My Ebay Doors

I have been looking for doors for the upstairs for 6 months. I searched our local Salvage Barn, and scoured every internet salvage site I could find. I have watched all the Chicago demolition sales web pages, but had no luck at all. On a whim I looked on Ebay and found an auction for 8 oak doors, in jambs with complete hardware. The doors sizes were exactly what I needed and the auction was ending in 45 minutes. I bid and won and had my upstairs doors. They were located in the Twin Cities, a bit over 5 hours drive from home.

I talked to Chris the seller several times electronically, and decided to get them on September 9th. I rented a trailer and hooked it up to Pete's truck (see previous post) and went north. When arriving I found that Chris was very pleasant and the doors were beautiful. She and I put them on their sides into the trailer. She told me the doors had come from her husband's parents' house, and that they were extensively remodeling it for her, as it had never been updated since they built it in the 1920's. Chris also asked if I was interested in buying either the kitchen cupboards or the front door. I really don't have anywhere for the cupboards but I did buy the front door.

We stacked the doors on their sides in the van and put the front door on top


When I got home I called Pete to come help unload and we took them out


We put four in Rowan's room and four in Laurel's for now.



We tried to put one into an opening and it fit nearly perfectly.
The doors are different than first floor, but that's OK, I need to find one more to get the entire upstairs ready. The hardware is nice too.


I can't use the front door anywhere here at Foxcroft, so I'll likely donate it to our local Friends of Historic Preservation Salvage Barn

Ever Lose a Ball Hitch at 60 MPH?

Now I can say I have. I was driving Pete's pickup truck with a U-Haul trailer attached to go get 8 oak doors that were in the Twin Cities. Since Friday is my day off, that's when I would get them. I thought I'd be smart and drive halfway on Thursday night, and stay in Mason City, IA. I was 30 minutes from stopping for the night when I felt a clunk, following by loud banging. I was certain I'd blown a tire until I looked in the rear view mirror to see the trailer bouncing up and down and swininging from side to side. (I was going downhill at the time. I managed to get the truck slowed down and pull over to the side of the road. I discovered that the lock washer and nut had dropped off the bottom of the trailer hitch, and the ball had slid forward allowing the tongue of the trailer to slip off. Basically I was towing the trailer by the emergency chains.


Another motorist had pulled off with me and said he had seen the trailer start to bounce. I called 911 to get someone out, and to call a wrecker to see if they had any ball hitches. The other motorist realized I was fine and took off. Ten minutes later, Ernie from the
Nashua, IA, police department showed up. I was about a mile beyond his small town, and he got the call from Chickasaw County dispatch. I explained what happened and he looked. His comment was that his experiences with ball hitches was that you can never take them off because they are usually rusted together. We waited for the wrecker driver to come. Ernie was great company, we talked about his kids, schools, and what happens in a town that only has one officer on duty at a time. We wondered how many vehicles were passing us that had ball hitches that we could have borrowed. The tow man came in his van 90 minutes later with 5 different ball hitches, he apologized profusely for not coming sooner, but two tire salesmen from Minneapolis had come down and he didn’t want to be rude to them. 5 minutes and 40 bucks total later I was back in business, and on my way.

I was very lucky in that A) the hitch came loose in a relatively lightly travelled stretch of highway 218 and B) the trailer was empty, I don't think I could have wrestled down a full one.

More on going to get the doors in my next post.

A "Rosy Outlook"

We are now painting upstairs rooms, Our older daughter chose "Solaria" as the VERY bright yellow that her room is now painted. Our younger chose "Rosy Outlook." When opening the can I told Lisa it was really "Strawberry Ice Cream." However the best description of the color goes to our neighbor, Mike, who took one look and said "Princess Pink."

It's great fun to take the digital camera upstairs at 10:00 PM and shoot pics in total darkness. Here are some upstairs photos, and for comparison purposes, what that section of the second floor looked like the first time we went upstairs, shortly before we bought the place in 12/03, or in the middle of emptying it in 05/05.

When I get discouraged about our pace slowing down, it helps to go back and realize how much we really have accomplished in a short amount of time, while maintaining our relative sanity and our relationships. I am also able to see so much potential here, and find Foxcroft to be a truly wonderful place to live.

I guess I really do have a "Rosy Outlook."

Tailgating 101

Our first home Iowa Hawkeye football game has come and gone. Living a block from the stadium means that parking cars and tailgaters are a large part our new Saturday morning routine. University Heights (the tiny town we live in surrounded by Iowa City) allows residents to park cars in their yards for home games. This is an old (and for many profitable) tradition. I took a few shots on Friday afternoon while it was quiet and then on Saturday morning to give a feel for what it was like yesterday.







The University of Iowa Hawkeyes are ranked #11 nationally and since there are no major professional sports teams in the state of Iowa, college athletics are huge around here. Iowa's success means that many of their games are broadcast regionally by ESPN, but given the state's small population, and perception by the major sports media that Iowa is not a "marquee" program that would attract a national audience, games are scheduled at less than desireable times in order to accomodate TV. In my childhood all games started at 1:00 PM. Now most games kickoff at 11:00 AM except for those that start at 2:35 PM. Hence the screwy tailgating rituals.



Tailgating (partying with lots of food and drink next to your car) is a major activity for Hawkeye fans. Neighbors behind and beyond our house all park cars for profit. The going rate this year is $20.00 per car per game. Most of our neighbors get people to commit to the whole season and pay in advance. Our other neighbors have a son on the team, so other parents of players are parking there. We were their overflow lot, and did park some friends, and still have room for one paying customer by chance.



The first folks arrived before 6:00 AM. By 6:30 the smell of brats and eggs was everywhere, and the sounds of the marching band warming up by section (kicked off by the drums) on the other side of the railroad ravine were easily heard. At one point I could simultaneously pick out "The Iowa Fight Song," "The Star Spangled Banner," and "In Heaven There Is No Beer." By 8:00 crowds of "bumblees" (black and gold striped outfits) were swarming all along the street. My personal favorites are the folks in black and gold vertically striped overalls, and nice nod to our agricultural stereotype, and god knows we need the slimming effect of the stripes.

At 8:30 the screaming whistle announced the arrival of the "Hawkeye Express" passenger train's first load at the stadium train gate. By 9:00 cars were coming down asking if we had space for sale. By my estimation our end of Golfview parked a total of nearly 75 cars. Also at 9:00 our youngest came tearing outside with her birthday outfit, (yes it was her 4th birthday yesterday too) a Hawkeye cheerleader costume. She and her older sister then peddled rice krispie treats and puppy chow snacks that we made the night before at 50 cents a bag. They sold out in an hour. We hung out in the yard and chatted with the players parents, some of our friends came by, and Pete showed up to work on the cement board for the tile installation. I requested that the folks who parked in our yard run over my dirt pile a few times, since we've had so little rain since drilling the geothermal system, the pile has hardly settled.

The game was great, the Hawks won 56-0. The stadium renovations (see Aug. 23 blog entry) are wonderful. More folks came by after the game and we hung out and watched people leave. At 7:00 PM Rowan and I took a bike ride around the stadium, and while there are bags of garbage piled everywhere, not a can or bottle was in sight, I love our deposit law!

Next home game is Sept. 17th, against Lisa and my alma mater the University of Northern Iowa.

Measuring Progress by the Gallon

I was thinking about volume and measurement last night as I was painting the first topcoat in Rowan's bedroom. So far upstairs we have used:

15 gallons of first coat primer
9 gallons of ceiling paint
1 gallon of yellow wall paint

Lisa and I did the first coat primer together and were pretty fast once I completely tore apart, cleaned and replaced parts on the airless sprayer we were using. I sprayed and Lisa rolled behind me. I also used the sprayer on the ceilings, but would stop and roll since I was working alone at night. To do the walls I'll only roll since I don't want bleed over onto the finished ceilings.

I was thinking about volume and measurement because I was thinking about New Orleans while working. Lisa and I have visited there twice together, plus I have gone other times on business. I love the French Quarter and the Garden District. We have stayed at small B&B's and just love the atmosphere.

Looking at photos in the paper made me think about all the devastation. To have the levees burst after thinking the worst is over is cruel. We saw similar situations with the flood of '93 here in Iowa, but not as much area was wiped out so quickly.

I have relied on the papers for news because we haven't had a working TV since we moved in 6 weeks ago. There is a VCR hooked up for the girls to watch an occasion cartoon. We didn't plan on this happening, but the cable hook up got mixed up and we forgot about it. I can't say I've missed it at all, and neither has anyone else. Lisa did schedule them to come today, but I'm wondering if we wouldn't be better without...

You Think We're Working Fast...

How about our neighbor one block away? They are also renovating, their place is one year younger than ours, and to say that people are excited about it is one gigantic understatement. I am of course talking about the University of Iowa's work on Kinnick Stadium.

The renovations are a 90 million dollar project. Work started the night of the last home game. Currently crews are putting in 18 hour days as they have been nearly all summer. Work will stop for this season then start again in November. The old temporary type bleachers in the south endzone have been replaced by a totally new structure that acts as the entrance (rather than the original East and West sides, when built in 1929 the place had no end zone seating.)Here's how it looks:

 And how the architect says it will look when competed:

The whole endzone section is what is completed now, and it matches the original brick structure beautifully. The really large gray thing looming over the stadium at the left are new luxury box seats and an expanded press box, that will be completed after this season. Also updated this year were the bathrooms, the first plumbing expansion since 1929. Kinnick had not added any more toilets in spite of nearly doubling in size over the years from it's original 40,000 capacity to 70,000. Another update receiving much attention is the visitor's locker room. When Hayden Fry came to coach in the 1970's he wanted to know what color had the greatest effect on making people feel passive. When he learned it was pink, he had the visitor's locker room painted that color. The new renovation carried that to an extreme with pink sinks and toilets.

I have pictures from Foxcroft, taken in the early 1930's that show Kinnick as the only thing visible on the horizon when looking south from the front porch. The stadium was built in a 5 month rush, and opened right when the stock market crashed. For it's 75th anniversary last fall, the team wore 1920's style jerseys and fans were given straw boater hats to wear. A great revival of tradition has also occurred: a passenger train now runs right to the stadium from a nearby mall, just like they used to when special cars came from Chicago and Des Moines. Lisa is considering trying to ride the train backwards and go to the mall during the game.

Here is a link to a web movie that compresses shots taken from a camera inside the stadium. The movie starts on Nov. 28 and ends on July 31:

http://www.artocentric.com/kinnick_reno.mov

To see the current shot from the webcam go here:

http://www.facilities.uiowa.edu/kinnickcam/kinnickcam.htm

I took the girls to an open practice last Saturday along with about 25,000 other Hawkeye fans. We had a great time. What will make the season even more exciting this year is that our neighbor's (and good friends) youngest son will be a freshman on the team. The first home game is Laurel's 4th birthday, Sept. 3rd.

Lots of Progress

We continue to forge ahead here at Foxcroft. Since last Friday we now have a functional geothermal unit (Thank God, it was 95+ on Friday so we ran AC that day and Saturday.) Lisa and I sprayed and rolled First Coat primer over the entire upstairs' drywall on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. The plumbers came yesterday and installed the shower unit in the upstairs bathroom. Thankfully they didn't have to cut open the door opening to the bathroom to get the unit in. We were also lucky that the windows for the new gable aren't here yet as that was how they brought the unit in, there's no way it would have gone up the stairway. We will start spraying ceiling paint this week. Walls will soon follow.

Other signs of progress: I bought 8 matching oak doors, in jambs, with all hardware, on Ebay last week. I looked up doors on a whim and found an auction that was ending in less than an hour. The doors are in the Twin Cities, so I'll be taking a trip up there the weekend after Labor Day to get them. We need 9 doors total for upstairs so I'll need to find one to match these. The downstairs doors are all two vertical panels these are two horizontal, but I don't think that will be a problem.

In other news, we all started back to school yesterday, Laurel and I are back at the same places, Lisa started her new job with the regional education agency on July 1 (why not switch jobs in the middle of an already stressful time with a difficult move) and Rowan started at her new elementary school yesterday. Everyone came home happy last night, so I think we are now truly starting to settle in.

Lookout Above!

We have finished a piece of exterior trim on the new gable! Pete and John put up the "lookouts" yesterday. They are the boxes that go around the beams that support the barge board on the new gable. The lookouts on the front of the house and sides are actually 3 boxes, tapering set one below the other. The lookouts in back on the gable over the back door are single boxes since it is out of public sight. We decided to do single boxes in the gable too.

Also here are pics of the flagstone path from the last post:

Backyard Archaeology

Saturday Lisa was stripping the paint off the clawfoot tub so we can paint it again. After putting on stripper you need to let it work a while before scraping, so she was doing various things in the yard and garden in between. She somehow got it into her head to start looking for flagstones. We have a map of the yard that was drawn by Bess and included in a 1956 letter. The maps shows all the fruit trees, vegetable garden, grape arbor, fish pond, etc. AND flagstone walkways all over the yard. We can still see a few and figured the rest had been removed.

WRONG! They are all still there, but buried under 2-3 inches of soil. Lisa started excavating and when I came back from errands she had unearthed 11. We now have nearly the entire path from the back porch to the far yard exposed. I then caught the bug and worked from the gate leading to the old vegetable garden (no longer our property toward the back porch and found a bunch more. The flags seem to be concrete that were pured in place, I have found one large piece of limestone. We know from photos that the pond (currently filled in) had limestone all around it.

We had our friend Lori, the landscape architect over Sunday morning and showed her the map and tried to find any fruit trees left, but not much luck. There are volunteers from the completely overgrown plum tree out front that we can transplant and tend, there also seem to be some volunteers from a Red Leaf Peach. We found a filbert bush hidden among the hackberry and box elder scrub, and a few cherries, maybe black? at the back of the far yard. All the other pear, plum and peach trees are gone, as are the apple trees including the Northern Spy apple. Lori just finished working at the General Dodge home in Council Bluffs which had many Northern Spy apples in the orchard, apparently it was the hot item for horticulturists of the 1860's.

Mudding in the Drought

Well our walls are in place and one coat of mud is up. As I type this at 10:40 PM CDT it is 82 degrees outside and 87 in the house. Being a weather geek, yesterday I installed and reset my indoor/outdoor thermometer so I could see new highs and lows for Foxcroft rather than keep the old records from Van Buren St. I needn't have worried. My record outdoor high in the last five years was 105, the outdoor was set on the west side of the house but was never in direct sunlight very long. My indoor record was 88.

Today's "official" high in Iowa City was 99. I came home tonight, hit the "max" button, and got a staggering 115 for outdoors and 91 for inside. I REALLY wish the geothermal guys would get the unit running. But I also think it's telling as to the construction of this home, that even with all the windows open it was 25 degrees cooler inside than the outside in the sun temperature.

So the walls are up and the place is starting to look to other people the way it had in my mind's eye:

Sitting room in the new gable that we just built:

 Hallway:

Master bedroom:

Laurel's room:

Rowan's room:

Laundry:

Bathroom:

Our next major challenge is finding floor and doors, I have been scouring midwest salvage web sites and need to do some travelling in the next month, which coincides with starting back to work at school, not good timing!

Breaking Radio Silence

Yes things are still happening at Foxcroft, it's been a busy 3 weeks since I last entered any updates. Since I last wrote, the framing of second floor is completed, the rough in for plumbing and electrical are nearly completed. The ductwork for the geothermal heating/AC is in place, as is the heat pump. Still needed to be finished is installing the control panels and hooking the water heaters into the system. This week the drywallers will insulate upstairs and start to hang sheetrock. Pete, from F&L builders continues to be an absolute marvel as he works tirelessly and keeps everyone else moving along too. Here is a pic of some upstairs framing and the ductwork:

We are 95% complete on moving into Foxcroft, of course since last Wednesday when we started seriously moving furniture, we have had high 90's and low triple digit temperatures. Yesterday's official high was 102. We have left our mattresses at the old place in order to sleep in AC while we can. Hopefully the cold front really will come through this evening.

Since last post also: Our oldest has learned to ride her bike without training wheels. We also purchased a framed print of "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" which now hangs very near where it did in 1930. More on that in a future post.

New Lid

Here are some pics of the new roof. The roofers finished started the new on Thursday and had it finished on Friday. They started the tear off on the front and have been delayed a bit by rain as well as having to replace some decking around the valleys on either side of the front gable, as well as the beadboard in the overhang over the front porch.

Over the weekend Lisa's folks took the girls and we worked in the living room, we painted the ceiling, finished stripping the doorways, windows, and baseboard, stained and varnished the mantle and bookshelves. I'll stain the rest of the woodwork today, and since it's nice and cool will be able to start varnishing tonight. Next I'll strip the floor and cover it, then paint the walls, and finish the floor. With any luck the room will be done by the end of next weekend, which is good because then we'll need to focus our attention on the old place and finish emptying it. We found a very nice couple to buy the place and close on August 1!

A Little Bit of Completion

Since the builders won't be back until tomorrow, after taking a well deserved week off, and the weather has been bedeviling my roofers, there aren't a lot of great construction pictures. However, Lisa and I managed to finish the library/music room this week and start to move things into it. Here's a picture from before:

Here's a current shot, while it really doesn't look much different, we did repaint in Ruskin Room Green from Sherwin Williams A&C color palette. We also stripped the windows, baseboard and floor. I patched the holes where I removed the radiator. Since we'll be doing the living room next, we will now pack this room full of boxes and furniture. The chair was up in the attic, and I threw a blanket over it. The wicker couch has a matching chair and rocker, we brought those from Van Buren St. Eventually they will go in the sitting room upstairs.

The feature everyone notices are the bookcases. The room was built to accommodate these with enough space on one side for Bess to put her folding card tables. She bought the bookcases long before building Foxcroft. We have the catalogs she ordered from, they are from the Weis company. While we purchased the bookcases separately from buying the house, we were able to keep the any of the books in them that we wanted. I selected mostly the Iowa Historical Society publications, along with several series including O. Henry, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Modern American Humor. We will also start filling them with books from the Van Buren bookshelves.

Sewing, Blowing and Throwing

Friday was another busy day at Foxcroft. Unfortunately, due to a camera malfunction I can't show you pics of anything that happened. Oh, well.

McNair finished their drilling on Thursday by threading the last 200 foot loop and then running a pipe under the house and into the basement. On Friday they came with a back hoe and dug an 8 foot deep trench about 25 feet long to sew the 5 loops together and tie them into the line to the house.

After the pipes were connected they were presseure checked (air blown into the system and metered) to make sure there were no leaks anywhere. Since it was all good their next step will be to come back and fill the loops with liquid.

While this was all happening my roofers came and started their tear off by throwing old shingles into the dumpster parked in the turn around. Nagle Lumber came with their boom truck and delivered half the shingles, I think when they come to drop the other half I will have them lift my clawfoot bathtub that is currently in the garage in through the window just above the turn around.

Over the weekend Lisa and I have put down two coats of varnish in the library/music room, started painting the cupboard interiors in the kitchen, and the basement walls.

"I'm An Old Pipe Liner"*

Today starts the most intriguing part of our house resoration. McNair Brothers Drillers came today to drill and se the pipes for our geothermal heating unit. When costing out adding second floor radiators AND putting in some type of "space pack" central air conditioning system, I realized geothermal was not much more expensive. We are having horizontally bored pipes installed.
At the back of our neighbors yard were set the plastic 2.5 inch pipes that will make the underground loops

The drill unit and and the water truck were set at the front of the house.

The gas, water, phone, etc. lines were all flagged. We need four 200 foot loops for our system, each loop is roughly equivalent to one ton of heating/cooling power. The drill would go down to a depth of 30 feet below the surface run 200 feet to the back of our property and come up again. Here is the start, the drillers were also taking digital pictures and plan to have a website up soon:

The driller sits and reads his display telling pitch of the line, depth, etc.

The rig carries 300 feet of pipes in three stacks of 10 ten foot lengths. When needed the next section automatically drops into place, is lubricated and attached the previous piece

A second crew member walks above the line as it goes, and carries a device that communicates with the driller. He marks every 10 feet where the line is.

Here is the remote sensor:

When the drill comes near the end of the property it is angled back up, and in our case surfaces in the neighbor's yard.

The bore is removed and replaced with a reamer bit

This bit will hook onto both ends of the loop that will be carried back through the hole

As the bore retreats the pipe is pulled through, and water and bentonite are pumped into the hole at the same time filling the entire area around the pipe, this is crucial in getting energy transfer from the ground to the pipe.

The first loop started at 10:15 and was completed with pipes back up at 11:15. The driller said it was like going through butter. I was grateful and left to go teach. When I came back at 5:00 everyone was gone and my front looked like this:

They had drilled 4 of the 5 needed loops in one day (fifth loop is to go into the house). You can see that they ran two loops on either side of the gas line, but all four lines are significantly deeper underground than the gas line. Once the system is running the only thing I will be using natural gas for is the gas insert in the fireplace and the stove. The last loop will then head under the house and then up into the pit dug into the floor in the basement (I forgot to get a picture of that) Then the heat pump will be placed on top of where the loop comes in. All of the lines run under the house at a depth of nearly 30 feet below surface. What I am truly amazed by is that the little bit of mud you see in front is the entire byproduct of a total of 800 feet of underground drilling!

Tomorrow the roofers come!

* Title of one of my favorite songs sung and played by local Iowa City music legend Al Murphy