Shedding Light on Window Restoration

It started raining buckets right after I got into the hardware store this afternoon, so when I got into the checkout line I was looking for reasons to delay going back outside. I am most assuredly not an impulse buyer but when I saw these I just couldn’t resist.


They are a battery powered LED light that clips to the underside of your ballcap! What a great idea. I threw it in with the brass screws I got and the two sash lifts. I was purchasing these because I was finally getting some hardware on the upstairs windows.


The upstairs windows were pretty unbelievable when I started in on them. For 79 years they have been up in place, and because upstairs was all attic originally, the interior side of the windows had never been finished. 79 years of attic gunk building up on raw wood. Of course since it was attic there were only screens on the windows, never storms, and there were bad water stains. When we finished the upstairs, I trimmed the windows but not until the last month had a I started in on the double hungs themselves.

Here is a shot of a window before I started


I am missing pics of a few steps but here is what I did:

STEP ONE

I took the windows out and sanded both sides, I used 100 grit, then 150, then 220 on the interior. For the extrerior I used 80 to take off loose paint. I also knocked off all loose glazing. I vacuumed and tack clothed off all the sawdust. I put boiled linseed oil on all exposed wood on the exterior side.


STEP TWO
I glazed the exteriors. After finishing a window I would flip it over and use a 2 part wood bleach to lighten the water stains. I’d let that sit overnight and then sand and wash with vinegar.

After letting that sit overnight I would hit the interior side with boiled linseed oil.


STEP THREE
After waiting a few more days to let the glazing skin a little I put sealer on the interior to get an even stain then I stained the interiors. After letting that sit over night I put on two coats of polyurethane varnish. Once that was finshed I primed the exteriors and then put on two coats of industrial enamel.

STEP FOUR
I installed the windows and then eventually got around to putting the sash locks back on, but none of the windows had sash lifts I manged to have 5 salvaged ones so I had to pick up a few more hence the trip to the hardware store. The hardest part was trying to see where my pencil marks for the sash lift screws were so I could drill pilot holes


But luckily since I had my attach to the ballcap LED light, I was able to find them


Here is how a window looked with lift in place:


And since you'd much rather see what's outside the window there's a shot of that too:

I My Landfill

I put down 2.3 truck loads of mulch today. The best part (besides how it looks) is that it was all free. Our local landfill grinds up all the tree limbs that people bring to them along with any that are left for curbside pickup and all trees that are damaged and must be removed by the city. The wood chip mulch is then free to anyone who wants it. For years at our old place I'd drive to a pick up point the city maintained on the southeast side, fill up my two garbage cans with mulch, and would be set for the year. Moving to Foxcroft meant a BIG upgrade in how much mulch I'd need.

Fortunately we are only about 2 miles from the landfill itself, and if you drive to the landfill proper and ask for mulch you can drive your truck out and they will LOAD it via an endloader while you sit in your truck and then you can drive away.

Today being my day off, I borrowed Pete's truck and came home with the first load:


I started wheelbarrowing it around and went back about 10:30 for a second loard. I got a third load at 12:30 and finished about 1:30. I used two full loads and about a third of the last load. Since Pete loaned his truck, he wanted about 2/3 of a load for his place so that's what I left him. I got most of the front hill and the part between the front and the turn around in the driveway covered.






I estimate I'll need about three more loads to do all the beds in back too.

The city now will take upainted nail free non-treated lumber to grind as well. Last year there were so many trees damaged by the April tornado the city DOUBLE GROUND all their wood to entice more people to come get it. The mountains of chips last year were staggering.

Welcome "Friends"!

I noticed a big jump in "hits" today and since the Friends of Historic Preservation's email note about the Parade of Historic Homes went out last night, I'm not surprised.

Welcome to the Foxcroft Blog. Here is where I write about restoring our place. Feel free to poke around. Major construction on our second floor project started in June 2005. A few favorite posts you may want to see are:

• A Little Off the Top, Please
• Old Guy Vs. the Radiator
• 5 Deadmen in the Basement
• A Lifetime Supply of Cardboard

If you want to see some pictures of the original interiors of the house, look to the links below on the left.

And not to hog the spotlight, here are photos of the other two homes on the tour:

Geoff's house which now sports it's uncovered original siding

Paul's house, as it looks after 5 of 7 additions over the years have been removed.

We all hope to see you on May 20th!

It's a House Tour and You're Invited!

Be sure to mark May 20th on your calendar, Friends of Historic Preservation will hold its "Parade of Historic Homes" that day. Three homes will be open, all of which have had major additions or restorations that featured the use of salvaged building materials and house parts. Yes, Foxcroft will be one of the three. Here's a scaled down version of the poster:


The poster pic is one from the original construction at Foxcroft, the shot shows the back porch, and shingling on the walls in progress.

I will post more about the tour in the coming weeks, with features on the other homes. If anyone is interested in more information about the tour, the FHP link above should be updated in the next two days or so, or contact me directly.

Revisiting Tragedy

At lunch yesterday I sat with my co-workers and watched the news about the VT shootings. It hit way too close for me.

Nov. 1, 1991 was a Friday, it was cold and even had started to snow. Lisa and I had been married for 3 months, and were planning to go out after work and meet some friends at a local pub. Shortly before 4:00 I parked at home and walked downtown. Two blocks from our old house was Van Allen Hall, home of the astrophysics department, on the UI campus. When I went past it there were firetrucks, an ambulance, and police cars all around and yellow caution tape in front of the building. I thought perhaps there had been a fire, but kept on going. When Lisa got to the bar, half an hour later, she asked if we had heard anything about a shooting on campus. We got the bartender to turn on the TV and heard that there had been a shooting at Van Allen Hall, and also at Jessup Hall, the UI administration building.

The initial news reports were very sketchy, I distinctly remember one saying that 5 people had been taken to Mercy Hospital (which was half a block from our home) I turned to our friend, who was a neurology resident at UI Hospital at the time, and said that must be a good sign, since the Mercy ER is much smaller than UI's, people must not be that badly hurt. Mark's response was that this was a bad sign, if people were being taken to Mercy they were likely going to the morgue. It turned out he was right.

Gang Lu, a UI astrophysics graduate student killed Dwight Nicholson, Bob Smith, and Cristoph Goertz three very distinguished physics professors, and fellow grad student Linhua Shan. He then went to Jessup and killed UI vice president T. Anne Cleary, and wounded a work study temporary secretary, Miya Sioson, leaving her a quadraplegic, before killing himself.

It was a horrible event and one that made a small city feel smaller. Gang Lu lived across the street from us in an apartment building, but we never met him. Goertz was a neighbor of my parents. I had taken an ed measurement class from Anne Cleary in the summer of 1986. The days that followed were painful. In a class discussion one of my 5th graders, mentioned that her parents, both graduate students, were very worried how people would react, they were Korean and even though the perpetrator was Chinese, they were afraid of facing discrimination and suspicion. Another student delivered papers to Gang Lu's apartment.

Many details came out later about Lu's anger at perceived slights, the inability of PhD students in sciences to get work in a changing China, his fascination with "Dirty Harry" movies. However I think the most moving and powerful summary of what happened was written by Jo Ann Beard. Her acclaimed personal essay based in part on the killings, called "The Fourth State of Matter," was originally published in The New Yorker. It also appeared in the 1997 edition of Best American Essays, and was later published in her collection of personal essays, "The Boys of My Youth." Beard worked as an editor for a physics journal at the university and was a colleague of the victims, working closely with several of them.

"The Fourth State of Matter.

My thoughts go out to all of the those people in Blacksburg.

Remembrances: Tornado/Vonnegut

It was more than a little ironic that the one year anniversary of the Iowa City tornado fell on Friday the 13th. Here's a link to my photos from last year: Tornado Tales.

I participated in the community remembrance yesterday in my role as president of Friends of Historic Preservation. I thanked the community members that have worked to restore over 60 properties that were damaged in three local historic districts and a conservation area. FHP lobbied get over $250K in funds made available so that homeowners could make the repairs required by their homes being listed in a local historic district. Many insurance policies did not cover the more stringent repairs as set forth in the Secrectary of the Interior's guidelines. I'm sure it's just conincidence that heavily Democratic Johnson County, with a governor who was running as a candidate for President, DID NOT receive Federal disaster designation! Here is a link to coverage of the event. I am quoted in the article, and in the print version of the paper I managed to be in the background of a shot of the mayor receiving a tornado statue.

Also in the print version of the paper today is a picture of an impromptu memorial set up at the "Vonnegut House" commemorating the author's death. Iowa Citians consider Vonnegut one of their own. He taught at the UI Writer's Workshop from 1966-68 and finished Slaughterhouse 5 while he lived here. He also allegedly started an annual "May Day" celebration at the house he lived in, that continued a full 20 years after he moved out. I know, as I attended more than a few. Here is a link to the house, it's for rent right now: Vonnegut House The rent is a little steep for the local market!

More Than a Chair!

So, I was walking around at the consignment store on Tuesday, and saw a funky looking chair. I went to inspect it and knew immediately that we had to have this in our bedroom closet. The chair we had up there was fine, a nice vintage wooden folding chair that Lisa and I sit in to put on our shoes. But what I found was more than a chair...

Here it is in the closet



Here it is when you move it into the center of the closet:


When you pull the back of the chair down, it becomes an ironing board! This is something we have really needed since moving laundary upstairs:


And if you keep pulling it over it becomes a step stool, which we also need to reach the top shelf of the closet!


Definitely more than a chair!

Deja Vu All Over Again

As major work on the house slows down I get to indulge in little things. After buying all my vintage wire I've been looking at all my electrical projects with renewed interest. The first was a bridge light base that a colleague gave my 5 years ago. It was such an early light that there isn't a hollow pipe for the wires to run inside. After purchasing, via online resources, a lamp bell socket and a wing nut swivel I could put it all together. Throw in a $4 shade from a local antique store and we've got one happening light:


Here is a close up:


Having this light next to the chair makes it a great reading spot now, so yesterday I happened to see a very cool magazine stand at a consignment place for $37, but it was 40% off so paid only $22.00. I already have my suduko book in it:


Last night while look at old photos for a picture for elder daughter's art teacher I found this shot:


So I have now unwittingly nearly recreated the original interior. Here is a picture from nearly the same spot:


The next post should detail my other big consignment store purchase...

April is the Cruelest COLDEST Month

I took some pictures last weekend of some of our early flowers. They were up and blooming after our warm weather last month. It even hit 78 degrees on March 13th. Today when I got up at 6:00 am the temperature was 16. So I’m glad we enjoyed the early flowers because the tulips, whose flower stalks were just beginning to appear above the foliage, irises, and daylilly foliage are all frozen and laying on the ground. Lisa had planted a lot of bulbs last fall and is very disappointed. Oh well, our ferns and hostas will still come up later.

Here is our Siberian Squill.


This early ground cover pretty well blankets the lawn between us and the neighbors to the south.


It also grows in nearly every other bed in the yard. It seems to have really spread this year, probably due to our clearing out the overgrowth the past three years.



This plant might be wild ginger?


We have quite a bit of this is the “far yard.” It is a shade plant, and I hope it stays even though it will now get a little more sun since we cut back the 20 foot tall lilacs.


This last picture is the only picture I have of the "tree trimming" from two weeks ago. If you look above the birthbath/fairy garden, you will see what looks like a large post leaning on the fence/ It is the trunk of a hackberry tree that we cut down.


Once it gets above freezing I'll be able to get my peas in.

My White Elephant Light

I re-wired my "white elephant" light yesterday. Since nearly everything but the border paper for the dining room is finished, and it's on order, I decided it was time to re-wire the light. I had installed it last fall but hadn't written anything about it since I knew it needed work. Here is how it looked after I had taken down the four individual globes and remembered I should be documenting:


Why is this a "white elephant" light? Because that is where it came from of course!

In family legend my paternal grandfather (farmer turned electrician) came home one day in the early 1960's and told grandma that he had bought a rather large old house in the very small Iowa town that they had retired to. Done deal, no discussion. Her immediate comment was "Why would anyone want that white elephant?" and the name stuck. The house sat in the middle of two town lots, grandpa moved it onto one lot and sold the empty lot for what he had paid for the house. The house may have been built as an upstairs/downstairs two-flat but I doubt it. Regardless it had been two apartments for many years before grandpa bought it. He inheirited "Bernadine" the upstairs tenant (I vaguely remember her, very old and scary) she stayed for years. He always held the downstairs apartment open, when he had a vacancy, to make sure that any new teachers coming into town had a place to live. My light came from that house.

My dad put it in my bedroom when I got my own room at age 12. Since we lived in a 1960's two story at the time our ceilings were only 8 feet high. Grandpa told dad he had to re-wire the light before he could hang it and gave him some clear light cord to do it with. Dad shortened the chains and hung it. When my parents moved into the home they ran as a bed and breakfast in the late '80's my light became their dining room light. When they moved out of that house, the same month we started cleaning up here, March of '05, I got my light given back to me packed in a box.

I wanted to lengthen the chains back a bit and after hanging the light in the dining room I realized that the wires ran a little too close to the bulbs up in the central pan for my comfort. We had used this light for 4 months without lights up in the pan.

I started by taking everything down and pulling out the old wires. I had ordered, from Sundial Wire, 100 feet of braided gold lamp cord:


I decided to cut long lengths and make sure I had plenty of room to run my wires around the edge of the pan rather than across the middle so they wouldn't come near the bulbs in the center


I couldn't figure out how to get the individual sockets apart. I was afraid to pry them apart with a screw driver, like you do with today's sockets. They are heavy, about triple the weight of new ones. The sockets are all stamped "Bress" and have a patent date of 1899 on them. The globe fitters are stamped "Hubbard." I resorted to calling my Dad to come over and he pried one apart with a screw driver after frankly admitting he couldn't remember how he got them apart before.


I forgot to shoot pics, as i was so engrossed in getting all my wires connected back correctly. I'm very glad the plastic insulation inside the rayon cloth is color coded. Eventually I got it back up. I put compact flourscents in the main pan to reduce heat up there, and 15 watt bulbs in the individual globes, and the globes are frosted and cut glass and are quite beautiful.


I doubled the drop on the chains (of course Dad had saved them all these years and they were included in the box when I got it) The total drop on the fixture now is two feet.


The drop on our original light in the living room is three feet, which is a little low. What I find interesting is that the dining room light is in the middle of the room, but you don't want to put the table directly under it, as it would block the natural aisle from the kitchen to the living room. The dining room, inexplicably, lost it's original fixture, and it wasn't upstairs in the attic, I wonder what ever happened to it.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

The Iowa Hawkeye's baseball team had their home opener yesterday, a double header to open a 4 game stand with North Dakota State. In the past two years since moving here we have listened to, or more correctly heard, Iowa baseball games because Duane Banks Field is directly across the railroad tracks from our house and the announcer is darned loud.

When we started working over here in spring of '05 I told Lisa that the baseball diamond was the one thing that would remind us of our old place. With night games our neighborhood is illuminated by the field's mercury lights. We used to live directly across from the Mercy Hospital Parking ramp which was lit 24/7.

Anway, the Hawks were at home yesterday so I asked the girls if they wanted to go. We tuned in the first game of the DH on the radio while coming home from school. You know you may be starting your home season a little too early when the giveaway admission prize is a free Hawkeye stocking cap to the first 500 fans. When we got home the game was tied 5-5 in the 8th. We walked over to the diamond. I figured if the first game ended right when we got there, no problem, we'll eat and watch part of the second game. Kids are free and adults are $3.00. You can't beat that.

The game had started at 3:00 and we got there at 5:45, there were maybe 200 people in the stands at that time, but lots of kids out playing wiffle ball too, and the stocking caps were all gone, so there must have been more at the start. It was still tied 5-5 in the bottom of the 9th when we arrived and went to extra innings.

Nothing happened in the 10th. ND State didn't do anything in the top of the 11th. In the bottom of the 11th Iowa had the top of their order up and got their lead off hitter on. They managed to get him over to 3rd with two outs, and as I'm trying to explain all of this to older daughter, I'll be damned if he didn't steal home to win the game. I told the girls I'd never seen that happen in person, and for it to happen in extra innings was even better. We stayed for the first 4 innings of the night cap, and Iowa was leading 2-0 when we walked home at 8:10. We had a great time and will definitely come back. I saw on the 10:00 news the Hawks won the second game 8-0.

Here is a shot from the front yard of the field lights. I took this when we got home:

2 Years On Foxcroft: A Pictoral Celebration

Today is the second anniversary of the first post on Foxcroft. Here is a link to that humble beginning:

In the Beginning...

In the two years since, of course the biggest change has been completing the upstairs. Here's Bess' the builder's description of the attic:

"Increase the pitch of the roof making the attic higher. Have it high enough so two or three rooms could be finished off later if desired. I want window at the east (front) as shown in the picture, then would like one on the north and one on the south. The roof pictured is not high enough for these last two but when you increase the pitch, I think they can be put in. Saw a house this style not long ago that had them. Want them all so they will open, with weights like those down stairs."

Here is what the attic looked like in 1928:


Here is a shot of roughly the same place when we purchased the home in 1993:


Same spot when working on framing, summer of '05, when it was known as the "Lumber Room"


Same spot with framing of the other two bedrooms complete:


Same spot, Master bedroom today:


The biggest part of upstairs was opening making a new gable in the back of the house:

Before we started '05:


After we opened it up:


In progress:




Shingling Summer '06


Today:


New gable from the inside:

Summer '05


After cutting the roof off:


Framing in place:


The three above pictures were all taken on the same day

We went quite a while before the window got put in:


But it finally happened:


I'm afraid I don't have anything more current than this:


Laundry room:







I think that's enough for now...