Our New Old House

This month, Jennifer James (co-owner with her husband, Larry, of the supremely cool Mars Cafe) presented a lesson on resources for learning the history of your house and neighborhood. She got me so fired up to get started that I went to the library today!

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.

Well, really Washington came to us. Being in Des Moines, these past two months leading up to the caucus have been exciting. I was stranded in Detroit on New Years Day and got to spend some time talking to journalists from all over the world who were on their way to cover the caucus. Since I was an Iowa caucus goer, I seemed to be rather interesting to them.

The caucus itself was mind-blowing. Nobody expected the huge number of people who showed up, but everybody was super calm and polite. Here I am in line to check in:

And here’s one side of the room voting on something:

It was fun negotiating and cajoling people to come join our group. Counting the number of votes for each candidate was tense, but I was super happy with the results. It was also a great opportunity to meet some people from my neighborhood. A few people in my precinct had been at the first Des Moines Rehabbers Club meeting that we hosted at our house back in November, so it was nice to catch up with them. They all asked how my house was coming along. I was thrilled to meet the lady who lives in a house across the street from mine. My grandparents lived in that house for 15 years or so before they bought a bigger house across the street and that’s where my mom and all her brothers and sisters grew up. The lady who lives there now is excited to show it to me and wants to know about my house too, so it’ll be nice to have another friendly neighbor on this street.

So, way back in November when we hosted the Des Moines Rehabber’s Club’s inaugural meeting, I met a guy named Todd who blew my mind with his crazy talk about how I could strip stubborn layers of caked on, baked on paint that has covered all the metal fixtures in my house for aeons.  His suggestion included only one ingredient: ammonia.

“Just regular old Bo-Peep ammonia, soak your fixtures in a bucket overnight, and in the morning the paint just peels right off,” is what he said.

I was skeptical.  I went to the Internet and worked all my librarian magic in searching for evidence that this might work and found none.  Well, with nothing to lose but a few bucks’ worth of ammonia and a night’s worth of time invested, I set myself up an experimentation lab in the basement.

Here’s where I’m going to interrupt my story to interject a story from my childhood. When I was little, we had cable TV for like, three years. During those three years I watched as much Mr. Wizard as I could because I just knew I was going to become a scientist someday. So my five-year-old self started stealing things like oven cleaner from under the sink to spray on aluminum foil and watch it dissolve, and pouring ground pepper into a pot of water so I could watch a drop of soap disperse it. It drove my mother crazy, and led her to post a poison control phone number next to every phone in the house. One day she read in the paper that the producers from Mr. Wizard were auditioning Midwestern kids to appear on the show and that they’d be making a stop in Des Moines. She dressed me in my cutest jumper and my red yarn leg warmers, and we trucked on over to the mall.  We waited in line for what felt like hours, but at last it was my turn to audition.  I don’t remember a single thing about the audition except that I was very confused the whole time and I knew when I left that I wasn’t going to get to be on the show.  I don’t think I was crushed or even overly emotional about it.

So, back in the present, inspired by my childhood hero, I set about preparing my experiment.

Remember the extra doors I wanted to practice on before I tackled anything upstairs? They came complete with painted over hardware that I felt ok about throwing away if this didn’t work.

Here they are soaking in the radioactive-looking ammonia. I didn’t buy just “regular old” ammonia, I bought “lemon scent” ammonia. Don’t be fooled, people. The lemon scent is only there to mock you while the ammonia kills you slowly. This is nasty stuff.

I put the lid on the plastic tub, went upstairs, and forgot all about it until the next day. I half expected to come back the next morning and find just cleaner, lemon scented paint still stuck tight to the hardware.

But when I lifted the lid and pulled out the first piece of hardware… Heavens ta’ Murgatroid, it worked!  I grabbed a piece of scrap wood from the floor nearby (you need very specialized tools for this kind of work, you see) and started scraping away and the paint just slid off the metal like cheese off a greasy pizza.

When I finished the test pieces they looked like this:

I grabbed my husband, stuck a screwdriver in his hand and said, “Quick! Take off all the doorknobs and faceplates and door hinges all over the house! We have to soak them! We have to rid our house of the awful layers of paint and restore the metal! Do it now!” I grabbed my own screw driver and started removing the nasty old registers from the kitchen and the dining room. Fortunately, Brandon didn’t go about his task with quite as much zeal as I’d hoped to inspire in him. He dutifully brought me the hardware from two doors, which was about all I could handle in the tub at one time. It’s good that I have someone to keep me grounded in times like these.

So I soaked the registers and hardware with yet more ammonia and they looked like this:

(I added some more ammonia to the tub after I took these pictures so the hardware was actually covered.)

After about a day and a half of soaking I started cleaning off the loose paint. By this time it was just falling off the metal.

A quick scrub with a scouring pad got the leftover bits of paint from the grooves and corners.

They came out looking pretty good!

After I rinsed them off in the sink, I laid them on the floor and dried them really quickly with… you guessed it! The heat gun! I didn’t want any more rust forming than had already started on these registers.

I’m now on a search to find out how I can spraypaint or otherwise treat the registers to give them a bronze color or at least protect them from future rusting. As always, I’m open to suggestions.

And as a final thought…

Someone asked me about the shirt I was wearing when I did all this wierd science. The shirt simply says, “PANTS!” and comes from a group of badass musicians called $trick9 and The Truth. I got them all to sign my shirt at their CD release party last Friday, so in the hopes that some of their badassness would rub off on my blog, here is the PANTS! shirt.

(The shirt is inspired by this video and you can check out more about the band at www.yostrick9.com. They’re loads of fun.)

This weekend was the second meeting of the Des Moines Rehabbers Club. I was thrilled to see so many repeat faces, and even more excited to meet some new people this time around. Steve Wilke-Shapiro already posted pictures of the event on RenovateDSM.com, so I’ll show you some pictures I took of some fascinating plumbing fixtures in this late 1800s house. Some of them are very old and some are new but have a classic character.

This toilet was in the third floor bathroom off what is known as the “ballroom.” Most people would call it an attic, but rumor has it the original owners of the house actually used it to host dances or something. Notice the carved pattern around the rim of the toilet. Talk about art in unseen places!

This sink is also in the third floor bathroom and seems to have new faucets but the original drain handle. Notice it says “pull” on top of the handle. How quaint!

And finally, this clawfoot tub has a really cool retrofitted faucet with a spray nozzle attachment. I covet it so!

This house has made me excited to find a Victorian era house to rehab next!

The Des Moines Rehabbers Club Kickoff Meeting was a HUGE success! People started showing up right before 9:30 and more and more people arrived and Brandon estimates we probably had around 50 people in our house at one time! We were all blown away by the excellent turnout (and we’re sorry if there weren’t enough donuts and coffee for everybody!)

Steve kicked off the meeting with an introduction to the goals and functions of the Rehabbers Club and then invited two guest speakers to present on behalf of their organizations. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch their names, but one was from a group promoting green and sustainable building practices and another was from the Polk County Health Department and spoke about options for lead abatement.

Here’s a picture of part of the crowd that gathered at my house. There were people crammed into the hallway, in the kitchen behind me, and all the way to the back of the living room.

I was amazed at how friendly and generous everybody was in offering advice and sharing resources. It just goes to show you that there was a definite need for a group like this in Des Moines.

Here are some great ideas and tips I got from folks today:

1. If you have heat registers and doorknobs and other hardware that has been painted, the best way to get the paint off and preserve the finish of the metal is to soak it in a tub of ammonia. It reacts with the metal and releases the paint. Soak for half a day or so.
2. An easier way (than smoothing the whole wall with joint compound or smooth plaster) to even out the texture on a wall that has flaws or is only partly textured is to mix silica sand like is used for sandblasters into regular primer/sealer and roll on a couple of layers. The sand will give it a fine texture, cover and mask previous textures, and prep the wall to accept color.
3. The carpet pad that is adhered to the hardwood floor will soften better if you spray it with whatever solvent (currently using diluted fabric softener, may try white vinegar) and then cover the sprayed spot with a plastic bag and a rug and let it sit for an hour or so. The rubber and clay padding will soak up more moisture that way and be easier to remove.
4. The energy savings from replacement windows may not outweigh the cost of installing them. If the current windows are in good enough condition, doing the work to reglaze and insulate them might be a more economical option and yield very close to the same energy savings in the long run.
5. Heat guns rock. (I think I knew that already but I’ve now had it confirmed ten times over.)
6. I had it reinforced to me how important it is to get a respirator. You’ll see pictures of my respirator as soon as it arrives at my house.
7. Someone pointed out that whoever painted our wood trim did it the quick way, just painting over the varnished wood without stripping or scuffing the varnish first. In some cases you can put some duct tape on the paint and leave it on for a few days and when you pull it off it’ll bring the paint with it, leaving the varnished wood exposed. I’ll give it a try!
8. Someone showed me a better razor scraping tool that I will do my best to hunt down. It was a Titan brand tool that holds a standard single edge razor blade.
9. Several people mentioned the Tool Lending Library.
10. The flooring under the vinyl in the kitchen may contain asbestos so have a professional look at it and see if we need help removing it safely.

Something I will be adding to my blog in the near future is a page dedicated to budgeting. I got lots of questions about my budget and how much we’d spent on each part of the project so far and that made me realize I don’t have one single collection of that information. It’s all jotted down in notes and pockets of folders in my big planning notebook, so I’ll do my best to compile all the important details into a single page for your perusal.
We got the names of several people who offered their expertise on everything from where to find salvaged cabinetry to how to apply reinforcing fabric to the walls. This club could not have come into existence at a better time for me!

Meanwhile, I’m still basking in the warm glow of all the friendly people I met today and buzzing with the enthusiasm to get back to work on my house!

Many thanks to Steve Wilke-Shapiro for bringing it all together!