Category: process

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Re-securing the stairs

The staircase was one of the things that first caught my attention.  From the outside the house was of an indeterminate age, but that sinuous banister, the turned newel post —  these were definitely old stairs.

A hundred and forty years old, as it turned out, and of course stairs that old will have some issues. These creaked alarmingly, some steps flexed down when stepped on, the banister was wobbly and some spindles were loose or missing. The biggest problem was that about two-thirds of the steps had slipped out of the slots in the stringer, the board attached to the wall along the length of the stairs. In old houses or better new construction the steps fit into slots in the stringer, making the stairs secure.  Here you can see the slots in the stringer — and how far the steps have moved out of them:

The stairs had slipped out of the stringer because the wall had shifted. On a balloon framed house like this one, the outside walls rest on top of the sill, a large wood beam that sits on top of the stone foundation.  The part of the sill near the front of the house had rotted because of a leaky gutter that poured water against the foundation.   As the sill weakened it shifted, turning slightly, and the bottom of the outside wall at the front of the house moved with it.  Only about an inch and a half, which might not sound like much, but you can see the effect on the baseboard on that section of the wall — it’s attached to the wall, not the floor, so it’s now tilting backwards.

Baseboards are not supposed to look like this.

Getting the rotted sill replaced was the first thing I did after I bought the house. After the work was done, the contractor and engineer told me that the wall was stable now but it had to stay where it was — moving it back into place would have damaged it. They figured this might be the case for the staircase too, although the stairs are about twelve further back on that wall and the baseboard on that section is straight.

While the staircase was creaky and not really solid, it seemed to be holding. There was a lot of other projects that were more immediately urgent.  In the meantime I kept a nervous eye on the situation and did some research on how stairs are engineered and how they could be shored up. The quick fix would be to put blocks of 2x4s under each step and screw them into the wall, then fill in the stringer slots and the gaps between treads and the wall. This would just provide support for the stairs where they were now, leaving the unsightly gaps to be laboriously filled in and camouflaged, but at least it sounded like something I could handle on my own.

The first step in fixing stairs is to remove everything — drywall, plaster, lath — from the underside in order to see what’s going on. I’d been putting this off because I knew it would be a dirty, miserable job and involve endless rounds of cleaning and vacuuming afterwards.

My partner J. was out of town for a week and I decided it was a good time to get this over with.  I could work for many hours without stopping and make a mess without it impacting him.  First, I hung up heavy plastic sheets to enclose the stairs to the basement, which are directly underneath the stairs I was working on.  Pulling down plaster generates a lot of dust and grit and I didn’t want to have to clean the entire basement (including a furnace and water heater).

Taking down the drywall patches was easy, but removing the remaining plaster was a lot slower because the keys (the rough plaster that’s squeezed between the strips of wood lath and holds it all together) were still solid. The plaster had to be broken off bit by bit.

Demo-ing plaster has to be the dirtiest part of renovation. In Pittsburgh, which had bad pollution for decades, it’s extra-messy, because along with the usual grit from deteriorated old plaster, sealed-up spaces often contain superfine black dust from decades of coal fires and industrial pollution.  All of this stuff rained down onto the steps (and my head) along with chunks of plaster and lath. Every few minutes I had to stop and clear up before continuing — the basement stairs would be so covered with rubble that I couldn’t get footing.

It took several hours of halting work and when I was finished, clothes, respirator, goggles and every inch of exposed skin were a uniform dull coal gray.  Plaster is also surprisingly heavy, so even removing a small section like this results in multiple contractor bags, each of which look almost empty but weigh about 40 lbs. When I multiply this by the combined weight of all the plaster in all the rooms, it’s hard to understand why the house vibrates during high winds, but that’s a topic for another day.

Once the underside of the stairs was completely exposed and everything was cleaned up it was easier to get a good look at the situation.

I could see that the treads had been replaced at some point.  It also looked like someone had already made an attempt to shore up the stairs; there were small blocks here and there, although most of them were loose and didn’t seem to be doing much.

When I pushed up on the steps that sagged the most, I was able to move them up an inch or so, close to where they should be. I started to wonder if the stairs could actually be pushed back up into the slots and then secured. It would make the rest of the stair renovation a lot easier if I didn’t have to figure out how to fill the slots in the stringer and the gaps between steps and the wall.  The final result would look a lot better, too.

A stairway is a structure made of many separate parts.  If it’s secured to the wall, it’s stable, otherwise, it can sag or twist, a bit like one of those articulated wooden snakes.  The usual method to fix an sagging staircase is to take it apart and put it back together, but that’s a complicated process and very expensive.  According to the Old House Journal book it’s possible to brace the staircase , move it back into the stringer and then secure it.  This was a lot less expensive and involved than taking things apart, but still a bit beyond my skill level.  I’m willing to experiment and learn on things that aren’t critical, but stairs are something you want to be sure about.  We needed a skilled carpenter who had experience with stairs.

An architect I know had the same issue in an old brick house in Uptown  and she had high praise for the carpenter who did the work.  Joe came by to take a look at our situation and said he thought he could get the stairs most of the way back into the stringer.  Before he returned to start the job, I spent a few hours cleaning out the stringer, scraping out gobs of foam and putty that had been used over the years to fill in the spaces between the steps and the wall.

This was the ugliest part of the staircase.

Once all that material was gone it was apparent just how precarious the stairs actually were.  They were really only secured at the top, a state of affairs that wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

For next few days we stepped softly, moved slowly and made sure to not be on the stairs at the same time.  I kept imagining them collapsing and stranding us upstairs, like that scene in The Money Pit.  Thankfully we only had to live with that new awareness for a few days before Joe came back and started work.

It was interesting to see how he braced the stairs against the opposite partition wall and the side of the stairs, using a diagonal 2×4 to distribute the pressure.

He also braced the stairs from below with 2×4’s placed vertically.  By going back and forth and slowly adjusting the bracing from the side and below, he gradually lifted and moved the whole structure back to where it should be.  He also attached blocks at several points along the stringer to keep those steps from moving too far.

Once he had moved the stairs back into the stringer — or as close as he could get — Joe added blocking underneath each step, using glue and screws to secure them into place.

There’s something very reassuring about that tidy row of identical blocks.

The bottom two steps couldn’t be moved back to the stringer, so he decided to replace those treads and risers.  You can see the old floorboards under there.  One day I’ll pull up the old diamond-patterned linoleum and refinish these floors.

The funny thing is the stairs don’t -look- much better, that won’t happen until I strip and refinish the woodwork, which will come after work on the second floor hallway ceiling and walls.  But it’s wonderful to go up and down stairs that feel solid.  A couple of the steps still creak a bit, but that’s fine — just part of the character of an old house.

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Ceiling and shelving

So here we are back in the middle room on the first floor, with no ceiling and one open wall.  It sat like this for a while (two years), but one winter my sister got stir-crazy up in the Virginia mountains  and decided to come to Pittsburgh for a few days and put up a ceiling.  This isn’t what most people choose to do when they get stir-crazy, but she really likes constructing stuff, figuring out how to do something.  She’s all about getting stuff done quickly and is bored by details, finishes and research, stuff that I find interesting, so it works out well.

The plan here was, she’d come for a few days and we’d bang this out, then I’d fill in gaps, the mudding and caulking and all the little details that take a long time.  First, we insulated the wall and the ceiling joist bays.  This is going to be a media room with big speakers, so the ceiling got two layers of acoustic insulation, which will help keep the upstairs peaceful.

While the wall was open, it made sense to frame in a future window in the north wall.  There’s an enclosed porch on the other side of that framed-in opening.  It’s a depressing windowless space now, but one day it’ll be a sun porch, with an amazing view.  When that happens, we could open up the wall here and put in a window — or a door (to leave the options open, the space is open to the floor).

We measured and took a photo to note the location of the opening and the wiring.

After the ceiling insulation came the blue foam, for another layer of soundproofing, then drywall.  The joists aren’t standard, so just attaching full sheets of drywall would require lots of careful strapping, the ceiling version of shimming.  We were limited on time and not concerned with making things absolutely perfect and my sister suggested that we put the drywall up in panels,  sizes to be determined with some quick math based on the dimensions of the room.  The seams would be covered with pine lattice strips for a simple, low-profile coffered effect.

The smaller panels would be much easier than wrangling full-size drywall sheets, but they were still a bit too large and heavy for us to comfortably carry up a ladder, hold and attach, so we rented a drywall lift.  It’s so nice to have something held in place, and you can  make small adjustments and take your time.

Then we put up drywall on the open walls, applied horizontally because it was an easier fit.  It’s always an adjustment to see walls closed up after being open and messy for so long.  The room looks so much better, but also smaller; although that perception fades after a few days.

I planned to fill in the open areas with drywall and blend the joint between that and the remaining areas of plaster, but convenience ended up winning and my sister put the drywall over the plaster, all the way to the corner.  We’d spent a lot of time scraping that wall down over the previous months so it was a bit frustrating to see that work turn out to be unnecessary, but that happens sometimes.

After the drywall was up I started mudding and they got to work on the bookshelves.

She’s got a great quick method for built-in shelving in a enclosed space like this.  In a nutshell:  firmly attach the side boards to the wall, then build up the shelves, bottom-up.  Put in vertical supports, put in the horizontal, attach, then put the next verticals on top of that.

In the two above photos you can see that the new ceiling between the chimney and the window is a bit wonky and not completely flat.  19th century joist beams aren’t standardized, which we knew, but the time constraints decided against getting into strapping (shimming to level a ceiling).  This area was the most uneven, which wasn’t so obvious when it was just the drywall panels, but the lattice emphasized it.

I wish we’d spent a bit more time on this area to even it out a bit, but it’ll look better after primer and paint .  I decided that the ceiling needed an additional detail and added the smallest, cheapest pine blocks to each intersection.  I put them on a diagonal because the other way looked awful.

Oh, and we also put up simple crown molding. Not only does it make the ceiling look more finished — like a cap on the room — but it covers the gaps between the wall and the ceiling.

We hadn’t decided on a fixture yet, so we left a panel around the box.  This will be covered by the medallion.

It’s much fancier than the original was, really a bit too fancy, but it looks nice.

Next:  painting, trim, details.

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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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