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April 23, 2008
Various renovation questions, help!
Hi
I have a few renovation questions that are causing me to loose sleep, and thought maybe I could get some feedback.
Issue #1: stairs. all the stairs in the house i'm buying have to be completely replaced. We could maybe save bannisters, and 1 stair's worth of spindles, as well as 1 newel post, but that's it. Where do I go for nice, period appropriate stair stuff? Do I just have to haunt salvage places and hope, or is there somewhere to get new treads, risers, etc (not newels, for that I will haunt salvage places) that won't break the bank or look too new/out of place? Thanks.
Issue 2: Floors. Where can I get reclaimed floors?!? Not old beams remilled into floors, but for-real old floors?
Issue 3: What about molding? House has no molding except in front parlor, and I don't want to replicate it custom but I do want nice, hefty, again, period-appropriate moldings.
Issue 4: Plaster work. It's all gone, long since sheetrocked. Anyone know anything about the fake plaster moldings (I think their rubber?) What do they look like? Where can I get them? Is there an example online I could look at?
If I had a million dollars to renovate, I'd put the plaster back up, but I just can't, so I want some viable and budget appropriate options to deal with ugly sheetrocked ceilings. Thanks!
Comments
Aaah, sorry for the TERRIBLE grammatical error above, it's "I think they're rubber," not "their."
Posted by: RAR at April 23, 2008 11:28 AM
Reclaimed wood flooring is widely available. Do a search on Google for Reclaimed wood floors. There are many varieties of wood, some are very expensive. I put naily grade old growth pine in my brownstone about 14 years ago. I bought it from Mountain Lumber Reclaimed Wood in Virginia.(I think this is where they are). Order samples of the wood because sometimes the pictures on the web look nothing like the wood.Also realize the cheaper the reclaimed flooring is the more variety in the wood, My floor has a large variety of old nail holes knots etc. Expect to pay for shipping. Also there are many companies selling reclaimed wood. Some do not have much to choose from. also make sure you can have it milled to your specs if you so chose, for instance if you only wanted 4" wide pieces they should be able to mill that for you. Of course this will cost more.
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 11:53 AM
Ha Sorry I just saw that you wanted old floors not reclaimed floors. Good Luck with that!!!
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 11:56 AM
Sounds like you're not buying the house you actually want.
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 12:09 PM
Re stairs:
Design Interiors on Meserole Street did our stairs. They manufactured spindles to match the remaining existing ones, put in new terads and risers, leaving the existing stringer attached, and reset the existing bannister onto the existing and new spindles. We were very happy with them. They can do whatever you want in this area.
Heights Woodworking can do the same thing and is very reputable.
Posted by: slopefarm at April 23, 2008 12:26 PM
Ha ha, of course we're not buying the house we WANT, cause the house we want would probably cost 3 million dollars and we can barely afford this junker. Sweat equity + lifelong commitment = future house of our dreams! There's no saying one day I won't get rich and be able to put everything back in totally perfectly, but I'm excited to save a house as best I can from total neglect even if it doesn't end up totally perfect. Some condo developer would just gut it and turn it into a monstrosity, and no-one who could actually afford to make it perfect would want to buy it, they'd buy a house that was less trashed!
Posted by: RAR at April 23, 2008 12:37 PM
I have a house with similar characteristice, (and yet, I did buy the house I wanted).
Some questions for you:
1. How do you know you need an entire new staircase? You might just need some work or reconstruction- call heights woodworking or soxco if you haven't already. I was quoted around 6K for pulling my staircase apart, righting it, and replacing any individual parts.
2. I have old pine wide plank floors that I'm also looking to match - hope you get some good answers here...Do you have an attic- you might be able salvage there, or also from your closets...
3. Go to a salvage guy for moldings, or look out for people with a million dollars who are gutting their brownstone- you can usually find moldings out on garbage day. Dykes has nice case moldings and crown moldings.
4. You can get nice medallions and moldings from restorers catalogs- it will never look totally real, but if you paint it with flat paint, or a mixture of plaster and paint and get a very nicely articulated medallion, it will look good. Take pictures of houses where you like the moldings- and pay close attention to the scale you're trying to acheive- it will look fine.
Best of luck.
Have you checked out the old house journal compendium? It's a really good reno handbook and addresses all the questions you ask above-
Posted by: Park Place at April 23, 2008 12:39 PM
What neighborhood by the way?
Posted by: Park Place at April 23, 2008 12:43 PM
if you had a million dollars... It sounds like you must still have plenty to consider rebuilding staircase with all detail (costs plenty), reclaimed wood (v expensive, let alone the cost of actually redoing the floors), redoing moldings (not cheap), along with all the other things that come with doing a job that extensive/expensive.
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 12:46 PM
Hi Park Place. THe house is on Sterling.
As for the money issue, no, we don't have that much, about 200-300k I've found if you look around, a lot of reclaimed wood places sell remilled old pine on sale for about $2-$3 a ft, you just have to be willing to search and salvage and ebay and craigslist...and to change what you want based on what you can get for a deal. Sure, there are really expensive and cheaper versions of EVERYTHING, but you have to look. Also, you have to be willing to have a small ikea kitchen, non-luxury appliances, simple bathrooms, not gut where you don't have to, and not change layout as much as possible...
As for staircase, who said anything about all detail? If I thought I could just afford to do that, I wouldn't be asking for input. Maybe the staircases will end up totally modern, maybe they won't.
Yes, we've got the old house compendium, it is good...
Posted by: RAR at April 23, 2008 1:23 PM
First of all...Bill at Circular Stairs! 718-218-9051
List of local used building supplies:
http://reclaimedhome.com/2007/10/30/used-building-material-resources/
List of internet reclaimed flooring places that offer "specials":
http://reclaimedhome.com/2007/09/12/reclaimed-flooring/
Posted by: rh at April 23, 2008 1:41 PM
For crown moldings and door trim I ordered newly milled poplar (sp?) from a place in Western Mass - I believe Springfield Lumber? You can get very detailed impressive stuff done, and not have to be satisfied with the puny stuff you would get at homedepot. Most people think my trim work is original to the house when they see it.
Posted by: Putnamdenizen at April 23, 2008 2:29 PM
And welcome, by the way. All Brownstoners aren't smart asses. It sounds like a great project house in a cool neighborhood.
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 2:51 PM
Sometimes we get old flooring and we come down to Brooklyn Flea once a month. However, most of the wide plank pine has been painted. How much square footage do you need? We are coming down this Sunday, but the next house we are taking out the flooring from won't be ready until our visit after that. We do get large lots of antique molding and door surrounds. Right now we have about 50 linear feet of multi-layered, dark patina oak trim that is 6" wide. It's $4.00 a linear foot. We also have some of the same wood that was trim around the opening between rooms and is fluted. If you would like us to bring down the trim and/or the fluted wood, let me know. Fred from Silver Fox
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 4:43 PM
Just a few thoughts, I know you specifically state that you don't want new flooring, however.... New(reclaimed flooring) will have just as nice of a patina as the old wood, and be in much better shape. It is fairly easy to find people selling old flooring, however the edges are usually pretty beaten up and you will never get a nice fit. In addition, there are almost always old nail heads, tacks, staples, whatever in the old flooring and it will bust your sanding belt everytime you hit one, which quickly adds a lot of expense and aggravation. Chuck at Olde Good things has nice quality reclaimed flooring and they will deliver for a very reasonable fee. I put in heart pine flooring in my own house as well as several remodelings and have never had a complaint when it was done.
As for the stairs, it is rare to find an old stair case where the stringers (the side rails holding the treads and risers) really need to be replaced. On almost all old stair systems, if you look at the underside, you will see that they used a tread with wedges underneath. It is very easy to remove those wedges and slide the tread back. The same thing applies to the risers. If you keep the same stringers, I would say that replacing the treads and risers is a job any reasonalby competent handyman could accomplish. Your biggest problem is going to be matching the radius on the nose of the tread to the slot, but using an old piece as a template, you should be able to find a router bit that will do the job. I personally think that Heights Woodworking will do a decent job, but they are outrageously expensive (just my opinion).
The thing that makes the biggest difference I have seen with the plastic medalions is when you run a thin bead of caulk around the edge. It does a much better job of making it look like it's part of the original ceiling, it takes two minutes, and yet so many people neglect to do it.
And last but not least,Period molding? Can't say that I bother with that. The best and easiest way is to start with standard 1 by stock and build it up. That's what they did a hundred years ago, and instead of paying the twenty or thirty dollars a foot that you'll spend for a fancy molding, you are spending somewhere around two dollars a foot for 8" moldings that look great. Shellack the knots so you don't get bleed through, try to find relatively staight pieces, and use a shoe molding at the bottom.
Good luck with your project. Take it a step at a time and you'll survive anything that the house can throw at you!
Brian
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 4:53 PM
Congrats on your purchase. It will take a LONG time to get to the place you want (and then it still won't be exactly what you want) but hang in there. We did and finally I can say I'm happy we did it. Good luck!
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 5:13 PM
A few thoughts/ideas:
1. FLOORING: I agree with poster above and the extra cost of installing old flooring may be more than what you saved buying it. You also don't want to end upm in a situation where you can't sand the flooring a few years hence because it's already been sanded too much in the past. How about trying to pick up some overstocked new flooring? There's a terrific company in upstate NY called Pioneer Millworks (google them) who sell wonderful flooring made from old beams -- we have their heart pine and douglas fir and our installer raved about the quality. They sometimes sell overstocks.
2. PLASTER DETAILS AND MEDALLIONS: Try Felber in PA. We bought 3 beautiful medallions from them and the owner (very small business) drove them up to us himself. We bought straight run molding by the linear foot from Decorators Supply. Another company that sells molding is Artistic Architectural Ornaments or aaplasterornaments.com. Also try Van Dyke Restorers.
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 5:34 PM
WOW! THanks all for comments! This is so helpful. There's no rush, we won't even be in the house to start work for a few months, but I just wanted to start getting ideas so that when I talk to contracters/handymen I can really have a sense of the materials, etc. Fred from silver fox, I have time on the flooring, so the next shipment will certainly be fine. Could you email pictures, by chance, of the trim?
Does it hold true that the stairs (stringers?) are probably okay even if they seem to have separated from the wall a bit?! It's seriously scary to get up to the top floor...
Posted by: RAR at April 23, 2008 6:58 PM
Ugh...does the string shift when you walk on the stairs? Get a stair company in to do estimates NOW. The stringer will be reattached to the wall.
I hope the underlying wall is okay.
Good luck. How many floors of this do you have to deal with?
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 7:33 PM
They also have moldings in Home Depot and Lowe's. Various price ranges. Looks just as good when installed properly as the more expensive stuff.
Posted by: guest at April 23, 2008 9:15 PM
Have the stairs pulled away, or were they set out a little from the wall in the very beginning? Often the stringer was set out a little from the wall, largely because of plastering purposes. It made it easier to slide the lath behind it, and you ended up with an equal reveal on both sides of the staircase as opposed to a stringer showing on one side and buried under plaster on the other.
Again, not a big deal, put a lag bolt through the underside into a wall stud. Make sure that you don't crank it down all the way, you want to leave room for your sheetrock to slide behind the stringer. Your plasterer/taper will thank you and you'll get a more aesthetically pleasing look. Use a piece of plywood as a spacer, drill pilot holes, pop in a lag bolt and fender washer and you're all set.
Brian
Posted by: guest at April 24, 2008 7:27 AM
Hey all--thank you again.
RE stairs, I'm not sure if they've pulled away or not. See, the current owner sheetrocked those walls, which now (in light of this new info) might explain the space between stairs and wall...perhaps the reason why the bottom two sets of stairs didn't do that is because the wall up from the parlor was replastered, not sheetrocked, and the garden stairs have been stabilized.
As for how many floors of mess, well, I think you probably don't want to know how bad it is. And I say that having seen a lot of bombed out former crack houses in my day. Top two floors have been semi-competantly sort of made liveable, but bottom two floors have received the trashing of a lifetime...plywood floors on garden level sinking due to termite damage, can see the basement through the holes, etc etc. It's a long and sad story.
Posted by: RAR at April 24, 2008 12:54 PM
And it'll be a long (but hopefully not sad!) renovation. Sounds like you've got some livable space and you can work on the rest of it as you have the time and money and materials... Nice to know that the house is finally going to someone who will take care of it.
Posted by: tyca at April 26, 2008 9:54 AM
Stair work is part physics and part compromise. I am easily capable of rebuilding an old staircase replacing double mitered risers and treads and bullnose.
The problem with such a plumb easy job is that the floors to which the stairs point is often not level. As the king joist that typically received the miter of the stringer gave over time, that had the resulting efect of pulling the treads and risers out of the wall stringer. The wall stringer probably hasn't moved, the outer stringer did.
What I recommend is new treads and risers (order them a little longer than you need), as you will have to cut them to length for each individual step.
Because of the compromise slant of your finished product, risers especially need to have compound, individual cuts to have a close joint between riser and stringer.
I got a good laugh over the comment above saying that a reasonably competent handyman should be able to do this.
Tip - stock up on dimensional poplar from Lowes, as each tread will need to be padded at the stringer to take some of the lean out of the staircase.
The good news is that the result will be only half as crooked, but it will be strong and firm.
Posted by: brucef at April 28, 2008 12:37 AM
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