almost always on back decks/patios. Ideally made out of redwood (e.g. those cool round ones from the 70s) and underneath a canopy of redwood trees with weed available and the fog rolling in but you not caring because you’re high and warm.
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Mar 9, 2021 19:14
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Less Fat Luke posted:Also on the subject of hot water tanks - when we bought this place during the inspection the tank was leaking and I commented that it's probably not a big deal since we'd like to go tankless. The real estate agent on the seller side told the home owners who immediately replaced the tank with a new SEVEN YEAR rental. Wow saddling the buyers with a lovely rental contract is a colossal dick move. Isn’t it waaaay more money over the course of the tank rental than just buying the thing? Is there a way to get out of it? I mean, our seller left us with a then 20-year-old tank (will be 23 this year), which to me is preferable because there are no strings attached and we can replace it at will with whatever we want. There was nothing wrong with ours other than being stupidly old, and even if it was on the fritz I still would have just taken it as is because we didn’t want the cheapshit seller further touching the house in any way. Motronic posted:At no point should the certainly fetid rusty rear end water in your hydronic heating loop be mixing with you Domestic Hot Water. So, a couple years ago we drained our system so we could move one of the radiators for floor work, probably the first time in 80+ years, and in doing so I got splattered with what came out. It was pitch black and disgusting, but it had no odor whatsoever. Full of rust and minerals, but nothing organic. But yeah, the water in these loops gets super gross and I wouldn’t want it anywhere near my hot water supply.
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Mar 15, 2021 17:38
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Toebone posted:I've got 40 or so cinder blocks the previous owner left in the backyard. Before I haul them down to the dump, is there anything neat I could do with them? I have a big empty backyard and it's mostly just used by the dog for crappin. You could use them as miniature raised planters - the hollows would be good for keeping seedlings isolated and easier to transplant into larger beds. Or if you have small children, stack them into an epic brutalist fortress for the plastic dinosaur army. But if you don’t have any use for them just put them on the curb with a “free cinderblocks” note/NextDoor curb alert/Craigslist post. I had a spider-infested pile of 200+ bricks in the backyard when I moved in, in addition to more bricks in the basement. Keeping them because they match the house and would come in handy if I ever needed to do brick work on the exterior (one of my giant peeves is poorly matched brick repair work/ bricked-in windows - always looks like complete rear end and I won’t stand for it on my house). My spare bricks are currently in use as a cute little patio platform for the garbage cans and flowerbed edging. But unlike my bricks that are the exact right shade of buff that they don’t make anymore, cinderblocks are generic so no point in holding onto them just because you might need them someday.
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Mar 24, 2021 19:44
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If it’s grandfathered and you can’t get new approval for a full replacement (which would be ideal because the existing one looks completely rotten and unsafe and should really be wholly replaced) then it’s Dock of Theseus time. I don’t know all that much about building docks but I’d start with sistering the piles with new 4x4’s like in the video and probably 6x6’s at the ends/corners, and then sister joists and beams with new wood (making sure to attach new joists/beams to new piles) and replace the decking (and possibly reuse any existing decking that’s not rotten so it looks more convincingly like a repair). Once the new dock parts weather a bit and stop looking conspicuously new (or expedite by staining new wood to look aged), start pulling out the rotten old wood until you’re left with only new dock. Hopefully someone with more dock building experience comes along.
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Mar 30, 2021 18:58
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nm posted:I have 8 year old PVC windows, and they already are breaking down. They slide like poo poo, need to be nursed in to close just right so they don't leak, etc. (There's also a bunch of poo poo between the panes, but as you note, that dual pane problems) Yeah with older PVC windows it’s only a matter of time before the seal breaks or they otherwise fail in some irreparable way. The folks across the street refurbed and sold one of their rental properties last year and mentioned to me that the buyers wanted them to replace a couple windows. This was very old house so I assumed old windows and asked if I could have the hardware, and they explained that the windows needing replacing were vinyl ones they’d installed in 2008. Twelve years old and already in a state of failure. We want to replace a number of lovely vinyl windows in our house with proper wood ones, and the millwork guy we talked to steered us away from double pane because they’re waaay more expensive and have a 20-30 year shelf life due to the seal. Old school wooden single pane windows are much simpler to build/repair and will last well over a century if you (and your descendants) regularly maintain them, and if you do stuff like insulate the attic and install storm panes and good window treatments, you can easily make up for the energy savings you lose by not having that second pane. devmd01 posted:$12k quote from Pella to replace the back door and side panel windows in the back. we are going to change it from a single door as it is today to a French door that opens outward. It will still have a screen across even when both doors are open wide for fresh air. Seconding getting another quote. Try some local window & door millwork shops.
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Apr 8, 2021 19:20
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shirts and skins posted:Well this is quite a rabbit hole to go down Isn’t it?  I spent a good while perusing the Craftsmen Group’s portfolio - amazing stuff. Seems like their work is weighted heavily towards restoration, though (or at least the work they are featuring). You can probably find ones that do modern/contemporary designs as well as traditional/historic. For instance, the shop we have here does a lot of historic reproduction but will also do modern stuff if you just want good quality doors and windows made the old way even if you don’t have an old house. nm posted:I'm honestly unsure if you can replace modern windows with old single pane windows legally here, but man, it's kind of a dream. I'll probably end up paying $texas for pella reserves. This house (turns 100 next year) just looks like such poo poo with the vinyl windows that even if they didn't suck I'd be looking to replace them. I’ve gotten the sense that in most places, rules on how many panes your windows are supposed to have apply to new construction and substantial remodels, not necessarily down to the level of simply popping in a new window, but then again, some vicinities have draconian permit requirements/rules around energy efficiency stuff. My mom has expressed worry about me running afoul of window energy rules (since CA, where my parents live, is rife with energy rules), but I have yet to find evidence of any rules governing window types in existing construction, and seeing all the cool single-paned period residential work the old fashioned millwork shop does around here, I don’t think it’s a problem. It helps that this is a good-sized city, which means they have better things to do than micromanage replacement windows in SFHs. Hell, my dad got away with new single pane windows in CA in a small town with a busybody planning commission in the 90’s. His reasoning for going with single pane was that he hated the fat muntins that came with true divided light double-paned windows. You can have much thinner and better proportioned muntins in single paned windows. One thing I learned from consulting with the millwork shop is that oftentimes, vinyl window fitters just stuff the vinyl replacement window into the original jamb, leaving it mostly intact, with the old pulley hardware and counterweights just sealed up, which means that after some light rehab to the jamb (and probably new stops), chances are you just need to pop in your new old sashes and attach them to the counterweights. This also means that the replacement window is a good bit smaller than what it replaced, which means less glass surface area and therefore less light. But yeah, in my house, most of the vinyl windows are trash, with a few being allegedly nicer, including a huge arched Pella in the dining room:  Bonus closeup of lower sash and sill with that stupid lip making it annoying to place potted plants, with cattes:  Multiple people have remarked on this being an expensive piece since it’s Pella and custom. Buuuut it’s stark white unpaintable plastic in a room full of dark wood trim and it looks like complete rear end from outside:  ...So I’ll be ripping it out and replacing it with a period appropriate wood window, probably with a stained glass arch pane thingy. But it’s way down on the list of windows to replace because it’s a decent quality window (for a hunk of plastic) and there are plenty of way shittier windows we have to contend with first. As for that previous pic, I took it to illustrate the contrast between some average original windows and the most egregious replacement windows - original windows are inset and protected from the elements. They have clean lines because they are simple wooden things. The replacement windows are jutted out and exposed to the elements, and modern window technology always calls for convoluted vinyl extrusions for some reason, so the resulting windows look busy and complicated and always seem dirty/degraded because there are so many crevices that detritus can collect in. That ugly upstairs window is in my home office and those stupid sliders don’t even fit correctly. It is supposed to be one of those cool Victorian oriel windows with the huge square sash and stained glass transom above (where that white plywood is), but alas. Some day. As for old school window inspiration, when I’m out and about, I’ll sometimes take  I’m so goddamn jealous of the windows in this house (and this house in general). That high-end oriel with curved glass and perfect double hung windows with a period appropriate paint job, not to mention the incredible brickwork and dentil molding  You can’t achieve that poo poo with vinyl. Best I’ve seen of vinyl in an old house was a rehab job on a far-gone dark brick Victorian duplex for which they ordered custom fitted BROWN vinyl windows (seriously, them not being stark white and also appropriately dimensioned made a huge difference), but it still would have looked an order of magnitude better with restored original windows (which, to be fair, looked rotten) or wood replicas. Way too often, especially when you have special windows like arched ones, this poo poo happens:   Here’s the main gable on our house:  That poor arched window is irredeemably rotten (on top of being very poorly painted). It’s going to get replaced with an exact replica because I refuse to cheap out and replace with rectangular vinyl trash like everyone else. tl;dr: I can’t shut the gently caress up about old house windows
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Apr 9, 2021 00:46
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corgski posted:I appreciate this old house window chat. Our house was entirely redone with the cheapest, shittiest white vinyl windows at some point in the past and I’m looking forward to the day I get to rip every last one of them out and put proper dark wood back in.  you and me both. Even though we still have about half of the original windows (all of which are in good condition except for the aforementioned rotten one), we are missing every last piece of stained glass. We learned from neighbors that they were extracted and sold off around ‘99 when the old guy who’d lived here for 50 years got moved into a nursing home. Back then, the neighborhood was in a rough state and the house was pretty much worthless, so it was worthwhile for the heirs liquidating the estate to sell off the stained glass separately. Makes me bitter because now I have to spend five figures on new stained glass. Still, said neighbors were friends with the old guy and were really happy that the house eventually found its way into the hands of us Victorian-loving owner-occupiers and not a shitbag property investor.   This should be magnificent stained glass...  But then again since we will (eventually) be commissioning new stained glass (because gently caress trying to salvage a huge landing piece of those exact dimensions plus five matching transoms), we can do something super nerdy like depicting a scene from the Silmarillion or sneaking in a Triforce. quote:Also compared to most storm window systems the ones for these vinyl windows are just irredeemably terrible. They couldn’t even be bothered to miter the screen frames and fit them together properly and just used brittle plastic clips to hold the screens together. Wow that sucks. We have pretty low quality poo poo but at least the screens are mitered, dear lord.
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Apr 9, 2021 01:45
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Motronic posted:While I know it should be stained and and that would be glorious, I love that the etching matches the staircase details. Oh yeah I suppose those motifs do go together. I mean, it’s not at all bad as a window design, except... it’s not actual etching, just a decal. nm posted:Basically everything everyone did to houses before like 2010 is just loving criminal. I think my dad got his windows made by a local carpenter who might have not even specialized in windows. With the right tools (which are all standard), anyone with a carpentry background could make an old fashioned wood window, I think. But yeah, there was definitely a huge shift in attitude about maintaining vs replacing. The rise of planned obsolescence probably had something to do with it. Design the thing to fail irreparably after a time and then sell more things! Toebone posted:My house has amazing 1830s wooden windows everywhere except the living room, where some poor misguided soul replaced them with terrible, cheap aluminum ones. I can't even open them without something popping out of the frame half the time so they mostly stay behind curtains. Those window sound cool. Were you able to fix them/find a better solution than the dowels? His Divine Shadow posted:What? Two pane windows last as long as single pane windows, maintaining the seals in a traditional wooden two pane window is part of regular upkeep and can be done with stuff you get from a hardware store for a few euros, it's proven and efficient technolgy from the 1800s, these old windows are efficient to the point that studies showed you wouldn't recoup the costs by moving to modern three pane windows (the norm here). So, I think we are talking about completely different things here. When I say “double-paned”, this is what I mean:  The two glass panes are mounted close together within the sash. The seal I’m talking about is made at the factory and is hermetic and maintenance free (aka unserviceable). It’s not pretty when it fails:  Ten years after installation, this crappy window, which replaced its much longer lived wooden predecessor, has failed and needs to be replaced. The broken seal cannot be fixed, and the area between the panes cannot be accessed without destroying the window. This place doesn’t even need the double panes because it is a summer house and is boarded up in the winter. It was installed by the other side of the family, who are into short term cheap fixes. What you seem to be talking about is not what I regard as double paned windows, but single paned windows fitted with what we know as storm panes or storm windows, which are removable and maintainable second panes that you mount on the interior or exterior of your existing windows. I did mention them: quote:...if you do stuff like insulate the attic and install storm panes and good window treatments, you can easily make up for the energy savings you lose by not having that second pane. Storm panes seem to have fallen out of favor in the States and been supplanted by the concept of mass window replacement with expensive “maintenance free” energy efficient windows typically made out of petrochemicals that outright fail after 20-30 years and need replacing yet again. Why would window companies want to sell you storm panes that you can maintain and mount yourself and use to save just as much energy for way less money and increase the longevity of your wood windows that you can have made (or god forbid, repaired) at a local millwork shop and not in the window company’s specialized factory? Doing smart European things like retrofitting and maintaining old windows and being sustainable and poo poo is antithetical to the twisted system that is American capitalism. Luckily you can still get storm panes made, but it is not the mainstream solution by any means, even though they used to be much more common.
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Apr 9, 2021 16:36
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nm posted:The guy above me has a better post explaining what we mean.  His Divine Shadow posted:I love storm windows, now that I know what they're called. I'm a big proponent for their use. Sometimes I wish I lived in an old late 1800s farmhouse with these types windows and a woodstove in the kitchen. Yes, they are a very good solution and I wish they were presented as a solution more often, rather than the ubiquitous “replace all your windows for ~*energy efficiency savings*~ and please ignore the astronomical cost which means they’ll never actually pay for themselves in energy cost savings before they fail and need to be replaced again.” When reading your post I was like, “Wait, there are maintainable double paned wood windows from the 1800s?? Why the gently caress don’t I know about these??” then “Ohhhh those are storm panes!” One confusing thing is that the interior panes are still often called storm windows even though the interior pane is inside insulating and leaving the window itself exposed to storms so it’s a bit of a misnomer. Window inserts make more sense for referring to the interior second panes. A good US-based resource for understanding the deal with old houses and their windows is Old House Guy, who bitches about replacement windows in old houses far more than I do. He has a whole section of window blog posts and articles: https://www.oldhouseguy.com/windows/ Not the best writing, but he makes some very astute observations about why replacement windows often look so bad and presents alternatives to replacement for old house owners. BadSamaritan posted:Our house’s Previous Owners ( That’s kinda bullshit your neighbor won’t sell/give them back when they’re not doing anything with them. I actually have a silly noble fantasy of salvaging all the neato old house parts from neighboring houses if/when flippers get a hold of them and At the very least, I can more realistically snap before photos and offer my house as a reference (it has a twin next door and also a lot of doppelgängers nearby, and otherwise the houses around here are pretty cookie cutter - all the builders at the time seemed to have worked from the same small pool of stock plans). Would your neighbor at least let you look at/borrow them to take photos and measurements so you can replicate them? My house’s twin still has one of its stained glass transoms, and now that it’s not occupied I really need to go over and take some closeup pics of it and measurements. quote:We’ve had to replace the failed balances in most of the crummy new windows and have the joy of missing out on some nice original detailing. Cool cool. I’m so sick of paying to remedy ‘low/no maintenance’ Boomer home improvements. Next up: the slapdash vinyl siding job. That sucks. When we moved in, none of the old windows with cord & counterweight balances worked because the cords had all been either painted in place or cut because our PO was a clueless idiot about this house. Luckily it was pretty easy to fix. But then again it was old poo poo that the PO had destructively tampered with out of ignorance, not new poo poo that broke all by itself. I actually just read an article on different types of balances with pros and cons that I dredged up on Google and it was on a window installer website and they listed cord & counterweight as having only one pro - nostalgia - with a bunch of cons, which included cords tending to fray (untrue if you use the correct type/quality of cord or a chain), and requiring specialized repair (also untrue - took us like two diagrams and a half hour of YouTube to become Specialized Antique Window Repairpeople ourselves because old windows are supposed to be easily repairable). Kinda pissed me off. But now I know about other types of balances, though I need to find more balanced sources on balances in the future.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:14
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) did crappy vinyl replacement windows throughout the house and in the process jettisoned the two decorative front windows with stained glass detailing. Our neighbor has them and wants to keep them (to keep in their basement or whatever, thx).
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The worst we ran into in that regard was stops that were affixed with nails instead of screws and also painted on, which meant some prying and unsightly damage to the paint. One access panel was missing, but that was because it had disintegrated along with the bottom quarter of the jamb.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:46
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mcgreenvegtables posted:Old window chat...the windows in my 1860s house are all original wood double-hung diamond pane beauties, but worked terribly due to idiots painting all over them. I had someone come and restore them (took the sashes back to the shop, stripped all the paint off the jams, install new ropes, add weatherstripping, etc. Now they are the best windows ever. Zero rot on any of them, old-growth wood is great stuff. Unfortunately, new wood windows are not going to be the same, and require a lot more aggressive maintenance to prevent rot. My local shop makes their windows out of Spanish cedar, which is the next best analog to old growth white pine, which is what most old American windows were made from. I was watching Rehab Addict (excellent show for old house lovers), and in one episode, Nicole pulls out this charred-rear end stained glass window that she’s going to install in her current project house and she’s like “oh yeah I got this from a house that burned down but the windows didn’t burn because they’re made from old growth lumber ”. With some minor repair work and repainting it was good as new. Also, she always sets aside budget to re-lead old stained glass in her project houses and in general is extremely pro-original window. quote:Next step is trying to get some custom-made arched storm windows so you can tell these are curved from the outside and I don't have to stare at the back of a trim board from the inside. Those windows loving own and good job getting them fixed up. I recently saw a diamond paned oriel on my block get replaced by a pair of vinyl trash windows and it was very sad. True divided light diamond paned can be a bitch to build and extremely expensive so it’s awesome you still have them. Have you tried hitting up local millwork shops for the properly fitted storm panes? At the very least they’d probably be able to refer you to the correct tradespeople for getting them made.
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Apr 11, 2021 02:51
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mcgreenvegtables posted:Welp, I have a bunch of stupid casement windows in the kitchen I am hoping to replace soonish with new matching diamond-paned windows. Not looking forward to learning how much that is going to cost. Oh I’m sure they have plenty of leads - the millwork shop I’ve been talking to does a lot of historical work so that sort of stuff is in their wheelhouse, and if a city has historical districts, I’d bet there are shops around capable of servicing it. As for diamond panes, we have a couple mini-Palladian configurations with an arched window and two rectangular side lights - one has diamond pane side lights but the other does not, be we found evidence that it used to and asked about restoring it. Window guy mentioned that TDL diamond pane is just inherently expensive due to its intricacy. I am very much not in a historic district but I like to pretend that I am, even if it’s just our own house... We considered looking at an 1870s rowhouse in a historic district but it was just a bit too expensive and a bit too far from the radius of neighborhoods we wanted to be in. Really loving cool though.
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Apr 11, 2021 03:59
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Anne Whateley posted:I'm curious about black for the roof. Obviously it's better for winter and for melting snow, but if the house is so tight and efficient with heat even before the roof was put on, isn't it a concern for being too hot the rest of the year? Especially if classic New England winters are going to be less and less common? I've spent lots of summer time in Maine (so I can't speak for Vermont specifically, just south central inland Maine which is at the same latitude as northern Vermont) and it generally does not get that hot in the summer. Old non-winterized summer houses have fireplaces because because summer nights were cold back when they were built a hundred years ago. Still gets cold at night, but only sometimes cold enough for a fire. In recent years there have been more frequent hot periods and the lakes are warmer, but it's still not nearly at the point where AC is necessary or worthwhile, especially with cool/cold nights. We definitely have more box fans than we used to, though.
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Apr 13, 2021 22:14
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Brennanite posted:More likely, it's weeping through the foundation wall. It's a 100 yr old house, so that worries me a lot less than the missing portion of a potentially load-bearing wall just because it seems like that could compromise the entire structure. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that. Yeah, I think the white is just weeping/efflorescence - it happens in porous old house basements and generally isn't anything to worry about. As for the middle basement wall in the first pic with the ducting going through it, if I'm piecing the pics together correctly, it is parallel to the joists so there's a good chance it's not supposed to be load-bearing. Going off my own basement, we have a center wall that IS load-bearing, but ours is perpendicular to the joists. I'm not a structural engineer or construction expert by any means though so hopefully you get some more input before you have to make a decision.
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Apr 15, 2021 07:20
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Build a backyard water tower/elevated tank! You'll have consistent, gravity-fed pressure without having to rely on a fancy pump with a lot of moving parts (aka points of failure) and if the power goes out you still have water pressure and a supply of water. I'm not being completely facetious. I saw a well question and was like, oh maybe I can answer that! but then saw it was about pressure pumps and bladders which I know nothing about because for their house in the country, my parents solved the pressure problem with a de facto water tower - well is on the other side of a hill from the house, so water gets pumped from the well into a tank on top of the hill and then gravity fed to the house. Works great when there is actually water coming out of the well.
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Apr 23, 2021 16:16
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I live in Hurricania and I have noticed that my old-school tank gas water keeps working when the power is out (I just looked and it has no wires?) whereas my parents' tankless gas one doesn't work if there is no power. Even when it's hot as balls and there's no AC, a hot shower is nice. If you're in an area that loses power often it's something to consider. Their new tankless one is entirely external and they did gain a good bit of storage space in the broom closet when they got rid of their big old tank. That's one nice thing about basic old poo poo with pilot lights - it doesn't know or care if the power's out. Our house came with a lovely old gas range and it's fully operational without power, oven and all, no lighting with a match required. The thing that put the final nail in the coffin on tankless water heaters for us was when the power went out while my husband was in the shower. We were leaning towards another conventional one anyway.
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Apr 24, 2021 22:00
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A voltage tester was one of the very first things we bought upon taking possession of our house. We have one of these, a Betamax-esque losing format of American electrical outlets, in our foyer:  ...and we learned that it's live and functioning correctly. We just don't have anything to plug into it and also haven't had a pressing need to update it.
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Apr 26, 2021 05:50
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Honeywell T87. More serious answer: I think want you want is a plain old programmable thermostat, rather than a "smart" thermostat. My parents have had the same one (a Honeywell one, I think) since the mid-90's and it still works and suits their needs. I would imagine that computing power and interfaces have improved since then. Hard part would be avoiding the internet-connected garbage.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:03
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FISHMANPET posted:You know poo poo is serious when a product has its own Wikipedia article. Indeed. Products like the T87 are what we study in design school, along with the designers behind them (Henry Dreyfuss in the case of the T87). It's a super well-known and influential design (and ubiquitous - last three houses I've lived in all had/have T87s). The Nest is round and handles the way it does because they wholesale copied the T87. Now Honeywell needs to copy their own poo poo and make a smart/programmable thermostat that isn't ugly-rear end trash (aka make a T87 with a screen). Until that happens I'm highly tempted to create remote control programmable thermostat functionality for myself with an Arduino contraption that physically manipulates my T87.
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Apr 28, 2021 07:21
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Holy poo poo you guys I was doing some digging on that cool Honeywell prototype discussed earlier in the thread that I was alluding to more recently but didn't want to post/directly mention as to not trigger people and I learned that it is not in fact a rejected concept for the ugly Lyric Round but an entirely new and different product that has yet to be released called the M5 Classic. It won some innovation/best in show award at CES 2020 so folks were really into it, which gives me hope. Only concern is that it was last really talked about directly following CES, which is over a year ago now and I haven't been able to dig up release date or pricing info on it. It had better be real and not some cocktease "concept car" type thing. It's straight out of 1953 and doesn't have a screen, so you just interact with it like an old school round thermostat and do the programming and smart poo poo on a separate app/smart home system interface (which I'd be fine with because thermostat interfaces tend to suck quite a lot). Just look at it: (trigger warning: beautiful thing that only maybe exists and is definitely unavailable at this time)  One thing it would need to have to convince me to take advantage of any smart features (beyond just programming a schedule for it) is if it has a checkbox to let it know that your heating system is cast iron radiators. (fake edit: apparently Nest has a radiator setting but according to reviewer testing it's useless and can't maintain consistent temp nearly as well as a dumb 70-year-old thermostat with a mechanical anticipator). I'm never going back to forced air if I can help it - too spoiled to the blessedly constant temp and not having to deal with dry air blowing on me for warmth.
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Apr 28, 2021 17:25
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falz posted:We have something like this but it's some remote kill switch over some RF frequency (or something) on a box outside ones house for A/C only. When we were in our apartment, I declined installation of a Nest (and therefore replacement of my beloved T87  ) because the landlord wanted our WiFi password in order to access the Nest (among other reasons, including Nest sucking at managing cast iron radiators). Basically, all they wanted was to remotely monitor the temp in all their units and avoid burst pipes caused by idiot college tenants turning off the heat before leaving for winter break. Could have been accomplished less intrusively with some wired connection temp sensors that sent info/alerts, but setting something like that up would have been way less straightforward than installing consumer smart poo poo and asking for everyone's WiFi passwords.Also yeah, would not want to give any sort of household system access to the power company. If they had some sort of energy savings participation program, I would accept a dumb sensor widget that would plug into my router and send back data and not interact with the rest of my network, but would never grant access to the thermostat itself.
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Apr 28, 2021 19:28
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When I got to college (in 2005, so before smartphones and rampant IoTization), the washers and dryers in the dorms took a scan of your student ID/card key instead of coins, and would send you an email when your load was done and I think noted which machine it was in. It was simple and nice. I like the idea of smart machines that have a dumb interface with simple inputs for everyday operation but then have a port or something for plugging in a tablet or keyboard to access the advanced smart interface and look at/export log data and do configurations and anything that involves input more sophisticated than pushing a button or turning a knob. But that's a pipe dream because the version of smart machines that came to be is in my opinion the worst possible outcome - godawful bloated machine interfaces with too many bells and whistles and lovely companion apps and internet/cloud operations that you don't fully control and might not even be aware of.
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Apr 28, 2021 20:25
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My dryer doesn't need to send an email or text because it sounds a loud angry buzzer when it's done, and if you set it to wrinkle control it will buzz periodically until you come fetch your clothes. (If you're in the market for a washer and dryer and hate IoT, get the Maytag Commercial Technology models - the huge boxy ones with black panels that look like they're from the 80's - beastly well-made commercial machines in a residential package with super simple controls, no WiFi, no apps, no screens, no error messages... or a Speed Queen)
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Apr 28, 2021 22:26
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DaveSauce posted:Sanity check on fascia replacement: We recently got a section of rotten soffit (maybe 12-15'?) replaced and a downspout replaced at the same time for $500. Material for the soffit wasn't anything fancy - looked like just a pre-painted 1x6. In these times I'm honestly not sure whether our guy was just cheap and we lucked out on not being gouged or you are being gouged/quoted in line with the times. Though if we need our guy to come back to fix our box gutters, he warned us that'll be expensive because of the cost/scarcity of materials (mostly the tin or copper for the lining).
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Apr 30, 2021 15:36
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