Whoa to Wow - Whoa to Wow

Jason's Box

One of the problems one can run into with a restoration project such as this is that not everything can be saved. Plaster crumbles. Bricks deteriorate. Wood rots.

Such was the case with one of the side railings for the porch. A large section of the top rail was rotted away. The only solution was going to be to cut that section shorter. The problem, of course, was that then it would not have bee long enough to fill the space needed. So, what to do?

After some thinking about it. Jason came up with an innovative solution. Build a box that was similar in size and scale to the base of the column.

Jason sketched out a rough idea…

But, what is the box for? It’s a package box. What’s a package box? Well, you know when you get packages delivered that are too big for the mailbox from the Post or Amazon? Normally, they just leave it on the porch — thus inviting curious eyes and porch pirates. Well, with a package box, there’s a place for those to go. With a rainy week ahead and projects at other houses to keep me busy, Jason got to work:

Using some of the scrap from the porch floring and some new green-treated plywood, he put everthing togather…

Once together we were able to put it in place, measure the railing against it, and put it all together…

And here’s how it will look all together…

I couldn’t be happier with the results. He took what could have been an unsolvable problem and came up with a solution that may just be one of the major “Wow!” features of the house. One of those things that a buyer will see right away before even going inside and, upon realizing what it is, wonder why all houses these days don’t have such a thing.

I know I want to build one for my house now that’s for sure.

Rebuilding The Powder Room - Part 1

With the Mudroom at a place where we are waiting for other work to happen before our work can continue (namely, some roof and siding repairs), the attention has turned to the Powder Room.

As a reminder, here’s what things look like before under the area where you first enter the room where the toilet was.

Let’s talk about all of the wrong here. The fact that you walk right into a toilet as you enter the room is actually the least bad of it…

The worst is not, in fact, that the main joists were cut to accommodate the large waste pipe so that there really was no real support for that area of the floor. In fact, what little support was there was so hacked up with cuts and holes it was a wonder it lasted with even a child standing on it let alone full sized adults sitting on a toilet…

No, the worst is a bit hard to see in this picture. But look closely. See it? If you said, “The worst is that they put an electrical junction box literally under a toilet and a sink!” you’d be correct. That’s it!

So, we set about correcting that. We cleaned up the bad ideas. Moved the electrical out of there. Took out the miss-mash of wood pieces pretending to be structure. My plumber came in and did an excellent job installing new pipes at their new locations (will post pictures of that later). With that done, we were able to cut new 2x8 joist sections to sister to the remaining primary joist sections.

Then we firred out other areas to fix other bad choices made over the years.

Now, we have the bones in place to lay a solid foundation.