YCGL - Friday-Sunday, October 14-16, 2020, The whole week actually - Boston Roundabout and Back Again
So, this is late in arriving, but based on the list right before, I'm just going to back up and pick up from where we haven't been yet. Got That?
We were originally planning on going to Martha's Vineyard for the weekend. Eliza's grandfather, a retired Business professor at Harvard, owns a place there. The place, however, is comprised of five different living quarters. There is the original house. As the family grew up and expanded, he added three two-bedroom cottages. As the families grew more and had kids, the noise was too great, so her grandfather built another house about 150 yards away so they could go to bed and wake up when they wanted in relative peace and quiet.
However, the weather was supposed to be rainy the whole time, so Erik decided not to go. Another time.
That gave us more time to start on the other project. First,
The House.
Kim, the neighbor on the left, said the houses on the block were built in in 1890-1903 by Portuguese fishermen. At that time, the houses were much simpler than they are now. Several examples, there was no running water or sewers, hence, no bathrooms. Outhouses were in the back. There was no electricity. The house didn't have closets, because you only needed clothes to work in and a set of clothes for church, all of which were easy to hang on the wall. All kinds of little curiosities.
The first date Erik has been able to establish was a building permit in 1920 to build an addition on the back of the house for bathrooms and an enclosed stairwell going from the second story down to the basement. There is evidence that the house has been remodeled five times. The evidence is from the downstairs bathroom. In addition to the original walls, ceiling and floor from the initial construction in 1920, there were four additional sets of walls, ceilings and floors. Rather than strip and remove, each remodel just added another layer. It really made sense because there was no insulation in the walls or ceiling. They hauled almost 10 cubic yards of material from just the first floor bathroom. 
They started that teardown right before I came last year. When I got there, the windows were holes in the walls because they had been covered over during the first remodel so Erik and the contractor didn't know they were there. The contractor closed in the windows a couple of days after I got there. The white paper towel on the floor covers the toilet drain pipe. The toilet never was there the whole time I visited.
The living room.
The front windows on the first and second story are now the master bedrooms, though Erik and I surmise that they were originally the living rooms on the floors. The front window on the third floor was my bedroom now, but was Erik and Eliza's bedroom during construction. The first two windows on the first floor was my bedroom last year and is still a bedroom now. The first two windows on the second floor is now the living room. The last window on the first and second floor are bedrooms, but the one on the second floor is Eliza's office. Erik's office is behind my third floor bedroom. The kitchens on both floors are behind and to the left, adjacent to the bedrooms. The bathrooms are behind the kitchens as is the spiral staircase going down to the basement.
All these rooms (except the basement) have been modified in some way. New LED lights have been installed throughout the second and third story, old hot water radiators have been removed and replaced with MiniSplit Heater/Air Conditioners, walls moved to increase the depth of the closets from thirteen inches to twenty four inches to fit modern hangers, a brick chimney for a no longer existing furnace was removed, etc. All copper and cast iron plumbing has been removed and replaced with PEX.
First floor closet and chimney. The entire Second floor closet extended by nine inches
wall was removed and the back wall was depth into what is now the living room. It is
extended nine inches. The space to the right directly over the closet to the left.
is the closet to my bedroom last year.
The Basement
That the whole house doesn't fall in still amazes me, but it is stable and the floors are incredibly level. The basement floor is in various locations masonry stone, bricks, concrete, and, in several locations where the awful concrete is located, dirt. (Yes, those that know my despise of the word dirt when soil should be used, this is dirt.) You can see some of those combinations in front of the washer/dryer on the right. What you can't see is the hole in front of the dryer that kept tripping me. I filled it with self leveling concrete. Erik and crew have removed tons of trash, pipe, glass, wood, remains of the coal bins, up these stairs.
Yes, they are as bad as they look. And there is no good way to modify them with the low ceiling above them. There is about five feet of height above the third step.
The window behind is interesting. It's about four feet tall. That is the way most of the stuff left the basement. It's useful, but....not a help in fixing the stairs.
The Stair Project
Yep, the basement is a piece of work. I mentioned "The stair project" in the previous blog. I've spent a lot of time over the past year thinking how to modify the stairs. The problem is the headroom. They are steep now, so making them steeper and losing a step isn't an option. The window doesn't solve anything. This year, I took a hard look at the stairs going from the first floor to the second floor. They are immediately above these, yet there isn't any problem with the height there. It finally occurred to me that stairs above didn't have a floor above them, so there wasn't a restriction there. The picture on the right shows three floor beams. The last two support the floor UNDER the stairs, meaning, they don't support anything useful. We talked it over with Kevin, the contractor, and he agreed that those beams could be removed without affecting anything above them. The vertical supports in the left picture could be replaced with a column that actually supports the flooring on the left side and everything that you see in the right hand picture except the first beam can be removed. Then the stairs can be rebuild and actually made into something that doesn't look like a background scene from Frankenstein. And Erik will do that as soon as the electrician finishes the wiring of the electrical panels and the building permits can be completed!!! Coming soon!!!
The Closet Project
This is the utility closet underneath the front steps going from the second to the third floor. Unfortunately, I took the picture after the previous shelving had been removed. The shelves tilted to the point of things sliding off. It matched the comfortable feeling of the basement stairs. The stairs rise at a 45 degree angle. They are really steep. And if that looks like a cardboard box for a ceiling, that is correct. It's cardboard. And the sheetrock isn't finished on the slope. The post is structural, by the way, it supports the center stringer under the steps. 
Erik installing a wall switch and outlet for a light under the stairs. He's done a lot of wiring in the past year.
Erik installing a wall switch and outlet for a light under the stairs. He's done a lot of wiring in the past year.
The happy carpenters showing off the almost finished product.
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