This Old Erie House

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED

2007-04-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

This blog has moved to This Old Erie House.

It Won't Be Long Now

2007-04-17T20:05:00.000-04:00

For those of us in the North East, waiting for spring to arrive starts to wear on our good nature. A taste of what is to come.

Click To Play

Stories to Tell

2007-04-16T02:49:00.000-04:00

We often walk in the area cemeteries. There is some beautiful artwork and stained glass on some of the buildings. The grave markers have many stories to tell.

I took these pictures on my last walk in the Erie Cemetery. I’m thinking of looking up the story of the first grave marker. I often go to the library for research and next time I’ll try and find out where the father and 3-year-old son drowned. Click on picture for slideshow.

Also, check out my new blog. It is still under construction but I'm adding a few things as I go, tweaking and looking for content to fill the pages I've created. Soon I'll retire this one. My new blog http://www.thisolderiehouse.com

Great Blogger Name

2007-04-03T12:51:00.000-04:00

(This is mostly for Erie area readers that perhaps haven't seen the houseblogs.net blogroll.)

I was browsing through the Houseblogs.com blogroll and found one that made me laugh. The name is great. This Old Crack House It's a great blog, with a great name. It says under the headline, From log house to farmhouse. Farmhouse to townhouse. Townhouse to apartment house. Apartment house to crack house. Crack house to our house. Our house to our home.

If you follow her link to "My Web Page" on the right side bar you'll see lots of great pictures of their Dayton,OH home.

I wish the originally beautiful, historic homes turned "multi-family" apartments and frat houses in our area would get taken over by families like this one and restored back to what they were meant to be. I hate seeing the mutilation of Erie's great old houses by greedy landlords just to make a few bucks. There aren't many of the grand houses left. And if you restored one in the city of Erie, they'd tax you right out of it. Thank goodness for the Watson-Curtze Mansion Museum. At least Erie will have that.

Some Library Research, Digging Through History

2007-04-03T02:08:00.000-04:00

I spent a few hours at the library recently researching the city directories, obits, yearbooks etc. I'm gathering information for my house's scrapbook that someday I will pass on to new owners. Hopefully, the new people will love this house, too.

I'm trying to be careful with my posts about the family as 3 of the sisters are still alive but we haven't had contact with them. There are a lot of questions, though, I'd love to ask them but for now, I won't bother them. They took it personally when we offered less than the asking price. They lived here all of their lives so they must not have known about negotiating prices. They thought the house was worth much more, but that was understandable with all the memories tied up here. They are up there in their years and they no longer could care for the place. There was and is a lot of labor involved in maintaining an old house. It was getting too much for them. They moved to a modern apartment.

When we bought the house, some of our neighbors told us some about what they knew of the former owners. There were 5 sisters and one brother born to the previous owners. None of the children ever married and all but one of them lived here their whole lives until we bought the house. That struck me odd.

The previous owners were the first family to occupy the house other than the builder. Our house was built in 1917 and the husband and wife moved into the house around 1920. They had a son about 1919. So that was my quest at the library. Find out about the son, first.

I knew the mother had died and found her obit. I found the son's name as having died previously in 1925. I was surprised at the date. I looked up his obit. He was only 6 years old. Somehow I had built a connection to these former owners and seeing that almost made me cry. He died in St Vincent hospital and was going to have a quarantined funeral. When people said he never married I assumed he was much older when he died. I cannot imagine the sorrow of losing someone at such an innocent age and I wonder what he died of.

The library announced they were closing so I had to leave. I'm going to return to look up the newspaper microfilm and see if I can find out what he died of or what kind of diseases happened to be going around at the time.

Procrastinator

2007-03-31T10:57:00.000-04:00

Since returning from my California vacation I haven't done anything to the house except my normal housecleaning. Once you clean up the mess (which I always do before a vacation) you hate to start working and creating another mess.

But I have been busy. I launched my new personal website that I'm pretty pleased with. I'm going to set up another one like it for this blog. It should go a lot faster now that I kind of know what I am doing. With the new website, my pictures and blog will be together and organized with pages of video, also. Which reminds me that I promised a video on applying shellac. I hope I can deliver.

But for now, at least today, it isn't raining or snowing and the temperature isn't freezing and you know what that means.....see ya on the water fishing!

Colonnade, China or Book Shelf? (pics)

2007-03-19T10:23:00.000-04:00

Click here to my new posting website. (I'm still in transition remaking my blog)

My Family's Antique Cookie Cutters (pics)

2007-03-16T16:30:00.000-04:00

I'm in transition to Wordpress on my own website. I'll be linking to it for new posts.

Cookie Cutters

Roto Rooter Rescue

2007-03-13T00:28:00.000-04:00

(See previous entry) My husband came home this evening and called Rotor Rooter and they came out in just a couple of hours. They kept us informed on their progress to our house with two different phone calls. That was nice as we could do other things and not just be on the look out for them to arrive.

From the sound of things, we weren't the only ones having this problem with the basement drain today.

The water is all gone but I'll still have the cleanup tomorrow. I'll probably be throwing out the area rugs we had down there. I'd just as soon have exposed cement anyways. It would be easier to keep clean. Plus the rugs were a lint trap near the dryer and hair magnet from our lounging cats.

Even though it costs a lot to have these guys come out, I can't imagine having to have to auger the drains ourselves even if we had the equipment. Yuk!

The Black Lagoon

2007-03-12T18:22:00.001-04:00

We haven't been home from our vacation for 2 days and something goes wrong in the house. I'm was getting all the laundry done from our trip and was just greeted with black water standing in part of our basement. The basement drain isn't working. In fact, I can pretty much swear the water was coming up from the drain....and from the bottom of an old toilet that hasn't been used in 7 years.

At first I thought the toilet was leaking along the bottom. I tried to turn off the water and couldn't budge the faucet. I took a vice grips to it and managed to turn it slightly. Either it is already off or it is permanently fused from non use. But there is no water in the inside of the bowl of the toilet so that means it is coming from under the ground and backing up out of the bottom of the toilet and floor drain.

It is black, like ink, and on the edge is movement. I looked closer and saw little worm-like things moving. Maggots? I can't smell anything, thank goodness, because I'm so miserably sick with a bad cold. I've been complaining about my cold but now I think my cold is a blessing!

I just phoned my husband at work to give him the news. I guess it could have been worse and happened while we were gone. At least I can move things to higher ground as the water is rising. Or I could have come home to a copper caper like what happened to my sister's house in Pittsburgh. Someone broke in (destroyed 2 antique doors to do it) and stripped all the copper pipes and even the water meter out of her house and left the water gushing into the basement. Luckily, her floor drain worked.

I Want to Live in Santa Barbara (pics)

2007-03-08T10:45:00.000-05:00

Santa Barbara was just another city to me until my sister guided my husband and I to a walking tour of the main parts of the city. The area is full of outdoor cafes, brick and tile pavers, hidden nooks and alleys that are so clean it is like Disney World. There is a distinct Spanish/Mediterranean flavor to the architecture. The little shops are so awesome! The weather was 81 degrees. The pier was even better than all the ones I've been to in San Francisco.

We saw a house for sale, a real dive and tiny, for over $700,000. A little out of my price range, ha. You could get a mansion in Erie for that! I was told Oprah has a house in the area of Santa Barbara.

We saw a homeless-looking guy on a side street with a bike packed to the gills with his things. He looked very much like Ed Begley Jr. Hmmmm, I guess it is possible he's researching a part for a movie but then I'm pretty sure he is just a homeless guy. My sister and her husband have celebrity sitings all the time, just not this time. Oh, well. If I was going to be a homeless person, I wouldn't do it in Erie where the weather is so cold. I'd hitch hike to Santa Barbara and sleep on the beach. Even if you had to go through the garbage, it would at least be gourmet.

My Walls Whispered Today

2007-02-22T13:06:00.000-05:00

IF WALLS COULD TALK-
Maybe it wasn't outright talking but my walls said something today. I was cleaning the kitchen cabinets (see pic) and on the front ledge I found a 2-inch wide indented area that immediately made me think of the old meat grinder my mother used so long ago. It would clamp on like a vise grip to the edge of a table or counter. We have lived here 7 years now and I never noticed it before. These little things become a bit exciting to those of us who would have loved to live in the years before our time. I can now picture that meat grinder working away with the old-fashioned wood stove burning and the smell of yeast bread in the oven.

Keep It Original, But I Want That!

2007-02-19T09:19:00.000-05:00

I am a person that totally appreciates keeping things original in an old house unless it can't be repaired or brought back to life. For about 6 years I have posted comments on different message boards and blogs how I feel about it.

The first time I had to eat my words was when we decided we had to put in a patio door and deck in order to have access to the back yard, as small as it is.

Second, is when I had to strip the old finish off of the woodwork because the top layer was peeling like dried egg whites (previous owner top coated shellac with old wax on it with water-based I conclude). I replaced it with the same original material, shellac, but went darker.

Our upstairs has original heart pine woodwork, never painted in all of its 90 years (except the bathroom). I want to redecorate the bedroom into a cottage style but the yellowish, brown color of the woodwork, though beautiful, doesn't look good with the whites, creams and blues I want. The woodwork would look really nice a cream color.

The woodwork needs to be sanded down because of the same egg-white peeling problem the downstairs had. Being it has to be stripped someday anyway because of this peeling, I'm thinking I may become the person I despise the most, the person that paints over original wood (heart pine, am I crazy?). I'm not having too much problem with this, because there is shellac underneath that would make stripping the paint off later with a heat gun quite easy. If I do this, I'll be such a hypocrite.

Victorian Mansion Gone Bad

2007-02-15T02:36:00.000-05:00

I was going through some vacation photos from a few years ago and came across this one from Williamsport, PA. They had wonderful Victorian mansions everywhere. It was wonderful to walk along the streets. Then we came upon this monstrosity. What the heck! Bungled, bungled, bungled. Yes, that front is attached to the back house. Whoever did this should be tarred and feathered, in my humbled opinion.

Answering Shellac Question-pics

2007-02-12T10:56:00.000-05:00

I received this comment regarding this post. (partial comment)

I have a 100 year old house that has Mahogany woodwork throughout. I am trying to replicate the finish which was shellac. I am not sure if is was tinted or garnet or just age. It has a very deep red wine look to it, similar to your oak.

I'm working on some woodwork now using the dewaxed, garnet shellac and I'll try to post video of my process. I'm not an expert but I've learned to do it with good results. If I could find free videos of the process, I'd link to them but I can't find any. They all want you to buy their videos or books. Mine won't be expertly produced but for the beginner who just want to see how it can be done, it will serve that purpose (and they are free.)

To start, I'm posting a photo of my mixed garnet shellac in a plastic jar with true daylight (and snow) behind it. [Also is the color of the shellac on my white oak woodwork in normal daylight lighting in the room. The wood has no dyes or stains, just garnet shellac.] I tilted the jar (see photo) and took the picture. As you can see, the color looks very yellow in the lighter areas. As it gets down to the heavier areas it turns a color with more red tones (garnet). When you apply the first coats, it looks yellowish. But if you keep applying coats, you can build up to the garnet color. How many coats? It depends on the color of your wood and how thick you made the shellac. You'll probably have to order the garnet shellac over the internet in flake form and mix your own. They have shellac dyes, also that can achieve similar colors with less coats. But the multiple coats builds the beautiful depth. If the color you are looking for is one of the shades in the jar, then garnet shellac may be what you are looking for. It will take multiple posts to explain working with shellac.

Video-Around Erie

2007-02-08T17:17:00.000-05:00

I took this video last weekend. For those of you from the Houseblogs.net that may be viewing this, I just wanted you to see what it is like during winter in our little city. It can be fun if you like winter sports. Erie has many Victorian and Crafstman houses. The older houses sell pretty cheap but the taxes are pretty high in the City of Erie. But if you want to find an otherwise cheap area to live and restore a house, Erie is it!
Video below has no sound.

Blip.tv

Picture of Medium Sheen Waterlox on Oak

2007-02-03T01:33:00.000-05:00

Here is a picture of how shiny the "medium sheen" Original Waterlox turned out on my white oak woodwork. I have multiple coats of the dewaxed, garnet shellac first to build up the color and then 3 hand rubbed coats of the Waterlox Original. It was still too shiny, I thought. So I have added another coat with some flattening agent added to it that I haven't taken a picture of yet. I'll take pictures of the finished product when I'm done.

Finishing Wood

2007-02-02T00:28:00.000-05:00

I have been pondering what finish to put on the oak floors. I bought a can of Waterlox back in 2005 and it has been sitting in the back of the refrigerator
since then. It has been opened and a little of it used so I must have
tested it on something but I don't remember it (so many projects going
on at once!) I'm lucky it is still good and didn't gel up. Maybe keeping
it in the refrigerator and that it had its metal plug replaced under
the cap has kept it fresh.

I have half my living room oak woodwork finished in several coatings of dewaxed garnet shellac. I decided to go over the top of it with the Waterlox
I have. I have the Original "medium sheen". I took extra fine steel
wool over the shellac to make sure it will get a good bond. It is so
easy to put on. It is just like rubbing baby oil on the wood! But is
does smell and doesn't dry for several hours. I had gotten used to the
smell but when my husband came home he immediately asked what that smell was.

The "medium sheen" was too shiny for oak to suit my taste. I added a little Shellac Flatt to the Waterlox on the final coat and am pleased. In a few days when it's cured, I'm going to rub some "dark oak" Black Bison Wax on it to give that satin sheen (not shine).

The problem with doing the floors with Waterlox will be
the dry time. I'm going to have to do small sections of the floor at a
time so we can step around it. Shellac would have been so much easier
but it has its drawbacks. Occasional cat accidents (hairballs) ruins
the finish. An area rug over the shellac would probably stick to it in
the summer humidity. You can see what a mess the shellac turned into when the old carpet was pulled up. The foam pad had melted into it so I had to
strip it. See pictures here.
So Waterlox it will be, one small section at a time.

Please Make It Stop! (pic)

2007-01-31T01:04:00.000-05:00

We complain if it doesn't snow (global warming!!) and then we complain when it does, oh, that's global warming, too?

My husband came home in what I call a "blizzard". I wasn't raised in these parts (California girl) so every time
a little snow falls I think I need to stay in the house. He looked
outside and my dear husband, born and raised here in Erie, asked if I
wanted to take a nighttime walk in the snow (blizzard).

Oh, this brought back a fond memory of a midnight blizzard walk when we
lived, for a short time, in the Chicago area (Crystal Lake). It was so
cold that night (about zero degrees) that the moisture in the air froze
into bright little crystals and night had turned bright like day with
twinkling stardust everywhere. I took that walk so bundled up it was
hard to move. The moisture of my breath froze on my neck scarf that was
covering my face.

It was no where near that cold tonight but it
was extra bright out for being so late. The snow was piling up fast. It
was nice to bundle up and feel the cold snow hit my face and cause
frostbite. Really, it was fun and I got my fingers out of my gloves long
enough to snap this photo. Actually, it really was much snowier and
deeper than the picture portrays. Pictures lie with fish size and snow
depth. :-)

Free Historic Home Repair Videos-Interesting

2007-01-29T23:47:00.000-05:00

I'm always searching for free home improvement videos. If you like looking at "how-to" videos you may want to check these guys out. It is very interesting how they repaired some antique beams and clapboards, etc. These may give someone an idea of how to attempt some of these things. See their link below. It's free, when you get to their site, just click on their links.

o Timber Repairs
o Exterior Wood 1, Clapboard Repair
o Exterior Painting 4: Surface Prep, Wet Abrasive Scrub
o Exterior Painting 2: Steam Paint Removal
o Exerior Painting 3: Ground Protection, Joint Cleaning
o Steam Paint Removal, testing
.
http://historichomeworks.phovi.com/

Anyone Use Waterlox On Their Floors?

2007-01-25T11:52:00.000-05:00

Soon I'll have to order a finish for my stripped oak floors. Originally they were shellac but I couldn't save it as the foam under the 50(?)-year-old carpet was ground into it in a lot of places. I have cats and on occasion they "yak-up" on the wood floors so I'm thinking I may use something else.

I think Waterlox is suppose hold up better than shellac. I don't like polyurethane floors. My shellac floors and stairs were not very slippery and that is the other big issue.

Anyone have Waterlox floors, are they slippery? Are they holding up well to foot traffic?

My Paslode Nailer is Worth the Price

2007-01-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

I was a bit scared about nailing that oak trim back on the newel post as I thought it may split being it is very hard and old. I was going to drill little, tiny holes first and then use finish nails but the minute drill bit I bought was still a hair too big for the finish nails.

I decided to try my Paslode cordless, angled, finish nailer that I bought a few years ago and had used on the old oak door trim in the dining room without any splitting. I hadn't used it in several months and after multiple false trigger pulls (and my husband walking away from holding the trim after several negative attempts to shoot the nails) I changed the fuel cell, charged the battery and got it working again. It's always fun to try and lure your helper back after so many "wait a minute, let me try it again, I think its working now" attempts.

It was really hard for my husband to hold the pieces level while I was pushing down on the gun and angling it upwards into the trim in order for the nail gun to fire. But we managed to get it on straight and most of the nails don't even need to be countersunk. I don't know how we would of gotten it on there straight hitting it with a hammer. The best part was that these nails didn't split that super-hard, antique oak trim.

I'll have to paint the silver-colored nails and coat them with shellac so they don't show. This nail gun was one of my more expensive tool purchases but I will be using it a lot, what a time saver! They are a bit tempermental, though. Mine jammed last year and I had to take it in to be fixed. They were able to pull the jammed nails out and the repair shop didn't even charge me a cent. That's a first!

See all of my recent posts here.
See the projects I have completed at this link My Website.
Houseblogs.net
Oldhouses.com

Newel Post Getting Its Crown-Finally

2007-01-20T02:15:00.000-05:00

I started the staircase, lets just say it was over 4 years ago and leave it at that. Nothing is so boring as stripping those staircases. You never get done. And I didn't finish it yet. But the stair railings are down to the last step. I just need to wax them. The garnet shellac has been applied and smoothed for the last time and now I'm ready to take my #0000 steel wool and apply my dark wax. It smells so good!

I waxed the top part of the newel post already because I need to put the trim back on the top. I don't know what the actual name is for it, but I refer to the trim as the "crown". I took it off when I stripped the stairs because I read that the builder often put the house's original blueprints down inside the newel post. I needed to take that top part off and the crown hid the joint between the pieces. But mine was empty. I hope I don't split the wood nailing it back on there. I'm excited getting that piece back on there where it belongs after all this time.

note* Notice the window trim behind the newel post in the picture is too dark. That was one of my first projects when we moved in. I stained it too dark and used a different finish, I don't even recall what I used for that, possibly a poly. But it is way too dark. I learned from it. I'll redo that at some point.

The Tiffany Exhibit at Carnegie Was Fabulous

2007-01-20T01:35:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday (Jan 13th) my husband treated me to a day in Pittsburgh to visit the Tiffany Gallery that ran through last Monday at the Carnegie Museum of Art. I was so impressed with the color. The depth of color of the glass just takes your breath away. Printed pictures just can not capture it. There were paintings by Louis Comfort Tiffany, too. I didn't know he was such a good painter. The jewelry, glass and metal work was so beautiful. He definetly had good taste and demanded quality. There was a large floor lamp that looked like an outdoor light post with the most beautiful metal and glass work on it. You should really go and see his work if the exhibit comes to a museum near you.

At Carnegie they still have some of the Tiffany desk sets there until April 29th. Also in the museum was Rembrandt's etchings through Feb 11th. You can see the schedule at the above link. What a great day trip it is.

You could take pictures in the other parts of the museum if you didn't use it for the internet or to be published, but they didn't let you take pictures in the gallery where the Tiffany exhibit was. I'm glad I asked before I whipped my camera out. There was security everywhere. It would have ruined my day to be strong-armed out of there.

Literal Pain in the Butt and Crossword Puzzles

2007-01-18T19:04:00.000-05:00

Now and again I get this pain in the buttocks. Down deep, stabbing pain. I don't know from one step to the next if I'll practically faint from the pain or will be perfectly all right. It can be gone as fast as it came. I think it is Sciatica. But by the time I make a doctors appointment it is gone. I look like Igor, dragging my leg behind me.

This gives me that great opportunity to blog, do crossword puzzles, you know, be lazy. When I'm blogging, I'm not working on the house.

I got a Dell crossword puzzle book for Christmas. It has a variety of puzzles, easy to hard. I have gotten 1/2 through the book and have now resorted to tearing the answer page out from the back, crossing out the puzzle answers of the ones I've already done and having the answer there right next to the puzzle I'm doing. It is cheating but it is faster that way. I'm no longer going to stress over a 3 letter word for Lincoln's bill: slang. I looked at the answer and I just didn't get it. I started to think mabye it was talking about Lincoln, a type of car, it had fins in the rear in the olden days. So I asked my husband, just to make me feel better (I knew he wouldn't get it either). He said, "Fin". I was so frustrated, I didn't want him to know the answer. "How do you know that?! How would I know that? I never heard of that before, dog gone it!! Why would anyone call it a fin?". Even cheating with the answers haven't stopped the stress.

See all of my recent posts here.
See the projects I have completed at this link My Website.
Houseblogs.net
Oldhouses.com