December, 2018 - Disaster Mansion

29/12/201829/12/2018

New doorway

The bottom left of the house was occupied by a decent sized room with an earth floor and reduced headspace (due the thickness of the earth). Access was by a small door under the stairs. We wanted to make this room a little more accessibly so Thomas and Matt cut a doorway through the lime mortar and rock. The wall was a bit of a bugger to cut through due to the rock.

The previous owners must have had the same thoughts as we did find architect plans in the house of this room. They had started to excavate the earth which unfortunately left the foundation walls hanging in mid-air (the walls had no footings). This was made worse by our local groundhog who had made even more holes under the walls. The soil is also very sandy tended to crumble and fall away. The walls will need some special treatment to prevent them from collapsing after which we will have an insulated concrete floor poured.

This room will be where we keep the mechanicals (boiler etc), though it probably will be a part-time bedroom and maybe later a project studio.

Thomas and Matt made this doorway just before we left for the UK for Christmas. It will be interesting to see how the house looks when we return.

09/12/201821/04/2019

Our last great find

Or rather Thomas, our builder. It’s neat that Thomas has an eye for this and appreciates the historical. What Thomas found was a portrait by T.M. Gill and although it’s incomplete it’s a lovely find. T.M. Gill first turned up when we found graffiti from him or her dated 1883, see we found some 100 year graffiti/

It’s odd that T.M. Gill is never mentioned in the records, but due to the artistic nature of the work I am having to lean to T.M. Gill as being female.

We will try and save as much as this wall as possible, but as you will find in a future post, this wall collapsed as we Aimee, Thomas and I were taking the following photos.

From the photos you see the oval portrait bordered in blue with the initials T.M.G visible at “4 o’clock”. It’s a shame the eyes are missing but the hair, ear, up-turned moustache are clearly visible.

The basement room they were found in had an earthen floor so this was probably the least special room in he house. I’d like to think that this was the work of a teenager.

We’ve found some pretty cool stuff in the house, but I think we have come the end of discoveries. I’d like to be surprised but I’ not expecting any other finds.

Thomas will try and say this part of the collapsed wall, but it may not be possible. I’d like to call out to local artists to see if they can re-create the portrait on canvas based on what they can see. Does anyone know of any techniques to expose any further remnants of this old portrait?

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07/12/201807/12/2018

First Floor LVL Beam Installation

Now that we have “Ye Olde Work Permit”, work has started on the house and the first things that Thomas and Matt are doing is to replace some of the load bearing beams which had been hacked about badly. They are using Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) which is stronger than natural timber, in parts because it can exclude knots.

They first build a temporary frame to support the floor while they remove the old supports. They use bottle jacks to do the heavy lifting, that said the LVL must have been a struggle to get in place.

This new beams will help flatten the upper layer floors which are sagging quite a bit. There is only so much sag you can remove doing this, but hopefully it will be noticeable. You do see the ceiling rising as they jack up the beam which is pretty cool.

07/12/201808/12/2018

Our Team

Our main contractors for this project is Motzer Construction and the team is predominately Thomas and Matt. Plumbing will be by Roland Green

This is Thomas and Aimee as Matt had to pick up his kids.

Our builder Thomas Motzer with Aimee on our balcony

07/12/201810/12/2018

Ye Olde Building Permit has been Issued

Earlier this week we had our building permit approved. Now Thomas and Matt can get started.

Aimee standing next to our building permit

Pre-1945 when you received your building permit you would have to walk around the block ringing a bell announcing your building intentions. Seems like a pretty cool tradition, at least it would have been a good way to get to know your neighbours.

Talking of neighbours, I think Gill Street is pretty special, everyone is pretty close and very friendly. A lot of them were born on this street so have some good tales to tell and some were even born at Disaster Mansion.

03/12/201803/12/2018

SHOCK, HORROR, PROBE. Child labour employed at Disaster Mansion.

Disaster Mansion had some visitors this weekend, Colin, Lauren and Tim (who I work with). Our guests weren’t initially pleased at being put to work planting bulbs, but after realising that their son Colin was a willing worker they cheered up. Colin helped with the planting of about 150 daffodil bulbs. It’s pretty late to plant them but I think we will be okay as the weather has been pretty mild this week. Even though we had a lot of bulbs we probably only planted up an area 10′ x 30′. As the years go by we will plant more bulbs, increasing the variety also.

The daffodils should look lovely when they bloom, plus they come back every year 🙂

We did buy a nice tool to make the holes. It was a little extravagant but it proved it’s worth.

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