The “Calm” After the Storm

It has been nearly 2 months since we moved our house to its permanent new foundation. So much has happened in these past 8 weeks, things seem to being moving so fast, and yet so slow at the same time. Just when we think we have taken a few steps forward, life throws us a curve ball and we get knocked back. Leaping forward only to step back has become something we have accepted as normal around the job site. With that said, lets dive into what has happened, and re-happened, since the big move!

Endless Patching

Chimney Patching

In order to move our home safely, the brick chimney that once stood tall in the center of the home had to be removed. In its absence, there were massive holes in both the main floor and second floor. One of the first things we decided to do after the house was settled on its new foundation was to patch in those two openings. Not only did we need to patch them in so flooring can be laid, but also because they both posed a major fall hazard. Huge shout out to my father, Ron Buttenhoff, for taking this task upon himself to complete. He has his own sawmill and is an avid lover of woodworking. So, with some time, ingenuity, and pieces of wood he had in his shop, this task was completed in no time.

However, as mentioned in the opening, when we think we have taken a few steps forward, this house knocks us back into reality. After patching was completed our HVAC contractor, Cole Zachgo of Zachgo Plumbing, came out a few weeks later to begin installing new equipment in the basement. These lines would provide the basement and first floor with heating and cooling. There will be an entirely separate unit that will provide HVAC to the second floor. After half a days work, our contractor realized that where we patched the floor was right where he needed to access the other half of the house through the old chimney support framing. Hard to explain the problem fully, but essentially he needed his lines to run east/west and the old chimney support framing was running north/south, right in his way.

We tried to come up with multiple solutions to avoid re-doing what had already been done, but in the end decided that the right way to do it was to take the patched flooring up, replace the three floor joists to run the right direction, and then re-lay the flooring. We employed the help of our local contractor, Elite Construction, to replace the floor joists in question, and when he was through, we installed the subflooring boards, again, and finally were able to move on from that project!

Drey’s Room Floor Patching

On the second floor, we also did floor patching in what will be our sons’ room. The old bathroom that was located there had deteriorated the floors beyond repair. After our contractor framed in the new bedroom, we decided to patch and repair the floors. As with every project in our home, this one came with its own set of 118yr old problems. When trying to patch in new floor we discovered that the original hardwood flooring was not laid completely true to the angle of the home. Meaning, we had to measure about 20,000,000 times and cut our plywood about the same amount of times! But, after lots of math, lots of time, and lots of patience(maybe not lots, but enough), we finally got a fit for the entire floor.

We are trying to save and refinish all the original flooring in the home. However with this particular bedroom, the floor was in terrible shape and already had sections of original flooring missing from previous bathroom remodel work. We are almost positive the bathroom was remodeled in the 60s or 70s, at which time they replaced sections of the original hardwood with plywood. We plan to carpet this bedroom when everything is finished.

Blockout Patching (Temporary)

Next on the list of things to (temporarily)patch were the holes in the side of our concrete basement. These holes are called block-outs and were used to help the moving company safely slide our home onto its new foundation. After our house was moved we immediately contacted our masonry contractor and got our name on his work list for getting all the block-out openings filled. While we waited for him to get the job done, we decided to cover each opening with scraps of plywood we had. Weather in Kansas this time of year can be extremely unpredictable so we felt a strong need to get as many openings covered as we could to avoid moisture and nature from coming into the basement.

Old Exterior Entrance Patching

Another exterior patching project we tackled was the opening on the (now) south side of our house. If you have seen any pictures of our home going down the road the day we moved it, you will have probably seen a huge piece of plywood attached to the lower middle portion of one side of the home. (see pic below)

This opening was an old entrance into the home. We are unsure if the opening was original to the home, or added at a later time.

It was a 36in wide opening that had a half-cut door in it. We believe, after talking with people familiar with homes of this size and build, that these doorways were a way for previous owners to get larger items into the basement. The original basement staircase in the interior of the home was narrow and had an abrupt 90degree turn. This turn made it impossible to get modern plumbing and HVAC equipment down to the basement. Therefore, the entrance to the exterior of the home was created so things like water heaters and furnaces could be lowered into the basement with more ease.   

Sheathing Patching

One of the most recent patching jobs we completed was for the exterior sheathing on the backside of our house. When we removed the added-on back porch in August, two of the bottom sheathing boards were ripped from the home. Lucky for us, we knew a guy, my dad Ron, who had reclaimed sheathing boards from the tear down of an old barn. We were able to find enough of the reclaimed sheathing to patch in an entire run of what had been broken. The bottom run we cut plywood to fit the gap. One step closer to getting our home fully protected from the elements!

Storage Space is a Must

When renovating every inch of a home, storage space for materials, tools, lumber and equipment is a must. Since we are just establishing our residence we have no garage, shed or storage space to hold all our renovation materials. Insert solution here! We contacted the people at Chuck Henry Sales in Solomon Kansas, and were excited to learn they had storage containers for sale of all varieties. We ended up purchasing a standard 40ft storage unit with one end of swinging doors.

Our storage unit has been an absolute life saver! We have been storing and locking all our renovation items in it. From extra lumber, to materials we plan to put back in the home, to new equipment, it holds it all! Best of all, it gets all those items out of the home and out of our way so the renovation process can keep going at full speed.  

Interior Progress

Beginning to Rework 2nd Floor Layout

Let it be known, that while we love our old home, old homes have not always been our jam. Let it also be known that no era of home has ever really been our jam, seeing as how we have been completely engulfed in our careers and children since the day we were married. However, in the last 3 years we have learned more about early 1900s homes than any other type of home. We have come to love the stories that an old house can tell, as well as the character and craftsmanship you cannot find with any other type of modern-day home. We decided early on in our renovation journey that we wanted to help tell the story of our home through the careful removal and reinstallation of almost every piece of original woodwork.

Older homes were designed in a way that consisted of many individual rooms. Each room served a purpose for the original owners in the era with which they constructed the home. Parlor rooms, formal dining rooms and separate living spaces were common. Fast forward 115+ years and times have changed. We decided we wanted to help our house change and move forward to accommodate the next 115+ years of living. That means we decided to change the layout of both the living room area on the first floor, and the bathroom/bedroom #3 area of the second floor.  We started on the second floor by reworking the layout of the entire east side of the house. We took what used to be a hall closet and bathroom and turned them into a bedroom for our son.

We will then take and make what used to be a bedroom into a closet/bathroom for our master suite. The prep work was all completed by us, but when it came time for new framing we called in the professionals, Elite Construction.

Vaulting Upstairs Bedroom

After removing lath and plaster from the entire home we have had the opportunity to rework our ideas and layouts to fit what we want, but also what we feel will showcase our home in the most functional way. The southwest bedroom upstairs has always been slated as our two girls’ room. After more consideration and consulting structural experts, we decided to vault the ceiling in their room. There is a circle widow at the top of the attic space above their room that will now be exposed. It will almost double the ‘size’ of their room just in head space.

We have officially decided it might end up being our favorite room in the entire home when it’s all done! In removing the ceiling trusses to make their room vaulted, we were able to reuse the 2×6’s in our son’s room. We had to replace all of the ceiling trusses in his room so the load from the roof would be sitting on his room’s exterior walls. It has always been our goal to try to reuse anything we can from this home, and this was just another project we were happy to be able to do that on!

The Wall Rebuild that Never Ended

The next interior project we tackled ended up being a lot bigger project than we originally planned for(imagine that). The wall along the west part of the staircase had been cut in previous years to incorporate modern day HVAC venting. Sadly, it was not done properly and did not consider the structural needs of the home. Two holes had been cut directly into the floor plate to make room for two vents, as well as a large hole in the ceiling plate. These holes weakened the entire wall, which supports the roof and bedroom directly above.

We decided to take the entire wall out, there was a doorway on the north end we needed to get rid of. After removing the wall, we added new 2×4 plates at the floor and ceiling levels that ran the entire length of the room.  We used jacks we salvaged from the original location of our house and jacked the second story floor up to become now level all the way across the wall. We then reused lumber from the home to remake the wall. The project from start to finish took just a few days.

Unfortunately, we had sick kids and right when Eddie and Ron were about done our son had a febrile seizure that required Eddie to come home and help me with the kids. So, Ron went back a few days later and finished what had been started. One day later we were back at the house doing a walk through with our electrical contractor when we noticed a significant sag in the first story floor right where we had replaced the wall along the staircase. After a short investigation, we discovered that instead of jacking the second story UP in our efforts to make the wall level, we had unknowingly jacked the first story DOWN, yikes! Upon looking in the basement, there was a significant crack that had formed in one of the floor joists right below the new wall we had constructed. We took quick action and made a make-shift support in the basement for the first floor. Our support was not something professional but was going to provide the house with enough extra support until we could come up with a solution.

The next day we called Brennan Johnson from Elite Construction. After assessing the situation, we decided that the best thing to do was to remove the wall we had constructed on the first floor, support the second floor with jacks again, and then replace a full run of floor joist in the basement with a brand-new double plate that would run from the exterior of the home all the way to our support beam in the basement. Therefore, providing more than enough support to hold the weight of everything above it. Adding the new double plate in the basement took just a few hours and by the end of the day was installed and looking great!

After that, we had work schedules and weather conditions to work around, so the wall on the first floor did not get re-built again until a week later. We reused all of the materials we had built the original wall with, having to cut a few of them down just a hair since the first floor was now level. But, since it was simply a re-do of what had already been done it took very little time to complete! Let’s hope we do not have to rebuild that wall EVER again!

Beams & Stairs

Two major interior projects for our home were both completed on the same day and MASSIVELY changed how our home functions. They were both completed by Elite Construction, with us watching in the background, trying to help when we could. This should definitely tell you something about the efficiency and timeliness of how things can be completed when done by the professionals! Would have taken us an entire week PER project had we tried to do it ourselves. The first project was the installation of a support beam on the first floor. This project technically took a few days, as a temporary support wall was built a few days prior to the beam going in to support the home while we hoisted the beam into place.

Once the temporary wall was built, the original wall was taken down and the beam was prepped for being placed.

Elite Construction glued 2x4s to both the top and bottom of our beam so that when it was placed there would be nailers for finishing. Our beam is 20ft long, 6 inches wide by 6 inches tall, and roughly 500lbs. Trying to figure out how to SAFELY hoist it into place was one of the most important things we had to figure out. We came up with a solution that used chains and pulleys to essentially lift the beam into place for us. We had to cut a hole in the second story floor to allow the chains to hook onto the attic floor boards.

Once in place and after securing the chain around the beam, they started pulling the beam up inch by inch. In a matter of minutes, we had the beam almost completely in place. The support posts that were placed under each end of the beam were from my fathers wood mill. They are made from cottonwood trees that were cut down a few years ago and are roughly 5inX6in. The entire process of getting the beam into place and secured took 3 hours.

The next major project we tackled for that day was the installation of interior stairs that would get us from the first floor into the basement. Ever since moving our house the only way to access the basement was to go outside and around the back of the house where we have a walk out entrance. So placing a staircase that can allow access to the basement from inside the home was a BIG DEAL. Elite Construction started by framing the end of our utility room in the basement, which was going to be a main support wall for under the side portion of the staircase.

Next, they had to cut a hole in the first floor where the new stairs would lead down. After they cut the floor, we went in and salvaged the old flooring by carefully removing it and storing it in our storage unit. We plan to use all the salvaged flooring to help patch the original floors in places that need it, i.e., where the chimney used to be.

After the opening was exposed then the staircase really started to come to life. The first thing to get built was the landing. The landing will be the support for all stairs leading to the basement.

Once the landing was complete, the stringers to the basement were cut and installed. Next followed the stringers leading to the first floor. Treads were attached last and voila, we had stairs!! There are still some things to figure out, like head space. We have not cut out for head room when you walk down the stairs, there are some structural things with the second floor set of stairs we need to figure out first. But, at least we can access the basement from the first floor with MUCH more ease!

Rebuilding Yet Another Wall

The most recent interior project we completed is the rebuilding of the (other)wall next to the first-floor staircase. This wall, like the one in the front room, was improperly cut for HVAC venting and was in need of a complete rebuild.

We learned our lesson with the front room and decided to start in the basement and work our way up from there. Luckily, the layout downstairs has two walls directly under where we were working, so we installed one support jack just for good measure and went to work on the first floor. We placed support jacks under the second floor joists and tore out the old wall.

We then supported the floor and the ceiling in a proper manner, reinstalled solid 2×4 plates on the floor and in the ceiling, and then began building the wall.

However, halfway through we realized the fun part about reusing old lumber, none of it is the same width. Everything we were using was old, but it still wasn’t all the same width. Some boards were exactly 3 ½ inches wide, some were 3 ½ +, some were 3 ½ -, but very few were the exact same width. So, we ended up gathering 6 boards, which is what we needed to complete our wall, and we took them back to my dads wood shop. From there we used his table saw and cut each board to be the exact same width.

After that, the wall went up incredibly fast! Another project done and in the books.

Odds and Ins

Letting The Dirt Settle

We recently began prepping our ground for more foundation work. There is a bay window on the south side of our home that had a foundation built under it when our house sat at its original site, but now that we moved our home there is nothing supporting it. We have already employed the help of our masonry contractor, Travis Schwerdtfager of Schwerdtfeger Masonry, to build us a foundation under that window. However, since our basement is so new, the dirt we used to fill in has not had time to settle. To help that process along you need to saturate the dirt with water so it can pack itself down and get rid of all the access air trapped in the dirt. We filled a few water tanks on my father’s semi-trailer, parked it along the house for a couple days and let the water trickle into the soil around the foundation.

It is crazy how well the water packs down the soil, in just a few short hours there was already a major difference. And after leaving the water to run all night we came back the next day and found the dirt had settled at lease a good 8-10inches! We will keep doing this around the entire home and then backfill dirt once again to build it back up to be even with ground level. Once this process is complete, we will give the masonry contractor the green light to build us our new bay window foundation.

Original Hardwood Flooring

We love discovering the history of our home. One thing we have done recently is to salvage some of the flooring from the first story so we can reuse it in patching. When taking up the flooring, we have noticed that each board is stamped on the back. Every board says “T. Wilce & Co” followed by a patent number. Most of the lumber from the front of the home is Patent No 13, however we have discovered in the kitchen and back of the home Patent No 14-16. This led me to do some research online, and while there isn’t much out there, we were able to track down the original manufacturer. The company was based along South Bar Lake in Empire Michigan. Mr. Thomas Wilce purchased a few mills already in operation there and became the largest flooring supplier in Michigan around 1890. We have no idea, yet, how it came that the floor in our 1905 Kansas home was supplied by a company in Michigan, but we hope we can find out!

Electricity

We finally got electricity ya’ll!! A long time coming, and we are so happy its here! Thank you to Rolling Hills Electric for getting us poles and set for power. Thank you also to Hayden Howard of Double H Heating & Cooling for getting us panels and outlets. We have an outlet on the panel outside, no interior outlets have been installed yet, but none the less we have access to power and are so grateful for it!

Promoting our Story and our Hometown

Northwest Kansas Today

A few months ago, I wrote about an opportunity we had to be interviewed by a publication called Northwest Kansas Today. The magazine is produced by the Dane G. Hansen Foundation and promotes economic and social growth for communities in northwest Kansas. Our article was featured in the February winter edition of the magazine, and we were beyond honored to be on the cover. A link to the article is below. Thank you to the Dane G. Hansen Foundation for featuring Lincoln in your article and highlighting the good things that are in progress! Click here to access the Winter Edition.

Insider

We also had the opportunity to connect with Maria Noyen, a write for Insider. She heard about our story online and wanted to know more about our journey. We were thrilled to share our story and how we came to be residents of Lincoln. She wrote a beautiful article that captures our story from start to current. We cannot wait to keep writing our story and see where this journey takes us! Click here to read the article.

Sickness, Cats and Internet

A lot of focus for social media spends time highlighting the beautiful, fun, and positive parts of life. We are no different. Our family’s renovation is a constantly evolving adventure, and we love sharing our progress and the fun things we are doing. However, with every part of life, there are also things that do not bring us joy, that are not beautiful, and that we do not wish to highlight to others. But, these things that challenge us also make us remember who we are, what’s important, and how to be humble enough to understand the importance of challenging situations.

Sickness

The past 2 months have been awful for the physical health of our family. On January 21^st, our oldest daughter Lily threw up in the night and I wish I was joking, but our entire house has been sick on and off ever since. If there is a sickness that kids can get, I am quite positive we have had it. The throw ups, the poops, so many fevers, the chills, snot faucets that are running at full capacity constantly, headaches, sore throats, febrile seizures, and the list goes on. Having our children so close is age is such a fun thing, EXCEPT when it comes to sickness. Everything we get immediately gets multiplied by 3. We are a fully functioning over-the-counter kids drug store. The makers of Tylenol, Ibuprofen and Hyland’s have made a killing off us this winter. Just three weeks ago Eddie got tested and was positive for strep throat, our daughter Lily was tested and was negative, but complained of a sore throat for days. And finally, a week ago we were all somewhat back to normal, only to get hit with a stomach bug once again that has taken out every kid, plus mom. When will it end?? I’ve been told it will get better when they move out, guess we will have to wait 18 years and see! 😊

Joey

To add insult to injury on January 28^th, we were coming home from having supper at Grandmas house and our beloved family barn cat Joey ran under the truck as I was pulling into the drive. When I realized what had happened there was nothing that could be done, sadly we lost him that night. One of the good, but also hard, parts about living in the country. We get to witness first-hand the circle of life and the sadness, but also the reality, of death. Teaching our kids that life is important and fragile, but also that death is a part of life, is something beautiful about living in the country. RIP Joey, we miss you already.

Internet

For 3 weeks at the end of January/beginning of February we were also completely out of internet. For those of you that live in non-rural parts of the world, this is an entirely foreign notion, the actual running out of internet. But let me tell you, here in the boonies, it’s a very real problem. Rural America has always been a few steps behind when it comes to modern advancements. This is both by choice, and geography. The geographical location of rural places does not allow the easy access to amenities that are offered in larger populated areas. Meaning that certain things that you accept as standard in your city, might be a luxury to us in rural areas. For example, unlimited internet, choices for phone carriers, takeout, same-day delivery, and different options for TV providers. Our current battle with the internet-data-cap folks is one that many people our age living in rural America are also fighting. We live very different lifestyles to those generations that came before us. Almost every aspect of our lives can be linked to internet. Our phones, computers, TVs, microwaves, stoves, vacuums, video portals, and so much more are all reliant on internet. Now, I know what some of you are thinking(mostly my father), poor first world problem for us. And you are right, this is an incredibly vain issue for most of the items we wish to be plugged in to the interest-verse. However, when my remote job, and our renovation progress rely on having internet to complete certain tasks, it was incredibly challenging those few weeks to make everything work out the way it should. We are also beginning to understand the plight of others who live rural and have the same issue. We are not blindly optimistic enough to think that our voice is going to be the one grain of rice to tip the technology scale and things will magically become better. But we are optimistic enough to hope that our voice reaches certain people, and companies, and that there can be more money and time focused on getting some of these modern advances available for rural America. I am now stepping down from my internet soap box!

Fun and Family

In between being sick and renovating, we have tried to enjoy some time together as a family. Whether that be outside, at the house, with our cousins or just getting to color with crayons at the dinner table. Life has a funny way of plunging ahead, if you are ready for it or not!

Hopefully it won’t be two months again before we update you on our latest progress, but until then, happy spring!