We discover a message from the previous owners.

       Today, was a really satisfying day of work at the house for three reasons.  Let me tell you about the first reason.

       Robin came along and began demolishing the piano room. I had her rip out all the wood paneling and the trim moulding.  She discovered that the wall that backs up to the kitchen was re-framed, re-wired, and sheathed with plywood rather than drywall under the paneling.  This will make for a perfect structure to attach the sheetrock to.

       She also discovered the old wallpaper on the plaster walls was in fairly good condition under that paneling.  But the best thing she found was some writing on the wall in the corner where the south wall meets the west wall:
 

        Yep, we found the build date! I had estimated the house to be built in 1875 from photos I found online, but this is the first piece of evidence found during the renovation that indicates that the house is actually fourteen years older than my estimate!
        Rob and I had found a date on the lumber of the second floor addition when we demo'd it three years ago, but it was a date that the lumber was milled. It was in the 1940's and it had the name of the customer who ordered the lumber: Dr. Maxwell Cohen.  This extremely cool message that Robin found is signed by Christine Cohen, the doctors granddaughter.  The house was built in 1861.

First day of work on the house.

      Today my wife Robin came along to the house.  While I was making a concrete pedestal for the new boiler to set on, she emptied out the piano room in anticipation of Robbie hanging all new sheetrock in that room.
      I forgot the camera, so Robin snapped a few pictures with her cellphone.  You can see what a mess the piano room is, as we have been using the table saw and the compound miter saw in there.
I still need to demo the ceiling and rip out the remaining wood paneling.

               Down in the basement, ten bags of concrete mix went quite fast with the electric cement mixer.

        This coming Friday(4/10)  a real big project will begin.  Materials are scheduled to be delivered and work should begin thereafter.  I'm not going to tell you what it is yet though.

        Lastly, I got a bunch of flooring material in for the entranceway and first floor hallway.  Here is a snapshot of some of it.

   

Stay tuned and stay well!  

2020 work season to begin.

      It's nearly the end of March, the weather is warming up, and work will soon begin for the new season.

    There will be some major projects this year, one of which will begin on April 12th, I won't spoil the surprise but it is one that I've been saving up for.

I'll be introducing you all to three new friends of mine: Bob, Mike, and Matt.  In addition to Rob and I we should be making some serious  progress this season.  Stay tuned, and for today I'll leave you with one photo.

Anybody care to guess when this photo was taken?

New Boiler & Oil Tank Delivery

      As I mentioned in my last post to this blog,  I scored a nearly new fuel oil tank. A few days later I completed a deal on a 2017 German made Buderus Logano G215 oil fired four chamber boiler.  It came with a riello burner. I've been told by three different burner techs, that this unit is the top of the line boiler/burner combo. It is supposedly the Mercedes Benz of boilers. 

       For the last few weeks it was a waiting game, as the weather was rotten every weekend. It was either snowing or pouring rain each weekend, so transporting the equipment to Pennsylvania  was not possible.  Yesterday we got a break though.

       I rented a trailer and picked up Robbie, then we headed up to the house. Here's what the trip looked like when we headed out in the morning.

   
      When we got to the house, the first thing we did was to hoist the boiler out of the trailer using a cherry picker (engine crane),  then we unloaded the oil tank and positioned it around the back of the house on the stone patio.

       With the boiler perched on top of a heavy duty furniture dolly, I attached a tow strap to the boiler and connected the strap to my trucks tow hooks. I laid a piece of 3/4" plywood over the stairs that lead down to the basement, and after making Robbie very nervous as we pushed the boiler over the edge, I then lowered it slowly by driving the truck forward toward the stairs.  Robbie guided me slowly and made sure the boiler went straight. After a nervous few minutes, the boiler was on the basement floor.

   

 

   
    Finally, we pushed the boiler over to where it will reside in the basement.  Next month I have a HVAC tech coming over to hook it up and  plumb it to the radiators.  Heat in the house? What a concept.

 

Merry Christmas.

I forgot to post a photo of the house on Christmas.  I had lights on it for the holiday season, probably the first time she was lit up in a long while.

Happy Holidays. 

As you might have guessed, it is winter here in Pennsylvania and all work on the house has come to a halt. I did however obtain a nearly new above ground fuel oil tank and a roll of copper fuel line for the house two weeks ago,  and I'm just about to pull the trigger on a new boiler as well. 

This means that we will potentially have heat in the house and be able to work year round(at least inside) in 2020!

As for today, the only thing I have to share is a pair of then and now photos of the Roebling Bridge.
The older one was taken from the NY side of the Delaware river and you can see the house in the background.  The newer photo was taken last month from my front yard.

    This post could have happened weeks ago, but I hesitated and gave it a great deal of thought first. My family and friends said not to mention it to anybody, and initially I thought they were right.  However, I decided to take pictures and share what happened last month. I figured that since I did everything correctly and I documented and photographed the procedure, that I may as well show it.

    This may help other people who encounter the same thing, and it may save them a few thousand dollars.  So, here it is: While digging along the north side of the house's foundation to seal up a porous spot in the stone, Rob and I discovered an old in ground fuel oil tank.

      Now, everyone has heard the horror stories about in ground tanks and how they leak and have to be removed by hazardous material crews, and if they have leaked into the ground, that the DEC must be contacted and a costly cleanup will ensue. Well, those were my fears when we first uncovered the tank.  I looked online and found examples where this had cost home owners between $2000 - $4000 if the tank did not leak and from $10,000 - $90,000 if it did depending on the scope of contamination!

     Dreading the worst, we first stuck a long wooden rod down into the tank to see if it was empty. To my surprise the tank was still holding oil, as it came up wet with red fuel on the first 24 inches of the stick.  The first order of measure was to pump it dry. It took two trips, and SIX 55-gallon drums to remove all 300 gallons of fuel from the tank. The fuel was then pumped into my home tank and my sons home tank, we are currently heating our homes for free so far this season.  That alone saved me nearly $500 in fuel oil costs.

     I then assumed that since the tank had held all that oil for all those years, that it was most likely intact and had not leaked, so I researched a process known as oil tank "abandoning" where the tank remains in the ground, but the top is cut open, the inside is cleaned out and then the tank is filled with sand or gravel.  This is the approach I followed but with one small difference, we did not use sand OR gravel to fill it.

     Here you can see the tank as we discovered it:

After pumping it dry, I used a reciprocating saw to open the top of the tank:

Rob wiped and cleaned out the inside of the tank using rags and old t-shirts:

Once the inside was clean and dry, I went to  home depot and purchased two pallets (84 bags) of  concrete (80 lb bags).
   

Remember a few post ago I showed the cement mixer that was in the kitchen? Well we mixed all the concrete and filled the empty tank:
   

The reason we filled it with concrete was because we did not want ground water from heavy rains to enter the tank through the soil and fill the tank via  porous sand or gravel.  With concrete the tank is essentially just a very large rock below the ground now. 

Total cost for this tank abandonment project was $680  which includes Robs labor and the cost of the cement mixer which I can use again in future projects.