Useful web links for new old houses and log homes
When you’re hand-building a period house, with unusual characteristics, in a rural area with wild critters, thinking of adding solar power and trying to incorporate some “green qualities”, you of course poke around on the Internet. It’s amazing how many resources there are!
Smith and Speed Mercantile homestead supplies and tools.
Cut and Dry Wood Chinking chinking with saplings, also restoration.
Formica VirrVarr and Boomerang classic countertop laminate.
Historic Colors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Valspar paint website.
Brown wall plate screws for those vintage brown bakelite switchplate and outlet covers from eBay.
A History of the Architecture of the USDA Forest Service
Forest Fire Lookout Association
University of Idaho native plant seedlings
Orchardgrass seed (naturalized in Beulah)
Harlequin’s Gardens well-adapted and native plants for Colorado.
Western Native Seed native shrub, wildflower and grass seed for the Rocky Mountains and western Great Plains.
Beulah School for the Natural Sciences webcam
Retro Renovation is an online decorating newsletter for 1940s, 1950s and 1960s homes.
Controlling Nuisance Woodpeckers in New Mexico
American Restoration Tile has period colors, shapes and patterns.
Our custom log builder, Pedersen Logsmiths, has a lot of information about log construction that is useful in the initial planning stages.
PEX tubing: what it is, what it’s used for, its advantages.
Edge trim for laminate countertops: New York Metal
Door and window details in PDF, DWG, and DXF formats. Without the DWG details to import into AutoCAD, I’d have had a much harder time designing the house. Thank you! to Eagle Windows and Simpson Doors.
Working With Linoleum Flooring by This Old House magazine
Discussion of the use of linoleum as a “green” countertop surface.
Another discussion, ditto.
A YouTube scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Another YouTube scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
The Preservation of Historic Log Buildings (National Park Service)
Rent a historic Forest Service cabin, fire lookout or ranger station
When visiting Grand Teton National Park, make reservations at Colter Bay Village, a collection of historic cabins refurbished for vacation rentals. Our bedroom is patterned after one of these cabins.
Cabin 1009 at Colter Bay Village, Grand Teton National Park. We copied the low-pitched roof, the ceiling boards, and the sliding bedroom windows.
Deco to Disco “20th century furnishings for the 21st century”. A shop in Portland, Oregon.
Floors & Other Wonderful Things
The floors planks for the hardwood floors are reclaimed wood from a gym floor that was in a high school in Hilsboro. The floors look a little funny in the place at this time, because they still have all of the gymnasium markings on them. When I walk through the house, I feel as though I should be dribbling a basketball in the house and looking for a hoop to shoot it into. Of course those free throw lines will come off when the floors are sanded. After sanding and finishing, the floors will look like beautiful finished maple.
Reclaimed Maple Floors (dining room)
Reclaimed Maple Floors (Entry)
Reclaimed Maple Floors (Living Room)
I know that bamboo flooring is in vogue these days, but I much prefer reclaimed wood floors. Bamboo still necessitates that it be grown and harvested and processed somewhere and then shipped here. By contrast, using reclaimed wood puts no additional demand on the market for harvesting new resources (bamboo or trees or anything else). It is also readily available locally so there is minimal transport required for it. So, all things considered, I think it is far more sustainable to reuse existing wood, as opposed to growing, harvesting, processing, and shipping new wood for a project like this. In addition to that, reclaimed wood has a story that comes with it. It has been somewhere before, and the story of where it has come from is usually quite interesting. Also, I just really like the way older wood looks.
While all of this progress has been happening on the inside, there has also been some more detail work done to the outside. The front columns are wrapped and detailed. All that remains is the railings. The porch decking has also been laid down, and it looks phenomenal. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good picture of it right now, because it is covered to protect it from the elements until it gets a treatment. The reason it looks so amazing is because it is also reclaimed wood. Specifically, it is wood that was salvaged from the garage that used to stand on the lot when we bought it. Rather than just tear the garage down and scrap it, we decided to keep as much wood out of it as possible for reuse in the house, and the decking was a perfect application for this. The planks are fairly wide and have a rich grain to them, as only old wood can. I’ll be sure to get a photo of that as soon as I can. In the meantime, I suggest checking in to the builder’s web site for more updated pictures: http://www.bridgecityinc.com/
Front
Front Porch Details
Log Set Part 2 plus a log building bibliography
Let’s continue with the log set. Back to Part 1
In reality it took several days of work to get all the logs up. Don’t let this post lead to you to believe it was all done in a day!
This particular style of log construction is called “round log chink style” or “saddle notch”. Chinking between the logs, which I’ll post about another time, fills the spaces between logs and allows for the taper and bumpiness of hand-peeled logs. There are attractive qualities about Swedish cope or “chinkless” construction that we considered. So, too, with square-hewn logs with dovetailed corners as well as the massive logs typical of Alaskan log buildings. Hewn logs are as typical of the early West as are round logs, and historically there were many hybrids and uncommon or regional methods of construction. These days you can have anything, including adobe/log combinations. At one point we even considered a log/straw-bale combination but that turned out to be too complicated. It was the log ranger station in Stanley, Idaho (which I talk about in my first post here) that finally settled the question of what style our log house would be.
You can learn more about styles of log construction at Pedersen Logsmiths and at the websites of other log builders. Various notches are pictured and described at Jeff’s website.
Okay, on with the show!
Think of how Lincoln Logs go together. Of the first course of logs, some have to be half logs, split in half lengthwise. Otherwise, you'd end up with a gap between logs and floor. Well, to be technical, this is the subfloor, painted for weather protection. The finish floor is a future operation, but if you look close you can see a 3/4 inch plywood rim that holds the logs above the subfloor by the thickness of the finish floor boards.
Where logs end without being notched together with other logs, such as at door and window openings, the log ends are held in place with vertical rebar and small plywood spacers. Here one of our helpers cuts plywood into 3-inch squares for the spacers.
Another helper cuts slabs of fiberglass insulation to place in the saddle notches (where logs cross).
Saddle notches are half-round-shaped cuts that allow logs to overlap. Here we have two courses of logs plus a half log. Eventually the half log will be trimmed out at the doorway. Notice how much redder the subfloor has become. The porch decking is so filthy it looks like the logs are sitting in dirt.
Here's where the big living room window will go. You can see the notches where the ceiling beams will fit in.
Jack Ferguson's boys spent all day balancing on the highest logs, guiding their dad as he lowered logs into place with the crane. Here it's a ceiling beam.
An early snow left the ground muddy. I've gone over the house several times trying to remove the red clay mud that got tracked all over but I bet I will never find it all.
Jeff Pedersen, our log guy, is as fearless as the Ferguson boys. And as muddy.
Jeff Pedersen had his hands full coordinating the crew of firefighters, neighbors, crane, and teenage boys. He is the best, no doubt about it. We found him by doing an Internet search for log builders. There was something about what he says on his website (www.pedersenlogsmiths.com) that we really related to, and a special visit to his log yard in Challis, Idaho, confirmed our choice. Jeff does perhaps a half-dozen houses and restorations per year. One of his early projects is featured in a book called Hands On Log Homes: Cabins Built on Dreams by Cindy and Art Thiede.
The big ceiling beams, which came from Canada, are supported by several log posts and one metal post.
One of the Ferguson boys keeps himself occupied.
Jeff sharpens his chainsaw.
In the main part of the house, the first floor logs and ceiling beams are in place. There will be two courses of wall logs above this, to form a kneewall in the second floor. The house is actually a story and a half, not two full stories.
I must have fizzled out about the time the gable assemblies were hoisted into place because I have no pictures of that. At any rate, they got there and now they are pinned together by purlins (roof beams). Someone has begun laying the tongue-and-groove boards that form both the ceiling for the first floor and the floor for the upstairs rooms. These, too, are now red with mud.
My watching and snoozing post, a storage container converted temporarily into a bedroom.
Firefighters can do anything, including laying floor boards.
Joseph, Truck of Many Colors, is a major contributor to the house.
Porch posts. The porch is tied to the house by an extra-long wall log.
With the porch posts in place all our crew (with the exception of Jeff, who had window and door bucks to install, and Jack, who would be needed in a day or two when the roof panels were installed) departed and the thrill of the log set was over. It was a grand time, made even more so by all the people who gave up a day (or two or three) of their time to help us and to share the work and excitement. Thanks to them, this will always be a house built with love.
Sometime I’ll tell you about the time when a bunch of folks came to help John install the floor joists under the subfloor. They kept us on schedule to get the logs raised and the house more-or-less dried in before the winter of 2008-2009.
A LOG BUILDING BIBLIOGRAPHY
These are the books that helped form our taste in log homes. For books that are out of print, check eBay and ABE Books.
Building with Logs: Western Log Construction in Context. Jennifer Eastman Attebery. University of Idaho Press 1998. 0-89301-208-4
Hands-On Log Homes: Cabins Built on Dreams. Cindy and Art Thiede. Gibbs-Smith 1998. 0-87905-80 5-6
Rocky Mountain Home: Spirited Western Hideaways. Elizabeth Clair Flood. Gibbs-Smith 1996. 0-87905-704-1
The Mountain West: Interpreting the Folk Landscape. Terry G. Jordan, Jon T. Kilpinen, Charles F. Gritzner. The Johns Hopkins University Press 1997. 0-8018-5431-8
Uncle Sam’s Cabins: A Visitor’s Guide to Historic U.S. Forest Service Ranger Stations of the West. Les Joslin. Wilderness Associates 1995. 0-9647167-1-2
Welcome to 1915 Bungalow Remodel!
A few years ago, we bought a one-story 1915 bungalow. The modest two-bed one-bath home had a well-kept interior and wonderfully landscaped yard. As if the beautifully updated kitchen and bath, hardwood floors, box-beam and coved ceilings, original built-ins and arbor were not enough, the real selling point of the home was the full, unfinished basement. At 1500 sf, the original home was a little small for us, but we could easily double the area by finishing the basement.
After a couple of years of hemming and hawing, I finally completed the drawings and specifications for the basement project. Although it’s true that working full-time designing and remodeling my clients’ homes did leave little time at the end of the day to work on our own project, the real reason for the delay is that architects make the worst clients. I somehow felt compelled to run through all possible design and finish options. I could not stop even as the contractors were bidding. Design is a never-ending process.
The project is now getting underway, and we are all very excited. Please join us as we remodel our bungalow!
Tune in next time for waterproofing the basement!
Log Set Part 1
Raising the logs is the one aspect of log house building that everyone wants to see and participate in. (After that they disappear.) So, here are some pictures of our log raising in October 2008. At that time I was too sick to do much more than watch, take a few pictures, and sleep. Much of what went on I missed or don’t remember.
The ten-inch wall logs came from standing dead timber in Idaho and the larger beams came from standing dead timber in Canada. At the arid Challis, Idaho log yard of Pedersen Logsmiths the logs dried further while other jobs were completed. Jeff Pedersen predicted that there would be little or no settling of the logs after the house was built. A year later, we’ve detected barely any settling. (This is not always the case.)
Our logs lie in Jeff Pederson's Challis, Idaho log yard.
When our turn came, Jeff and his crew hand-peeled the logs, notched them, and constructed the shell according to blueprints from Trent Roman of Northwest Planning and Design. Each log was numbered according to which wall it belonged to and its orientation.
I know from first-hand experience how much work is involving in peeling logs.
Challis, Idaho: Seven rounds of logs are built and you can tell where the windows and doors will be. This picture by Jeff Pedersen was our first view of our future home.
Then the whole thing was disassembled and loaded onto two flatbed trailers. The trucks headed out to Colorado, about a two-day trip. Jeff loaded his pickup with tools, following the trucks.
Meanwhile, John had rounded up friends and firefighter buddies to help at the logset. For me, he set up a cozy bed in a storage building near the action so I could retreat when I got tired but still be able to hear and watch what was going on. A local crane operator was hired and he brought his family of teenage boys. A house was rented for Jeff, who would spend nearly a week supervising and doing detailed fitting work. We were all ready and excited when the trucks pulled in with the logs.
It's a house! The first truckload of logs pulls onto our street.
Volunteer helpers took turns directing Jack Ferguson (operating the crane) and slinging logs in groups to be unloaded into piles.
Bill and Tom guide the crane and put slings under the logs.
Jack Ferguson at the crane controls. We were extremely fortunate to have a local crane available rather than hiring one from Pueblo, thirty miles away.
The gables arrived partially assembled.
Each wall of the house is tagged with a different color slip, numbered according to its place in the wall.
Logs everywhere. You could hardly move around.
Here comes the first log, the beginning of the wall between the main part of the house and the master bedroom "cabin addition". There is no doorway opening in this log. Until Jeff cuts it out later, when the wall is stabilized, everyone steps over it. That's paint, salvaged from a local paint store's mis-mixed stash, on the subfloor. It's intended to help protect the plywood from weather.
Jeff Pedersen brought this apparatus for lifting logs with the crane.
Rough plumbing inspected and approved
Our log house, with its limits on where plumbing lines can be run and its tendency to settle over time, has been a challenge and a learning experience for Troy Taulman, a recently-ordained master plumber. It’s also been uncomfortable. How he wished for an apprentice when he had to slither into the narrow space under the shed dormer’s roof, where we had decided to put the waste vent.
The things a plumber has to do! That white material is a cross-section of the structural insulated panels (SIPs) that provide 12 inches of foam insulation as well as the roof structure itself.
At least it doesn't have cobwebs yet!
Today Doug from the Regional Building Department came to inspect the rough plumbing. An affable guy, he told stories from his own plumbing career and gave Troy tips for future work. Only a couple of minor things needed correction. A couple of drain pipes containing slip joints (to allow for possible log settling) needed some blocking to make sure they’d slip down straight. The two-way cleanout located just outside the house needed to be replaced with double one-way cleanouts or eliminated in favor of cleanouts already installed inside the house. No big deal, these are easy fixes.
Doug (left) and Troy.
Although Troy didn’t get the “atta boy” he wanted from Doug, just an “okay!”, I could tell by Doug’s cheerfulness that he likes Troy and thinks he’s doing a good job. Best of all, he signed off on the work. He’ll be back another day when we get the hot water heat put in.
Those people and their cameras! Doug grins as he signs off on the rough plumbing. The permit is kept in one of those real estate "take one" boxes while a set of plans is stored in the capped blue pipe.
The final 10 percent
“The first 90 percent of a project takes the 90 percent of the time, and the final 10 percent of the project takes the other 90 percent” — apologies to the person who said this first, because I can’t find a citation and therefore can’t give you the credit you deserve for describing our remodel so neatly.
We’ve been so close to done for (what seems like) so long that I no longer have any idea what to say when people ask when I think we’ll be done. Even when I run through the list of things of things that are left on the remodeling side, I start thinking about the interior design elements that are yet to come, and the point at which I sink into a comfy chair and gaze contentedly at the Magnolia shade seems very far away.
That said, tile is providing more joy than pain these days. We have a backsplash. Or two, depending on how you think about it:
The brown paper looks a lot like the butcher block underneath. OK, a little.
The stove went in a while ago, but it came out again so Orlando could work his magic :
Wood, paper, stainless, plastic, lizard, Spock . . . .
I keep heading into the kitchen to admire the backsplash, one tile at a time.
Waiting for grout, once again.
Unfortunately, Orlando’s magic did not extend to getting all the tiles right side up. I caught some of them, but a few hours after he left, I saw that the garlic was upside down, with a clove floating at the top of the tile. I tried to pry it off, but astonishingly, that didn’t work. Then I moved on to figuring there was nothing I could do about it right then. I am confident it can be fixed, and I am confident that I am not the person to fix it.
Dressing It Up
The finishing process is coming along nicely. On the exterior, we now have all of the siding done, including some of the detailing work. I am very pleased with how it’s coming together. Each step we take seems to make the house look more and more historic.
Exterior (front)
The interior is getting its detail work as well. One of the details that I’m most excited about is the crown molding, along with the pictureframe molding just below it. I’ve always enjoyed this was wonderful feature of historic homes. I also appreciate the utility value of the picture molding, because it actually allows you to hang pictures without putting nails in the wall. That’s a great idea, in my opinion.
Family room w/ a view of the crown & picture moldings
Another element that helps this house to start to feel more like a home is the presence of cabinets. The boxes are hung, and looking good. It’s much easier to envision how the space will feel now.
Kitchen w/ cabinets
The finishes that are scheduled over the next several days will change the look of the house considerably. We have paint colors selected, and will begin painting the exterior as weather allows. Also, floors will be installed by the end of the week. I am particularly excited to see how the floors change the look, because we will be using reclaimed wood that was previously part of a gym floor. It still has the free throw lines on it. Of course, the lines will be sanded out before the finish, but it’s still pretty fun to look at. I’m sure I’ll post again once the floors are in.
More details and pictures are available on the builder’s web site.
Globe finials: an old roof detail you can revive today
Have you ever noticed these little galvanized steel balls on the peaks of gable roofs in older neighborhoods?
Globe finial (ball finial) at the Blizzard Gulch "Ranger Station".
This is a globe finial, sometimes called a ball finial. My childhood home in Oregon, which was built right after WWII, had three of these ornamenting the ends of the ridge caps that sealed the tops of the shingles. So did many other houses in the neighborhood. Nowadays few people know what they are. Roofers rip them off and toss them into the dumpster. Ridge caps are no longer used with asphalt shingles; the shingles wrap right over the ridge. Gable finials therefore no longer have a purpose, except sometimes on barn roofs, but still it seems to me that a roof looks neglected without them. That particularly applies to a period house.
Classic Forest Service ranger stations commonly have green asphalt shingles. The Blizzard Gulch “Ranger Station” departs from that tradition in having a corrugated coated metal roof, mainly to provide a safe surface for rainwater collection and to stand up better in case of forest fire. Unlike traditional ridge roll, such as was on my childhood home, its ridge cap is designed to fit closely to the roofing panels, leaving no space to slip ball finials in. Still, I was determined to have the finials even if they must perch a bit oddly. I bought old globe finials from eBay and antique stores because the roofing company not only didn’t know where to get globe finials, they didn’t even know what I was talking about!
Old globe finials from eBay. This pair happens to be the large size.
Today I dug deeply into Google and discovered that globe finials are still being made by Klauer Manufacturing Company in Dubuque, Iowa. You can go to their website, look under “request a catalog”, pick the pdf format catalog, and look on page 30. There the finials are!
New globe finial from Klauer Manufacturing Company.
Not quite believing my eyes, I emailed to the Klauer company and received from Mr. Dan Burrows not only reassurance that the company does in fact still make globe finials but also a bit of history about the little critters. Here’s what he told me:
In the early 1900’s through the 1940’s, putting the roof on a home was somewhat different than today. More often than not, rolled asphalt roofing was used, if the homeowner did not use metal for the roof. To seal the roof peak, a demand was created for products that both closed the roof and were somewhat ornate in their nature to dress up the application. Products ranged from various ornate hip shingle designs to plain ridge roll. Plain ridge roll was by far the most popular of the products used to seal the peak and dress up the project. There were actually originally (3) three sizes of ridge roll used for this purpose. They were 1-1/4″, 1-1/2″ and 2″ Plain Ridge Roll. The size references the diameter of the roll at ridge of the product. Some applicators simply snipped the roll and bent the product down at each end to seal it, however residential homeowners did not really care for that look. Subsequently, Klauer Manufacturing Company developed what is referred to as the Globe Finial. It consisted of small piece of the actual ridge roll with a round ornate ball attached to it. This provided a very ornate look as well as sealing the ridge roll. There were originally (3) three sizes of balls, one for each size of ridge roll. This particular product was totally manufactured by hand, as it still is today. There are (13) thirteen individual operations in the manufacturing of the Globe Finial. Due to the stress of fabricating the Globe Finial, it can only be manufactured from Galvanized Steel. We had totally discontinued the fabrication of the Globe Finial in the early 1970’s, however demand required that we at least continue to fabricate the one for 2″ Plain Ridge Roll. Today the 2″ Globe Finial that fits 2″ Plain Ridge Roll is the only size we manufacture. The other sizes have been discontinued over the years as their use dwindled. We have chosen to keep the 2″ Globe Finial in our product line, and at present have no plans to discontinue it. I believe there are some plastic finials that someone is having made, however we are the only manufacturer of the metal (steel)finial.
Ridge roll for use with globe finials.
Klauer Manufacturing Company sells globe finials only to wholesale distributors. In Colorado, these distributors are Guardian Building Products in Pueblo and Valley Steel and Wire in Fort Collins. Guardian Building Products has warehouses all over the country. No doubt there are many other wholesalers who carry Klauer metal products. You can ask your friendly local lumber yard, such as my beloved Rush’s Pueblo Lumber, to order globe finials for you from one of these wholesalers. The Guardian item number is 35213. I’m going to buy some for our sheds!
To contact Klauer Manufacturing Company, you can email to sales@klauer.com.
Edit: another wholesale source is HW Brand. Inquire at farm and ranch supply stores such as Big R.
Edit: I am on the hunt for pictures of houses that still have their globe finials.
Globe finial (ball finial).
“Tile.” Spoken calmly, without any veins bulging anywhere.
I knew roughly what sort of tile I wanted in the kitchen and bathroom before we’d even signed a contract. You might think that would simplify things, which in turn would speed the process up. I didn’t do a controlled study, so I can’t prove that my advance work didn’t help, but it’s hard for me to see how the tile part of the project could have gone any more slowly.
Timeline:
Some time in the 90s: I see a tile I like in a magazine. I think about how nice it would look in a backsplash.
Winter 2008/2009: I spend an evening going through about twenty years’ worth of Bon Appetits. I find the tile. I get on the Internet. It is no longer available.
I move on to spend vast quanities of time on the Intenet looking for tiles I love. I even go through every page of tile on CafePress. CafePress has about 15,000 tiles. I look at all of them, finally finding something that is almost right, except the tiles have words on them. I write to the artists, asking if they have given any thought to making them without the words. And, because the world evidently revolves around meeee, they have.
So I order these tiles. I don’t know who will be installing them or what else will be with them, but these will be the highlight of the kitchen backsplash.
Spring 2009: I spend a lot of time designing the backsplash, blissfully unaware of the realities of available tile sizes and such.
May 2009: We sign a contract with the man who will eventually accuse me of being a Russian spy.
First week of June 2009: The contractor’s in-house desginer and I go to the contractor’s preferred tile showroom to meet with their preferred tile designer. She hates my tiles. She hates my proposed symmetrical backsplash design. Eventually, she suggests we move on to discussing the bathroom. That goes better, but it doesn’t resolve the kitchen issue.
Most of the rest of June: I e-mail the tile designer a few more times. We make no progress.
End of June: The contractor’s in-house designer goes to the beach and I go to another tile designer, who produces designs I like much better. When the beach vacation is over, I fax the designs. In-houser attempts to get designs to work with contractor’s preferred tile place. No go, because they don’t have the sizes and shapes we need. And the place that produced the tile designs I love doesn’t meet the contractor’s standards.
I remain calm. I have faith.
Mid-July: In-houser and I eventually go to a place owner by a friend of hers, and we manage to put together an OK plan.
Late July: At least I think it’s OK, but then it turns out that I can’t get a cove or sanitary base there. And in-houser is going out of town again.
Clearly, this is a job for Heather the interior designer who is too good for me. She hooks me up with her woman at Waterworks. Tile in the right sizes! And colors! And shapes! And a five-week lead time.
Beginning of August: In-houser and I meet at Waterworks. Everything goes along tickety boo until I say something about wanting the mud base. Waterworks says we probably want a cove base, because the mud base tile is only for bathrooms that are getting a mud base floor. In-houser says we’re not. Waterworks gives us a list of the colors and types of tile we’ll need for the kitchen and bathroom.
Middle of August: Tiling subcontractor provides list of what he’ll need.
Middle of September: First batch of tile arrives. It does not include the cove base, so nothing can happen yet.
End of September: Second, final batch of tile arrives. I meet with contractor and tile subcontractor. When I show the cove base to the installer, he tells me that it is the wrong type to use with a mud base. Which we are having. I announce my intention to kill in-houser and throw in a Bad Word, just to show how understanding and collaborative I’m feeling. I am sure he is impressed by the rationality and good nature of the homeowner he’ll be working for.
Now it’s the beginning of October. We still don’t have the backsplash up; we’re waiting for a countertop. But once the tile came in, the bathroom tile got done in a week, including grout. And it is lovely, even if the Streamline soap dishes and towel rings haven’t gone up yet. Now for some plumbing . . .
Hers and his
I took the next photo before the tile was grouted. I keep getting barred from my own bathroom while something cures or sets:
Tub/shower enclosure, with niches for our various toiletries and suchlike.
We’re going to need quite a threshold from the bedroom to the bathroom:
Our bathroom is on a higher plane.
They can call it a mud base, but it looks clean and white to me.
