sustainablemaynard.org

We have had in mind for many years that we would take the two adjoining rooms on the West end of the house and turn them into a master suite.  The smaller of the two would make a nice large bathroom, and the two offset closets between the rooms would make a large walk-in closet.

As with so much of the house, there are mysteries about how things came about.  The indentation in the wall in the North West bedroom is a prime example.

When we first looked a the house, there was a large family bible with its own stand in this opening.  I thought it would be the perfect place to have a shrine of some sort, complete with Mexican candles and fake flowers, since the inset area in the wall provided a certain reverence for whatever the purpose was.  We didn’t really know why this was setup this way.

A closer inspection of the opening revealed what appeared to be holes drilled in the floor for water pipes.  However, there was no drain.  I figured that there might have been a sink here at some point, but why would there be evidence of supply pipes, and no evidence of a drain?  When we stripped the wallpaper, we could see that there was something that had been attached to the wall.

The thing is, why would there be a sink in the bedroom?  Was this something that they did because they were not sure what ameneties to put in a house at that time?  If the house was built in 1889, and renovated some time in the 1910s/1920s (as the style of the architectural detail, construction techniques, and materials suggests) then it could be that people were not as accostomed as we are to having indoor plumbing.  The sink would make this the master bathroom of that time.

The bathroom in this house had a toilet and claw foot tub.  There was no shower in site.   It seems that this was representative of the way people lived for the first half of the 20th century, the bath being reserved for Saturday night.  It could be that the sink was a way to freshen up in the bedroom.

Behind the wall of this wall indentation was the closet for the other bedroom.  The two closets were offset (with the Southwest bedroom having a much smaller closet due to the sink indentation), and we figured that if we opened up the walls inside of the closet, and moved the door in the Southwest bedroom over to match the location of the closet door for the Northwest bedroom, then it would make a very convenient walkthrough.  It would also provide a nearly four foot wide by six foot deep closet between the rooms.

The closet had this built-in set of drawers.

After removing the set of drawers, it was clear to see how the original wood work looked unpainted.  In fact, most of walls in the house had never been painted, since they were all wallpapered.

Interesting things always appeared when working on the house, like the hole cut in the floor under the threshold, which appeared to be for an electrical box…

Next, I demo’ed the wall in the back of this closet, and opened it up to pass through to the other closet.

Since the old sink indentation did not go all the way to the ceiling, it was opened to the attic above, and when we blew cellulose into the floor joists above, they filled this area, and all the adjecent stud bays.  I had to scoop out a bunch of cellulose, and attach some cardboard to the strappings to keep the stuff up there.

When we demo’ed the back wall of the SW closet, we found the drain pipe for the old sink.  In this picture, you can see the joint in the cast iron pipe where a section of pipe attached, and went up next to the lathe in the wall.  This was the vent for the sink.

When we opened the wall in the cubbie, we found that there was space inside the wall that was plastered, and it is not clear what was done first or why.

Also, the plumbing we expected to find was there.

The orange pipe is for a home sprinkler system that was installed when we were first renovating the house.  That is a story for another post.

After pulling all the plaster, framing, and lathe, here is what it looked like…

I smashed the connection between the smaller and larger drain pipe with a hammer.  It is iron soil pipe, so a few whacks with the hammer takes it apart nicely.  The smaller drain pipe is lead.  Lead is also used as is the packing material that is placed in the joints between the iron pipes.

We continued removing the plaster and lathe, to get down to the sticks.

Tags: Construction, Renovation

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 3:41 am and is filed under Renovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.