Interior Renovation

The revival of the inside of your house may well be 50 % of the task. It is certainly the part that changes the structure from an antique house to an antique home and gives you great rewards for your work every day of your life. Although as with the outside work, you will want to be sensitive to the original design of the house, you will need bathrooms, a modern kitchen, a modern electrical system, and a modern form of heat. This is why I have called my approach “reviving” rather than “restoring” an old house. This antique must be comfortable and suited to your needs for particular kinds of space. Not only is your home your castle, as in old English law, but your castle—this nice old house you’ve been working on—is your home.

Commonsense goals are to preserve

• The flavor of antiquity in all things

• The look of antiquity in most things

• The basic creaturely comforts that one expects in a home

• A minimum of trouble and maintenance

• Reasonable operating costs

Walls and Ceilings

The walls of your house will probably need some form of attention, and you will need to consider what level of attention they need.

Possible Problems of Old Walls:

Patching Plaster Walls and Ceilings

Plastering is one of those things that looks harder than it's , but it takes practice. There are three secrets to successful plastering of cracks and holes in plaster walls:

• Use the right materials. The stuff they call patching plaster is usually ridiculously high priced. You would do better to go to a building-supply dealer and buy an 80-pound bag of plaster and use this for the rough coat in all patching jobs. You should be aware that sometimes what is called patching plaster is really plaster of paris, which you may have used as a child to make little wall plaques. If you need to fill a deep hole, it's excellent, but it sets up very fast, so mix only what you need. Joint compound makes an economical and good material for the final coat over patching plaster or for covering small blemishes in the existing plaster. (Don’t use joint compound to fill the large holes themselves, because it shrinks a lot when it dries.)

• Clean the area to be plastered of any old, loose plaster.

• When applying regular plaster over lath, wet the lath down just before plastering with a generous spray of water from a plastic spray bottle with the nozzle set to mist.

Re-covering Walls with Gypsum Wallboard

Sometimes the walls are so bad that you need to replace them with a new surface. The first step is to prep the walls:

• Remove all loose plaster, including everything that's not tight to the lath.

• Fill all resulting holes with lath or shingle to bring the area to be patched up to the original level of plaster.

• In some cases, such as where large areas are loose or where the surface is very uneven, you will have to remove all the plaster.

Before putting up the wallboard is the time to install any new electrical lines and outlets that are needed. Be sure to mark the location of the wire on the surface of the wallboard so that you don’t hit a wire when nailing in the wallboard.

This is also a good opportunity to add insulation to outside walls. If you have removed plaster, take down the lath, too, and insulate between the studs. If you are leaving the old plaster in place, add 1-inch, high-density rigid foam insulation over the old plaster before installing your new wallboard. If the in creased wall thickness protrudes beyond your window and door casings, you will have to build them out.

For best results, use a cordless screwdriver and long, self- tapping screws (popularly called Sheetrock screws). Self-tapping screws have sharp points and deep grooves in their Phillips head slots so that they can be driven with a cordless screwdriver. They are called self-tapping because they will pierce even soft tin without a starter hole. They have several advantages over nails:

• Since they don’t have to be driven into studs, you don’t have to place your wallboard joints over studs.

• You don’t have to pound them in, so you don’t risk loosening plaster on nearby walls.

• Screws don’t work loose, as nails do, with expansion and con traction of framing.

• You can drive screws into lath that would be too springy to get a nail into.

• Self-tapping screws will hold in sheet metal.

Cover the joint where new wall and existing plaster meet with joint compound and tape.

How to Build Out Door and Window Casings

Removing old trim may not turn out to be as easy as you think it will be. It is often brittle with age and held in tightly with many layers of paint. Proceed with caution and patience to avoid splitting and splintering.

When you cover an existing wall with wallboard, especially if you also add insulation, you may have to build out door and window casings because the surface of the new wall lies beyond the casings. There are two methods for doing this:

• The purist’s method involves removing the casings and the apron (the flat, horizontal member under the windowsill), being very careful to not split the wood. Next build out the jambs (the uprights that form the side of the opening) to the level of the new wall with wood strips of appropriate thickness. Replace casings. If you are planning to remove the paint from the woodwork, you might consider sending the casings to a professional paint stripper. You should also put new sash cords or chains on the weights while you have them exposed.

• An easier method, if the window and door casings don't already have a trim molding, is to add a molding around the outsides of the present casings. Ordinary “colonial” window casing material is usually suitable. If that does not build the casing out far enough, add a strip of wood under the molding to bring the trim out to the necessary level. On the other hand, if windows and doors already have moldings, you will have to try a different approach. If the outside edge is flat, you can build it out as far as 3/4 inch by nailing on a strip of wood the same width as the outside edge. If the situation requires building it out more than 3/4 inch, you would do well to remove the moldings, add pieces of wood to bring the casing out to the necessary level, and then replace the original moldings. Baseboards may also need to be removed and then replaced on top of the wallboard.

Use a wooden brace to hold wallboard in place until you can nail or screw it permanently to the ceiling joists.

New Wallboard for Old Ceilings

In the case of ceilings, as in the case of humans, just hanging around for fifty or seventy-five years is hard on the ability to hold together. Ceilings thus usually deteriorate before walls do, and badly deteriorated ceilings should be covered with wallboard. Never try to lift loose plaster with a layer of new wallboard. You will have to remove the loose plaster before applying your new ceiling. For small problem areas, remove loose plaster, shim the area where you have removed the plaster to bring it to level, as you do on walls, and cover the entire ceiling with wallboard.

To apply wallboard to ceilings, construct two big Ts, the horizontal members of which are 3-foot long lx4s and the vertical members of which are 2x4s about 1 inch longer than the ceiling height. Put the wallboard in place, at the same time forcing these Ts up against the wallboard to keep it in position until you get it nailed or screwed permanently to the ceiling. Screw the ceiling into the lath and , wherever you can, into the joists. A cordless screwdriver is especially useful for this job.

Simple Lessons on Taping Wallboard

Everyone has his or her own method of taping wallboard, but I’ll share with you my own experience. Use ready-mixed joint com pound sold in five-gallon cans. What a service to humanity it was when this premixed variety became available so that it's no longer necessary to start from a powder as we did in the old days. Make sure you don’t get any old pieces of plaster or dry joint compound into your supply of fresh joint compound or it will leave furrows in the surfaces you are trying to smooth.

1. Cut a piece of tape the correct length and set it aside. Apply a first coat of joint compound in which to embed the tape. With a broad taping knife (a very wide wall scraper may also be used), spread a coating of compound down the whole length of the joint. Downward pressure will keep gaps from developing in the compound. Press the tape into it with the knife. When you get to corners, cut the tape and fold it lengthwise into a long v-shape, as with flat seams, before applying the joint compound. Let this coat dry thoroughly. (You can apply a very thin coat of com pound over the tape before this first drying, but it isn’t necessary.)

2. Apply a second coat of joint compound to cover the tape. Trying to hurry this and subsequent steps will just give you a bad job and a big headache. If you try to cover the tape completely on the first application, you will surely get the tape so wet that it won’t stick and you will have bubbles in the tape or whole sections of it rising up in rebellion.

3. Use a very wide taping knife to apply a third and , better still, additional coats of joint compound. Patience really counts at this point. If you omit this step (as I shamefully admit that I sometimes do) you will be able to spot the joints and nail holes at a thousand feet on a cloudy day. What you are trying to accomplish is a build up of thin layers of compound over the•• tape, spreading out from 8 to 10 inches on each side and thus tapering the edges so that no ridge is visible. Generally, I find that smoothing the material perpendicularly with the joint works best, though others prefer working parallel to the joint.

4. Nail heads and damage marks also must be covered with at least three coats of joint compound, the last one going out from 1 to 5 inches all around the nail. Joint cement shrinks somewhat, so each coat will leave a new depression until the final coat is applied.

5. To get absolutely smooth walls, finish the job by sanding the joint compound. This, unhappily, is a really dirty job. After it’s dry, you can work out some of the ridges with the help of a wet sponge.

Use these same techniques when you must repair holes in the walls. Apply a chunk of wallboard or patching plaster to the hole before you tape it.

Good luck on this. It is likely that you will do better than you think you will—and you certainly will improve with experience. If you are going to paper the wall or ceiling, you don’t need to do quite as careful a job as you need to do where only paint will hide your work. You will soon find out that although wallpaper hides minor flaws, paint hides almost nothing.

(A) Using the screw as a handle, put filler patch through hole in existing wallboard and glue the filler patch to the back of existing wallboard. (B) After glue has dried, cut a plug the exact size of the opening, and (C) glue It into place against the filler patch.

Commonsense Wallboard Repairs

When the wall that needs repair is made of wallboard, you will usually need to use a different approach. Damaged areas can be cut out to the nearest stud. Nail a piece of scrap lumber—called a nailer—to the stud so that you have something to which to attach the patch. Headers can be nailed or screwed at the top and bottom of the hole so that half of the width supports the old material and half supports the new at the point of the horizontal joint.

Patching a Small Hole in Wallboard

1. Make the hole rectangular or square.

2. Cut a filler patch, to which the final patch will be fastened. This should be a piece of wallboard or lightweight wood bigger than the hole, but of such a size that it will fit through the hole diagonally.

3. Put a screw in the center of the patch to use as a handle.

4. Apply white glue to the front surface of the patch, around the edges only.

5. Slide the patch into the hole: you may have to do a little cutting to get it in.

6. Use the screw handle to pull the patch toward you tight up against the back of the existing wallboard until the glue dries. If it's very heavy, you might need four screws through the old wallboard to hold it.

7. Cut the final patch, a plug that fits the hole exactly.

8. Cover the patch with glue and insert the plug into the hole against the filler patch, fastening it in with joint tape and joint compound.

Wallpaper and Painted Walls

Amazing improvements in the quality and the variety of wall coverings have recently become available. The choice is yours, but those choices present some challenges. Here are some suggestions from my own hard-won experience:

• Do not spend all of your nickels on wallpaper—less interesting houses need this kind of pick up, but not your beautiful old house.

• Do not choose wallpaper that's inappropriate for an old house.

• Do not choose colors and patterns that are too striking and bold. Today’s wall coverings last for decades, so avoid what you will soon tire of or will find hard to mix with new furniture or the changing uses of rooms.

Advantages of Wallpaper over Paint

• Wallpaper, especially vinyl wall covering, which is very tough, will help hold the plaster together.

• Wallpaper seems actually to prolong the life of the plaster by keeping it airtight

• Wallpaper is great for covering walls with small cracks and slightly rough surfaces

• Wallpaper, especially vinyl or vinyl-coated wall covering, will usually provide a vapor barrier

• Wallpaper will outlast several paint jobs. Although, like paint, it fades, paint also begins to flake off in a few years and it probably shows dirt more than patterned wallpaper does

Tips for Hanging Wallpaper

Before hanging wallpaper, remove layers of old wallpaper and apply a sealer to the wall. If the wall surface has been painted, always use a latex sealer so that any stain in the plaster can’t come through. The sealer also helps to keep the paint under the paper intact, otherwise the paper may curl up at the joints where the old paint stuck to the paper and the paint pulled off the wall. When this happens, nothing will get it to stick to the wall again.

I like to use vinyl paste, even for prepasted paper, because I think it sticks better, and there is more time before the paste dries to adjust the paper while working. Be careful, however; if you apply too much paste to prepasted vinyl wall covering, bubbles that won’t go down will form beneath the surface.

If you decide not to use paste on the prepasted paper, don't just wet it with a brush, but soak it in water according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If wallpaper does later come loose, glue pieces back up again with wallpaper paste.

• The easiest method of fitting wallpaper is to cut it several inches longer than necessary and then to trim it along the baseboards and ceiling edge with a sharp, single-edged razor blade after it's hung securely in place.

• The best way to fit wallpaper around windows, doors, and other interruptions is to cut it larger than necessary, then to trim it with a single-edged razor blade as you are attaching the sheet of paper to the wall. In the case of a door or window opening, for example, rough out the hole a little smaller in size than the actual opening, before you spread the paste on the wallpaper. If you are putting up prepasted paper, make your cuts before you get the paper wet. Smaller openings, such as those for switches and electrical outlets, can be cut out once the paper is on the wall.

• Gently but firmly smooth paper out with a wallpaper brush. (Some delicate papers may show brush marks, so proceed cautiously.) Roll down the joints with a hard roller to make them stick well, and make sure there are no bubbles under the joints that would leave a piece of the paper not glued.

Don’t be intimidated by wallpapering. It isn't as difficult as it used to be when papers were more fragile than the tough ones on the market today.

Papering Ceilings

Although not impossible, ceilings are admittedly hard to do. Avoid them if you can. With papered walls, painted ceilings look better anyway! If you feel you must paper the ceiling, here are some tips to help you along.

• Set up a good scaffold, such as a heavy plank between two stepladders.

• Cut the paper a bit longer than necessary before applying paste.

• Fold back one 18-inch.section with paste against paste. Then, fold the rest crossways, accordion fashion, into a number of 18-inch sections with right sides always against right sides and pasted sides against pasted sides.

• To apply paper to the ceiling, unfold section by section, working your way across the ceiling and smoothing the paper as you go.

Tips on Paints and Painting Interiors

As with exterior paint, for interiors I recommend using high-quality, though not necessarily the very best-quality, paint available. If you get good, name-brand paint at sale prices.

• Re-cap paints tightly. You can save even the smallest amounts and combine them when you get a substantial amount to get some free paint. Never mix oil and latex paints, but you can mix indoor and outdoor paints, gloss and flat, as long as the paints are all latex or all oil.

• Save money by painting your rooms all the same color. Because in fine old houses it's not the wall color that's the center of beauty, you can get away with this better than you can in less interesting houses.

• Spread heavy drop cloths everywhere so you won’t spend half your allotted time in clean up.

• Use a telescoping roller extension for both ceilings and walls.

• Don’t over-paint walls and ceilings; thick layers of paint will inevitably crack and peel.

Wood Trim: Strip It or Paint It?

If your house is older than 1920, its woodwork was probably originally stained and varnished. With the passage of time, these varnishes often darken so much that they appear to be black paint. By all means strip off this old stuff. Varnished wood strips relatively easily. In fact, that original coat of varnish often is a real lifesaver, for, in many cases, it will have prevented subsequent paint layers from filling up the pores of the wood. Try one door frame at least, and if it's too much work, you can always paint over your half-hearted attempt at stripping. Paint that has been applied over varnish also strips fairly well, but paint laid over bare wood is almost impossible to get clean unless it's dipped.

If you really want varnished trim, you can remove all the casings and have them dip-stripped professionally. Unfortunately, you may split many as you try to remove them, and you will still have the jambs and sashes to do. A more sensible compromise is to remove and strip the doors, preferably by having them dipped. If you strip them yourself, lay them in a horizontal position where you can get serious about putting lots of paint stripper on them. The trim can then be painted in contrasting colors to show off its “ornateness”. Varnish the doors while they are still off the hinges and without hardware.

Unfortunately, when the old-timers were staining what they considered an inferior wood with a coarse grain, such as yellow pine or fir, they often applied a ground coat of a paint-like substance to obscure the grain. It is the worst part of the accumulated layers of finish to get off, and when you go to varnish it, it will look bleached and chalky. In this situation, radically thin the first coat of new varnish with the recommended thinner for that particular type of varnish. A 50-percent mixture would not be too thin, if you even suspect problems, put a test coat on the edge of a door and let it dry to see what the whole job is going to look like.

Paint that has been applied over a good primer on bare wood is very hard to get clean enough to stain or varnish unless it's dipped in a tank. It is well-nigh impossible to get rid of the little flecks of white paint in the surface. If you try to stain over them, the stain will just go into the bare wood, leaving the white spots to show up even more conspicuously than before. In this case, try a stain- varnish which, instead of permeating the wood as stains usually do, acts more like a paint, covering up the surface.

Generally, you shouldn't stain old doors or other old wood. The very fact of its age means that it will turn surprisingly darker as soon as any kind of varnish is applied to its surface. If the door is a recent reproduction, however, test a spot on the edge of the door. if it shows that it's not going to match the other doors when it's merely varnished, experiment with stains until you find one that matches. Do the same for other replacement wood, such as casings and flooring.

As you strip away old paint and varnish, you may find that some old deceiver in past years used a piece of plywood or putty or plastic wood to patch something up. You may find a mantel with plaster trim, a door with an added width or length made out of some non-matching wood, or some other unexpected disaster. Try covering these with flat brown paint, then applying stain and wiping it off with a cloth or a brush to simulate wood grain.

Tips on How to Strip Paint and Varnish

• Get lots of cotton cloth: T and other cotton knits are especially good. You may be able to find a place that sells rags cheaply by the pound.

• Protect your skin, and especially your eyes. Most strippers are exceedingly toxic.

• Work with your surfaces horizontal so you can lay a lot of stripper on the wood. This is no place to be delicate.

• Use good-quality stripper and buy it by the gallon. Use the gel form for both horizontal and vertical surfaces, the liquid form for horizontal surfaces only.

Liquid stripper can be applied using a plastic, pump-type garden sprayer. Small items can be dipped in a pan full of stripper; reclaim your stripper by straining it through a screen to clean it.

• Let the stripper do the work. Wait until it blisters the paint before you try to lift off the paint.

• Use a broad scraping knife, such as a putty knife. First get the large part of the paint off of the flat surfaces, then use cloths to wipe as much of the surface dry as you can.

• Apply multiple coats of stripper. You won’t succeed in getting all the layers off in one try.

• When the wood is clean, flush it with water, but avoid soaking the wood any .more than you have to.

Floors

The treatment of the floors of your house will be determined largely by the condition that time and misuse have left them in.

Special Floor Problems

Common Floor Finishes

Floor Sanding

This dirty and tedious job gives great rewards in a short time. You will get better at sanding with practice. The job will certainly be easier if you follow this advice:

• Consider taking up warped or uneven boards and placing shims under them to level them before sanding. Sometimes the shimming can be done from the basement so that you don’t have to tear up the floors.

• Rent good-quality equipment from a reliable company.

• Floor-sanding machines require a 20-amp circuit, with nothing else running on the circuit.

• Because it's such a filthy job, try to do all your floors at the same time. Also, for the same reason, refinish your floors before painting walls and trim.

• A high-powered exhaust fan in the window of the room being sanded will cut down dramatically on dust in the house.

• Hang wet sheets over openings into other parts of the house to keep the dust from travelling through.

• Use the correct paper: Coarse paper is for leveling and for taking the old finish off; sand with it until you see all bare wood. Medium paper is for smoothing the floor somewhat and removing the abrasions caused by the coarse paper. Fine paper is the final touch to get the floor so that it feels smooth to your hand.

• Sand with the grain of the wood. Some people pull the machine, but you can sand in both directions as long as you always move the sander with the grain.

• The most important thing is to keep the sander touching the floor gently while constantly moving it forward or backward. Every time it's allowed to drop on the floor abruptly, or to remain in one place, it will leave a trench the same width as the sanding drum, which will show in the finished floor. Don’t get bent out of shape when you get a few of these trenches—all amateurs do. They aren't nearly as visible in a furnished room as they are in a bare room with a new coat of varnish on it!

• Switches on the handles of some sanders allow you to raise the sander so it's running on the drum and not the wheels once the sanding drum has contacted the floor. Slowly go the length of the floor, tapering off to nothing at the very end. Alternatively, you can sand to the middle of the room from both ends and carefully taper the sanded strokes on the second end to meet the stopping place for the first end.

• As you sand, watch for the shiny nail heads and drive them in with a nail set as soon as they appear. Otherwise, they will groove the sandpaper and probably make it fly off the drum.

• Do the edges with the special edger that's always rented with the sander.

• Corners where the edger can't reach may be scraped clean with a sharp, broad chisel. Hold the chisel, or a good triangular scraper, perpendicular to the floor surface with both hands and scrape toward yourself, at the same time exerting downward pressure.

• Clean up the sawdust with a shop vacuum or broom, followed by a dust mop dampened with linseed oil if you plan to varnish, or by a commercial tack rag if you will use polyurethane.

• Roll on a coat of varnish with a paint roller and extension handle (so you don’t have to bend over or work on your knees). You don’t even have to use the roller pan. Just pour out a small amount of varnish on the floor and roll it in.

Hardware

Any old brass that your ho use may contain can be cleaned with steel wool and brass cleaners. Once it's thoroughly clean, spray it with a clear lacquer to keep it from dulling again. This will keep you from coming to hate the frequent cleanings so much that you end up painting it. By the way, I have known instances where silver-plated hardware was covered with wall paint and beautiful, solid brass painted with gold leaf: Watch for unexpected blessings beneath all the paint! When in doubt about whether apiece of hardware is brass or not, use a magnet to test it.

The hardware in your old house will probably need attention. Among other possible problems, it may have eight or ten coats of paint on it.

• Don’t paint it with gold paint and try to make people think it's brass: They won’t think it’s brass; they’ll think it’s tacky.

• If it's speckled with white paint, paint it black.

• If it has many layers of paint on it, remove it and dip it in a bucket of paint remover to clean it thoroughly.

• If it's just rusty, cover it with shellac and then highlight the edges and any embossed high spots with a rub-on paint similar to shoe polish, made for this purpose. Apply it with your finger and then, when it has dried a bit, buff it with a soft cloth. The result looks like a million dollars! It not only shows up any embossing or engraving, but gives the effect of old brass shining through years of grime.

• Avoid spending too much on what I call “designer hardware,” reproduced to sell to perfectionists with old houses, especially if you have demands more central to the beauty, comfort, and efficiency of your old house than minute but costly details.

Lighting Fixtures and Chandeliers

Brass or painted tin lighting fixtures that need to be restored should be taken down and examined.

• Use steel wool and brass polish on the solid brass, and house hold cleanser on brass plate. Spray freshly cleaned brass with several coats of clear lacquer.

• Repaint painted surfaces as needed.

Interior Doors

Nothing in an old house lends so much to the general ambience of antiquity as do beautiful doors. If you are fortunate enough to have all the doors you need right there in all the correct openings or stored away in the basement or attic, count yourself lucky. This isn’t always true, however, and you may have to be inventive to work out some compromise if you are missing a door or two. My first advice is never to put a plywood flush door in an old house. A more acceptable choice is masonite doors. Molded to look like old doors, they look, feel, and sound new. They are usually six-panel doors, however, not the usual four panels that many old houses have. A molded door may get you by until you run across a nice old door that will fit your opening at a garage sale some day. If the rest of your doors are finished natural, you might try antiquing the molded door so that it doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb.

• In the case of missing sets of pocket doors (large, sliding doors typically used in late nineteenth-century houses between such rooms as hall and parlor or parlor and dining room and fashioned so as to slide into the walls), you might try building an ornamental lintel across the top of the opening supported by two or four columns going all the way to the floor or to a half wall. Leave ample space for passage between these projecting dividers.

• If your talents run to design, you might try designing and making your own doors. Molding and cut-outs with ball-and-dowel decorations can be applied to plywood doors and then painted. Be sure your design suits the style of your house.

One of the loveliest doors I have seen is a true primitive design from a cabin up in the mountains. Made of three vertical tongue- and -groove boards, it has three horizontal panels with rounded edges nailed onto the finish side of the door. A similar one could be made out of pine for less than the cost of a cheap plywood flush door.

If pocket doors are missing, build an ornamental lintel across the opening and Install columns against the vertical frames.

Kitchens and Bathrooms

Kitchens and bathrooms often claim major attention when homes are refurbished. In addition to planning ways for these rooms to function more efficiently for your family, you will want to give thought to their flooring and cabinetry. Your kitchen may have nothing more than a sink and a bare minimum of cup boards -- if any cupboards at all. Often, free-standing china cabinets and Hoosier cupboards (which featured flour sifters and pull out, porcelain work counters) served all the household’s needs.

Wood floors are now a distinct possibility for kitchens or bath rooms. This is quite in keeping with the old custom of using a white wood, such as maple, for kitchen floors. In the past, these floors were not varnished, but kept clean and white by constant scrubbing with salt and sand. Now, a polyurethane finish allows one to have the beauty of wood, yet a practical, easy-to-care-for finish as well. A successful wood floor must be:

• Tight

• Smooth surfaced

• Undamaged

Tile or linoleum are more commonly used. Prepare the floor for either of these materials by laying a subflooring of 1/4-inch, waterproof plywood, nailed every 6 inches. Do not use chipboard or other non-waterproof materials: They will disintegrate during the first plumbing overflow. Non-waterproof plywood will slowly deteriorate over time, both separating and warping.

Choose colors you can live with for many years. Remember, dark colors hide dirt, but they also make a room much darker. Tile is much easier to fit to the floor than linoleum, but high-quality linoleum makes a more waterproof surface, and tile often warps and loosens along its many seams. Consider ceramic tile for bathrooms. Although it's about twice as expensive as good vinyl tile and requires the same plywood under layer, it lasts for the life of the house.

You have several choices of what to do about kitchen cupboards. You could take the option of freestanding cupboards, but this will almost certainly leave you with an outmoded sink, no place to put a dishwasher, and too little countertop workspace. Furthermore, a lot of little cupboards and cabinets are apt to look very cluttered. The other extreme is to have a factory-built, modern kitchen installed, leaving this one room in the house a startling contrast to antiquity.

The middle way is to install a limited number of cabinets and countertops and a modern sink. With this option, you can create the desired ambience with such antiques as a freestanding primitive cabinet, a Hoosier cupboard, a pie safe, or iron bakers’ racks. Use an antique or reproduction butcher block in the center of the room for a work island and additional countertop working space. Hang your cookware and utensils over the stove area, to cut down on the need for cupboard space. Careful consideration of the lighting system for an old kitchen will help enormously in creating the right atmosphere, while, at the same time, give a sufficient amount of light for a modern kitchen.

Prefabricated cupboards represent a huge investment in some thing that does not go well with an old house in the first place. Two alternatives will both save you money and look better.

• Buy just the doors and make your own cupboards.

• Make the cupboards in their entirety, with perhaps the exception of laminated plastic countertops, purchased in ready-made lengths, which you can then cut to fit.

How to Build Cupboards (or Bookshelves) the Pinch-penny, Lazy Way

• Mark out the position for the shelves on the wall.

• Screw wood strips (lxl2s or lx2s) to the wall just below the shelf marks, using slender, self-tapping screws and a cordless screw driver. To keep the whole cupboard from pulling off the wall, it's especially important to screw the strip that will support the upper shelf into the studs at various points.

• Nail or screw shelves to the strips.

• Add ends, where necessary, by nailing through the end pieces into each shelf. Be sure the shelf is level before nailing in place. Shelves will tend to slope toward the front because of their own weight if not level. If the end of a shelf is against a wall, screw a short strip to the wall to support its end.

• Build door casings on the front of the shelves. To determine the size opening you need, evenly divide the space, ascertain what size doors are available, and keep doors fairly narrow both so that they don't project hazardously when open and so that the weight on the joints isn't excessive.

• Construct doors of vertical boards held together with 1x1, horizontal strips screwed at the end of the boards, top and bottom. This is an old method that gives a sturdy door, a finished look, and the appearance of age. Alternatively, you could build narrow frames, screwed together at the corners and routed out to be fitted with glass. Or plywood doors can be made exactly the size of the hole minus the width of a dime all the way around. Plywood doors done in a commercial shop ordinarily overlap, but they are hard to build without the right tools.

Fireplaces

Everybody loves a fireplace, but they do demand some close attention to make them efficient and safe to use. The first task is to eliminate the draft going out through the chimney. It will suck the heat right out of your house, whether you have a fire going or not. There are two ways to do this:

• Assuming that the chimney is in perfect condition, you might use the fireplace for occasional fires and build an airtight cover to plug into the fireplace opening when it's not in use. A box- cover design, about 4 inches or so deep, will work better than a flat piece of wood or tin. If you come across an old metal fireplace cover (used at one time to block off fireplace openings permanently), attach it to a plywood box structure; it will make a good plug and the plywood will keep it from falling over.

• Another option is to install an airtight fireplace insert, which works like a woodstove. This will be possible only if your fireplace is deep enough. In the Southeast where I live, most houses have shallow fireplaces, good only for burning coal.

Other Fireplace Wisdom

• Often the elaborate mantels and mirrors of the late nineteenth-century are merely screwed to the wall and can be easily removed for stripping and refinishing.

• Fireplace tile can be replaced, if necessary, with ordinary ceramic tile.

• If you are doing a radical job of interior restoration, you might choose to tear out the chimney and build a new, flue-tiled one. If you work from the top, you can avoid destroying the opening and firebox of the existing fireplace.

Electrical System

There are two ways to deal with the fact that your house does not have a big enough electrical system. The first is to have it rewired. Generally, if you have heavier lines brought in from the pole, an electrical inspector will require that you have a qualified electrician rewire your house. If you plan to do this, the earlier you do it in your renovation process, the better, and the cheaper.

The second option for dealing with an inadequate electrical system is to make do with the present service by expanding the lines and by radically curtailing your use of electricity. If you have a system that has at least half a dozen circuits (indicated by the number of fuses there are in the fuse box), and if you don't depend on electricity for cooking, heating, and hot water, you might get along with the present service.

You might also try some conversions and avoid complete rewiring. Systems that have a circuit (or sometimes even a separate meter) installed for a hot water heater and /or an electric range have the potential for expansion. Since the electric stove is 220 volts, and the hot water heater probably is also, if both stove and heater were converted to gas there would be four extra circuits that could be used for circuits elsewhere in the house. As you add extra lines to existing circuits, think ahead and balance them so only one large appliance, such as the refrigerator, freezer, toaster, dishwasher, attic fan, is on each circuit.

Your old house may have a knob-and-tube electrical system. There is nothing wrong with such a system if

• You are using electricity for lighting only (no appliances), in which case a ground is unnecessary

• There are no frayed or loose wires

• Nothing is near the lines that could fray them or short them out

• The receptacle outlets on the walls, the switches, and the ceiling fixtures are all in good condition. This means that switches feel tight, plugs fit snugly in receptacles, and ceiling fixtures have no frayed wires.

Plumbing

Plumbing has gone through a revolution in just a few years, making it now a do-it-yourselfer’s delight. Materials are relatively inexpensive compared to those used until recently, and further, they are easy to cut and install. E.g., you can use plastic soil pipe that glues together, and flexible neoprene connectors that join new plastic to old cast-iron pipes.

You can choose between two different systems for water pipe:

• Flexible, polybutylene pipe with pressure-tightened joints is about the same price as copper and easy to cut (can be done with a knife) and assemble. Because it's flexible, it's somewhat freeze-proof and it's tough.

• P. V. C. and C.P. V. C. (Polyvinyl chloride and commercial polyvinyl chloride) is the white- or cream-colored material that's most commonly used. It is cheap, easy to use, effective, safe (no lead problem here), and rust-free, and it can be cut with a hacksaw and glued together. However, it can be broken, and it will shatter if frozen with water pressure on. It is important to use C.P.V.C., the more expensive of the two, for at least the hot water lines.

Sewer Lines and How They Work

If you don't have your own septic system, your private sewer line most likely connects with the public sewer line in the middle of the street in the front of your house. Drain systems have a gentle slope, or pitch, toward the sewer in every horizontal part. Before the advent of plastic pipe, terra cotta was used. Roots often get in through the joints in the pipe and clog the line. If that happens, call a drain service or rent a rooting-out machine.

Every drain from the house into the drain system must have a trap, which consists of a U-shaped pipe that's always filled with water to keep odors and gasses from coming back up the system into the house. Near each trap is a vent pipe going up higher than the eaves of the house to allow gasses to escape into the air.

Plumbing Repair

If you have to get involved in plumbing repairs on either water or sewer lines, it may be better to repair than to replace the whole line with new materials, depending on the general condition of the line and the location of the problem. Here are some common problems you may face:

Leaking Sewer Pipe

• First, clean the section to be repaired well, and allow it to dry; use a hair drier to speed this process along. For a temporary repair, wrap the leaky pipe tightly with electrician’s tape or duct tape.

• For a permanent repair, replace the offending section with plastic pipe with neoprene coupling clamped onto the old pipe. You should be able to get the old section out by melting the lead in the joints with a butane torch. Alternatively, old sewer pipe can usually be broken by driving successive holes around it with a sharp metal punch. Any jagged ends can be broken off by adjusting a crescent wrench to the thickness of the pipe wall and snapping the jagged piece off.

• If the leak is in the joint of cast-iron sewer pipe, dry it out and try sealing it with silicone sealer.

Leaks around a Toilet Base

• Turn off water supply.

• Drain the tank.

• Unfasten the water inlet line.

• Remove the two to four bolts holding the toilet to the floor.

• lithe floor is rotted out, cut out a square section of floor to the nearest joists and replace it with a new waterproof plywood section of floor with a hole cut for the sewer pipe.

• Install a new wax seal on top of the sewer pipe, being certain the seal is on right side up.

• Carefully replace the toilet.

• Fasten and reconnect the water line.

Leaking Sink Traps

• First, try tightening the offending joint, while holding the rest of the trap firm.

• If that does not stop the leak, and the trap still looks in good shape, try adding new washers.

• If that does not work, remove the whole assembly and replace with a P.V.C. trap. Use silicone sealer generously where the new plastic system meets the old drain.

The adaptors that allow you to go from galvanized to plastic are the worst aspect of plastic piping and need to be screwed on to the metal with the help of Teflon tape or some other sealer. Buy a couple of extra adaptors so you can risk breaking them by screwing them on very tight. They won’t leak when you turn the water back on.

Leaking Galvanized Pipes

• First, turn off the water supply and remove the whole section, from one threaded joint to the next. You can then replace this section with two pieces of pipe and a union, which allows you to screw together pipes coming from two directions, or, you can add adaptors at each pipe joint and insert a piece of plastic pipe in the middle.

• If the leak happens to be a pinhole leak (as is often the case in an underground water line), it can be repaired temporarily by clamping a plastic patch against the leak. One pinhole leak, however, usually signals corrosion to the point that it will probably spring more leaks soon.

Leaking Copper Pipes

• Remove the leaking section with a tubing cutter or (carefully) with a hacksaw. Use polybutylene fittings for your repairs because polybutylene is the same size as copper pipe and readily accepts the relatively soft copper.

• If there is just one break, perhaps because the pipe was frozen, a polybutylene connector section will nicely fit around the leak.

For multiple leaks, put a connector section of polybutylene on each end and a length of polybutylene pipe between them.

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