Abigail Carter's Blog, page 2

The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 14

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

 

[image error] Firestation #33 in it’s “hayday”

My new people have been hard at work updating my paint, restoring my rooms to their former glory, although I can’t deny I miss my horses. Oh, the horses. Yeah, they chewed on my sills, but I loved the sound of their clomping hooves on my cement floor, specially grooved to give them adequate traction, as they were led from the back pasture, through my barn doors into the room where they were washed and fed and settled into their stalls.

I miss the old alarm bells which were my signal to open my stall doors so the horses could take their places by the engine. I then dropped the horses’ harnesses from the “spider” trapeze hanging from their place in my apparatus bay ceiling. I’d open my bay doors as the men came sliding down my brass fire poles, lock the horses into their harnesses and they’d be off in a matter of seconds.

When I was fresh and new, the firemen took good care of me, scrubbing my floors, polishing my brass, planting my window boxes and painting my insides regularly. I stood proud on the top of my hill, happy to be serving my community. I loved when the neighborhood children came to sled on my back slope during rare Seattle snow. I loved watching the horses munch on the grass in my pasture. I loved the order of my apparatus bay, hoses and equipment neatly stored, the engine polished and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

After the horses went away, a truck replaced them and their smells were replaced by different ones – oil and gasoline. For many years, I continued my life as a useful firehouse, until one day, my friends all moved away and I fell into disrepair. My new owners didn’t treat me well and for a while, I feared for my safety. But then one day, new owners showed up and began to take care of me. The Chandler’s built new walls and replaced my torn away stair. They repaired my roof, rewired my old electrical system and replaced my old coal furnace, adding many shiny, copper pipes. They had great plans for me, until they got older and sicker and could no longer take care of me. For 20 years, I fell into disrepair. The doors to my rooms were shut, my windows removed and pigeons nested in my attic. I did not like the pigeons.

One day, a year ago, new people arrived and woke me up with the machinery they brought to clear all the brambles that were beginning to scratch my siding. My stalls, which had been long ago removed and replaced with a new room, the bones still visible in the wooden beams that make up the walls, are now a hall and office and my new people have added a beautiful new bathroom and will reopen my window which the Chandlers had covered over with shingles.  At first I was alarmed when my cement floors were cut and dug, with bright red pipes traversing the length of the trenches created, but I have felt their warmth and my new tiles are quite spiffy. I feel like I have a new pair of warm, shiny shoes.

My hayloft has been transformed. For many years, the door was shut against the weather coming in through my missing windows, weathered blue tarps covering the holes where I could feel the wood rotting year by year. My windows are now restored, the hole in my floor, crudely patched has been refitted with wood that matches the floorboards I was born with. My new people filled my gaps, sanded, stained and polished my floor with such loving care, I couldn’t help but sigh with pleasure.

My attic, which the Chandlers had begun to create into a whole new room, one that when I was a proper firehouse was used for nothing but storage, and open to the hayloft below, has now been closed off from my hayloft and my new people will continue the work of creating a new room from my ample attic space and I love the new window that frames my finial so beautifully.

I watch with pleasure as little by little, my bones are painted and polished with joy and excitement and I look forward to again being filled with laughter, music and happiness.

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The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 13

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

Overnight, during one of Jim’s late night pushes, the bright red PEX (hot water tubing used for radiant heat floors) is laid and we are ready to fill the trenches with cement. My poor Prius is packed with 800 lbs of cement, loaded by a large Home Depot guy who is quick to let me know how strong he is. I am happy to step aside and watch him heft the 60 lb bags into the car. I rent a cement mixer and another guy manages to set it on top of the cement bags. The Prius limps to the fire station.

Jim mixes the cement and shovels it into the trenches while I smooth the surface, spanking it with my hand until a satisfying sheen of water rises to the top like the froth in a Starbucks.

[image error] Jim testing out toilet placement

Next, Jim carefully frames out the new bathroom, taking care not to bolt through the new PEX. We set the toilet in place to figure out where to locate the wall. We find a couple of doors taken from an old school at Second Use, (a store that sells salvaged items) which match with the era of the firehouse and build the framing around them.

Many more evenings of framing and threading red PEX tubing through the new framing pass until one night Jim has the water for the floors hooked up and gives me the honor of turning the valve that will fill them with water to pressure test them.

[image error] Turning on radiant floor system for the first time.

The stables room is still too rough to lay tile, so we decide to take the extra step of adding a layer of self-leveling cement to the floor. More trips to Home Depot and another cement mixer rental later, we spend one evening in a companionable mode of Jim mixing and me spreading the cement and by the end, it looks like a skating rink floor.

Floor tile selection is the next step and is relatively painless. Jim and I seem to have a fairly compatible ability to choose finishings. I tend to want to keep things simple, and he keeps me from wandering too often into the expensive aisles, which I am prone to do. I seem to be adept at selecting the most expensive item in any store I walk into. We decide on a large, 12” x 24” dark gray porcelain tile that is relatively inexpensive, necessary given the huge expanse that will need to be covered. I make multiple trips in my hardy little Prius to pick up 1000 pounds worth of tile at a time. The poor car groans under the weight and continues to groan, even without the tile, whenever it comes to a stop. I hope that Prius abuse is not punishable by law.

A friend tells me about a guy she’s had to help her reno her kitchen and I send him an email. Kevin shows up and seems enthralled by our project and not deterred by what must look to an outsider like a maniacal worksite of projects in various states of completion.

A few days later, Kevin is hard at work in the hall laying the huge tiles which frees Jim up to tackle the puzzle of reworking the mechanicals in the hayloft room. The array of black ABS tubes and white electrical wires hanging off the wall seems daunting. The first task is building a new portion of attic flooring to cover a missing span a gap of about 3 feet to reach the roofline (hard to explain). When the floor is framed in, we haul the post that we removed from the new downstairs bathroom and Jim cuts a corner out of it to be used as a facade in the new ceiling created in the hayloft room. Jim planes it down and then together, using a couple of rachet straps, we hoist it into place.

Slowly, wire by wire, pipe by pipe, Jim arrives at a schematic for relocating each wire and pipe within the new wall and ceiling. I take on the grueling task of removing old nails and screws from the framing, handing tools up to Jim as he’s perched on the ladder, running around the house hunting down tools that have incredible migratory powers, buying fast food lunches and calming frayed tempers.

Beam in place.

As the days pass, the hall is soon completely tiled, but we begin to realize that the thin set has not been adequately wiped away before it has dried and so it becomes my task to chip out the plastic spacers that are now cemented in place in order to clear the way for the grout. I experiment with a variety of tools but eventually settle on a box cutter to cut away the plastic spacers and a grinder to saw away the pillows of thin set that poke up between the tiles. I acquire bouquets of bruises on my knees.

Once the tile is finished being laid, Kevin helps to hand the drywall in the hayloft room and then Jim frames in the triangular hole between the attic and the hayloft room. Each step is a small victory, but the exhaustion is creeping up on Jim and I worry. The contrast in our work styles is evident in the late nights he puts in, while I beg off and head home to make dinner for the lone teenager. I’m in a constant state of mom guilt in my neglect of him and rationalize that I am providing him with his independence. He is barely going to school, checked out in a state of severe Senoiritis, and I am an annoyance with my nagging him to go to school each morning. 

I’m a pendulum swinging between two guys and two homes, trying to support each, to cut concrete by day and still be home to make dinner each night. To nag about school, and calm an overly tired and aching man on a ladder while maintaining some semblance of sanity.

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The Firehouse Chronicles Episode 12

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

 

While we have the cement saw, Jim figures we may as well cut the cement in the back room so it can have radiant heat along with the bathroom. This leads to including the hall and storeroom in the radiant floorplan. I happily agree, imagining the nice warm feet, the muddy boots drying by the back door, the ability to remove some of the uglier radiators that presently provide heat. If I’d known what was in store, I might have reconsidered. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

The reality is every inch of the house covered in a caustic layer of cement dust, the constant, deafening squeal of the cement cutter, which cuts at a rate of an inch a minute and has to be handled while holding a garden hose that snakes its way outside, our lifeline to fresh air, clamped between teeth, all without breathing through the nose. Jim’s McGyver scuba system. Since I apparently don’t possess adept nose-clamping-while-manhandling-a-giant-slicing-tool skills, I push the machine with my foot, holding the hose to my mouth with one hand while pinching my nose with the other. More often than not, I forget and take big gulps of carbon-monoxide-laden air through my nose. Jim insists I take many breaks to dash outside and breathe fresh air, lest my blood vessels burst and I have a heart attack on the spot, as Jim so calmly points out.

One night, after a day of carbon monoxide poisoning, we drop our tools at 7pm and head back to my house for quick showers and an hour later are celebrating the 5th anniversary of our first date at the restaurant we first met.

celebrating the 5th anniversary of our first date.
[image error] Attempting to master the garden-hose-while-pushing-machine-with-foot breathing technique

The next day, we are back to it. By the time all the cutting is done, I calculate we cut 5000 linear feet of cement, radiant heat now encompassing over 2/3rds of the entire footprint of the house. As I (or a Home Depot guy) cut in one room, Jim jackhammers in another to dig out the cement between the two cuts creating the trenches that will eventually house the water piping for the radiant heat floors. Next, it’s my job to clear out the resulting rubble from the trenches with a shop vac, hauling heavy shop vac-fulls of rubble to the dumpster and hefting them over the side.

A week later, on Valentine’s Day, we again break at 5 pm and go night skiing, which as we are driving up, seems like the most exhausting activity we could have chosen, and after a couple of runs, we are in the bar having a beer. Oddly, the beer seems to rejuvenate us, and we wind up skiing until the 9 pm close, shushing down the almost skier-less slopes under the watery floodlights.

[image error] Valentine’s Day ski lift selfie
The radiant heat trenches post-jackhammering in the process of being vacuumed.

One evening, as we are leaving for the night, I ask Jim if he hears running water, but we dismiss the sound as just an echo of water pooled inside a small hole near the basement. The next morning, Jim arrives and investigates the noise further, discovering the water meter spinning at an alarming rate.

I arrive a while later to discover our front yard looking like a grave site. We call a plumber who arrives and agrees to only charge $1500 if we do all the digging. Jackhammering is put on hold as we (meaning Rob, our latest Home Depot guy and Jim), dig an ever-enlarging trench trying to find the hole in the 100-year-old pipe. It becomes clear that the pipe has been vibrated by our jackhammering creating an M&M sized hole in the old metal.

The plumber spends a good portion of the next day fixing the main, while we try to do what we can with the cement cutting and jack hammering despite having no water.

Chloe helps with the digging.

Jim looks online at the water bill to see if he can determine how long the line might have been leaking and while there discovers the water bill at one of his rental houses is over $1500, indicating a water leak there as well. Jim spends the next two days digging another trench at that house, cutting through the ceiling of the basement apartment to thread a new water main in order to bypass the old water main that unfortunately disappeared under the slab of the entire house.

Adding insult to injury, I get a call from the renters at the island house who tell me there has been a slide that has wiped out the septic system for the guest house and feel lucky that the entire guest house didn’t wind up in the sound.

Guest house slide

We have clearly angered Poseidon.

 

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Breaking Widow

It’s 2:42pm on a Tuesday. The dog is curled up in my lap. With a cup of tea I settle down to read some work of a friend in my writing group. We are meeting in a few hours to discuss our work. I am fascinated how she writes – short snippets of her life that jump around in time, but through which she weaves themes and a complete narrative. She is a woman battling depression and I am struck by how directly her words resonate.

My pen is in my hand ready to comment, but I am drawn in. In one section she writes about a condition called Dysthemia, a low-level, chronic depressive condition. Her doctor says, “I suspect you’ve had it your entire life.”

I feel winded by this. Sometimes I look at my face in the mirror and notice my mouth seems to be in a constant frown. I think back to my grandfather who warned if we crossed our eyes, that they would stay that way. If we do something long enough, feel something long enough, does it become ingrained in our tissues, the essence of our being?

I wonder if I have been sad my whole life, or just since Arron died. I don’t know anymore. But I feel a sadness, hidden deep, even when I am happy. I have taken meds to help, and perhaps they do. I don’t know. They become part of the baseline after a while.

I know I should exercise, because I know it helps, but I have a new apathy towards it. It’s all so boring. I want something different. I try a ballet class, a yoga class but I can feel that clench of my jaw, the frown. I force a smile since they say even a forced smile will induce happiness. It still feels like a frown.

 

 

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The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 11

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

 

Since we are in destruction mode and have a dumpster blocking the driveway, we proceed to make short work of tackling the kitchen, pulling down the strange hutch in the middle of the island to open up the room. Jim works to tie up or decommission the snaking wiring. We are left with an odd island with two sinks in the middle of the room and overhead wiring hanging from the ceiling. Not pretty, but already the room is brighter and it again becomes easier to see the possibilities.

The house is now coated in a thick layer of plaster dust, sawdust, and rogue nails prickling floors and walls.

[image error] Kitchen island with hutch before destruction
[image error] Kitchen wall with shelves
[image error] Jim attacking the hutch
Jim contemplates the purpose of some of the cabinets we remove.
kitchen island with hutch gone.

Now that we have things flayed open, we turn our attention back downstairs. Jim rents a cement cutter and slices trenches for the plumbing – toilet, vanity, shower drain. He digs around the base of the old iron sewer drain pipe that runs the height of the room to the ceiling and in one night, cuts the entire pipe out and hauls it out the back where it is added to a pile of metal scrap that I will eventually take to the recycling place and gleefully come home with $23 (it’s the little things). The old iron pipe is replaced with black PVC pipe that will fit within a standard wall.

Alongside the new sewer pipe is a beautiful old six-inch thick wooden beam. Like the sewer pipe, this beam also poses an impediment to a new wall due to its thickness and so we decide to replace it with a slimmer steel beam. We save the old beam, hoping to find a place to use it.

We head to Pacific Supply Co., a warehouse filled with huge racks of steel beams, pipes, spikes and flat metal sheathing. The air inside is heavy with a tangy taste of iron and the smell of grease. The noise of a huge saw that cuts the steel to customer’s specifications interrupts all conversation. The saw is run by a guy in greasy blue coveralls who speaks in grunts as he hoists a long length of steel onto a cart and wheels it noisily over to the machine. We have two 3-inch diameter lengths of steel cut into 15-foot pieces with the intent of welding them together to create the new beam.

By the time we’re ready to place the beam, however, the reality of another 10 hour day has Jim abandon the welding and opting for a single beam, which from an engineering point of view, is more than adequate. I use a circular saw equipped with a blade that cuts through steel to slice four vertical slits into the bottom of the beam, which Jim then uses pipes wrenches to flay outwards, creating a base for the beam that we nuzzle into a deep bed of concrete. Equipped with gloves, ear protection, a full plastic face protector, I have grown used to the flying sparks and squealing noises, but am still hyper vigilant about the placement of my various extremities.

Jim sets up his GoPro camera and begins a VLOG of what will become 1-minute recordings of our progress. The first two encompass what I have described above (dramatic sparks and all):

Once we get the steel beam in place, we engineer a complex array of wooden planks, ropes, and the trusty car jacks to wedge it into its new home, where it can settle into its job of holding up two-thirds of the house. Next, we fill in the trenches that hold both the new beam, the new sewer stack and all the new plumbing and slap the cement smooth.

It’s been another 12 hour day that ends with more doses of Advil. I am my own pain-relief commercial.

The next day, Jim goes to work, so Chloe and I head over to clean up a little and I take some measurements so I can try to plan out the bathroom with real numbers and figure out what to do for a vanity, doors and determine how big the shower should be.

This leads to hours researching a tool (my motto: there’s always an app for that!) that I can use to plan the new bathroom leading me to find Home Designer which I buy for $99. It seems reasonable given that there will be lots of planning to do in the coming months. What I don’t anticipate is the learning curve. I spend hours entering the correct measurements and eventually have all three floors of the house mapped out. When I go into 3-D mode however, the roof of the house looks like it was built by an oragami artist on crack. Jagged roof peaks and folds everywhere. Various floors appear to be made from grass and parts of the roof are open to sky. But eventually, I come up with a plan for the bathroom that looks almost legible. I even manage a 3D rendering. I am beginning to feel a little like Joanna Gaines (if you haven’t already become addicted to “Fixer Upper” I don’t recommend it, unless you have a ton of time on your hands, but I’ll just say, it’s available on Netflix). Olivia has already accused me and Jim of being “just like Chip and Joanna” and I have to laugh, especially as I create my first 3D rendering of the bathroom. I am weirdly flattered by the comparison to Chip and Joanna, as they appear to be a couple who enjoy each other’s company. They’re playful and silly, Chip lends a hand in the demos (Jim is quick to notice he is too clean for a guy doing demo) and Joanna creates plans (and 3D renderings). As Olivia put it, “Chip is a big kid, just like Jim, and you are like Joanna, the practical one.” It’s interesting to see how my child views my relationship with Jim, since she doesn’t say much about it, and I am glad she sees the positive. If you promise not to laugh, I’ll leave you with my first 3D rendering. Thanks Joanna Gaines!

[image error] 3D rendering of main floor bath
[image error] The main floor plan with new bathroom.

 

 

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The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 10

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

 

With the steps complete, Jim feels it’s safe to invite the electrical inspector to document the existing electrical system. Completing the stairs seemed essential before inviting the inspector, given the fact that cutting a giant hole into the floor of the attic exposes copious wiring that took Jim days to reroute and map back to the electrical panel. Now the floors are all buttoned up, with a tidy switch for the new pendant lamp over the new stairs. The inspector spends just 10 minutes looking at the new wiring installed by a hired electrician and goes nowhere near the stairs. He tells Jim he needs to better label the electrical panel as he tapes the approved inspection certificate to it.

The destruction begins before the inspector reaches his car with Jim dashing upstairs to punch a crowbar into the false ceiling in the hayloft room. When I arrive an hour later, the entire wall is exposed revealing what looks like a church organ of black plumbing pipes interspersed with live electrical wiring. Unceremoniously, Jim hacks off the tops of the pipes which he assures me are just venting pipes and don’t actually carry raw sewage.

Our plan is to extend the attic floor to meet up with the angled roof lines of the back portion of the house and then build the wall right up into the soffit, blocking off the opening from the attic that allows one to look down into the hayloft bedroom.

Half wall is the first to go
Half wall destruction
[image error] Entire wall exposed
[image error] The outlook from the attic

The next day, we (and by we, I mean Jim) tackle the stables room, in preparation for creating a bathroom and a storeroom from the awkward space. From the original plans, we know there was once a window on the south side, which would add a great deal to our new bathroom. Alas, the window has not been preserved, but when we tear down the drywall, we find the original framing. I email our Historic Preservation contact who tells us in great detail how we will need to have the window rebuilt:

“You indicated that you will engage someone to replicate the window to match. So I should confirm that will mean: paired outswing casement wood sashes and wood frame, with true divided lites (six per sash as illustrated). We’ll also want to confirm that the glazing will be clear float glass. The size and profile of all of the other wood window components, sill, and trim should also match, and because there is so much intact historic fabric, you will have a good template to follow. I would anticipate that the original windows are Douglas Fir, but you will need to confirm that.”

After a few Internet searches and one carpenter who turned down the job, I find an expert in historical window building willing to fabricate it. Because the muntin profile (I’m getting good with my window vocabulary!)  is so unusual, it will require special blades for the router which apparently is why we get a quote of $4,000 for rebuilding the window, a cost we see no way of avoiding.

Initial destruction of stables room. Original window framing can be seen just behind Jim
[image error] Half wall removed and on-demand water heater removed as Jim prepares to move it up into the ceiling.
[image error] Detail of window framing

Once Jim has the water heater relocated up under the ceiling, he moves on to the back stables room. We have now filled one dumpster and are moving onto a second. Jim hires Raoul, our favorite Home Depot guy (we now know half a dozen by name) to help him and when I show up the next day, the false ceiling is gone, and the room has its lovely 15-foot ceilings restored to their original height.

Back stables room before destruction
Back stables room with false ceiling removed. Still intact bathroom on left.

We work together demo-ing the bathroom and come up with an intricate arrangement of car jacks to hoist up the raised bathroom floor, tiles and all, snapping it off the bolts that secure it to the cement floor. I then cut the bolts off with a grinding tool in a terrifying array of sparks and squealing noises.

 

That night I take two Advil before bed, something that’s becoming a regular habit. I realize that there is a large difference between home remodels in your 50s vs. home remodels in your 30s. Advil fills the void.

With all the destruction, we begin to see the possibilities of what’s to come and setting priorities and making decisions becomes easier. The metaphor is not lost on me. Sometimes it’s necessary to break things wide open before you can rebuild them into something new and beautiful.

 

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The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 9

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

 

[dropcap background=”yes”]A[/dropcap]s the weather turns colder, we turn to inside projects, the first of which is to determine where to place stairs to the attic, an area that the previous owners framed out and added a partial master bath to before illness ended their renovation dreams. The beautiful hayloft room on the level below is dominated by a temporary stair that ends two feet from the hayloft doors. Coming down the stairs is a game in self-preservation as one misstep means a 20-foot tumble out the door when it’s open.

[image error] Stairs in hayloft
[image error] Stairs removed from hayloft

We learn from one of the previous owners’ family members that they planned their stair to the attic around an ornate iron circular stair from the University of Washington that sat for years in the yard, no doubt overtaken by weeds until they made the sad discovery that someone had stolen it. In their plans, the circular stair took up most of the hayloft room which also housed the laundry, a baffling arrangement.

Again and again, Jim and I remark on how sad it was that these people, who owned the house since 1974, never saw their dreams come to fruition. And yet, if they had, we probably wouldn’t have bought the house.

Original 1913 plan showing the two closets, one labeled as “The Drying Room” where the firefighters used to dry their gear.

If we are to preserve the hayloft room, the only other location for a new stairway is inside a pair of closets off the living room, one the original “drying room” where the crew hung their wet uniforms, and the other the “radio room,” where presumably, the calls came in. (We still wonder how. Morse code? Telephone?)

[image error] The pipes that were part of the drying room

Jim pulls up pieces of well-glued subfloor to peek at the rafters. He does intricate mathematical equations on the backs of envelopes. One day, I come upstairs to find that the wall between the two closets is gone and the 2nd floor is filled with plaster dust.

Jim begins tearing down walls
[image error] Jim and Chloe studying the hole and stairway logistics.
[image error] Attic room before stairs

We spend the next couple of hours finishing the demolition and soon Jim is in the attic saw-zalling through the floor to create the hole for the stairwell. More plans and mathematical formulas are scrawled onto envelopes. Jim creates a mock set of steps to determine how the stair treads will need to turn in order to land neatly on top of the wall dividing the closets from the living room. We debate about the removal of an unused chimney that runs from the roof right down to the basement, an idea that is eventually taken off the table as more calculations deem it unnecessary, but we are thrilled how it looks when we pull down the plaster around it and expose the brick.

Soon, Jim has the hole reinforced with steel plates and rivets and if Chloe or I wind up deaf in the years to come, I will know it will be a result of Jim drilling those holes into the steel. In the end, the hole has over 70 such rivets and I joke (sort of) that if there is ever an earthquake, you will find me standing in that stairwell.

The many rivets that are part of the stairwell hole.

IMG_3927

Step-by-step the stairs take shape. There are mistakes, miscuts, misalignments, and Jim berates himself over every one. At first, I leave him to his frustrations and find other projects. I rent a cement grinder from Home Depot and spend hours grinding away 100 years of grime in what will be my office to reveal lovely, pale cement. I am exhausted and covered in muck and dust, but satisfied.

[image error] Temporary stairs, as Jim works to figure out the complicated turn at the top.
Ab with grinder

Jim labors over the stairs, and because I have no idea the intricacies of the calculations he carries in his head, I have no idea how to help him. I come up and find him in a state of certainty that the whole idea of building the stairs is a bad one, that it can’t possibly work, that we need to hire someone, though we know it’s a job that no contractor will tackle.

The stringers ready for placement
Jim placing the stringers

And so I offer my services and Jim and I discover that we much prefer working together than working apart. Jim gets the help he needs, and I learn new skills. The work is often physically challenging: carrying multiple sheets of drywall from the van to the second floor, holding heavy planks in place above my head, sanding new drywall.

[image error] Chloe demonstrating stair viability
[image error] Treads being added to more complicated section
The completed stairs.
Adding the railings.

 

We work late into the night on weekends, our new date-night routine, and step-by-step we fall into a groove. As the steps take shape, Jim and I learn each other’s limits, skills, and tolerances. Jim learns to call on me when he needs help rather than attempt the task on his own. We buy stair treads and risers in oak, lengths of popular for the banisters and railings. I learn to use the drill press to put holes in the steel that holds everything together. I neatly slice lumber into posts with the table saw.

Step by step, Jim and I establish our need to work together, to plan, experiment, test, build and rebuild if needed. We learn that nothing about renovating this firestation is going to be conventional, nothing will go quite according to plan, that for the most part, we are going to have to do the bulk of the work ourselves. But mostly we learn that we make a pretty good team when we work together.

 

[image error] Still needs railings and banister toppings, but final stairs.
[image error] The final stairs

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The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 8

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

Jim on top of scissor lift prepping trim.

We flit between pulling blackberries to Jim repairing the shingles at the back of the house while I sample paint colors for the exterior trim which is in dire condition. What was once a chocolate brown has weathered to a near pink, peeled and chipped, exposing wood to rot. I begin to scrape at a window frame, and soon I’m at the paint store and finally perched on a ladder in the sun painting trim like a pro. Of course, I want the entire place painted instantly.

I call a few painting contractors, but only one returns my call. By the time he arrives to give us a quote, Jim has already tackled one of the worst rotted window sills with epoxy and I have slathered it in paint in hopes of protecting it from rain. The man appears in the back yard where we are back to pulling blackberries. We follow him as he takes a look at the ill-repaired sill.

“Hmm, I don’t know what somebody thought they were doing here,” he says, poking his finger at it. He continues around the house without us and comes back around the other side.

“OK, I think I have everything I need,” he says. “We won’t be able to begin until next spring, we are fully booked for this year.”

Jim is insulted by the man’s comment on the repaired window.

“I don’t like the guy,” he says.

We guess he’ll quote around $15K, but a few days later I get a quote for $20K. By now, I have already begun painting the windows on the south side of the house.

“It’s probably a pretty good price,” Jim says. “This is going to be a tough house to paint, even with the scissor lift.” We decide that we will just paint the trim, and leave the exterior shingles for next summer.

With the help of a series of men we pick up at Home Depot, we spend the rest of the summer shifting between pulling brambles and painting trim. With each stroke of my brush I am reminded that we are saving $20K by doing it ourselves and with Jim’s meticulous prep work, we feel as if we are taking greater care than hired painters might.

The derelict-looking scissor lift that I assumed would have to be chopped up and hauled away as scrap metal has now been equipped with 3 new car batteries and has sat for 2 weeks in the driveway plugged into an orange extension cord that snakes its way into the garden shed. Jim has it running and stands on its platform as it squeals its way to a height of about 20 feet. A week later he has it lurching fitfully against the back of the house where he stands (bravely) on the platform with an electric grinder that sprays sparks from hot nail tips that fall into his shirt as he slices through all the nails on the underside of the eaves of the roof, prepping them for painting. Later he builds a platform above the lift’s platform so he can get up even higher to get at some of the higher peaks and eventually sets a ladder on top of that to reach even higher peaks. I can’t even look at him without feeling nauseous.

Proof that I actually painted while standing on the scissor lift. The first and only time.
[image error] The many platforms and ladders of the scissor lift
Starting on the painting.

I get into a routine of working in the mornings and spending afternoons at the firehouse. I buy a pair of white painter’s pants with a “Sherwin Williams” label sewn on the back pocket. The sun is warm and I become ever-braver on the ladder reaching the top corners of the windows and trim, though 1 hour on the scissor lift painting is all I can handle. My brush hand shakes as I try not to look down or breathe for fear of making the lift wobble, a dizzying sensation.

It takes a week or two to figure out how to tackle the blackberries. We get excited about the prospect of hiring goats, until we find out that it costs $700 per day and the property would take 6 days for the goats to clear it. Instead, we rent a bobcat with a “brush hog” attachment for a day for the same cost as 1 day of goats. Jim is like a 4-year old with a new Tonka truck, tearing around demolishing everything in his path.

http://abigailcarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IMG-3677-SD.mp4

By the end of the day, not a shred of green remains. What we haven’t yet realized is that we have turned the hillside into a dust bowl. I source a place to buy straw which we spread over the hillside to keep the dust down. Later, In the fall, it takes two weeks of a Home Depot guy to get it cleared, placed into bags and hauled away.

[image error] Shingles repaired, trim painted
[image error] Straw covered hill
The hill post-bobcat

Some mornings begin with picking up Home Depot guys who pull out creepy crab-like blackberry roots that the bobcat didn’t munch while we prep and paint. I head to local fast food places for lunch which we eat while sitting in the sun on cheap green plastic Adirondack chairs. We soon have our favorite guys – Raul, who we first see because he almost leaps in front of our car, so eager and energetic to get work. Louis, who we barely understand, is a workhorse. We guess he’s somewhere in his late 50s but is sinewy and lithe and doesn’t like to quit. A Rasta hat hides his dreadlocks and he speaks a sort of Spanish that even the Spanish-speaking guys don’t seem to understand. Louis only eats chicken teriyaki, so we all eat a lot of chicken teriyaki all summer. In the evenings when it gets dark, we realize it’s 9 pm so we light up the BBQ and grill sausages or steaks and eat them off paper plates washing it down with lots of Coors Light.

Jim and I have our first sort-of fight as I am up on a ladder painting a window, where I have gotten a few splotches on the glass. In my experience splotches on glass are easily taken care of by a glass scraper with a razor blade.

“We can take that window out if you want,” Jim says. “Might be easier to paint and you won’t get as much paint on the windows.”

“Taking the window out seems like a ton of work,” I say. “Why would we take it out?” It would never have occurred to me to take a window out to paint it.

“Well, you do it your way. I just hate it when there are smudges of paint on the windows.”

“But you can just scrape the windows later,” I say, aware of the pout in my voice. I am surprised to feel a sting of tears. I feel as if I have just been slapped, criticized for doing a bad job. I don’t know why this affects me so much and it’s only much later that I remember Arron’s voice: “Jesus, bird, stop hitting the ceiling! I don’t want to have to go over it again!” Arron was incredibly meticulous with painting and we painted a lot of houses together. From him, I learned to “cut” the edges, to paint without a dropcloth, to drag the “bead” of paint slowly to create a perfect line. He had been a College Pro painter for a summer and had high standards. Through this project, I learned that Jim had similar summer work experience and I have once again assumed the role of lowly apprentice.

Jim removes some of the windows and I perch them onto saw horses and lean over them with a circular sander, fill holes with wood filler, primer, and finally paint them. I see the advantages of removing the windows, especially for those in really bad shape. Joyce, Jim’s mother sits in a chair in the office where I have the windows propped and talks at me as I work. I hear stories of her youth, her family, Jim as a child, his dad. She seems happy to sit there and talk.

By the fall, we are getting close to having all the exterior trim painted and the house transforms. Heights and I have never been friends, and 9/11 did nothing to lessen my phobia. I am not a fan of tall buildings. It’s a surprise then, to find myself leaning out of windows, paintbrush extended trying not to picture my crumpled body on the ground below. I keep my gaze up. In the cooler weather, my fashionable working uniform of white painter’s pants has been swapped for a highly sexy, gray “Dickies” worksuit that zips over my clothes.

[image error] The “Dickies” make me invincible!

One day in late September, one of our Home Depot guys tells us that he found something while digging for blackberry roots. We follow him to a small area that has been cleared, exposing some brick, perhaps part of some kind of patio. We spend another 30 minutes clearing the rest of the bricks of soil. It feels like an archeological dig. The area gets larger and appears to be round. Eventually, we reach the edges. The “patio” is about 8 feet in diameter with one corner area clearly meant as the entry.

We speculate what it might be. The patio of some sort of shed? A stand-alone patio? A part of a garden room? The floor of a gazebo? It will be fun, at some point to find more info about the house to see when the patio might have been added and for what.

Joyce watches as we work, and then inadvertently takes a series of photos when she holds her finger down to take our picture, which. Google obligingly turns these into small “movies.” I’ll end this episode with kisses.

Clearing “Stonehedge”
[image error] kissing on Stonehedge – click for movie effect.

 

 

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The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 7

This post is the next in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

Jim and I meet at the house on Saturday morning, the day after closing. It’s his birthday and we’ve planned a party for that evening, both a birthday party and a house-warming. Turning the key in the lock and opening the door feels like we are opening a door into a new life. Chloe rushes in sniffing corners and I smile, thinking we are all, more or less, doing the same thing, walking from room to room trying to take in the space, the smells, the light.

In the kitchen, I pop the bottle of champagne I’ve brought and Jim and I hug and kiss, in awe that we are actually standing in the kitchen of a house we now own. Together.

I realize I have forgotten to bring glasses for the champagne, but we find a box of old canning jars, filled with dead spiders that I wash out and we drink our champagne, laughing. I snap a picture of the moment.

[image error]

“We really did this!” I say. “Where do we start?”

“I think we need to christen this place,” he says, pushing me against the counter and kissing me again, hands reaching under my shirt.

I give Jim his birthday gift of garden gloves and machete which he immediately presses into service, tackling the blackberries with gusto. I’ve brought clippers and a battery-powered hedge trimmer and do my own wrangling. Before long, I have uncovered a stone wall along the side of the house, and untangle a hidden Japanese maple, planted in a half barrel. It’s like unburying treasure and hard to stop, but we need to get ready for the party. Jim continues while I head off to pick up his mother, Joyce and then the food from the Mexican food truck that Jim ordered from.

[image error] West side – pre excavation
[image error] West side – pre excavation
[image error] West side – mid-excavation
West side mid-excavation
[image error] Jim feeds the chipper

Joyce and I arrive back at the house to find the first guests, Jim’s uncle, aunt and cousins already having a tour of the house. Soon, the house is filled with people, and we conduct tour after tour. Thankfully, some of the guests have brought folding chairs, as there is no furniture. Many of Jim’s firefighting colleagues offer construction ideas and a few seem as excited as we are, perhaps the house representing a vicarious dream. The bifold living room windows are original to the house and most are slid open so people perch on the window ledges. The Mexican food is quickly devoured. People bring fire house themed housewarming gifts (an old fire truck nozzle, a CD of the band, “Fire House,” firemen figurines, and a kid’s fire engine book) and I realize that we will likely wind up with a collection of fire house kitsch in the years to come. The party has the effect of cementing our excitement, seeing other people’s reaction to the house, their imagination about it’s potential makes us both feel as if our rash, impulsive purchase was a perfect choice.

The next morning, we are excited to get back to our clearing, but our pile of brush is out of control.

“Should we get a chipper?” Jim asks. This question comes up every time we do yard work together and for the first time, I find myself saying yes. I leave Jim to continue working while I head off to McClendans, our local, family-owned version of Home Depot and choose a monster which one of the staff helps me try to lift into my Prius. When it doesn’t fit, he calls another staff member on his radio to bring a wrench and they remove the feeding spout so that it will fit into the car. The chipper is immediately pressed into service.

Jim trots down the hill dragging an odd assortment of the trash he finds in the brambles. Apparently, they have been a convenient dumping ground for our neighbors on three sides.

There are countless shoes and balls, tires and entire seats from a car, a broken wheel barrel, rusted cans of paint, rotted timbers, dried up rolls of sod, moldy tubes of carpeting, and full garbage bags that we don’t dare open.

 

[image error] South side – before excavation

 

[image error] South side – mid-excavation
Uncovering the tree in a barrel
[image error] South side – post-excavation

At 9pm, we are exhausted, filthy, scratched and bruised, hungry and thirsty. The sun has yet to set, so we light up the grill we have found in the old garden shed and grill a steak and eat as we sit in a couple of rescued lawn chairs (still entwined with vines) and the sun go down, admiring the transformation we have manifested.

“We could continue the stone wall to create a little patio back here,” I suggest, imaging the entire area covered in stone, a grill and little retaining wall, maybe some steps up the hill.

Jim reins me in. “I think it’s going to be plenty of work just to clear all these brambles, never mind building walls and patios.”

“I know, but it’s fun to fantasize. I can’t wait to see it all cleared, so we can see what we actually have.”

“Those branches touching the house have to go,” Jim says pointing up and before he takes his next bite of steak, he has the chainsaw in hand and is climbing a ladder where he reaches up and lops off a branch.  It’s fun to see Jim’s excitement, to revel in our common purpose, to begin the process of working together to uncover our mutual dream.

 

 

 

 

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The Firehouse Chronicles – Episode 6

This post is the 5th in a series of posts I have dubbed “The Firehouse Chronicles.” See all episodes.

Making an offer – June 10th, 2016

We head to another local restaurant to write our letter to the sellers, a recommended accompaniment to our offer. The scene is surreal: two fire trucks parked outside and a whole group of firefighters and medics inside attending a patient. We take a table out of the way and I open my computer to start typing, all the while, watching as the firefighters and medics do their thing. The ironies are laughable: I’m a 9/11 widow writing an offer letter to buy a firehouse with a firefighter as I watch firefighters do their job only feet away.

Jim and I slide the computer back and forth, trying to figure out what details about each of us might be pertinent to the sellers: Our love of the house; Jim’s job as a firefighter, our willingness to clear away things that they have left behind; my architect father who specializes in updating historic libraries; our love of gardening and our intention of maintaining the whole instead of selling off the second lot; Jim’s ability in home renovation projects; his kit plane and love of the workshop.

Our letter needs appeal to the people we know only through their home. Our waiter takes our photo and we add it to the document which I then email to our realtor. I drop a deposit check off at his office on my way home.

Our offer in.

That night, as we tuck into bed, my phone rings.

“They approved your offer! Congratulations!” EJ says.

We lie awake, in shock. That they accepted our offer without letting what certainly would be a heated bidding war to happen seems insane. That night, my emotions swing between terror and excitement, sadness and jubilation. I know that Jim’s enthusiasm will match my kids’ despair in intensity. I am both thrilled to take this first step into a new chapter in my life and reluctant to close the old one. Jim leaves for work early the next morning giving me the weekend alone with the kids to break the news.

“I thought money was tight,” my son says when I tell him the next day. “How can you have enough money to buy another house?”

He has a point. I don’t want to think of my depleted nest egg that will now most certainly depend on selling our house to be replenished. I do my best to explain the finances as I already had for Olivia.

“I will probably need to sell the house when you go to college next year,” I say. “But if I can swing it financially, I will just rent it,” I say.

“I really don’t care what you do after I leave,” he says.

Conversations with 17-year-old boys tend to be short, and he shrugs, disappearing upstairs. I know is words mask his true feelings.

Olivia heads out of town for the weekend to visit her boyfriend, so I am spared the conversation with her for the moment.

We are set to close on June 24th, the day before Jim’s birthday, only 2 weeks away. Because there are no banks involved in the transaction, the time for closing is sped up to whiplash speed.

Landmark approvals
[image error] Landmark office, June 13th, 2016

On Monday, as Jim comes off his shift, we meet at Seattle City Hall, at the Municipal Landmark office almost as soon as it opens. We want to meet with the woman in charge of historically registered buildings in Seattle. We are ushered into a small room where she pushes a thick file of documents across the table. We flip through the file filled with permits and plans submitted by the sellers for the work they planned to do over the years. There are copies of their architectural plans, exterior paint colors, copies of the Historical Board’s approvals. We see, for the first time, copies of the original architectural plans dated 1913 and I immediately start taking photos of each one with my phone. We learn that to make any changes to the exterior of the building, we will need the Historical Board’s approval. This includes paint colors, changes to the roof, balconies, and decks.

I pour over the plans as Jim reads through some of the documents pertaining to the renovations that the previous owners applied for. We discover that a historian, Jim Stevenson has supplied quite a bit of historical information in his bid to have the station historically landmarked. We learn a little bit more about the house.

Jim Stevenson historical detail in Landmark application

When we’re done, we find the office of the city archives, one floor below and are soon opening a huge folder containing the original, hand-drawing renderings of the house, on the old linen vellum that was used in those days for architectural drawings. They are stunning and give every measurement and flourish in

Front Elevation

meticulous, hand-printed detail. Again, I take a photo of each one with my phone, though I’m dying to roll them all up and steal off with them.

The following week, while Jim is at work, I meet with one of the sellers, the wife, who I learn is a designer and has done the plans for the renovations herself. We stand in front of one her drafting tables in the office as she pulls plans out of a large chest. She is a tiny woman, wig slightly askew, but I can tell she is a determined type. I am thrilled to discover she has many of the blueprints of the very drawings I coveted from the archives. She has collected a few other tidbits for us: the book on Seattle Firehouses, by the same Jim Stevenson who applied for the landmark, and his hand-drawn elevation cut out of the house, showing the firefighters and horses and how the firehouse worked. Jim Stevenson’s book contained front elevations and a short history of each fire house in Seattle, but this drawing is not in the book and is ideal for showing the workings of the station in its heyday.

[image error] Side elevation of station in action

Together with her oddly doting realtor, we walk around the house as she explains that she and her husband bought the house in 1974 when the city owned the building and it housed a destructive renter who did some catastrophic renovations such as trying to connect the stairs to the office. The stairs had to be completely rebuilt by her husband. I learn of her plan to have a circular stair go all the way from the ground floor to the attic. I hope my face remains neutral as she tells me this, which, in my mind, is nothing short of insane. She explains that a carpenter spared her husband all the cabinetry work in the kitchen, but that he took over the work in the attic when the contractor wasn’t completing the job to his satisfaction. I’m dying to ask where they slept all those years, given there is no discernable bedroom, but this seems rude. She proudly points out the elaborate array of copper pipes jutting from the new furnace that her husband installed himself and assures me that the radiators throughout the house keep it very toasty in the winter. As I follow her around the house, trying not to stare at her wig, it is hard not to feel sad, realizing that so many of their planned projects didn’t come to fruition. She leaves with the promise of providing the paperwork and the keys to the old Toyota MR2 parked in the driveway, which I envision as a fun project for my son and Jim.

EJ stops by my house the day of closing to drop off the keys. I am dying to dash to the house and run around, but Jim is working until the next day and so I decide to wait for him. That night, Carter and I go out for dinner to our local Vietnamese and after dinner, I get a fortune in my cookie:

Be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.

 

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