Those who know the house, know that there was no real basement until this project. We had a dirt cellar under the kitchen and a crawl space under the rest of the house. The cellar was no more than 5'-6" at its highest point. So me at 6'-0", and Dad at 6'-2" tall always had to duck while in there. it was where we kept coolers for milk, butter and beer. We had to buy bags of ice from the gas station about every second day to keep things cool. It worked pretty well though, and it was a cool space.
These are pictures I took of the cellar in the summer of 2009, the summer before the demolition began.
I remember the forest of columns to hold up the kitchen floor. Every year Dad and I stabilized the ones that had fallen down the previous winter, and sometimes added more to keep the floor above from falling in.
Under the main part of the house
The base of the center chimney
The coolers were kept on this thick concrete knee wall under the north side of the kitchen. The steps were poured concrete with big beach stones in the aggregate. For the time, this house had a lot of concrete. The steps to the back porch, the stoop at the kitchen porch, the walkway to the street and the steps up to the street were all concrete.
Now the walls are ICF (insulated concrete forms), Styrofoam permanent formwork with a 6" thick solid wall of concrete in the middle. The Styrofoam provides insulation on the inside and outside of the concrete. The floor is concrete with a radiant heating system. Glycol, an antifreeze, runs through coils in the floor to heat the space. it is very dry and cozy. The ceiling is now at 9'-0".
The image below is the same view as the photo above. The stairs are in the same location.
Main Room (don't know really what to call it)
The ceiling fan was installed while I was home
The room is a catch-all for everything that doesn't have a place upstairs.
This is where we ran out of trim. I got 200 linear feet of window/ door trim, knowing that it wouldn't be enough to do it all, but it is now much easier to estimate how much trim we need to get to finish the project. That will happen in the spring.
Bathroom
The biggest accomplishment is that Mom and Dad's bathroom is now complete. The shower was tiled and the sink was installed. Since I left, Dad and Mom painted the bathroom. Its a new colour for the house, Dorset Cream. Mom really likes the Farrow's Cream upstairs, and this colour is very similar, except its a little darker and richer.
Dorset Cream
I haven't passed this idea by Mom and Dad yet, but I want to repaint the bathroom floor. I want to paint it in a checkerboard pattern, probably white and black, or white and dark red. I've painted a floor like this before and its pretty simple. Just takes a chalk line, a lot of tape and a lot of time.
The tiles on the walls are traditional 3x6 subway tiles, with a Carrera marble pencil trim and door frame. the veining in the marble is dark grey, so I picked a mortar to match.
The floor tile had to be small, because the floor is slanted in four directions to the center drain, and big tiles would crack at the valleys. The tile however matches the 12x12 tiles at the front door in the Parlour.
This is the cabinet that was in the pantry upstairs. It was built right into the wall and took quite an effort to get it out. I think I remember correctly that James and Dad worked a long time to salvage it. Dad sanded it down and painted it and now it holds towels and storage, plus its now a home for Dad's wooden duck collection.
This is what it looked like when it was in the pantry.
Dad's Workshop/ Mechanical Room
This room has all of the mechanical equipment for the room, is a storage room, and Dad's workshop. He has a system, I think.
Since we were there, Dad has refinished a number of these chairs. Some he painted white and I'm sure they look fantastic. Many of these chairs came out of their church in Springhill, long ago put in storage and would have been thrown out if Dad didn't rescued them. We have lots of chairs.
Dad also put a lot of pictures up in his space, mainly to just get them out of their storage boxes, which took up a lot of space. We are slowly finding homes for everything.
