Last week in Renovation Adventures, we learned a lot of things about the history of our house. Most are things we had deduced from things we could see (or smell or feel underfoot) but others were only suspected.

Most were interesting in an architectural/historical/personal way. A few were downright alarming.

In the former category, we long suspected the stairway to the upper floor wasn’t original — a news article about the house from the local historical society described “the world’s largest spice rack” behind a door in the kitchen—and getting the siding done in 2020 proved that the back room was clearly an outdoor porch first enclosed & later expanded between the ‘50s and the ‘70s.

When the awesome demolition crew of Oscar, Oscar et. al. removed the sketchy-ass plywood paneling on the stairs, they revealed the original attic doorway and evidence of two renovations. That original stair was likely a straight one across the width of house —that’s a design we’ve seen in several other nearby bungalows.

The pic on the left shows the interior of the wall at the sides of the current stair that goes straight up from the back of the house towards the front. The brick wall at the back of the house was demo’ed to create the opening. I forgot to take pics of the basement doorway when that was under construction, but that appeared to be a purpose-built opening during the original construction. The edges were smooth and evenly mortared.

This one is some “let’s bash a hole here, eh?” shit. The pic on the right shows the old doorway framing, all that remains of the original back stair. The side supports come from its second life as a shelving unit once the door was blocked off. Now it’s walled off completely behind kitchen drywall, partially behind a countertop and cabinet.

Another “Hmm, that’s interesting” find was hiding behind the walls upstairs. Way back when we viewed the house before purchase, we were told there was no attic access because there was no attic. This turns out to be half right.

We always suspected there had to be un-vented dead air space up there due to the way the upstairs held heat at night, but neither Spouseman no I had any interest in banging holes in the walls.

Well! Now that holes have been made — okay, whole walls removed—lo, there are indeed four biggish attic spaces behind the walls.. One space, on the north side, houses the HVAC ductwork coming up from the first floor. The other three, on the south and east sides, were just…there.

Walled-off. Uninsulated. Unventilated.

Now, the HVAC ducts and the walls against the finished areas were insulated, so, yay? The thing is, with only wood decking and shingles to fend off the hot sun, those spaces were getting superheated every summer day.

No wonder the A/C struggled. It was fighting to cool three ovens.

They were empty, though. No missing artworks, no old trunks full of forgotten family heirlooms, no skeletal remains. No signs of rodents or insects, either. (YAY!) Just plank floor, air, roof decking and dust. Not even much dust, since they were sealed off.

The floor in the closet under the vinyl planking was ugly brown linoleum tile reminiscent of my high school classroom floors. That’s strong evidence placing the initial upstairs finishing/remodel somewhere between 1950-70.

The MAJOR issues are less fun but in their own way even more interesting.

Electrical and plumbing are both a mess. Neither are as bad as Spouseman and I feared, but both are about as bad as we expected.

The whole back room was completely wired in flexible metal conduit of questionable age. (At least 70’s or earlier according to our very knowledgeable electrician, who accurately ID’d the other half of the upstairs as an early-mid 90’s remodel.)

Anyway, the electrical crew will be replacing gobs of BX cable that’s not properly secured to framing, but is running right across plumbing in various places and sometimes notched through studs and joists. (That practice is, you will not be shocked to hear, NOT acceptable.)

Plus they also have to redo a bunch of electrical that was installed between floors without access, which is yet another big no-no. Bonus, they’ll be pulling wire to give the upstairs its own three circuits on the breaker box. AND my new ceiling fan will have a fan-rated junction box with nice, long thick screws into solid joists. No more fear of it ocillating itself down onto my head. Yay.

The BIGGEST discovery was the condition of the top third of our drain stack. The cast iron part that they couldn’t reach during the basement remodel was holding together by the power of belief. It cracked while the demo crew was working on the wall. Chunks fell off. The corrosion is that bad. The iron is about as solid as a wafer cookie.

No leakage, (whew) but a catastrophic failure was clearly inevitable and imminent. See, cast iron pipes have an effective lifespan of 50-75 years. That’s a fun fact I learned from one of the awesome contractors digging up our street to replace the neighborhood’s 100-year-old ductile iron water main and lead feeder lines.

That means our drain stack should have been replaced during one of the prior bathroom remodels. Either the original upstairs 70’s one, the followup 80’s/90’s refresh. CERTAINLY when the first floor was redone post 2000.

I get why it wasn’t done. Stack replacement is tremendously expensive and a total PITA for plumbers & homeowners alike. They’re gonna have to go into the first floor wall and up on the roof. And if we hadn’t done the basement remodel, we would be without a working toilet for a couple of days while they fix things.

But still. That stack’s gonna come out, and I am 100% thrilled. I am betting once it’s done I will no longer be annoyed by mysterious whiffs of sewer stink when the wind comes out of the northeast, and I know I will stop worrying about the floor caving in.

Once the plumbing and electrical are brought up to code compliance, the bathroom wall will get totally reframed, and the floor will get reinforced properly for shower & tub.

Yeah. I am seriously glad there wasn’t a tub up there before, now that I’ve seen what was under the vinyl plank flooring that I never liked anyway.

In a way, all the bad news is good news. The demolition discoveries have erased my last bits of doubt/buyers remorse over spending all this money on House Stuff.

We had ample reason to wait another year on this project, what with surprise costs of the basement getting flooded, torn up, & put back together, not to mention the cruises planned for autumn, and sundry other life complications.

We went ahead and started the process, but I gotta admit, the doubts were there. And it was tempting to pull back & postpone once we learned the lead pipe & water main replacement would be going on this summer. Because it’s srsly a huge hassle to have everything going on at once.

But now I’m more thankful than ever that we didn’t wait a single day more than we did. I’ll take disaster prevention over emergency repairs any day.

And that’s it for this long overdue update. Now that things are shaking down into a schedule, I hope to regain some energy.

Have a Pippin picture for your patience:

That’s it for now. Until later!