On Saturday, we got Fidel to come over and assist us in clearing out all the trash that had accumulated in the dining room upstairs from tearing out the kitchen floor. We also finished tearing out the bathroom floor - so now all the original floors are exposed and ready to be restored.
We also started stripping wallpaper in all the rooms. For some reason, in the second floor flat, every room was wallpapered with multiple layers of wallpaper - and then every room was painted over. In most of the rooms, even the ceilings were wallpapered, and that includes the hallway and stairwell. It's going to be a big job stripping all that wallpaper, but it has to be done. In many places, the wallpaper is peeling, and, like many nonprofessional installations, the wallpaper has several places where the seems were overlapped, the paper is bulging, etc.
Surprisingly, the walls underneath the wallpaper are in pretty good condition. Although there are some holes in the plaster, and there were many many screws, tacks and nails driven into the walls, most of the walls are reparable. So there's no need to remove the original paster walls - we'll just have to patch them all.
Underneath the wallpaper, we found copies of the Berkeley Gazette and the San Francisco Chronicle, all dated from September 1950. There was older wallpaper beneath that, but the last layer - the latter that was subsequently painted - was installed in 1950.
We don't know what most of the wallpaper looked like, but in the south parlor, there had been a closet or bookshelf installed before the walls were painted. Although that shelf has been removed, no one ever painted over the exposed paper, so we can see what the paper in that room looked like.
Wallpaper in south parlor
And in the stairwell, we can see the two papers that were installed, one over a now-removed picture rail, the other underneath.
I also started fixing the windows in the house. There was only one window left that had no glass at all, the south window bottom sash in the south parlor. The window is large, and the glass needed is 41" long by 31 ½ inches high. Installing it was a little nerve wracking: handling ⅛" glass that large always feels like it is about to shatter from its sheer weight. However, with some care, I got it installed, and secured in place with glazier's points and window glazing.
Every time I restore windows, I marvel at how wonderfully simple they are, and how much fun they are to repair. I detailed how to do that in the 62nd Street blog, but in this house, it is complicated by the size of the windows. One of the windows I dismantled and repaired today is the east wind in the south parlor. The glass in that window is almost 5 feet wide, and the window weights are huge. In fact, the weights are so large, I couldn't take them out of the weight pockets via the access doors - the weights are too long to fit through, and I had to remove the interior trim to get to them. Even though two of the weights still had the ropes on them, I went ahead an replaced all four ropes, hoping that I won't have to do THAT particular job again any time soon. Of course, the east window in the north parlor is the same size, so I'll have the same problem next weekend.
I also spent time scrubbing the bathroom sink, which was filthy and rusty. There's still some rust to be removed, but it will come out, and the sink really is beautiful. With the clawfoot tub, it will make the bathroom look as it did in 1903 when the house was new.
The bathroom sink, on the way to being clean
I also removed graffiti and stickers from the pebbled glass window in the bathroom door. Now the door lets light flow from the bathroom in (and vice versa). With the windows uncovered and the glass cleaned, the pebbled glass glows in the sunlight, for the first time in years.
The bathroom door, looking into the hall (left) and in from the hall (right)
The worst part about working in the house is that it is just so dirty - everything is covered with years of dirt. I spent time brushing off all the surfaces today, so at least all the dirt is on the floors. I've been sweeping the floors like mad, but there's still dirt. In the south parlor, I finally mopped the room, and the difference was dramatic. Next weekend, I hope to sweep up as much dirt as I can, then wash not only the rest of the floors, but also the trim and window ledges. As I take each window out to fix the weights and ropes, I am washing the windows themselves, and having clean windows is a big change.
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