Wednesday, July 31, 2013


 

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE AUGUST 2013
A question posed by a reader to the "Ask the Expert" column.
In "Ask the Expert," (I allus referred to it as "Axe the Eggspurt"), I shared the weekly forum with several other columnists, all contractors, some with a less developed sense of the prosaic than myself. Why Linda Calliouette (psic) let me write for her at all, I dunno. Hey Linda! Let's get a drink! I don't care who you're married to!
E.B. White spinning again..







DETERMINING ORIGINAL PAINT SCHEMES ON QUEEN ANNE STRUCTURES
(AND CHOOSING WISELY)


My husband and I just bought a Queen Anne Victorian house in a historic district and the exterior is in need a of new coat of paint. We want to paint it in historically accurate hues. What's the best resources to turn to to make this decision? Thanks in advance!

To which I replied:

Queen Anne style homes are sometimes referred to as “Painted Ladies,” as they’re original paint schemes were often multi-hued. We at CM Construction paint a lot of these, as they are quite numerous in downtown Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter. The clapboard siding is often one color, window sashes another, and fishscale shingles a third. Accent colors are often used on window trim, corner medallions, and the fancier parts of porch column turnings. Keep in mind that this is a rather simplistic explanation, and that some homes have much more elaborate color schemes.

There are a number of ways to determine what is right for your own home. The first thing to do is to drive around your local historic district and see what other people have done to their Queen Annes. Treatments of these structures range from a simple monochrome to vivid multi-hues; your own tastes will determine the scope you want to use. The places for accents I mentioned above are the most common, and certain rules are universal.

Foundation brick, if unpainted, should remain unpainted. This is true of all brick; paint will cause brick to fail earlier than it would normally due to moisture retention. If the foundation brick is painted a strange color, it should either be stripped or be painted brick red.  Original sheet metal porch roofs are nearly always painted brick red (ironic, don’t you think?), though they are seldom visible from the street. Wood porch floors are usually a light gray and porch ceilings were often painted sky blue back in the day. This is said to deter wasps from building nests there.

There are several good books on the subject of painting Queen Anne homes, including an excellent pictorial series called “America’s Painted Ladies.” Perusing these will give you a great overview and will narrow your choices to what you want and what looks good versus what is too gaudy for your tastes. Keep in mind this rule; just because you can add more tiers to your paint schedule doesn’t mean you should.

We at CM Construction often do historic preservation as opposed to restoration, and that requires a lot of research into original structure, field archaeology, and investigation of original paint colors. There are high-priced companies that do this as well, but I learned to do it myself over twenty years ago.

My favorite method is to choose a number of places where differing colors might have been used (see the first paragraph for which components to test) and using sandpaper, bring spots on those components down to bare wood. It’s best to start with 80 grit and work to higher numbered, finer grits successively, ending with 220. Using an oscillating or ¼ sheet sander (not a belt sander) sand a circular spot about the size of a quarter, and once bare wood is reached, concentrate on hand-sanding the edges of the paint that surround that circle. You’ll want to feather those edges to create a slightly angled shallow divot; this will expose many tiny layers of old paint. The final step is to use a magnifying glass or jeweler’s loupe to examine those layers up close. Wetting the spot will help to bring out the colors. You’ll be amazed at the information gleaned from examining these layers, and trust me, one of the middle levels of paint will undoubtedly be a light green, which was extremely popular in the 1950s. Everything was painted Institutional Green back then.

Ick.

Once the colors have been decided upon, the slight divots can be skimmed and sanded and no one will know better. But if it was me, I’d varnish one of these sections and leave it as a window on the past.

Then you can paint. Keep in mind that painting is 70% preparation, 10% high quality paint, and 20% proper application.

CM Construction has been repainting Queen Annes as well as other historic structures in Arkansas for decades. Go to www.cmconstructioninc.com to learn more.

Then get some sandpaper and get to work on those components. I promise that you’ll learn as well as have fun.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

HE IS THAT HOUSE
Excerpt from Abandoned Arkansas
(Soon to not be published by a major publishing firm)
           I put one hundred tiny short stories together in 2008 after taking thousands of pictures for a book that was to become Abandoned Arkansas, I'll post a few of the stories here in the next year or two. This is one.
 






Oh, sure. That ol’ cabin out by the road was built by my great-grandfather before there was even a town down at the crossing.

No, there warn’t no stores around here. O’ course not. Whatever you wanted, you made or grew. Or did without.

People was too busy back then to care about what they didn’t have. A full belly and a dry head made more diff’runce than nice clothes or a fast buggy.

You’d think buildin’ the cabin was the hard part, but it wudn’t. Ever’body helped each other back then. And in this valley, they still do.

But my great-grandfather was Eli Crawford, and he knew ever’body in this valley and all the surroundin’ ones. If there was a barn needed buildin’, he’d be there, just like his neighbors were for him when it came time to raise that house.

Eli and his brother did most of the fellin’ and hewin’, but it was the other farmers that did a good deal o’ the raisin’. And when Eli’s first crop came in heavy, ever’body in the valley got a bushel o’corn, even them what didn’t help. Didn’t matter; they was all in it together.

No, I wouldn’t think o’ sellin’ it. Not for love or money. I know you want to reassemble it somewhere else and restore it. You already tole me.  That don’t matter. It’s a part o’ this land just like the grass or the trees. You think I’d sell them off? Well, I wouldn’t. And if it goes back to the land, well, that’s fine by me.

I look at it like this. That building is part of the land, and I work this land. My great-grandfather worked it, too. Cut it from the forest. He made these pastures. He dug the well out back. Dug it by hand! You know what that takes?

Eli Crawford is in this land. He’s in that house.

Hell, he is that house.
 
                                   Notes on the Stories
This may be the tether, the grounding rod, the foundation of the ideals in this book. So many ‘abandoned’ buildings are kept in their present conditions not because of opportunistic neglect, but because there is a very decided reverence for the fact that their present owners’ forbearers should have a temple for their descendents to gaze upon. Never mind that it cannot be used as a dwelling, or that it might want to be.
I can see the failing, barely-able-to-walk form of great-grandpa as he hobbles about the pasture, tightly holding the hand of his five-year-old thrice-removed scion.
“Do you know that I used to LIVE in this house?” he smiles.
The little boy looks up at him, eyes wide in wonder.
“This is a house?”
This is how history is passed down.
 
The cabin in Boone County.

Friday, May 10, 2013


RESTORATION TALES 6-14-11


I have been restoring old buildings across America since 1985, and have many more tales than can be printed from my past columns. When I lived in Little Rock Arkansas from 2005 until 2013, I was lucky enough to have a forum at a painfully short-lived paper known as The Emerald City of the South, a sometimes-bi-monthly (or bi-yearly) city paper put out by Glen Schwartz, an editor/owner/publisher/ad seller that let me do just about anything, as long as it read well. Like most of my editors, he didn't really have to do anything, including formatting the text.
Though HE might have a differing opinion.
Hey, Glen!
You old stoner, you.

 
GHOSTS AND TREASURES

Anyone dealing with old buildings automatically becomes a bit of historian, whether they own it or dig a ditch in the front yard. It goes with the territory. And anyone not interested in history is automatically expelled from owning an old building, or they’re just plain misguided.

It’s when history comes calling in the form of the physical and ethereal that my hackles rise in anticipation.

I personally believe in ghosts, but professionally do not. I’ve never seen or gotten a picture of one, and trust me, I’ve tried. I three times recorded a nonexistent string quartet in the Married Officers’ Quarters at MacArthur Park, now the Military Museum. Jim Eison, the past curator, would let me set up high-bias recording equipment in different areas of the building back in the eighties, when it was the Museum of Discovery. And that string quartet was there each time, no matter where we set up, with the same volume and clarity (neither which amounted to much). The music was the same piece each time as well. I got the same results recording just outside, on the porch. No radio was left on, and the building was quiet as a tomb. Go figure.

And in case anyone wonders, I do know where one of the tunnels is, though if it’s the fabled “tunnel to the river” that may or may not exist, I’ll never know. Park officials made the backhoe driver fill it in as soon as they got wind of it, but I saw it just after he broke through. Triangulated its location, as well, after dropping into it. Made of hard brick, it measured ten by ten feet high, with an arched top. Stretched twenty feet to the south before a collapse and disappeared into darkness to the north. The park officials scolded me and the backhoe operator, but I was the archaeological monitor on the park at the time, so I had business there. They told me not to talk about it. Statute of limitations are up, gentlemen. The State Archaeologist at the time was not interested in its existence. Go figure again.

But I’ve not seen any floating vapors. There is an apartment complex we restored a few years ago, and the manager swore it was haunted. He still does. I went so far as to do a nighttime photographic survey during demolition, but no images of Casper. But I felt something weird about number fifteen. Nobody liked to work in there. It felt creepy to all the guys, regardless of belief. We had been told about number fourteen as well, and when a stranger showed up six months into the project and asked whether fourteen was still haunted, we laughed and told him we didn’t know. We all kept up our guard after that.

But, while standing outside of number fifteen near the start of the project, I felt something cold and clammy move right past me. I spun around, thinking I was in someone’s way, but nothing was there.

“Did you see that?” one of my carpenters, to whom I had been talking, asked.

“No! Did you?!!”

“No, but I saw you see it!” We laughed nervously and changed the subject.

I personally think these things are extensions of our selves, but I still like the movie “Poltergeist.”

Treasure is where you find it. And have I found it.

While cleaning out the leftover junk from a tiny apartment in a carriage house in the Quarter before restoring it, I discovered two French Foreign Legion bayonets with numbered scabbards.

While scanning a wall for metal pipes in a home in Connecticut, I got WAY too big a signal; opening the wall, I found an ancient apple peeler with so many gears and hinges that it must have been designed by Rube Goldberg. The owner let me keep it, and it sits proudly on a bookshelf at home today. But why was it in the wall?

Sometimes the treasure can’t be taken away, as it belongs to the house.

I cut my restoration teeth restoring an 1835 farmhouse in upstate South Carolina (it had some sort of presence in it, I assure you; tell you about it next time), and on one of my yearly updates to the property, I removed some deteriorated siding on the rear parlor wall, discovering a previously covered-up window opening. No casement or sash, just the framed opening.

“I always thought there should have been a window there,” Peggy, the owner told me when I called her with the news. “How hard would it be to put in a new window with the same dimensions as the old one?”

“About twelve hundred dollars should do it,” I said. There were matching sashes in the barn, possibly the same ones that had been removed. I milled the casements, sill and facings to match the original, and that room now has windows on three sides like it did in 1835.

While digging a garden in the front yard of the same farm early in the project, I hit brick. Thinking it was an errant remnant of past chimney building, I tossed it aside. Then I found another right next to the first. I tossed my shovel aside and went for my mason’s pointing trowel. This, to you whom have not been archaeologists, is the primary tool of that profession. I carefully cut the soil away from this structure until I had uncovered three feet by eighteen inches. The bricks were aligned end to end, with a depression in the middle.

I stood up and eyeballed the direction it seemed to lead away from the front porch, and walking away from the house towards the railroad cut in the front yard, I smiled when I reached that fifteen-foot drop. Because there, having been cut through many decades before, was the same brick structure. Five bricks wide, with the same depression in the center. I scraped this one, too, and after uncovering three feet of it, I stood up and looked towards the house.

Then I got it.

“Of course!” I laughed. “Of course! Why didn’t I see it before?”

I hadn’t seen it before because I didn’t have the house as a center point. And to get the best view of my find, I had to climb down into the railroad cut and up the other side.

I turned around, and there, perfectly profiled by the railroad cut, was the cross-section of the original driveway of the house, complete with its brick gutter on the left side. The gray sandy loam of the farm was interrupted by a foot-deep, twelve-foot wide berm of hard clay and gravel, compacted into this hidden driveway only revealed by mischance and cross-section. Further research showed that this driveway had been built in the 1840s and abandoned around 1900 when the tracks were built.

I photographed the excavations and reported my finds to Peggy, who couldn’t wait to see the exposed brick. Cordoned off like a museum exhibit, it can still be seen on the Cason Farm in Hodges, South Carolina.

But by far, my favorite offchance find during a restoration was what dropped into my hands while demolishing a plaster ceiling in an 1873 row house in Washington D.C. in 1988.

What dropped into my hands was a rat’s nest, complete with the rat.

Before you go running to the bathroom to wash out your eyes from having read such a thing, let me assure you that Brother Rat had been dead for long enough to mummify it. Or, with a nod to the Egyptians, long enough to desiccate it and allow it to be preserved in the exact form it had in life.

Now, people, I can assure you that I have iron testicles. I chase tornadoes, explore virgin caves, and have no problem singing in front of strangers. I can carry a musical show for four hours if my voice holds out. I spent years hitchhiking across this country. I’ve had a black widow for a pet for three years. I let her go when she got too big.

I was not freaked at this experience. I felt the plaster and lath give way, and knew I’d got a mouthful of black dust and spider eggs and splinters and godknowswhatelse.

And guess what? I did. In two seconds, I was covered with the hidden dirt of a century.

My exclamations (a little too colorful to print here, I assure you) were heard throughout the third and second floors, and my fellow craftsmen came running to see what was wrong, if they could help, or if there was a funny story to be gleaned from my discomfiture. And they all laffed and laffed and laffed upon seeing my face and hair and shoulders completely draped in black dust, spider webs, and tattered paper.

But when the dust began to clear and they saw that I held something remarkable in my hands, they gasped.

“Get me a piece of plywood or drywall!” I sputtered, spitting centuries of dirt from my face. I stood there on the stepladder, shaking the dirt from my hair, trying to make it possible to open my eyes without going blind. I held something airy and ancient and colorful in my hands, and it was so light that I thought it’d blow away with my next breath.

“What IS that?” more than one worker asked.

“Its history, boys,” I smiled, my mouth crusted with black dust. “And you’re the first to see it in decades.”

It was true; I had so much dust in my eyes that I could hardly see a thing. But I knew what I had from feel and from the first glimpse of what had dropped before the dark dust cloud took over.

One of the carpenters held out a scrap of drywall with shaking hands, and I placed my find onto it carefully.

“Take it into the front room and put it on the table with the plans,” I said, wiping blackness from my eyes. “Somebody bring me another scrap! There’s more!”

I had soon emptied the two-foot space above the third floor of its rat nest, and alighting from the ladder, walked to the front room with the second half of the treasure. Word had spread of the find, and within a minute, fifteen guys stood agape at the table.

“How old is it?”

“Is that a rat?”

“What’s all that stuff?”

The rat was ten inches from tip to butt, excluding the tail, and its tail measured that again; this appendage was wrapped tightly around its side, and its face was turned up slightly. It appeared to be looking at me, and its grin revealed more of its teeth than I wanted to see. Tan skin stretched tautly across a long skeleton, and by its size, I surmised that this particular rat lived rather well.

But the real treasure was its nest; a hundred years of history filled the sticks and straw that made up its bulk. Apparently this home had a sewing room on the third floor, because the third most prominent ingredient was thread. Thread of all colors, thread of all sheens. It looked as if it had just been taken from the spool, nevermind the black dirt. Then there was a plethora of fabric cuttings, some merely rag edges and some as fine as crinoline. The rat was apparently egalitarian in its tastes.

And buttons! Oh, my! I had heard that rats are attracted to shiny baubles, but this was the first proof I’d seen. It had a thing for silver buttons, and the gaudier or more embossed, the better it liked them.

I dated the nest to 1893 at the oldest, mainly because the rat also had a taste for paper. Scraps of personal notes, bits of newspaper, postcards, and box tops littered the nest. Most of the dates were in the early 1890’s, but it was the nearly intact playbill that excited me most. I forget what the play or venue was, but the date was 1893.

The crew debated and declaimed, discoursed and discussed. Until the foreman came and sent us all back to work. Then he added his three cent’s worth.

“Damn! It’s a rat’s nest from a hundred years ago!”

That’s why he was the boss. Sharp as a spoon, he was.

That night, I presented the nest, complete with Brother Rat, to Alan, the owner of the house. Being a corporate lawyer, he was not impressed.

It was his loss.

I kept the rat. Still have it somewhere, though it may have gone to dust by now.

History stands still only when kept in a dark, dry place. But it’s nice when it’s discovered.

Then we can learn and talk about it.

What time capsules are waiting for YOU?

 
ADDENDUM

Since this colulumn was writ, I have found something even more remarkable.

While restoring the 1820 Estevan Hall in Helena, Arkansas in 2012, one of the demo crew came running downstairs. Everyone on each crew had been given explicit instructions to bring me any found objects, no matter how young or old.

"What about this?" he asked, caked with rock wool dust. He'd been removing old insulation from an attic behind a four-foot kneewall, and had been crouched for hours. I'm sure the tiny paper dust mask he wore wasn't helping keep the fiberglass out of his lungs, either.

He presented me with a strange looking chain found in the attic. It had a round link on the end, oblong links in the middle, and an embossed plate in the center. The whole thing was hand-forged.

 


 
"Looks like it'll just fit around someone's neck," Tim, my demo guy, said with a smile. He was referring to the local rumors (all apocryphal)  of slaves kept in chains in the basement before the War of Northern Aggression. "Is that a name on the plate in the middle?"

It was, but I couldn't read it.

"I doubt they made metal nameplates for slaves," I quipped, examining the thing closely. I still don't know what it was. Tim, newly energized from this find, went back up to finish.

"Keep your eyes open!" I yelled after him.

I hadn't been organizing the plans on the construction table for two minutes before he came down the stairs again. This time he was out of breath.

"I found some pictures," he panted.

"Well, bring 'em here!"

He shook his head.

"You'd better come up."

I followed him to the crawl door in the second floor wall. This part of the house had been added in the early 20th century, and the room had four-foot kneewalls. He pointed to an area about thirty feet from the door, then disappeared into the hole.

"Damn," I said, following with my point-and-shoot camera. I HATE crawling. I had hated it since a disastrous run-in with a deer on my Triumph motorcycle six months before, and my broken ribs creaked and complained as I got on my knees. I also began to hack and cough, what with the fiberglass dust in the air.

"This better be good for me to do all this," I sputtered to Tim. I figured he had found a few desiccated photographs with water spots and curled edges.

But at the end of the crawl, I was amply rewarded.

"Holy mother of God," I said. "Hold that one forward a little. Yeah, like that. Now move back...that's it."

I took only one picture. I could hardly breathe in all the dust.

"Stay here," I said. "I'm going to knock a hole in the wall so we can get them out." I crawled back to the door and looked around the room to figure where the pictures were; they were behind the back wall to the closet. Luckily, this room was sheathed with unsaturated Celotex (????), so knocking a hole in the wall was easy, and Tim passed the two framed portraits through with none of the bumping and scratching they would have endured if we used the crawl. There were five more small pictures in frames as well.

Once the whole collection was downstairs, the black dust and fiberglass was wiped from them. The two big portraits looked to be about 1840s vintage, as judged by the clothing, hair styles, and artistic execution. I immediately called the architect, who called the owner, and then I got the person in charge of building services for the Delta Cultural Center. SHE had the climate-controlled storage where the portraits would be kept safe until they were carefully cleaned.

 




It turns out that the portraits were of the builder's son and daughter-in-law, and I was pretty close in my rudimentary dating as mid-1840s. The others were framed photographs that were taken in the first part of the 20th century, and featured a number of familial scenes, but unfortunately nothing from the outside of the house, which is what we really needed for architectural verification of facades. They had probably been put behind the kneewall when the addition was built around 1919, but why they had been forgotten is a mystery.

The most interesting of the small pictures was one of the same man in the big portrait. Only in this picture he was fully white-headed. It was unmistakably the same man.

 
When the restoration of Estevan Hall is finished, it will become the Helena Civil War Parks Visitors Center. The two portraits are slated to hang prominently in the main room, but I hope they'll include the picture of Tim and his very-evident grin behind that dust mask. I think the way they were found was as interesting as the pictures themselves.
 
 

 

Wednesday, May 1, 2013


 

 "ASK THE EXPERT" COLULUMN
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE
SPRING 2013


Another offering to the Lovely Linda C. I think it was her idea, and not taken from a letter. Or maybe I just foisted the thing on her.
I was starting to make my getaway to New England, so it beats the hell out of me where it came from.




SO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A HISTORIC HOUSE
 
So you want to live in a historic house. There are considerations both physical and cultural to keep in mind.

First, if it's in a designated historic district, there may be local guidelines as to what you can do to alter it. People that put a lot of time and money into their homes' authenticity don't necessarily want a neighbor with modern fabric or design changes that might degrade the historic aspect of the neighborhood. That doesn't mean you can't put up gutters or replace your windows; it just means that alterations should look like what was there before.

Older neighborhoods are more  integral; privacy fences are few, and neighbors often interact with each other more than in suburbia, looking after each others' property as well as the whole neighborhood. It's a fairly hip crowd that takes on the responsibility of keeping up a historic house.

And older homes take more upkeep. If you have wood siding, it will need to be painted every ten years or so. Interior "box" gutters need to be maintained, or they'll leak and your eaves will disintegrate. Wood porches need a lot of attention; homeowners used to sweep the water off them right after a rain to preserve them. Older homes are more expensive to roof, as they are often taller and have a more intricate roof design or steeper pitch. Interior plaster is easily repaired, but a cracked plaster ceiling should be removed and replaced with drywall.

Older homes, however, can be made much more energy efficient with newer technologies. Most were built without insulation and seem quite drafty until insulation is added above, below, and blown into the walls. Replacement windows are sometimes installed, but a properly caulked original window casement with a new storm window will be nearly as efficient. Taller ceilings cry out for ceiling fans with downrods, and almost all older homes were built with outside-to-inside air circulation in mind. Modern homes do not circulate air nearly as well.

Older homes were often built with superior lumber that withstands stresses and termite attack better than newer wood, and as most were built with pier-and-beam foundations, they have crawlspaces instead of concrete slabs. This allows for systems to be inspected and updated easily. Lead paint is almost always present in older homes, but if it is encapsulated with new paint and not made airborne through sanding, it is not a hazard. The soils near the foundation should be tested for lead that came off the house in past years. Asbestos is sometimes a concern, but much more so in commercial construction. The binders in residential plaster were usually jute fibers and horsehair, not asbestos, and the most common places to find the nasty stuff is in old 12" square rigid tiles or in the thick [plaster that encasulates old boilers.

If you buy an older home, have it inspected by someone who knows old houses. Original electrical and plumbing systems are outdated and dangerous, but updating them is easier because of access in the attic and crawlspace. Most updated older homes have already had their knob-and-tube electrical wires and galvanized iron pipes replaced.

If there are wood floors, you will need carpets. Older homes often require more furniture, as they have larger spaces, and living in one sounds completely different than in a newer home, as sound seems to carry and reverberate more.

Older homes may take more attention, but they give back such charm that those who live in one often find it hard to go back to modern homes. It is also a fact that those in older homes tend to live there much longer than those in newer homes.

This might sound biased, but after all, I am The Old House Doctor.

Monday, April 15, 2013




If my last couple of offerings can be an example, it seems I'm having a one-sided conversation with Linda Calliouette, one of my past editors. She seems to keep popping up as I update and re-edit myself. She'd be so proud.
This was a colulumn I wrote in response to her own inquiry about hanging pictures on plaster wall, and when I told her to use a stud finder, she knowingly responded that stud finders don't work on plaster walls.
Smart girl, that one.
If I'm going to be corrected, it might as well as be by someone so easy on the eyes.
So I wrote this and sent it to her.


THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR

HANGING PICTURES ON PLASTER WALLS

(NEVER PRINTED)

Though today we may hang pictures on walls using those little hooks with nails driven directly into the drywall at enough of an angle to hold them, it wasn't always done this way. Houses built before 1930 often had picture rail nailed less than twelve inches from the ceiling, and it was from this that pictures were hung by special hooks that supported long wires that attached to the backs of the pictures.

This was done for a number of reasons, but mostly because the walls in older houses do not have drywall as an interior surface. They are composed of lime plaster spread on wood lath strips, and nailing into them can be problematic. Plaster does not hold nails as well as drywall driven at a steep angle, and many pictures in bygone days were much heavier due to more massive frames. Photos of turn-of-the-century interiors show the long loops of picture wire running from picture to rail, often up to six feet long. One of the handy things about using picture rail for its intended purpose is that it is relatively easy to move the pictures around. Plus there are no little holes left in the plaster.

Almost all homes from this era had picture rail, and if yours doesn't, it probably was removed or fell off. Picture rail was nailed to the studs with thin nails that sometimes pulled loose because of all those heavy pictures, so it is a good idea to reinforce existing rail if you are going to use it. And if you want to add more picture rail from somewhere it has fallen off, it's relatively simple.

You'll need a stepladder, a cordless drill with a #2 Phillips bit, and a deep-scan stud sensor. This electronic whiz tool isn't as cheap as the basic models (forty bucks as opposed to about fifteen bucks) and will pay for itself in stress relief from knowing where your studs are in the future. And even THESE have a hard time finding the studs, so be patient.

Using either a straightedge and a pencil or a chalk-filled stringline, establish the bottom line from each end of the existing picture rail and use your stud sensor to find the studs. Make small marks at the studs, then cut your new piece of picture rail to fit the space. You may need to cut the ends on angles to fit what's already there, but a hand-powered miter box can be purchased for less than eight dollars (minus the handsaw).

Simply screw the rail to the studs using 2 1/2" coarse-thread drywall screws (make sure to countersink them), and when you're done, go around the room doing the same to the existing rail. Spackle the holes, paint and caulk, and you're ready to hang hundreds of pounds of pictures.

It is always a good idea to pre-drill the screw holes with the rail in place, drilling through the plaster below. Plaster is brittle and may crack if this is not done. Use a high-speed steel bit with a diameter no more than 1/8 inch.

Picture rail is universal and can be purchased at Greenfield  Millworks on Counts Massie Road in Maumelle. It's the only place to find it in Little Rock. The special hooks that hang on picture rail can also be hard to find, but Besser Hardware on Main Street in downtown Little Rock usually carries them.

For those of you that want to hang pictures directly in plaster, use the same drill bit to drill your holes, but drill them downward at 60 degree angles and use 1 5/8" drywall screws through both plaster and lath. With the head 1/8" from the plaster, this will hold as well as anything.

Friday, March 22, 2013

I thought that I'd do an update that was promised to my readers in 2004. Shut up, it only took me nine years. The update is the colulumn that follows this one. It tells you how to keep bats out of your attic once they're already up there. Read this, then the following arktickle to learn how. Cretins.



THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR 12-13-04


 

YOUR BATS!

 
Dear Old House Doctor,

While doing my annual home winterizing this week, I noticed a spot under my eave with black smudges that weren’t there last year. Looking closer, I saw a piece of trim had dropped off and there was a gap between the boards. Is my house leaking some warm air out? What could be causing the black smudges?

                                                  Signed

                                        Worried on Wall Street

Dear Worried,

          Not seeing your problem firsthand, I can only guess what condition you’re suffering from (AAAAUUUGGGHH! A preposition at the end of a sentence! That it something up with which I shall not put!). But I don’t think you’ve got anything coming out of your house. I imagine something is getting in.

          If it’s squirrels, you’re doomed. They are nearly impossible to evict. But I imagine you have bats.

          This is the time of year that bats hibernate, and old houses are a favorite roost. With spaces in the woodwork and separations in the joinery, they will take up winter residence in numbers ranging from two to two million. There they will sleep and dream their little batty dreams until the temperature warms, then they’ll either decide they like it or move on. Most move on in spring, but if they stay, they will likely raise little bats and might even invite some friends to share the space.

          It is not only imperative that you do not disturb them in winter, it is also illegal. The Bat Police will come and take you away to Bat Jail, and you’ll have to share your cell with others like yourself, which is perty scary if you think about it.

The bats are doing no harm in winter, and if you disturb them they will likely die form exposure. They’re in suspended animation and will not recover easily enough to find another roost.

When spring comes, they should be allowed to wake naturally, flit forth at sundown, and then you can plug up their hole to keep them out. There are other alternatives to this, though, and I’ll talk about them next time.

Sunday, March 17, 2013


This was an offering to glen Schwartz and The Emerald City of the South. If you've read many of these colulumns, you'll notice that I do tend to harp on certain subjects, mostly about how you should KEEP UP YOUR FUCKING HOUSE FOR CHRISSAKES. This is one of my House Invaders arktickles. And perty short for ECOS. I had moved out to Roland, a rural burg thirty miles west of the Downtown of Little Rock, and so this thing lends towards country.




THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR 3-14-13

 
INVASION OF THE OLD HOUSE SNATCHERS

 
So the winter has hung on longer than usual. So you still sleep until eleven because the sun doesn't come up until then. So you have a bag of ice-melt sitting by your front door even though the daffodils have already died off.

Spring, believe it or not, is here, and baby, it's gonna be a big one.

How does the Ol' Doc know? Because I lives in the country and have intimate knowledge with all those invasive things that are headed your way when the weather truly turns warm.

And juss whut duz ah know?

To start with, the skunks got active early, despite the cold. They are coming around right now looking to fatten up on bugs and grubs and roots because they is hongry after having slept all winter. There are more than I've ever seen this year, and we out in Roland are having a time with them. DO NOT try and trap them; they will spray you. If they take up residence under your house, they are a pain to get out, so make sure there's no place for them to get in. The same goes for raccoons. NOW is the time to repair your foundation holes. While you're at it, open your foundation vents. Whut, yew ain't got no foundation vents? No wonder you got critters.

Birds are beginning to make nests, and the ones you need to be concerned about are starlings. These corvids (related to crows and ravens, you dolt) are extremely fecund (have lots of babies), nest the same places from year to year (don't let them get started), make a ton of noise, and stink up the attic or eaves something fierce. They also raid other birds' nests to kill their babies and eat their aigs. Remove them now or they'll bring up a brood in your eaves.

We in Roland are plagued by fire ants (far aints to yew Arkies), and they are about to explode throughout the county. Grits and corn meal are old wives' tale cures that don't work, and Orthene is a terrible poison that can't be used in a vegetable garden. Putting pure orange oil on the mound is supposed to help, but Rolanders are country folk and use two methods SEPARATELY. One is to build a fire directly over the mound (after clearing dry grass and burnables, of course) and keep it going for a day, but the most used method is plain old gasoline. I'm sure it is not environmentally friendly, but it does kill them dead, and I doubt it's worse than Orthene. DO NOT LIGHT THE GASOLINE! Actually, don't lissen to me at all; I'm just a pack of cards.

Piss aints will make their way into your kitchen, and Terro is a biodegradable product that will attract them, then kill them day-id. Put a drop onto your counter by the backsplash and watch the fun. I think I tole you about that stuff last year in my colulumn "F#$#$@! Bugs and Why You Should Be Happy to Kill Them," which my editor changed the name of for some reason.

Warm weather brings human pests like burglars and thieves, so get yourself a pound pup and they'll leave you alone. Get two and they'll be easier to bring up, more entertaining, and better guards. I do not recommend putting 3-inch drywall screws through the top rail of your privacy fence, though. Liability issues can make this messy. You didn't hear that here, y'hear? Here here.

The bats in your attic are going to be waking up soon, and you want them to fly away and not come back to the attic. Look for dirty marks near the eaves and gable where they've been wriggling their little batty bodies in through the cracks. They've been hibernating all winter and will soon emerge to gorge on mosquitoes. Be glad they're around, but do two fun things to keep safe and help them at the same time. Find some light plastic netting with fine mesh (no more than 3/16"; the type of mesh you want is similar to onion bags at the grocery store) and tack it up around their dirty little exit/entry. Tack it loosely with the bottom open, but not so that the opening flaps around. When they exit, they won't be able to get back in. The second thing to do is to install a bat house nearby. If you have access to fresh guano (bat poop, and if you have bats in your attic, there's poop there, too), rub some on the bat house entry (I told you this would be fun!). This will attract them and they will hang out and eat mosquitoes forever. If you do come in contact with bat poop, wear a facemask or respirator and use gloves. It's not good to breathe and your hands will smell for years.

Go back in time to read my "Them What Stings" arktickle to brush up on your bug problems; I won't repeat them here.

Some of the most undesirable invaders to the old house are flora, not fauna. Climbing vines such as English Ivy, Carolina Creeper, and trumpet vines may look pretty, but they hold moisture against your house and promote wood rot (they kill trees, too). The dreaded wisteria, despite it's sweet-smelling  bunches of blue flowers, is a real threat. Think "Day of the Triffids" here, or if you're an old Genesis fan, "The Return of the Giant Hogweed." You must truly be an old stoner if you remember their album "Nursery Cryme." A great performance of the song can be found on YouTube.

Back to wisteria. Wisteria grows so fast and is so powerful that it will actually grow under your trim and siding and will lift, tear, and pull it off (oh my!). If you have this stuff, cut it back and keep it on a pergola away from the house. At least trim it back from the eaves or brick monthly. I have seen it destroy a brick veneer in one summer.

Another plant to watch out for is the Empress Tree, which my brother sometimes refers to a s a kluckalucka. Yeah, well, he's a Nartist. Go by Galley 360 at 900 South Rodney Parham and you'll see. They may actually be two different trees; the Empress has opposite leaves and stinky white flowers and the kluckalucka may be a young catalpa. They're very sneaky trees; sometimes it's hard to tell just what they are. The catalpa's leaves are huge elephant-ear looking things and the wood grows at a rate of about a foot a week (I'm not kidding). Both of these trees need to be kept from growing near your foundation, as do all trees. They'll heave it and break the brick and then where will you be? Living in a cardboard box, sniffing Tootsie Roll wrappers and agreeing with Paulie Ryan that the rich need to eat the poor to absorb their power and become all-powerful. It's a sad cycle. Soon you'll become an Arkansas congersman and pass bills outlawing women, minorities, and progressive thinking.

So there you have it. Skonks, birruds, aints, and Triffids. Then Paulie Ryan. Finally becoming a Hillbilly legislator. It all leads to disaster.

Better get started before it's too late. I need a drink. Want to buy me one? Do so at king.oldhousedoctor@gmail.com.

Then go to my blogs and all will despair!!!

architecturalvestiges.blogspot.com and oldhousedoctor.blogspot.com

Yippie tie one on!