2011 In Summary

When we told our four year old today that tomorrow was the last day of the year and that it would be a new year in two days, she asked, "What does that mean?"

I could have said, "Well honey, it's a completely arbitrary day chosen out of the approximately 365 days it takes for our planet to go around the sun. It has achieved its significance solely through a long series of historical decisions made by people over thousands of years. People ascribe meaning to the day, when in fact there is absolutely nothing significant about it from a religious or astronomical perspective. Furthermore, not everyone in the world agrees that it is the beginning of a new year. Millions, maybe even billions, of people in the world don't believe that there is a new year in two days. They have chosen their own New Year."

Instead I said, "It's like the birthday for the world. It's the day the world turns another year older." That seems to have satisfied her.

For me, 2011 will be the year that I started to ignore the blog. I did succeed in posting at least once every month (February isn't really a month), but only just barely. I'm not sure if this is an indication of fewer and fewer projects completed, or if it reflects an increased level of comfort in leaving things the way they are.

So for the record, here's what 2011 brought the House of 42 Doors.

• Early winter of 2011 was snowy, with entirely too much time spent blowing and moving snow.
  
• We had an early melt and the promise of an early spring. Sadly old man winter came barreling in though, and pushed spring thaw out until early April.
  
• In mid-April we had tornado warnings and sirens. The girls ran to the basement while I watched the swirling clouds from my front porch.
  
• Spring involved the big project for the year - putting in the raised beds. It was significantly more time and money than I originally anticipated.
  
• The local factory finally sold to a demolition/recycling company. While there's not word if they are going to demolish all of it, demolition has started on some of it.
  
• I found out that we didn't have enough shingles to re-shingle our garage, even though we ordered them when we redid the roof on the house. Currently I have a promise from the roofer that he'll get me the additional 300 square feet of shingles. I owe him a call after the first to check on the status.
  
• I also discovered that acorn flower is tasty, and a fantastic medium for mold. It's astounding how fast it gets moldy.
  
• I put in external outlets in the dormers and heat cabled in the gutters. The winter these last few months has been so mild, I've had no cause to use them yet.
  
• The dining room french doors are half finished. Only one more french door needs to be stripped and stained.
  
• I've almost finished my first radiator cover. Pictures forthcoming.
  

Really, its been a much quieter year. Next year is looking to be very busy though. We have two roofs to replace.

Here's wishing all of you a happy and safe New Year.

Vintage Hubbell Brass Light Switches

I have searched high and low online over the last four years for these light switches.

And I've had no success. My hope is that by putting up a few pictures, somebody out there there will find these and comment on them. As near as I can tell, these brass Hubbell light switches are original to the house. Harvey Hubbell designed these switches in the 1920's and was granted a patent around 1926.

I'm a little puzzled about the chronology though. Our house was built in 1921, so there is a chance that these switches were installed a few years after the house was finished. What I'd really like to do is get my hands on a Hubbell catalog from the 1920's in hopes of finding the first year these switches were sold.

When we bought our house, there were still about 10 functional in the house. The rest had been replaced by more modern toggle switches. When the house was re-wired in 2008, our electrician took out the remaining and replaced them with modern toggles. When he was done, I put back the functional ones in the public spaces of the house - the front entry, the living room and the dining room.

The problem is that the switches do break. They have one flaw in the design where metal fatigue causes a break after 90+ years. Two weeks ago, I lost the three way switch in the living room and now it's been replaced by a brown plastic toggle switch. It looks fine, but the brass ones look so much better. So I've decided to see if I can find replacements, or replacement parts.

Occasionally, unusual stuff shows up on E-bay, so that's probably my best bet for now. I did find these, as modern replacements, but they are still not quite the same. And using these are prohibitively expensive.

Here is a picture of the light switch outside of the wall. You can see that there is no visible screw or fastener for the plate.

The plate comes off by untwisting the round beveled ring around the switch. This screws onto the main switch and holds the plate in place.

The switch is screwed into an electrical box, similar to a modern switch. One difference though is the size of the switch. It's gargantuan compared to a modern switch. Also the wires are attached to screws on the front of the switch, so they have to be snaked around the switch to the front. One unfortunate side effect of all this is that there are live wires that are uncomfortably close to the brass metal plate that you touch when you turn on the light. When I installed the switches, I grounded the switch, to help with any stray current, but originally, they would not have been grounded.

Here is a picture of the internal switch. This is a three way switch.

And this is the switch itself. It seems rather clunky. The switch is a pivot point and there is a spring on the back half of the pivot. The switch offers resistance and a very loud "click" when the switch is thrown. As the bottom half of the pivot moves, it forces part of the teeter totter part on the right to move up or down and make contact as appropriate.

For many of the switches, I have all the parts and I might be able to solder them back together, but I'd have to be sure that the soldered joint was stronger than the original piece, otherwise it's just not worth it. So if anyone runs across switches like these and knows anything about them, please let me know.

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

It's hard to not anthropomorphize the House of 42 Doors. I often think of her as a beautiful, temperamental model who just happens to have an addiction to heroin, shopping and small furry animals. The last few weeks she's been acting up again.

It started after I had begun an improvement (presumably unappreciated). Every winter the gutters freeze up, causing varying degrees of ice dams to the house. We haven't had any leaks since the new roof, but I'm not willing to risk the roof, integrated gutters, soffits or beadboard that could all be affected by year after year of leaks.

So I decided to install two external outlets on the sides of the dormers that I could plug heat cable into. These in turn are controlled by a switch on the inside of the house. When the snow comes, I just flip a switch, the snow melts, runs down the gutters and I'm done. When the southern sun shines on the roof and melts the snow, causing it to run into the gutters and freeze, again the heat cable can come to the rescue.

In the time that I spent running the wire and getting it all hooked up, the house decided to give me three mice in the attic, a broken cold water faucet in the bathroom and a broken 1920's Hubbell light switch.

The light switch saddens me the most. They are irreplaceable.

Acorn Flour

A month has slipped by and every day that I look at my garage roof, it continues to look, well, the same. I've gotten in touch with the roofer that we bought the shingles from, and after explaining that according to my measurements, I was 256 square feet short, he suggested that he come out and measure it himself. After all, "I want to make sure we get you the correct amount. Too many shingles is no good either."

That may be true, but at least if I had too many, I could have started by now.

So for the last three weeks I've expected to see John climbing around my garage roof with tape measure in hand, trying to avoid the massive wasp next located in our inherited and defunct satellite dish. So far, I've been disappointed. I called today to remind him of the situation, but not surprisingly, he was not in the office.

I have other options of course. I did hunt down another distributor, but unfortunately, they are located just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. Hardly a hop, skip and a jump away.

In the meantime, we've been doing standard fall activities; tidying up the yard, washing windows and putting up storms, stowing the screens, chopping wood, etc. One new thing I added this year was acorn gathering. We have two very old (probably 250 to 300+ years) white oak trees in the back yard and this year was a bumper crop. Doing anything in the backyard in the last few weeks was dangerous. An acorn falling on your head, dropped from 40 to 60 feet hurts. A lot. Most of them have come down now, especially with the massive wind storms we've had in September.

I'd known for years that acorns were edible but never bothered to research. Thanks to Ye Olde Internet, I have made acorn flour. Acorn bread is quite tasty - earthy, nutty and mushroomy all at once. The smell of drying acorn slowly roasting in the oven is very pleasant.

The garden is winding down, and except for one very confused pea shoot, everything is dying and like us, preparing for winter.

Why Must I Do Your Job?

This is a rant. Warning issued.

Three years ago we had the new roof put on the house. At that time I told the roofer to order enough shingles to shingle our garage. I also told them we would wait to re-roof the garage. It wasn't in the budget. The main roof, gutters, electrical work, sewer line and tuckpointing had tapped us out.

So for the last three years I've been tripping over 53 bundles of shingles in my garage, waiting for the job to bubble up on the priority list. I was set to do the tear off and shingling next weekend (Labor Day weekend), so I started to put together a list of all the items needed. When I got to the part of the list called "shingles", I put down a check and then started wondering...

My garage roof is 1,316 square feet. Each bundle of shingles covers 20 square feet. See the problem? I'm short 256 square feet of shingles, or 13 bundles. Can someone please explain to me why I must do everybody's job? Why do I bother hiring people when they can't even do basic [expletive] math?

20 * 53 < 1,316

Must I check everything?

Un[expletive]believable. So now I'm stuck with 53 bundles of shingles that I wasted money on and have been tripping over for three years. The shingles were special ordered from the west coast and I paid a fortune to get them shipped here. I put a call into the roofer to see if he has any ideas on how to make this work. Got his voice mail and I'm waiting for a call back. I'm not confident.

Hopefully he's learned how to do his [expletive] job in the last three years.

End rant.

What I Learned from AD

I have been a closet architect for many years. That doesn't mean I dream up design solutions for Imelda Marcos' shoe collection. It means that I have an appreciation for art, design, space and synthesis; and also that I wish now that I had taken a different path in college.

I considered architecture as a major in college, but my university did not offer it. I could have transferred out after two years to pursue a degree in architecture, but for a variety of reasons, it didn't happen.

Three years ago my wife had the option of ordering a magazine as part of some promotional deal or charity event. Ever thoughtful, she chose a one year subscription to Architectural Digest for me.

I was over the moon, to say the least. I had never once seen a copy of the magazine, but the name made me think of something polished and professional, something that discussed the newest trends in architecture without losing sight of the historical foundation from which these new trends arose, something you'd find in an architectural firm lying around to prove how professional the firm really was.

About 10 months into the subscription, we ordered light fixtures from Rejuvenation, and they had a promotion which gave a free year's subscription to Architectural Digest for any customer's who bought over a certain dollar amount. About year after that we bought more from Rejuvenation, and again, it extended my subscription for a year. The upshot of all of this is that I've had the opportunity to see about three year's worth of Architectural Digest, without actually paying a subscription fee.

Finally, this month was my last issue, so I thought I would try and summarize what I've learned from Architectural Digest in the last three years.

• White is a very popular color in good architecture.
  
• Good architecture is mostly about interior design - the colors, the fabrics and the accessories.
  
• Building placement is important. Good architecture is almost always located by a big body of water. The ocean is best. If you can incorporate an infinity edge pool, you get extra points.
  
• If you own sculptures and paintings that are created by world renowned artists (Rodin, Picasso, Rembrandt), you leave them hanging on your living room wall, or sitting upon a credenza in your office.
  
• Surprisingly, historic European estates are significantly cheaper than modern estates located near modern metropolises. I found a 17th century Scottish castle for about $10 million, while a 3,500 square foot, modern house near New York was $21 million.
  
• If you live in New York city, especially Manhattan, and the opportunity arises for you to purchase your neighbor's apartment, do so immediately. You can knock down walls and have a stunning apartment. You get extra points if you can purchase and incorporate several adjoining apartments.
  
• The majority of people who own good architecture do NOT have children, or at least do not plan their architecture around their children.
  
• A good designer can be used to help re-decorate almost anything, e.g. houses, pool houses, guest houses, planes or yachts.
  
• If you can't find a neighborhood to live in that suits you, sometimes it's just better to buy several hundred or thousand acres and start up your own gated community that reflects the architecture and values you'd like.
  
• Only rich people can own good architecture. Also from what I can gather, many rich people who own good architecture are actors, directors, investment bankers, venture capitalists, or directors at charitable foundations.
  
• Homosexuals make great designers and designers make great homosexuals.
  
• Rich homosexuals are at the top of the heap when it comes to good architecture.
  

About forty percent of AD I really enjoyed, but it was not the magazine I thought it was going to be.

Local Factory Sold

I haven't been blogging much lately. As I continue to complete tasks for the house and learn about all the things that I was so blissfully ignorant of for the first 30+ years of my life (calcimine paint, picture rail, asbestos shingles, double hung windows, lathe and plaster, etc.), all those topics that originally seemed fodder for a posting are now commonplace. I don't blog about them for the same reason I don't blog about changing the oil in the car or mowing the lawn. They are just part of every day life. But events still occur which are newsworthy.

After hearing rumors swirling for several weeks, I finally got confirmation - the nearby factory has been sold. When we bought our house in 2007, it employed 600 people, and then by the end of 2008, it shut down. Since then the parent company has been trying to sell it with one caveat - they would not sell it to someone who could use it to manufacture the same product.

Imagine that there's a factory that is custom designed to make widgets. Widget Inc. decides to close it and won't sell it to anyone else who makes widgets. Being highly specialized, it is difficult to convert the factory into making anything else. Its not surprising that it took this long for the factory to be sold. What really surprised me was who it was sold to.

It was sold to a Canadian metal recycling company who specializes in the demolition and recycling of building sites. There's no official word on what happens next, but if I was a betting man, I'd say the days of the factory are numbered.