Working, Working, Working.
Passing Out from Fatigue

This is a collection of photographs of work we completed or started on Victorian house.

We created a "To Do" list and made priorities of certain things. Weather played a big part in the decision process. It if was nice outside, we worked outside. If it rained, we worked inside. This was a workable plan when the temperature is nice. Winter inside the Victorian House without a heating system is a problem. Standing next to a torpedo heater is like sticking your head into a jet engine. Warms up this un insulated house pretty fast, just a real loud heater.

Boiler Tugging Challenge!

Now this was a real challenge. The task before us was to disconnect the current heating system and drag the thing out of the house. This boiler was shot and we had already explored alternative heating systems. If it wasn't for my skid steer, I'd be in a world of hurt.

This rusted out boiler must weigh 800 pounds. We had stripped every bit of weight we could and the thing still weighed a ton.

I had to hook a chain to it and drag it from the basement while dodging the pillars holding the center of the house up. We tried a pallet and industrial wheels set up that it simple crushed and made it hard to control. giving up on an easy way, we dragged it inch by inch to the basement door.

We scored the concrete floor but we plan to replace the floor anyway since it is only poured about 1/2" thick over the original dirt floor. It took some time and struggle, but it was worth it at the end. We're looking at a in floor radiate system but need to do some additional research.

Off to the scarp yard to be turned into soup cans or a Chevy bumper.

Hey! We Found the Original Veranda Floor!

(8-2-06)

This was really a puzzlement. A false floor was built on top of the original veranda floor.

The flooring was a poor grade of tongue and groove that was in awful shape. It was badly damage by all the water that poured into this house which had rotted and warped beyond repair.

We did an exploratory and found that this flooring sat on a base of concrete. The question that came to mind was what was under the concrete? The appear to be 6 to ten inches of concrete. The area by the door also had strange shapes of slate pressed into the concrete. We crawled under the veranda and saw wood that made up the original veranda.We also found a Ohio automobile license plate from 1942. The wood we discovered looked like the original oak veranda floor.

Using a mini jackhammer, we start to dig our way to what appeared to be another floor.

6 inches deep into the concrete and we find the original veranda floor! The floor looks in pretty good shape, but the previous owners had move a load bearing wall to make the veranda another apartment. In between all the weight of the concrete on the floor and the movement of the wall, the house started to sag in the corner. It's fixable but it was idiotic that they did this in the first place.

I question a few older contractors and they said at that time concrete was cheaper then fill or wood. So we tossed away four truck loads of waste concrete from the veranda.

But it gets worse. We plan to take out the front steps and the west side bay window porch that was created where the original bay window was. I've been through some tough stuff, but nothing like this.

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victorian house@efadgroup.com