New to the forum with an old house!

[CivilWarHome]

I love what I see so far! Can't wait to see more.

I agree with the previous poster, I think the chairlift is neat! Does it work anymore? Store it! You could have the coolest ride if you would ever need it

[McCall]

I have three used stair lifts I need to get into my place and need three more, but that thing is really scary looking, and deffinately not safe.

House is beautiful by the way.

[catperson]

I always thought it would do a lot of damage to put a stair lift on my stairs, but yours doesn't look like much damage was done. Good news for us oldies!

[McCall]

Stair lifts bolt to the stair treads in 3 or 4 places depending on the lenth of the track they do not touch the walls at all.

[Hoosier Foursquare]

Our chair lift was put together in four seperate sections. Each section had two to three 16" plates that screwed to a riser and a mounting point with bracket on each corresponding step. Each section weighed about 150 lbs. and was fairly easy to remove. With small kids and another on the way, the lift just didn't make sense for our family and we were both more interested in reclaiming the originality of the steps. They were completely sanded down, restained and varnished. Every tread/riser was also missing the original cove under the nosing and the quarter-round at the base of each step, it looks so much better now.

If you looked at the stairs now you wouldn't have any idea that it ever had a lift installed which is a true testimony to the skill and craftmanship of the lead carpenter on the job.

[Hoosier Foursquare]

The next room off of the Foyer was/is the Parlor. It was walled off sometime in the early 50's (as far as we know). The Colonnade was removed and it the room was converted into a bedroom. The original 60" opening and pair of pocket doors leading out of the Parlor into the Fireplace room or Study was framed into a 32" opening and a single luan sliding door.

I opened up the wall and found the original framed opening for both the colonnade entrance and the pocket doors. The only thing remaining of the pocket doors was the original Lane Bros. "Bar-on-Edge" track which was awesome to find because it confirmed my thought that there were pocket doors there originally. The Parlor itself basically was untouched as far as the interior of the room went with the exception of the addition of Crane Baseboard Radiators sometime in the late 40's-early 50's. The original windows are one over ones, have the original glass and are in great shape. Like all old windows, the sash cords have been painted over and some have broken. I have plans to re-rope them next spring/summer.

The new colonnade entry is installed, the floors have been refinished and the room is being painted out. I spent quite a bit of time prepping and painting the trim. Windows take forever!! At some point I would love to strip the paint off of every peice or trim and casing and bring it back to it's former state but I didn't have the stomach or the time to embark on that journey at this point.

Here are some before pictures.

[Hoosier Foursquare]

The next room(s) north, or on the backside of the Parlor is the Fireplace Room/Study/Sitting Room. It was originally a 14'x11' open room with a fireplace and two sets of pocket doors. One set opened into the Parlor and the other set opnened into the Dining Room. Like I mentioned before, both sets of doors were gone and the openings re-framed for smaller sliding doors.

The Fireplace Room had been convereted into three different spaces.
#1 - A very large bathroom
#2 - A closet
#3 - A hallway that led from the Parlor to the Bathroom, closet and Dining Room

The ceiling had been dropped about 3' from the original lathe & plaster and was done so to hide old water damage, provide a place to run "new" electric and run a vent system for the tub and the sink. The fireplace had been filled in and covered up by the large vanity and two radiators. the floor was a 2' thick mortar base impregnated with wire mesh with ceramic tile on top and a real pain to demo! I punched a hole in the ceiling to see what was going on up there and noticed a 2" galavanized vent pipe running up from the tub and into a crudely punched hole into the chimney where it was connected to a larger pipe that went all the way up the chimney, about 35 feet.

Our plan was to take the room back to original look and reclaim the fireplace. I demo'd the bathroom, closet and hallway and found the original openeing and track for the pocket doors leading into the dining, just as I had for the Parlor. Only problem.....No pocket doors! The PO had mentioned to the real estate agent, "Don't be surprised if you find the pocket doors in the walls" Welp, I was a little disappointed to find them long gone but I also knew that I would be able to replace them. I was able to find two identical sets that came out of a house in Ohio and bought them and had a buddy pick them up on his normal trucking route that he runs from Indiana to Ohio for a far cry less than it would have costed for me to go get them or have the professionaly shipped.

So, after everything was cleared out of the room, the dropped ceiling was "dropped" all of the way and removed, the tile floor and base demo hammered into oblivion and all of the fixturing moved out of the way I was left with a shell of a room but happy at the same time to be getting closer to where I wanted to be. The next task was to remove the galvanized vent pipe. I got all of the piping from the tub to the chimney cut out and removed fairly easy. The pipe up the chimney was a different story! I literally sat in the firebox with a recip. saw and cut a section out at a time. Make a cut across the bottom, hit with a sledge and watch the pipe drop down. This all happened in 3' sections about 10 times untill all of the pipe was gone.

Here's some pictures of before and during demo.

[Hoosier Foursquare]

More pic's.

[Hoosier Foursquare]

More pic's.

[Hoosier Foursquare]

And some more!