Author: lc

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A house history


(photo courtesy of David Bakaj)

Here’s my house in about 1947 (going by the license plates).  It’s the one in the background on the right, with the little pediment roof over the front door.  That pediment was new, aluminum supported by simple black iron brackets — a popular 40s style update.  The window trim has been removed so that dark red asphalt shingle siding could be fitted over the wood clapboards. The house to the left, built around the same time but not yet updated, still has the style of a bygone era.


(original 1870s wallpaper in the upstairs hallway)

A good friend gave me a wonderful housewarming gift: a house history by Carol Peterson, which came in the form of a folder of maps, copies of deeds, and newspaper notices.  Carol compiled this material from research in public records and wove it together to tell the story of the original owners.  Below is her summary about  the people who built the house and those who lived here subsequently, with my photos of house details.

James C. Rayburn Jr. and his wife, Hannah Dain Rayburn, had [the house] constructed between 1872 and 1873. The house was built on part of a double lot that Hannah D. Rayburn had purchased in 1871, for $1100.
James C. Rayburn Jr. was a bookkeeper and clerk with Armstrong and McKelvy, a paint company, during the time that he and his family lived [in the house]. He lived during much of his childhood on Penn Avenue in the Strip District, where his father was a Pennsylvania Railroad foreman and president of the neighborhood school board. Hannah Dain Rayburn also grew up in the Strip District. Her father was an Irish immigrant who ran a livery stable, and her mother was a Welsh immigrant.

The Rayburns were in their early 20s with two small children when they moved into the new house. They eventually had eight children, all of whom lived in the house. Hannah Rayburn’s mother Hannah Dain also lived [in the house] from the time that the house was built until she died in 1884.

In the early 1890s, the Rayburns moved to South Winebiddle Avenue. They owned [the original house] until 1896, renting the house to tenants.


(small objects found during renovation)

A section of brief notes brings later residents into view, sketching out the story of the neighborhood as well as the house.

1900
The 1900 census enumerated the Gallagher and Greenawalt families living in apartments at [the house]. James Gallagher, 43, was a day laborer who had immigrated from Ireland in 1873. His wife Julia, 36, had immigrated from Ireland in 1876. The Gallaghers had been married for 20 years and had nine children. Seven of their children were living: Edward, 19, a day laborer in a mill, Margaret, 16, a packer in a cracker factory, James, 13, Ellen, 11, Mary, six, Sarah, four, and Julia, one.


(labels found in back of a closet on the first floor)

William H. Greenawalt, 34, and his wife Jennie M., 33, rented the other apartment. Both were at least second-generation Pennsylvania natives. William Greenawalt was a blacksmith’s helper. The couple had been married for ten years and had three children, two of whom were living: Clyde A., eight, and Jennie B., seven months.

1910
Records of the 1910 census do not identify occupants of [the house].

(Fragment of a comics page from 1911, found stuffed in a wall)

1920
In 1920, the Raschle and Kaylor familes lived [in the house]. Albert and Sophie Raschle were both 29-year-old Polish immigrants. Albert had immigrated in 1909, and was a hammerman in a forging plant. Sophie had immigrated in 1912. Neither had learned to speak English. Their children were Albert, six, Olga, four, Arthur, three, and Edward, one.

(linoleum rug, found upstairs when removing wall-to-wall carpeting)

Mary Kaylor, 35, was divorced and worked as a car cleaner in a railroad yard. She had been born in Pennsylvania to parents born in Alsace-Lorraine and England. Her daughter Margaret, 16, was a buncher in a cigar factory. Catherine Negley, 24, was a sister of Mary Kaylor and a widow. She lived with the Kaylors, and was also a railroad car cleaner.


(ruler from a local shoe store, found behind a baseboard)

1930
Polish immigrants Piotr and Mary Kozlowski owned and lived [in the house] in 1930. Piotr Kozlowski was a rail car cleaner. Census records show that the Kozlowskis had learned to speak English, but neither could read or write. Their children Tadeusz, 13, Waclaw, 11, Raymond, nine, and Edward, four.

Vincent and Frances Przyeck rented an apartment at [in the house]for $15 per month. Vincent, 25, was a laborer in a rivet factory. He and Frances, 23, had been born in Pennsylvania to Polish immigrants. They had been married for two years and had no children. Michel Olnicki, France’s widowed father, lived with the couple. He spoke English but could not read or write.

Information about past residents ends there.  Carol noted, “Manuscript census records are withheld from public view for 72 years, to protect the privacy of persons who were enumerated.”  After living in this neighborhood for over ten years, I’ve gotten to know several other people who lived here and learned a little bit about their stories.


(layers of floor coverings in the upstairs kitchen)

I came to think of the previous residents of this house as neighbors, separated by time instead of distance. They made food in the same kitchen, maybe put their bed in the same spot.  They were also awakened by the train whistle and the boom of freight cars shaking the hillside.  They slept, or tried to, when storms shook the house.  Maybe they also put a chair in front of the window that catches the breeze from the north in the summer.


(upstairs sitting room)

Reading about my neighbors-in-time is a reminder that although I’m here now, like them, one day I will leave and not come back. In art this understanding can be prompted by a memento mori, an object/idea which provides perspective and some wisdom by reminding us of the impermanence of life. Maybe all histories work that way, but Carol’s house history is also about change and renewal through the narrow lens of one simple wood house and the people it sheltered.

Carol died in December 2017.  She’s missed.  As a historian she believed that the history of working class people was worth preserving, including their homes.  She bought old houses herself and with a series of light-handed renovation projects she proved that it’s both financially feasible and market-friendly to preserve old houses, rather than gut or demolish them.  She created the Pittsburgh House Histories Facebook page, which her friends are maintaining, to make this point.  She co-wrote (with Dan Rooney) Allegheny City:  A History of Pittsburgh’s North Side.  She was a tireless advocate for the value of historic preservation, which is how I met her.  She wasn’t afraid to stand up and ask uncomfortable questions at public meetings.  And she did house histories, hundreds of them.  Many homeowners in Allegheny West who got house histories from Carol shared them for this online archive.


(Carol’s own house in Lawrenceville, one of her restorations.
Photo from this blog)

If you’d like to know more about Carol, here’s an article about her house histories.  Here’s an article about her work as an architectural historian.  And here is the appreciation of her life and work in the local paper.

Thank you, Carol, for all that you did.

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The attic

The general plan for the interior renovation was to do it piecemeal, starting at the top of the house.  This story is being told piecemeal too, so it might not be clear, but in general things have proceeded according to the initial plan.

Thus, work started in the attic.  It’s a big room, 22 feet square, but the sloped ceiling is only 7 feet at the highest point.  The space had been partially enclosed with a sturdy wood and glass structure to create a little room within a room.  It was clear why someone took the time to do this  — with no insulation and crawlspaces on two sides, it’s cold up there.  The structure could have turned a big chilly attic into a semi-comfortable bedroom.


(realtor photo)

The side panels had been removed at some point so the framework wasn’t serving a function anymore.  It just chopped the room up and didn’t look very good.

I wanted to open up the room, cold be damned.  Once I was sure the framework wasn’t holding up the roof, we spent a fun evening in a frenzy of demolition.  Someone really made sure this was solid — lots of 2x4s , lots of nails.  I wish I’d gotten demo pictures, but taking wood structures apart with hammer and pry bar is extremely entertaining and I completely forgot to stop and take in-progress shots.

Afterwards, when things had calmed down, we pulled out all the nails and stored away the wood pieces for future scrap needs (of which there have been many, so doing this was both Virtuous and Worthwhile).

It was immediately so much nicer once the space was opened up.  Even with a low, sloped ceiling it feels spacious.  The light’s really nice too, with no structure to block it.

I like that the stairway woodwork up here is the same as on the first floor — same newel post, even.  Typically the woodwork in non-public spaces would be much simpler, but for whatever reason they didn’t do that here.  An old house expert came to see the house shortly after I bought it and, seeing this woodwork, said “they put their money in the stairs”.

The walls and ceiling are wood — it looks like they just continued the floorboards up the walls and onto the ceiling.  The room has a lot of angles, so doing this was probably quicker and cheaper than paying a plasterer to do overhead work in a room that only the family would see.  I really like it.

Wood panel walls are pleasingly straightforward to deal with:  smooth down, fill holes, primer, caulk gaps, and paint.  Much less fuss than patching drywall or plaster.  The only nuisance was sanding off paint buildup.

After spending some time on this  encrustation where the frame for the room-within-a-room structure was attached, my partner suggested that we strip and refinish the walls and ceiling along with the floor.  He was joking, but even the thought of that project makes my eyes twitch.  Ugh.

To work on the window above the stairs, I made a platform to cover the stairwell.  (This is where some of that salvaged wood from came in handy.)  On the left side, the platform rested on an strip of wood that was already there.  In old houses sometimes there are ~1″ wood strips, sticking out about an inch, on stair walls level to the floor.

It looks random, but it’s there so painters or anyone doing repairs could set boards across the stairwell space so they could work above , like so:

Since the support strip was old, I braced it from underneath with a 2×4.  It worked fine and felt solid enough, but I was very aware of the yawning gulf of the stairway underneath.

On the other side of the room the window was surrounded by acoustic tiles, probably in an effort to add some insulation.  I was a bit nervous about removing them, wondering what horrible situation might be underneath.

But it was fine, just the same wooden planks painted kelly green, probably in the 1930s — this color was popular then.

When I was 10 or 11, I painted my room a green a bit darker than this, with glossy white trim.  My dad and I made a stained glass shade, like you’d find in an old ice cream parlor, also in green and white.  The finished effect was striking, but the green-hued light made being in there depressing as hell.

While this green paint was interesting, there was no question of keeping.  I wanted to turn this attic into a big, calm space, and with so many angles in the room there was already a lot going on.  (Also I’m really over accent walls.)

After the walls and ceiling were primered we got started on the floor.  We tested the top layer of paint, which turned out to be l**d, so it was likely that one or two of the other layers were too.  Sanding this would put a lot of lead dust into the air, so although it would take longer, we decided to chemically strip most of the paint before sanding the floor.

There were So. Many. Layers.  Old paint was very good quality.  Stripping took a long time.

We counted up to 10 layers of paint in some areas.  The bottom-most layers were partly soaked into the wood, so this is where we stopped the chemical stripper.  It was exciting to finally see actual wood here and there.

Once there were only the tenacious remains of paint, we rented a sander.

I think this was after one pass of the sander.  The white stuff is old epoxy, which filled a rather large gap in the floorboards.  At some point I’ll make an attractive patch for this — maybe copper? — but for the moment, the epoxy is holding.

As the wood was gradually exposed the light in the room changed dramatically.  It was like the sun coming out.

Apart from the actual sun, that is.

The floorboards aren’t perfectly even so paint remained in some areas and had to be removed with an orbital sander.

After the second sanding:


After the third:

So, so much better.  All I wanted to do at this point was stand in there and stare at it.

Next: Osmo and stair woodwork.

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Walls and a window

Where were we?  Oh, yes.  In the middle room on the first floor, with no ceiling.

I wasn’t yet up for the challenge of putting up a ceiling and turned my attention to the walls, which were lumpy and had that swirly texture you see a lot in rentals.  That stucco look was modern and hip once, but it survives because it’s a quick and easy way to disguise imperfect walls.

Textured walls catch dust, though, and even with bright white paint they never look really clean.  I was prepared to skim coat the room to level out the surface, but  that would take a long time and the walls were already thick with repeated patching and layers.

I really didn’t want to add more stuff on top of this.  I was scraping at it dispiritedly one day and discovered that the textured surface beneath the paint was joint compound, applied in big looping motions and covered with countless coats of cold white semi-gloss latex.  This was encouraging, because joint compound is water soluble.  I’d been reading about how to remove a popcorn textured ceiling by soaking the material until it was soft enough to scrape off.  I experimented with that technique on these walls and discovered that if I made lots of shallow scratches, just enough to pierce the paint layer, then sponged water into the scratched areas, the joint compound underneath would soften.  When it got damp enough, the thick latex paint could be peeled off in wide ragged strips.

When most of the paint had been peeled away, the joint compound could be soaked  further, to the point where it could be (gently) scraped off with a palette knife or scraper.  At that point it wasn’t hard to get down to the original horsehair plaster (although around here, apparently, they often used pig’s hair).  Old plaster is water-resistant and can take it a lot of wetting, but it took a bit of practice to find the right angle and pressure to avoid gouging the surface.  I keep reminding myself, it takes less time to be careful than it does to repair what you’ve damaged.  One day I’ll absorb this lesson.

After a careful scraping, the remaining traces of joint compound could be washed off with a scrub brush, then the wall could be wiped clean with a damp sponge.  It worked best to do this in sections of about 3-4 feet square — an area that was easy to reach and to keep damp.  Plastic on the floor was essential; this is a soggy process.

Speaking of water damage, there was the window.

The original windows for the house were long gone.  Judging from the style of some old sashes in an enclosed basement space, their replacements were gone too.  Apart from the basement, all the windows were white vinyl, and every one had issues.  One day they’ll all be replaced, but the window in this room — and the wall below it — was in particularly bad shape.

(That interesting texture outside the window is the Insulbrick siding on my neighbor’s house.  That hexagon is my favorite type of Insubrick because when it’s old it gets these beautiful variegated tones.  This siding was probably green when it was new;  now each hexagon is different, with rusty color coming through, like scales on a sea creature.)

This window is on the west side of the house and gets the brunt of the weather.  The lower sash didn’t close all the way and the casing and sill were rotten, with a gap to the outdoors where air was coming in.

Outside looked even worse.

That is a layer of red-brick patterned Insulbrick over older dark red asphalt shingles, liberally frosted with roofing putty.  I like how this angle looks like a crazy floor you could walk on.

Because water had been getting into the wall for who knows how long, the area under the window would have to be re-framed.  This was outside my experience and I got Russ and Joe, father and son neighborhood contractors, to come in.

I saved a bit by doing the interior demo myself — pulling off the window trim, opening up the wall and removing the the plaster and lath, pulling nails and cleaning up.

Once the plaster and the lath strips were off you could tell that there had been a fire at one point — some of the studs were charred.  Later, we pulled up the carpet and underlayment and discovered that right-hand corner of the old floor was charred, too.

Russ and Joe reframed  that bit of wall and installed the new window …

… then wrapped it well on the outside.

It doesn’t look like much but it is such a relief to know that the wall is closed up tight.  This side of the house isn’t visible from the street, so it’s fine until we can get to the exterior renovation.

Next steps in this room: add electric, insulate, close up the wall and put in a ceiling.

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First floor middle room

This room was just finished last month.  Mostly finished.  There are a few more things to do, but my partner waited a long time for this — it’ll be his media room and library — and has already moved in.  Now it’s full of stuff; furniture, boxes, stacks of books everywhere.  He’s alphabetizing by author and doing stuff with cords and cables.  Eventually there will be a rug, or rugs.  It’ll be a while before it’s ready for another public viewing — or shoe moldings.

Until that day comes, this is the “after” photo.  This was taken after the first coat of shellac on the floor and was my first look at the final effect of all the elements together.  My initial thought was “wow, that is a lot of shiny brown stuff for one room”.  The amber shellac darkened the floor even more than we expected.  We knew it would get darker, but seeing it suddenly pop into view was another matter.  It took some adjusting.

Here’s what we started with (these next two are the realtor’s photos).  This would have been the dining room when the house was built. The front room, a parlor, is through the doorway ahead.  The kitchen and the back of the house are behind you.  On the left wall you can sort of see the lumpy seam where there was once a door to the hallway, closed up when the house was converted to apartments in the 1890s.

Simple and functional.  I’ve lived in a few places that looked pretty much like this (minus the couch and the snake).

The room didn’t look that good again for six years, because the first thing we did in here was take down the drop ceiling.  Most of the plaster was gone, leaving the wood lath strips and crumbly plaster dangles.  Around the perimeter was a border of acoustic tile ceiling, with a bits of the original plaster under that.

I get why people installed these ceilings, it was so much easier than fixing a ceiling and probably made the space warmer, but they make rooms feel awful.  Now that you can see how high the ceiling was supposed to be the room looks horribly cramped under that grid.

This isn’t great, either.

My usual inclination is to leave original material in place, but not here.  On the upper face of the of the wooden lath strips was a quarter inch of black dust.  Just touching them brought down clouds of fine  powder.  Even if the lath had been clean, putting drywall on top of such an uneven surface would be fussy and tedious.  Removing the lath would allow us to put in sound insulation (my guy likes his movies at movie theater volume).  We could also get electrical work done for this room and the one above it.  It made sense to just to remove all the material down to the joists.  My partner volunteered for this job.

These are a bit out of focus, but it really was cloudy and nasty in there.

It looks very dramatic and awful but demo is actually fun.

This is why so many houses around here have a shower in the basement.  This was a working class neighborhood; many of the people worked in the mills or on the railroads nearby.  A lot of people came home from work this dirty, every day.  They would come in though the basement and get cleaned up before coming upstairs for dinner (and often a shot of whisky, so I’m told).  Pittsburgh was this dirty, buildings were covered in soot and pollution.

Here’s something not so positive about Pittsburgh:  the air quality here still isn’t the best.  Like any thriving city there are a lot of cars  and some polluting industry.  They’re working on it.  It’s a lot better than it used to be.

Inevitably, the pollution also found its way into buildings.  In areas that remain undisturbed by rain or or renovations, it’s still there.   In my attic crawlspace — facing  the valley where the railroad is and the mills used to be — there are small drifts of it.  See that soft gray stuff between the joists, that same color, dusting everything?  It’s faintly sparkly, a little bit greasy and so fine that it gets into your pores — it takes a couple of showers to get it out.

It’s quiet and still in there, which is good — under the right conditions, airborne coal dust is explosive.  The dust in my attic is probably a mixture of coal dust, other pollutants and stuff that’s already been burned, in which case it’s just a slightly less scary problem.

Aside from fire concerns, coal dust at any level is a health hazard.   Driving south from Pittsburgh and through West Virginia you see the law firm billboards advertising for mesothelioma patients.  We weren’t going to get black lung disease from renovating the house, but  according to the World Health Organization there is no safe level of coal dust exposure.

Getting every bit of the dust (The Dust) out would be impossible without entirely gutting the house, and I’m not doing that.  Instead, we follow the protocols: wear protective clothing, gloves and a respirator.  We collect the dust carefully, get it into bags which are carefully sealed and put into other bags which are also sealed, and get it out of the house.  Then I vacuum a lot with a HEPA filter and if it’s a washable surface like paint or plaster, wash with TSP substitute.  And then I wash it a couple times more with water.

That’s what we did in this room.  After all the unwanted material had been cleared away, we vacuumed the joists and the underside of the second floor, then scrubbed the joists.  Some time later I patched the holes in the ceiling, aka the underside of the second floor.  When upstairs you could see into this room, which we got used to pretty quickly but seemed to unnerve our guests.

And … then we left it like this for a good long time.  There was so much other stuff to do, and the idea of putting in a ceiling was too overwhelming.

Next: walls, a window and a ceiling.

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