Basement Workshop Repointing: Part 6, A New Wall
Welcome to another installment in our riveting Basement Workshop Repointing series. This is part 6, where we leave repointing in the mortar tub and move straight into building a new foundation wall. It’s technically the extension of an existing wall, but we are building it from scratch. Coming up with blog post titles, especially ones that appease the search engine gods, is harder than repointing a stone foundation. But I digress. Why Do We Need to Extend the Foundation Wall? At some point in the past, an opening was created in this foundation wall to access the foundation under our kitchen addition. It’s a rather large opening, approximately 4 feet across.…
Basement Workshop Stone Repointing: Part 5, Foundation Wall Top
Welcome back to another installment of our Basement Workshop Stone Repointing series. This is part 5 because I really know how to milk a series for all it is worth. Today, we’re talking about the tops of foundation walls. An old house’s stone foundation wall is usually at least 18 inches thick. Besides the fact that this wall is supporting the weight of the house, there are also multiple beams sitting on top of the foundation wall. These may include the sill plate, floor joists, and door and window headers. From the outside of the house, the top of your foundation wall is not visible. Or, if it is, there’s…
Basement Workshop Stone Repointing: Part 4, Floor Joists
Welcome back to our Basement Workshop Stone Repointing series. This is part 4, where I tell you how our floor joists have taken a starring role in this melodrama. Anatomy of an Old House Way back in the 1780s, when this house was built. It was a humble one-room structure with a sleeping loft. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know this room as our dining room with the big fireplace. The sleeping loft is now our office. This humble house, of course, had a stone foundation, which is the basement workshop that we are repointing now. We don’t know where this basement area was accessed,…
Basement Workshop Stone Repointing: Part 3, Halfway Done
Welcome back to our Basement Workshop Stone Repointing series. This is the third installment of this series. Part 1 and Part 2 are rock-solid bangers, so don’t miss out on that good time. Today, I’m happy to celebrate being halfway done with this project. *and the crowd goes wild* I was unhelpfully thinking the other day that we would have been done already if we had just put our lives on hold and devoted several solid days to the project instead of a few hours after dinner a few nights a week. That’s the kind of toxic thinking a DIYer doesn’t need to indulge. The project will get done when…
Lime Mortar FAQs for Stone Foundations
You’re a homeowner with an old house and a stone foundation, and you realize that the stone foundation needs to be repointed. Now what? We’ve been in your shoes. We are DIYers who were skeptical of the ‘advice’ we were getting and went on a mission to figure out the best way to repoint and repair our stone foundation. Whether you are hiring a mason or planning to DIY it, here’s what we learned that will help you get started on your repointing project. Scroll through this blog post or use the table of contents to jump to the questions you want answered. Table of Contents What is lime mortar…
Basement Workshop Stone Repointing: Part 2, Concrete Problem
Welcome back to our Basement Workshop Stone Repointing Series. It’s a rocky romp through restoring the creepy part of our house – the basement. You can catch up on Part 1 here. Today we’re talking about the concrete problem. Most people in the U.S. probably take for granted that their basement, if they have one, has a concrete floor. So did I, until we bought this house. Part of our basement has a rubble floor. Aside from the perk that the floor is one big drain, it’s about as awesome for modern living as you imagine. However, the part of our basement that we are currently repointing DOES have a…
Basement Workshop Stone Repointing: Part 1, Why Now
A new series chronicling our basement workshop stone repointing project (say that three times fast) starts today! Get your popcorn ready. I’m about to overshare the nitty-gritty details and drama. Project Background: Our house was originally built in the 1780s and has a stone foundation. It pains me to tell you that most of the exterior of that foundation has been skimmed with modern mortar, but that’s a project for a different blog post. Historic stone foundations are made with fieldstone, which is stone used in its natural form as it came out of the ground. There was no grinding or chipping to make the stones uniform in any way,…
Yes, You Can Hang a Mirror on a Peg Rail
Yes, you can hang a mirror on a peg rail. I’m here to show you how and share the unexpected item I used to make it happen. I have a peg rail on the wall above a bedroom dresser. I mainly use this particular peg rail for hanging my everyday necklaces. What I did not have was a mirror above the dresser. I realize this is a less common bedroom dresser feature in these modern times, but it sure is helpful when you’re trying to pick a necklace to wear. There are two ways (at least) to hang a mirror on a peg rail: First, you can hang it directly…
Lime Mortar Pointing on Brick Stairs
It took two years, but I finally finished the lime mortar pointing on our brick stair risers in the basement. *takes a bow in an empty room* The stair treads are flagstone, but the risers are brick. Someone had a “one and done” approach to building these basement stairs, and I wish I could throw them a ticker tape parade for their decision because they will never rot or need to be rebuilt. Repointing is another issue. That needs to be done every one hundred years or so. I’m just the lucky homeowner whose game piece landed on the “must repoint” square on this board game called “Money Pit.” We…
DIY Giant Plywood Christmas Trees
Decorating for the holidays? The thing your front porch is missing is giant plywood Christmas trees. They can be painted any color, made in most any size, and can fold flat for storage. That’s it. That’s my pitch. Blog post complete. Kidding! You know I’m chattier than that. To make giant plywood Christmas trees, you need to cut two isosceles triangles out of plywood. I might have had to Google how to spell isosceles, but I do know from high school that it’s a triangle with two equal sides and two equal angles. We used rough plywood, not finish-grade plywood, because no one is examining these trees up close. I…
