My House - the 1950's

My last post about the history of my house was here http://my1929tudor.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-house-1940s.html where I gave you the ups and downs of the 1940's.  Onward, now to the 1950's.

1950:  Nettie is now the school cafeteria manager at Travis Elementary.

1951:  This year, when the City Directory was published, Nettie is listed as a widow.  Also notably her employment is not listed.  I don't know if she was in between jobs at the time, or if its just a printing error, because in

1952:  Nettie is listed as working as a dietician.  I don't know if she was doing that work for the school, or for someone else.

1953-54:  Nettie continues to live in the house.  Nopw she's working as the lunch room manager for Crockett School.

May 31, 1953:  I found a newspaper article this date, that gave news of an upcoming Sunday tea, where a bridal engagement will be announced.  The bride-elect, Doris, is listed as living in my house.  I don't know who she is... but she's marrying Ed.  It seems a bit anti-climatic to announce the upcoming tea, during which an engagement is going to be annnouced... er, so, now we already know, right?  I'm confused!  The article says that Miss Glenys (the sister of Doris the bride-elect) will be "registering" the tea party guests.  And it says an "old fashioned bridal bouquet of pink and yellow carnations will center the tea table, and the table will be covered with an aqua table cloth."  The wedding date is set for August 15th.  Here is a photo of Doris:

1955-56:  Netie must love the schools, because she's changed jobs again, but she's still doing school food.  She's the Lunch Room Engineer for the Board of Education! 

1957-1964:  She's back at Crocket, working in the lunch room.  Maybe back then all the school cafeteria positions were on some type of rotation...  I'll bet her feet are tired.

1965:  Par-tay!  Nettie retired this year.

1966-1975:  Not much news listed anymore; the newspaper formats were changing.  But in 1975 the City Directory became a telephone book -- Nettie got a phone!  Her number was 321-3219.  I'd like to ring her up...

Pocket Door - Out

My office internet has been down, so I haven't been posting... (far too busy at home to blog - must blog at work - ha!)

I talked through the pocket door idea with Red and reluctantly concluded that a pocket door is a bigger project than I want to take on.  The type of construction of my walls, combined with having to relocate electrical, and topped off -- so to speak -- with the need to install a header was just too much.

So now I am back to either an oversized traditional hinged door, or a barn door style.  Here are a couple of photographs of the barn door styles:

Photos courtesy of www.BarnDoorHardware.com

I could still make my own door -- in a traditional style that matches the other doors in the house but wider -- or I could do a rustic barn door style.  I could have one large door, or I could have two narrower doors where one slides left and one slides to the right...

Because I have a light switch and an outlet just 4-5 inches away from the door frame, I would need enough track to allow the door to go all the way past those to have access to them; but that doesn't seem like a huge deal.  It would also bump into my row of 5 clothes hooks, but I think I could put 2 of the hooks on the door itself, and/or move the hooks closer to one another.  A less attractive option would be to reduce the number of hooks from 5 to 3, but if you could see what heavy use they get you'd agree: not optimal.

I found http://www.barndoorhardware.com/ which has a mind-blowing selection of styles and types and lots of fun photos of doors in place to help you dream. 

Right now I am leaning towards the barn door style over the traditional hinged door style.  What do you think?  Which do you like?

Barrel in Place

Here's the newly painted barrel in place...

Blends in nicely!  Maybe I'll paint the concrete pad and cement blocks too...

Interior Door Trim and Door Frames

SATURDAY

This weekend the interior door trim and door frame project got underway in earnest.  I was so excited to begin that I could hardly relax and have morning coffee with Red. I traded vehicles with him for the day, and headed out to Home Depot.  To those of you who gave me Home Depot gift cards for my birthday -- thank you!  This is what they purchased....

As an aside, Home Depot only had half of their overhead lights on -- I presume to conserve energy since it's so hot and the electric grid is continually threatened -- but it lent itself to a very different shopping atmosphere... sort of nice...

I finished removing the door trim off the outside of the bedroom door, and was left with the door frame -- entirely freestanding.  All that had been holding it in place and plumb was the trim!  I cannot conceive how it was still plumb, but it was. I guess that is a testament to the sturdiness of my house despite many boards appearing to have been cut with a hatchet...

I carefully removed the door frame intact and stabilized the corners and legs for transport.  At this point I hoped to use it as a pattern for my new frame; size, height, door hardware placement, etc.

Here is the "before" photo of the outside of the bedroom door.  I know -- and I agree -- it doesn't look bad enough here that replacement is required.  But what the photo doesn't show is the just ghastly amount of crusty old paint and painted caulk that is making the whole structure a lumpy, formless goo. 

And here is what it looks like now:

The doorway is positively huge!  It's larger than the door I took down by a good 6 inches in width.  Red and I spent quite a bit of time Saturday afternoon discussing building the opening up to fit the smaller door.  Eventually the obvious occured to him (it never did to me...) and he asked,

"When are you going to build the new door?" 

Me:  Um, sometime when it isn't 110 degrees outside when I'm teaching myself a new project?

Red:  Why don't you just build a larger door, to fit this opening, rather than make the opening smaller?

Me:  Silent stare.  Oh.  Yes, why don't I?

We had both remarked earlier how nice the larger door frame looks -- how spacious it feels.  So why would I enclose that again?  Hmmm.  I'll have to think about that.  And with that, we were off to dinner.

SUNDAY

Sunday morning over coffee I thought about what Red said about making a custom door to fit. I also thought about how spacious the room feels without a door. And then the lightbulb came on: a pocket door! My walls are certainly thick enough (hollow enough) accomodate the hardware and door.  I turned this idea over in my mind during most of the day while I worked...

Immediately adjacent to the door (but not visible in the photograph above) is a little* closet that I use for my vacuum and cleaning supplies.  The trim from both of the doors was compromised in the corner...

It became readily apparent that in working on the bedroom door, I'd need to remove the trim (and about 3 tubes of caulk) from the adjoining cleaning closet door.

Closet door trim removed

That helped me see things more clearly, but I continued and took the door off in anticipation of removing the frame.  This door frame, like the first one, also was not secured by anything other than the door trim.  It did however have a couple of "shims" wedged in.  Not actually attached, mind you, but in place.

Again, utter amazement that the door frame is still plumb.

Where I removed the frame from the bedroom door, there was some goopy white paint on the flooring as well as quite a build up of floor wax and polyeurathane, forming a pretty high ridge. I got my sander and gave it an initial clean up -- it will need more...

"Before"

Right side "after"

Left side "after"

 

Sunday evening I did some online research on pocket doors -- pros and cons and what quality issues to watch for, and watched a couple of installation videos.  I'm fairly certain it's the route I want to go.  Installation would require me to remove a few feet of sheetrock, but I am okay with that.  I looked at pocket doors at Home Depot, but am going to look elsewhere; I wasn't pleased with what they offered.  I was going to do some online searches today (Monday) but since I neglected to take measurements this morning it will have to wait.

The bummer is, until I think this part through, I'm sort of at a standstill on this project unless I want to demo more door frames before this one is resolved... and I do not.  I am already sleeping with a compressor in my bedroom (who else do you know who does that?), and lots of construction tools etc. are in my guest room.  Probably best not to not go completely crazy before I finish the first one...

More updates to come!

*Mostly it's "little" because there is an old furnace chimney coming up from the crawlspace that hogs most of the closet space.  Word on the street is that every house in the area has one, and it has asbestos in it.  Consequently they have been left alone for the most part.  Mine is wallpapered!  Makes me laugh.  It also makes me want to rip it out. 

Slight Rain Barrel Detour...

Before I delve into what I expect will be a lengthy post recapping this weekend's interior trim and door frame project... a quick post about some rain barrel progress...

I reached a stand-still this weekend on the inside project, and in my endeavor to keep moving I decided to pour the second (of three) rain barrel pads.  This one is on the front of my carport. 

A wee bit precarious

It was a little trickier to frame and level the form due to obstacles; there was some old concrete from when they poured my carport that I guess had oozed out between the form planks.  There was a tree root which interfered with leveling... and there was a fence corner where my fence juts out to allow space for a neighbor's tree.  The good news is, I was still able to use the form from the first pad that I poured.  I had to notch out for the tree root, and it took a lot more work to get it level than the first one.

After I got it framed and stabilized, I placed the criss-cross of rebar in the middle, and went to Home Depot and bought 3 - 60 pound bags of concrete.  Three bags is what the last form took; in fact I had extra -- but as it turns out, I should have bought 4 for this form.  Alas. 

I mixed it up in my favorite tangerine orange wheel barrow and heaved it into the form, smoothed it out, and confirmed I was all still level -- the form and the resulting concrete, since it fell below the form frame.

Then I got ambitious and decided to paint this barrel and the one on the back corner of my carport (both are bright blue recycled food containers).  First I removed all the adhesive labels -- which pulled off dreamily easily -- have you ever bought a clay pot where the price tag was on the top lip and it shreds when you try to remove?  Hello?  Why don't they put those on the bottom?  Ugh! 

Then I scrubbed down both barrels with a 1:1 mixture of vinegar and water to remove the dirt.  I had some primer (Kilz 1-2-3 Professional) left over from my culvert planters* so I put a coat of that on both barrels and while that dried I headed to Home Depot for some terra cotta colored spray paint.  Which they did not have.  They had something called "cinnamon" but it wasn't quite right.  I ended up with sort of a khaki color -- it's fine.  It may even be better...

I figure I can always paint over it if I change my mind.  It is recommended that I apply 2 coats of polyurathane over the final color.  I haven't done that yet.  But may I just say -- yowser! what a shockingly huge improvement over that blinding blue!

At some point maybe I'll get crazy and do a colorful design.  Here are a couple photos of some barrels I found online...

Photo courtesy of Cobb County Watershed Stewardship Program, Cobb County, Georgia

But as I've learned -- first with the culvert project and now with these -- it's a lot more surface area than you think it is when you begin painting!  Ha ha  So... maybe not.

At any rate, I'll look forward to the pad setting up and getting the newly painted barrel back in place.  It will sure look better looking down my driveway from the street too!  I have one left to do -- the one on the front corner of my house.  That barrel just emptied yesterday.  (That leaves me just two partial barrels of water left.  C'mon, rain!)

*The last of which you can see in the background of the photo above -- I can't decide where to put it, and until I decide where to put it I can't determine final paint color...so there it waits, primed...