Older and Hotter Than Me

The same family owned and lived in the House of 42 Doors for 82 years.  The original builders/owners lived here from 1921 to 1941. Two of their children lived here from 1941 to 1978. And a grandchild lived here from 1978 to 2003. In all that time, the house acquired a lot of "stuff".  When the last owner moved away, he moved overseas, leaving behind either a trove of archaeological curiosities, or a lot of junk, depending on your view point.

I spent many evenings the first year looking through what we had purchased; every box, every envelope, every letter and every news clipping. For anyone that has done historical family research, you'll understand the allure of discovering or deducing intimate and personal stories from primary source material. But this was a bit different.  It also had a voyeuristic bent.  These people weren't my family, and even though the stuff in the house did become ours when we bought it, some of the items were personal in nature.

When I came across those items that had potential family value (correspondence, photos, birth certificates, stock certificates, etc.), I set them aside. I was able to contact a sister of the previous owner and gave all of those items to her. But there were other pieces of the house that were simply left over from past days - a ringer style wash tub, a cast iron pressure tank, a porcelain sink, a swinging bench, a cistern pump, a Morris reclining chair, the Nazi chair, etc.  Most of these were broken beyond repair, or saved by people who lived through the Depression, or saved perhaps because of nostalgia for days gone by.  Some of the items we threw out, some we repaired, and some we've held onto - including this.

I think this is the original 1921 water heater, but it might also have been the original boiler used to heat the water for radiators.  It's quite small, only 33 inches tall, and Ms. Huis has been after me for years to get rid of it. I have become irrationally attached to it, and I have no idea why. It is impossibly heavy - too heavy to lift. Thirteen years ago I was in good enough shape to lift it out of the basement - I doubt I could do that now.  It sits in our garage, tucked into a corner while I try to find a better use for it other than scrap iron.

I spent the last 13 years with our current water heater, and I rarely gave it a thought.  Perhaps a few times a year I'd think, "I don't like where it is" or "I wish it was gas instead of electric" or "I wonder what we'll do when it fails?" The original water heater on the other hand would have required daily care and feeding of placing coal in, and ashes out. There may have been a temperature gauge for the water, but the only regulator would have been how much coal was shoveled in.  A water heater in 1921 would have been a wonderful luxury. Hot water on demand! Straight from the tap! The original owners of the house were born in 1864, so much of their life would have been carrying water from a pump and heating it on a stove. But their 1921 water heater compared to the one I just replaced is positively archaic.

And so the march of progress continues forward.

P.S. Anyone have any ideas of what to do with a Richardson No. 600 boiler/water heater?

And Not a Drop to Drink

It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that if you own an old house, you had better enjoy fixing things.  That can mean replacing, rebuilding or redesigning; but if you choose to do nothing, you can be assured that the house will fall apart around you.  Things are going to break or wear out. Sure - this happens with all houses, but around here it seems that for every thing we fix, at least one more breaks.

Sometimes it feels like it is impossible to keep up with the flood of constant care required to keep an old house in shape.

Speaking of floods, last November Ms. Huis said to me one morning, "Mr. Kluges you need to come to the basement." She had that tone. We all know that tone. One that portends bad news. I didn't ask on the way down. Sometimes it's just better to get the experience first hand. This is what I saw.

It really wasn't a surprise. We've been in the house now for 13 years, and the water heater was not new when we moved in so I knew it was going to go at some time. But 13 years of experience has also taught me that sometimes when a picture is crooked, we end up deciding to remodel a bathroom.  Okay, so maybe that exact example didn't happen, but one thing always seems to lead to another.

The good news was that we still had hot water, and that the water was only leaking, not gushing. I mean, at least the bottom hadn't fallen out. After so many years of dealing with leaky roofs and gutters, 90 year old knob and tube electrical wiring, clogged pipes, tornado damage, collapsed sewer lines, and numerous non-domesticated mammals, a minor leak on an unfinished basement floor was a "meh" event. We'll get it fixed.

We're on the back side of this now, but just like every other project in this house it was not as easy as it could have been.