I took some video of our tour. It’s about 40 minutes long, so pause the player and give it time to buffer. If you have a Vimeo log in you can also download the video to watch on your own computer, which may fix the buffering problem.

Des Moines Rehabbers Club Meeting April 2011 from Kelli Griffis on Vimeo.

The grand entrance, which faces 21st St., features this beautiful tile floor:

The grand staircase flanks one side of the foyer:

Ornate, hand-carved newell post:

We started our tour in the receiving parlor. Here’s Aaron telling us about the history of the house. To his left is Michael. The room behind Michael was the original dining room.

Here’s the rest of the crowd.

The room behind the group is known as the library and has the most ornate crown molding in the house. It seems to be made of plaster and to have been cast and painted on the ground and then mounted to the walls in pieces.

The decoration seems to include some Arabic calligraphy script, which I’m seeking help in understanding. If anybody out there can read Arabic calligraphy and tell us what this says, I’d be truly grateful!

From the main foyer, pocket doors open to the formal parlor:

The formal parlor includes this gorgeous fireplace:

Pocket doors lead from the formal parlor to the receiving parlor and on through to the dining room. We speculated that another set of pocket doors would have led to the dining room.

The original kitchen was dismantled and a new modern kitchen is on the second floor. Aaron and Michael plan to restore a full size kitchen to the main floor. An original bathroom does survive, though, and it has some beautiful tile details.

The second floor shows off this beautiful curved hallway that lets in the light from the tall stained glass windows.

Five bedrooms and a servant’s apartment at the back make up the second floor.

This would have been quarters for the servants. The doorway on the right in the background is a pass-through closet to another room and includes a built in dresser.

A very small sun room was added on in the 1960s with a small addition. We speculated this was originally an open air porch that was later enclosed. It is only about 4 and a half feet tall.

This doorway goes back to what is now a modern kitchen. It includes two linen closets, which leads us to believe it was part of the servants’ area where they lived and cared for the family’s linens.

Next up was the third floor. Originally a ballroom, it later became the casket showroom for the funeral home and the area to the left of the stairs was the embalming room.

This unusual antique ceiling fan is on the third floor. I didn’t hear whether Aaron said this was original to the house or simply period appropriate.

From there we ventured outside and got a good side view of the house:

We talked about landscaping questions, including the unique challenge of having nearly an acre of parking lot.

One of Aaron’s questions was what to do with the sign. Some people suggested removing it and using the existing electrical wiring to run a fountain.

The brick driveway is a feature Aaron wants to restore and use, but part of it is covered by concrete. The part in the photograph is an example of some interesting ways to fit bricks together around a round driveway.

Next up we looked at the carriage house.

It has the original brick floor…

…and is a treasure trove of historic artifacts, including this unique piece of plumbing fixture. People had all kinds of speculations about this one. Is it a sitz bath? A tub specifically for bathing infants and children? Something specific to the funeral home business? You tell me. Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

A close-up of the knobs:

A small side staircase led to the carriage house apartment where the stable hands and carriage driver would have lived.

The place was in bad shape but we could all see the potential for a really cool living space or artist’s studio or something here.

It felt like entering a time capsule where nothing had been touched for a hundred years.

They found trunks full of old papers and letters, as well as some remnants of household items.

You could almost imagine a small team of horses grazing outside the window there.

That concluded our tour. Aaron and Michael have a beautiful home and lots of enthusiasm about bringing it up to its full potential. Thanks a million to both of them for sharing their home’s story with us. We’ll be checking back to find out how things are going.

I hope to do a more full-length post about Shull’s, but in case anyone needs to know, here are the basics: Shull’s is a furniture refinishing business in Valley Junction and they are the go-to place for having large things stripped of paint quickly and easily. From what I understand they have a large tank of chemicals and they submerge items to have the paint stripped off. Apparently they can do whole doors, and possibly larger items. Anyway, they had six sashes done for me within a day or so for about $130. For those items you just don’t want to spend the time stripping by hand, or for delicate pieces that need to have the paint soaked free, Shull’s is the place to go. (515) 255-9449

I got them back and my next step would be to cut a slot on each side of the sashes for the weatherstripping to fit into. For that I needed a router with a 5/32″ slotting bit. A Des Moines Rehabbers Club member was kind enough to loan me his plunge router and bit. Now, I LOVE power tools and I’m always excited to get my hands on a new one. This one was particularly fun and I was reluctant to give it back. I may just have to buy myself one someday and find things to use it on.

Here’s what the 5/32″ slotting bit looks like:

We had lots of fun at the Rehabbers Club Meeting demonstrating how to cut the slots for the weatherstripping.

And here are some pictures of how the slot looks. (Remember, the letters I etched in the sides are how I will match the sashes up to their original frames and panes of glass when I put them all back together.)

Don’t make the mistake I made here. In this next photo you can see I clamped the window on the side I had cut. I found out later the clamp had cracked the sash a little. I repaired it and all was well, but I learned my lesson. Only clamp the solid top and bottom. And use a rag so the clamp doesn’t bite into the wood.

I also damaged one of the muntins (that’s the wood between the small panes in an upper sash) when I was removing the glazing so I did a quick glue and clamp to repair that.

Here are my two damaged sashes waiting for the glue to set. The bottle of Citristrip is acting as a weight clamp for one of the sashes.

Now that the sashes were cut and repaired it was time to finish removing the remaining paint and varnish, give them a good sanding, and prepare them to be reglazed. Check back in my next post to see those steps.

I forgot to take a picture of the exterior so here’s one from Google Street View:

Inside the sanctuary the historic pipe organ is being protected while the plaster is repaired around it.

This organ is the oldest of its kind west of the Mississippi.

We toured the sanctuary and learned about the roof repair, the plaster repair, and plans for refinishing the floor and pews. They hired an interior designer to pick out paint colors and local plaster craftsman from the neighborhood are donating their time to patch cracks and prep the surfaces for painting.

We trekked upstairs to check out the balcony and get a better view of the sanctuary.

The huge dome skylight over the sanctuary was once so covered in pigeon debris that it didn’t let any light through. It has been cleaned and restored and with a fresh coat of paint on the trim, the colors really shine.

Plaster workers broke channels into the plaster so that electrical cords could be installed for sconce lights.

We didn’t get to see the lights that would go there but maybe they look similar to the fixtures in the hallway.

In the basement there were bricked up doorways that once led to the alley.

The architectural details in the building are beautiful and they’re doing a good job of preserving them.

The renovation work continues and they’re always looking for volunteers. If you can lend your talents or want to learn a new skill alongside a more experienced craftsman, ask about volunteering at Trinity. They have a work day the third Saturday of every month from 8am-5pm. Call (515) 288-4056 for more details.

The flooring company has secured the right color grout, but they didn’t order enough tile for the bathroom.  They will finish the parts under the tub, toilet, and sink and finish the rest when the tiles are in.  They’re going to cut the tile to fit around the pipes in the floor, rather than some other way.  I’m glad of that because it didn’t seem right to have to cut all the pipes down and redo all that plumbing. 

When I talked to Brandon (who’s at the house today while I’m at work) he said they’d laid the subfloor in both the kitchen and the bathroom and were going to get the kitchen done today.  That was earlier this morning, so I hope there’s been some good progress made.

 While the flooring guys were working in the house, Brandon took the ladder out and broke the rotted fascia off the roof and removed as many nails as he could to prepare for new gutters being installed.

 Our quote from the gutter company arrived.  It is over $2000, which for a single story, 1000 square foot bungalow seemed ridiculous.  Our neighbor down the street with a similar house had theirs done for $450 or so.  Will keep looking.

We’re heading out to the Iowa State Fair this afternoon to blow off some steam.  Pictures coming soon of all our adventures!

[tags]gutters, thanks, ceramic tile, bathroom, Des Moines Rehabbers Club, contractors, plumbing, kitchen, flooring[/tags]

The video is 50 minutes long, so give it a few minutes to buffer. 

In addition to this video, Steve Wilke-Shapiro is working on an update to the Des Moines Rehabbers Club website explaining Angela’s process with photos.  Don’t miss that!

[tags]windows, double hung, video, demonstration, Des Moines Rehabbers Club, glazing, reglazing, wood windows[/tags]

The host of our meeting was Aaron who is working on the finishing touches on an early 20th century transitional house (Victorian to Craftsman I think) in the River Bend neighborhood. Back in the early 2000s the house was in total shambles. The owner previous to Aaron did the hard work of making the house livable again and now there are smaller, but time consuming projects to finish to make the house complete. The biggest project on the agenda right now is the windows. They’re all original and badly in need of new glazing, weather stripping, and refinishing.

Lucky for Aaron, an experienced window rehabber lives right next door! Angela Thorne owns a house built by the same architect that built Aaron’s house, and works with a restoration group. She did us the honor of demonstrating from start to finish how to remove old double hung windows, take them apart, repair them, and put them back together. It was a detailed lesson in window maintenance that everybody who attended the meeting just soaked up.

As we went around the room, nearly half of the people introducing themselves are facing a project with their own windows right now, and many of us are inexperienced at window maintenance. Fortunately, in addition to Angela’s expertise, we had Jack Porter and some other more experienced rehabbers there to offer their insight.

I took quite a lot of video of Angela’s presentation, so rather than describe the whole process in this blog post, I’m going to edit together a complete video and post it here on the blog. It was just so much easier than trying to write down all the jewels of wisdom everyone had to share. Thank goodness for hand held recording technology!

So stay tuned! Video will be up shortly. In the meantime, check out www.renovatedsm.com for more information about windows and to see some photos that other members took today.

[tags] windows, glazing, Des Moines Rehabbers Club[/tags]

The total job is going to cost about $2800 to replace all 20 of our storm windows, including the porch, plus replace the old attic windows completely with new awning windows that actually vent all the way.  We’ve paid the $1400 advance payment and they’ve given us a 3-4 week lead time to manufacture the windows (here in Des Moines!) and schedule the work.  I’m so excited!  And I gotta say, it feels good to be going with a local company.  They’ve been completely professional and helpful all along the way, including letting us try out all the features of their windows in their showroom. 

 I’ll come back with more on this in a month or so when the work begins!

[tags]storm windows, windows, budget, Des Moines Rehabbers Club, future plans[/tags]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080207/NEWS/802070329/1001/NEWS

Jack discussed the biggest parts of the project: the woodwork, leveling the floors, and pulling down all the plaster and lath to insulate the walls and put up drywall. The woodwork had all been painted a horrible orange and turquoise combination, so he pulled it all off the windows and doorways, labeled each piece, and sent it off to a furniture stripping company in Valley Junction. We all had a chuckle about Jack’s mild panic when he realized that the stripping solution also took off his pencil markings that told him how to put all the pieces back together! It added an extra day’s worth of work for Jack to piece everything back together based on the position of nail holes and other little imperfections that matched up to the original placement. The floors in the house were all warped and wavy. Parts of the foundation had settled and joists had sagged over the years. He hired a company to raise the house, re-build the foundation, and level it all out. Jack described this as the most difficult part to watch because with every creak and squeak the house made, he thought the whole thing was going to fall apart. He needn’t have worried. The floors came out perfect and the rebuilt foundation looks better than ever!

What struck me the most about these home rehabbers was their sense of humor. They were able to keep a positive attitude through some very stressful challenges, including the arrival of a surprise baby girl!

 Here’s our host, Jack, discussing the project:

A young guest listened attentively.

A couple of details about the house stood out to me. For example, this corner sink was fascinating.

An example of Victorian love of symmetry:

Jack is also the president of our neighborhood association, (http://www.unionparkdsm.com/) so of course we’ll be going to the meeting tonight!

[tags]Des Moines Rehabbers Club, photos, Union Park, woodwork, foundation[/tags]

Here’s the house from the outside:

Here York (on the right inside the doorway) and Steve (on the left inside the doorway) introduce the house and give some of its history. The house had been built for a family with ten children (4 girls, 6 boys), then had been a rooming house, then a nursing home for around 60 residents! This is a big house, but NOT big enough for 60 people of ANY condition. Most recent history includes hosting parties for Barack Obama’s staff, family, and friends around the time of the Iowa Caucus. York told some great stories about Sen. Obama challenging his secret service detail to keep up with him as he made his way around the house.

The highlight of the house for me was the set of stained glass windows in the staircase.

York had really done his homework in researching stained glass and he told us that red and purple glass is the hardest and most expensive to make because it uses gold in creating the color. He also pointed out three round pieces that are pretty much priceless because they are blown with lead and the lead makes them crackle like spider web. The third coolest thing about these windows were the hand painted pictures. He explained that those pieces were probably fired six or seven times each because the artist would paint one color on, then fire the piece, then paint the next color, the fire the piece, and so on and so on. Can you imagine? Here are some close-up pictures:

York also had some good insight for other projects around an old house. For example, he explained how to use linseed oil to condition wood. He also explained the difference between using shellac and polyurethane. I was especially interested in that part because I’ve never used either and I’ve been trying to figure out which would be better for the woodwork inside my house.

The most surprising thing about this house was the third floor. The main floor is mostly functional for hosting parties. The second floor has comfortable bedrooms and living spaces that are decorated tastefully in a way that keeps the period style intact but displays the couple’s own modern tastes. The third floor was like stepping into a totally different building! Back in the 1980s whoever owned the house had the third floor redone as an apartment. (Originally, the third floor would have been used as a ballroom.) Whoever they hired as a carpenter to build all the cabinets, closets, and living areas was a genius! The whole area had a very modern feel. You’d never know you were in a Victorian home. Clean lines, modern furniture, and bright, neutral colors made the space feel amazingly open and fresh. I took a few pictures, but wanted to be a little careful since they do rent it to someone and I wasn’t sure how they’d feel having their living space shown all over the internet.

One of the coolest things I got to see from the third floor were the wooden shingles! Plus, a pretty neat view of the Des Moines skyline.

This trip had a bonus house in it! York’s friend owns the house next door and had given permission for us to look around in it too. The most beautiful thing about this house was the staircase. It amazes me that in over a hundred years of families and tenants living in this house, moving furniture up and down the stairs, and probably kids living here, this ornament never broke off!

The rest of the house is in pretty bad condition, having been split into several cheap apartments over the years and suffering a sorry fate of particle paneling and drop ceilings.   It’s going to be fixed up and converted back to a single family home soon though, so there’s hope for it!

One final note: York mentioned that when a house has been split up into multiple units the law requires there to be exterior fire escapes.  These tend to become eyesores after a while and are one of the main reasons people like to return houses to single family residences.  York explained that one of the things he recommends to people buying houses in Sherman Hill to reconvert back to single family houses is to tear off the exterior fire escape right away.  For one thing, it’s just one less access point inviting vandals if the house is vacant for a while.  And also, the house can’t be listed as a multi-family residence without that fire escape, so it’s sort of a back-up insurance that the house won’t be split up again if you have to sell it or something.

I always learn so much from these meetings!

Some of you may know that I am an aspiring librarian. I plan to go back to school and get my Masters degree in Library Science sometime in the next two years. So researching the history of my house and the neighborhood is a special treat for me because I get to expand my knowledge of the library collections and research materials at the same time I’m learning so much about my house! I spent several hours in the library tonight (after working all day in another library) and compiled some data from the Des Moines City Directories.

I’ve put a link to a PDF of my data on the About Our House page and the About the Neighborhood page. I’m not putting one here because as I get new information for the spreadsheet, I only want to update the link on static pages. But they’re right at the top. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting to them.

Thanks a million to Jennifer for all the fabulous information and inspiration! I know I’ll be in touch for additional wisdom.

For more information about the Des Moines Rehabbers Club, visit RenovateDSM.com.