episode #33: that'll take eight weeks and other lies€¦ · episode #33: that'll take...

Episode #33: That'll Take Eight Weeks andOther Lies

Sun, 7/5 2:08PM 47:34

SUMMARY KEYWORDSSUMMARY KEYWORDS

house, project, alexandria, houses, plaster, people, season, week, true, plumbing, episode, bought,

bigger, talk, helped, foursquare, months, leaks, diy, dc

SPEAKERSSPEAKERS

Stacy Grinsfelder, Alex S., Devyn Caldwell

Stacy Grinsfelder 00:02

I'm Stacy Grinsfelder, from Blake Hill House.

Devyn Caldwell 00:04And I'm Devyn Caldwell from Our Philly Row. We're the host of True Tales From OldHouses.


And this is season four.

Devyn Caldwell 00:15Welcome to season four.


Yeah, welcome back. I suppose if you spent our time off binge listening to seasons one

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Episode #33: That'll Take Eight Weeks and Other Lies of 29 Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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through three, it may feel as if we haven't been gone at all.

Devyn Caldwell 00:25I know. it's been over a month.


So what did you do during your time away from True Tales From Old Houses?

Devyn Caldwell 00:30Well, I'd like to say that I was very productive and got a million things done in the house,but honestly, not that much. Just kind of in preparation for summer I did some stuffaround the house, but I have one really big thing that got done. There has not beenwaters in the backyard for the entire time that our houses existed, which is 167 years. So Ihave put a spigot into the backyard so that we can now water things, a lot of the plantswhich we have yet to get, hose things down. We got a power washer and I washed piles ofdirt off of the concrete and it's glorious.


Yeah, I think you mentioned that project before we wrapped season three. So look at yougetting things done. That's nothing to sneeze at. You did something

Devyn Caldwell 01:13That's true. It was my first time doing that much plumbing by myself, and I'm very pleasedwith myself for it.


Good. no leaks, I guess.

Devyn Caldwell 01:19No, no.

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That's great. How many leaks did you have in getting to the point where there were noleaks? I'm a terrible plumber. That's why ask.

Devyn Caldwell 01:28I had none. I bought the right tools. And I used PEX and copper, copper copper crimper,whatever they're called. And I tapped into a PEX line that we already had going to theback of the house in the basement, and nothing. It's great.


Good for you. Oh my gosh, I feel like we always have two to three little small leaks beforewe get to the point where there are no leaks. Well, it must feel good to get that projectbehind you. And now you can spend a nice summer outdoors with all those flowers you'veyet to buy. Maybe a cocktail or two and some nice lights and

Devyn Caldwell 02:03Cocktails, nice lights, planter boxes, which I just got this last week. Now I need to go andbuy several cubic feet of dirt for but it's gonna be awesome.


Good, exciting. So do you want to ask me what I did? Yes.

Devyn Caldwell 02:15So what have you been doing this time away?


I, I don't know. messing things up breaking things. I don't know. It feels like... I thought, Ohgosh, I have this huge amount of time stretched out before me, and I can honestly say Icompleted nothing. But it does feel like I started several things. We'll talk about that in thefuture, but mainly just things like painting and trying to get my container garden going. Idon't know, really. I wish I had more to show for it, but I mostly worked, I think on sort ofbehind-the-scenes stuff here with the podcast. So I guess maybe we should talk about

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some of those behind-the-scenes things that we have going on for season four. Devyn, youare working on something. and then I've been working on some things. So let's talk about Iguess what we're doing for this new season of True Tales From Old Houses. Sure. We'veadded a new resources page, which we talked about at the end of season three. It's stillnew, and we don't have a lot on there yet, but we're going to add to it. If I remember,right, we asked people to send us things or suggest things and we could put on to theresources page. You can do that on the website. True Tales From Old Houses. Excellent.Excellent. Now is that live when this episode comes out or close to it, like maybe it won'tbe live?

Devyn Caldwell 03:35It's live


when you hear this episode, but Oh, it's live, yeah Good for you. Gosh, you're just gettingthings done. I feel I feel inadequate. All right. Well, one of the things that we did at the last,at the end of the season was we talked about the survey that we had, and we got somegood responses to the survey, which I actually didn't share with you yet. I'm so sorryDevyn. Something that everybody seems to really want that we can't really address rightnow is more episodes. Almost every single time people will say, I wish there were moreepisodes, you know, the schedule is fine, or the seasons are fine, but I wish there weremore episodes.

Devyn Caldwell 04:14It's a lot of work.


It is a lot of work. It is.

Devyn Caldwell 04:18We're at this point where this is volunteer.

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Yeah, but the thing about the work is that I really enjoy the work. But I think probablyalmost more importantly, to some degree, we're kind of on the cusp of needing someone,a person, another third person who's taking care of a lot of this stuff behind the scenes forus, and that is not really going to happen anytime soon. So unfortunately, I think we'rekind of stuck right now. I do have some ideas for maybe some mini episodes or otherthings. Devyn and I'll, we'll have we'll have a meeting. I will try to see if there's somethingbut as far as doubling up the amount of episodes we can do, I don't think we can do that.Right now,

Devyn Caldwell 05:00It's just a little more low than we can take on at the moment. But I think as we get throughthis and this season, and we learn more about how this process works, because, you know,we're still both somewhat new to this, right, you know, it's only what two years in basically,


We keep learning, we keep getting better, but there's still ways that we can streamline theprocess and maybe add more episodes in the future.

Devyn Caldwell 05:20Yeah, we'll get there.


Yeah, something new we have, which we're working on, which should be available in thenext week or two weeks, is we've created a Facebook group for True Tales From OldHouses. It is currently-- it's developing, but we're hoping that it'll be a resource for peopleto ask us more think questions that we can answer on air Q & A, maybe some --acommunity of sorts for you to communicate about your old houses and old house relatedtopics. Maybe we'll be able to share some pictures that don't quite make it on the shownotes or just some behind the scenes information. You'll find it under True Tales From OldHouses right on Facebook.

Devyn Caldwell 05:58

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We have an excellent lineup for season four, we have Q & A, project discussions comingup. We've already recorded some great guests. We're super excited about.


So, so excited. So yeah,

Devyn Caldwell 06:10Especially today's guests. It's gonna be awesome.


Pins and needles. I'm on pins and needles.

Devyn Caldwell 06:14Yes. Yes.


Speaking of Q & A, we do have a new one for you today, and it is fresh off the survey formpress. Do you want to read the question

Devyn Caldwell 06:23Sure


or do you want me to read the question?

Devyn Caldwell 06:24The question is, How much hands on work do you do?

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How much hands on work do we do? I do the majority of it in our house for the most part, Ido have a husband Andy. He was in season two in the ghost story episode, and he and Iboth came into this house thinking that we would work together. But it turns out, he didnot really care that much for the work. Now in all fairness, I know this sounds like I'mputting my husband down and that is not true whatsoever. I mean, the man is probablyworking 60 hours a week. So unless you love this work, you're not incredibly driven after a60-hour work week to come home and start doing more work.

Devyn Caldwell 07:05very true, very true.


Lots of people do it, and those are people that are passionate about that work. Myhusband is not passionate about this work, and I'm fine with that. It's worked out fine. Soas a result, I'm doing most of it here. I do. I talked about what a terrible plumber I am, andhe does some of the plumbing. I'm not an electrician, I always call an electrician, but asfar as most of the other work, and he's helped me wallpaper he has and he's takenwallpaper down. He's really good at that. But most of the projects, I guess, that you hearabout and read about on my blog, or on Instagram, or that I talk about here on thepodcast, those are done by me. How about you?

Devyn Caldwell 07:47Pretty much the same. I have to admit I haven't done as many projects in the house hereas I did in our previous apartment. So sometimes it looks like I haven't done that much.Now that my health is back and I'm getting back. I'm looking forward to getting intoproject Some, I, I tend to be the hands on person on the details, I like to get the detailsbecause I'm very particular about, like how the woodwork is done or that kind of thing.And I'm not afraid to get in and do the dirty work either. I've done it. But I'm also willing tohire people at times when I'm either it's beyond my skill set, or just enough to my skill set.Maybe like, I don't think I could do a good enough job. Like I could do it. But I don't thinkI'd be happy with it. Or there are times, which I think we're going to be doing with ourmaster bath, we're going to hire people to do a lot of the work because I want it done fast.I don't want to spend nine months doing this. I want to done in three months or less, and ifI do it myself, it'll take forever.

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Yeah. And I think it's only fair to, I don't know, to remind people-- like I feel like we've hadthe same listeners since we started but in case we're getting new listeners, you haverecovered from cancer surgery. So there is a very legit reason why you are not doing somuch hands on work right now.

Devyn Caldwell 08:59That's true.


Do you do you want to share any good news with us or...

Devyn Caldwell 09:03Sure. I had my six month follow up appointment this last week. And the test came back aswhat's known as NED or No Evidence of Disease. So for right now, I am truly cancer-freeand I'm really, really grateful for it.


Oh my gosh, I got goosebumps when you told me that. So yeah, I'm happy. I'm reallyhappy for you. That was our first question of Season Four. I think we addressed itthoroughly. What do you think?

Devyn Caldwell 09:26Um, I hope so. I think so.


Yeah. I can't really think of any more to say. My, my body tells me that I'm doing most ofthe work that I'm tired, that I did.

Devyn Caldwell 09:36My back does for sure. [music] Today's guest is somebody who both Stacy and I are very

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excited about. We've been trying to finagle the schedules to have him on before now.


It's true.

Devyn Caldwell 09:56You may know him under his website, Old Town Home or You may follow his Instagramold at Old Town home. (@oldtownhome) He has been a wealth of information for the pastseven plus years for me that I've been following him. He's taken DIY to a whole new level.He's covered everything from how to plaster a wall with a real plaster, all the way to likeleveling the feet on your clawfoot tub--So many tips on both the website and Instagram.He's just really been an inspiration for me, and he's also incredibly helpful and willing tohelp people when they have situations. He just loves old homes. Well, he and his wife loveold homes.


He's blogged, I think he's been blogging since 2011. So

Devyn Caldwell 10:34yeah,


in blogger years, that's like 75?

Devyn Caldwell 10:38Yeah, at least.


Do we count those like dog years? I don't know. Anyway, tell everyone who our guest is.

Devyn Caldwell 10:45

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Devyn Caldwell 10:45Our guest is Alex Santantonio, from Old Town Home.

Alex S. 10:51Hi, I'm Alex Santantonio. My wife Wendy and I own two historic properties in the DC areaand we've been restoring them collectively since 2003 and 2014. It's a project that willnever end. We love what we do, and we love working with our hands and restoring theseold properties, and we love helping other people when they have questions about how torestore theirs.


Excellent. Well, welcome. It's so good to have you here.

Devyn Caldwell 11:14Yes. We're glad to have you.

Alex S. 11:15Thank you. I really have been looking forward to this for quite some time. I'm a huge fan ofthe podcast. I've been, I think, really obsessed since the episode with the haunted talesthat you did a while ago, like in the first season I think. We were on a road trip somewherelistening to it, and then I've been, I've been a constant fans since then.

Devyn Caldwell 11:37Awesome.


Well, thank you. Thank you. Are you talking about Debbie's Little Piece of History isHaunted, the one about the Underground Railroad?

Alex S. 11:43Yes, exactly.

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That was a really fun episode to record.

Alex S. 11:47I grew up in outside of outside of Cleveland in Ohio. I grew up about 15 minutes away froma little town called Oberlin and a lot of my friends lived in Oberlin, and They had a prettyrich history with the Underground Railroad there. And several of my friends had houses onthe Underground Railroad. So it was, it was nice to hear the kind of the history on that sideon the podcast, growing up pretty close to it. And being aware of it so much,


Devyn and I make a list every year, every season, and we we put some names on it thatwe just we really want him to be on the show, and you've you've been on our list for awhile. And we finally got it together here to have you on the show. So I'm happy you'rehere.

Alex S. 12:26Well, thank you very much. I know I've been around between blogging and everything Istarted I think in 2011. And you know that a lot like any old house project, I wanted to startblogging a lot a lot longer before that. So I had photos and everything going back fromwhen we bought our house in 2003. And it was just a matter of getting to the point ofactually starting a blog in 2011. And writing about everything. After sharing countlessthings on Facebook, and boring all of our friends who don't really care about old housesand getting comments that says, "You know, you should really start a blog," I felt it wasencouraging-- them trying to encourage us. It was probably more them just trying to getus out of their feet.


Oh, yeah, that's exactly why I started this podcast, my husband said to me, "You know,you really need to find some other people to talk to about all this old house stuff." I'm notgoing to do all the talking today, Devyn, I'm sorry, but I do want to say one more thing isthat this Season, Season Four, Devyn and I were really interested in finding people who'dbeen doing this for quite some time. So you're one of a few guests in season four that we'lltalk to who are in this for the long term. Sometimes, people will buy their old house and

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immediately start blogging, you know, maybe for six months or a year, and there's a lot ofvalue in that beginning and hearing about that beginning, but I think there's as much ormore value in hearing from someone who's been doing this for a very long time.

Alex S. 13:49And I feel like you know, when you're renovating an old house, especially if you decide todo it yourself. It's a marathon, not a sprint. You know, there's the-- I can't tell you howmany I talk to people about, that who are considering old houses, that this is notsomething that you're going to be done with in a couple years and move on to the nextthing, unless you're planning on hiring a lot of people, putting a whole lot of money into it,and not really enjoying the house for what it is. We actually had that skewed conceptbefore we bought our house in 2003. When we bought our house, we figured we have thisplan that we were going to buy the house and have it renovated in two to three years.And then after two to three years, maybe sell it move on to the next thing, maybe moveback to Cleveland, not having any idea that it would be 17 plus years at this point. Andwe're still not done with it. We still have plenty of projects that we want to work on.

Devyn Caldwell 14:45It's a never-ending process. I mean, I talked about the 10-year plan, and we bought ourhouse three years ago and we're still on a 10 year plan. It'll be a perpetual 10-year plan,


Right. I've moved from the 10-year plan to saying I'm going to die with a paintbrush in myhand.

Alex S. 15:01That can take the majority of your time either painting or cleaning up the messes youmake on a daily basis. Those are the two most time-consuming aspects of every everyrenovation,


For sure. Actually, it's funny that you talked about your expectation. I'm gonna let Devyncut in here because that was one of our questions we have on our list. But go ahead,Devyn, you start I've been talking.

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Devyn Caldwell 15:19Well, let's start out with your house in Alexandria, your row house. How did you find it? Imean, what's the story about finding that house and how you fell in love with it?

Alex S. 15:27Well, we we moved to DC, the DC area right after we graduated from college in 2000. Andwe were fortunate enough to move into Alexandria, Virginia, which is right across the riverfrom DC. We realized in our early 20s, that every weekend pretty much we were going toOld Town, Alexandria and Old Town, Alexandria is the historic district in Alexandria. Oneit's one of the earliest National Register of Historic location districts in the country, and it'sjust absolutely rich with houses that are 18th century 19th century homes that are all rowhouses in a very kind of tightly packed urban area, but it's, it's City Light is what wealways say. And we realized we were going there every single weekend. And we werespending all of our time walking around and looking at the houses. We also realized thatwe had this affinity for old things. Even going back further. We've been dating since wewere 17. We were highschool sweethearts, one of the first things that we did together, Ithink we went and we took the SAT and then after the SAT, we came back to my herparents garage, and we started refinishing an end table that we still have in our housenow. So we knew that we liked working on things together old things really kind of piquedour interest. So after we got married and we decided to start looking for a house, wethought you know what? we should probably look in Alexandria for the house. Wedefinitely want something old. So we looked out in a lot of is around DC. And actually webought the house-- I think we looked at 18 different houses 19 or 20-something like thatdifferent houses. We bought the very first house we went through. And that's how italways seems to work out. We had to see the other 18 or 19 to make sure we were makingthe right decision,

Devyn Caldwell 17:20right.

Alex S. 17:20We took the plunge there because we figured this house is a very old house that we reallywanted. It was a brick, it's a brick house. It's a row house was built around 1885 1886. It stillhad a lot of its original character. And there was just a huge amount of potential there. Iactually had some background in working construction, and also working in a windowrestoration shop from high school and college.

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I like that.

Alex S. 17:46Yeah, it was it was a good experience and a good-- it was helped it helped me understandthe value in especially historic windows. Wavy glass was kind of drilled into me by myboss, and I spent an entire summer stripping and removing glass from 800 wood windowsthat were removed from a big historic Hotel in Cleveland called the Tudor Arms Hotel thatentire summer. He would come and talk to me every day, and he would say, "let me tellyou just how important every piece of glass you're removing is. We can repair it andreplace it if it breaks, but every single piece that breaks, that's 100 years of history that'sgone." So that drilling, drilling that into me, made me appreciate it. And then that mademe appreciate it even more when it became my own house


Of course.

Devyn Caldwell 18:37Absolutely. What was your biggest reality check in early years in Alexandria, the house?

Alex S. 18:41Just how long everything takes and how every time you make two steps forward, you canexpect to have at least one step or a half step back. You know, we understood that it wasgoing to take effort. We understood that it was going to take money to do this. We reallydidn't have much in terms of a budget set aside to do the renovation, so we figured wewould start small, and we would do what we can as we can. And we would do it one roomat a time. So I think the first day we were in the house, I think it was 15 minutes from ourclosing. And then we walked our house, and we started tearing apart our house, I think wewere taking out shoe molding. And I got the heat gun out. And I was like, I'm going to stripall the paint in this first room, and it's going to be great. And then about four hours later, Ithink we had finished about three feet of baseboard. And it was a giant mess. And it waslike wow, this is a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. I thought this paint wasjust gonna jump off of these moldings here,

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Alex S. 19:47And then since then, everything has been about the same. You know, it's this idea that youhave an expectation that something is going to take a day it's actually going to take fourdays. If you think it's going to take a month for me I've realized lately, something that Ithink will take about eight weeks. Really, seven, eight months is more reasonable.


Yeah. Don't you love it to how we've kind of expanded our expectations? You know, whenyou say something will take about eight weeks, that sounds very reasonable. You know, Icould go for that. Eight weeks-- I'm being very flexible here. It's going to take eight weeksand then suddenly, like,

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I lie to myself, so I believe it too!

Devyn Caldwell 20:22Yeah. Well, I mean, if we were a contractor, we'd be bankrupt. Right?

Alex S. 20:26Exactly. I think I figured out how much I'm paying myself hourly from the time we boughtourselves to bought our house until now. I think I came in at somewhere around 18 centsan hour or 19 cents an hour. something like that.


Old Fashioned labor costs to match your old house.

Alex S. 20:42Right, exactly. I'm a bargain.

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Devyn Caldwell 20:44Yeah, there you go. So do you have a project in the house that you're particularly proudof?

Alex S. 20:49I, I have a couple there and they all have to do with different skills, I think, and it's theevolution of what we do and this is something I touch on on Instagram, a fair amount--The the idea that your process on doing something, especially something that you'redoing multiple times, whether it's working on plaster, working on windows, maybe doingcrown molding installations, something like that your, your process evolves. And youknow, looking back on things, you're, you can be proud of a project that really doesn'thave that great of an outcome, because it's what you knew at the time. And it's what youdid at the time. And you can be, and you can have a lot of pride in that. So I think theprojects looking back on it are the ones that everybody always says--oh, that allowed meto level up, you know, that really leveled up in this idea of, of getting better and gettingmore confidence. I think those are the projects that I'm most proud of the ones that welook back and we say, boy finishing that really helped us to build our confidence so thatwe could take on something bigger for the next project. So I think going through theprojects, you know, building the desk that --I built the built in desk to mimic the antiquecabinet in our small office area. That was big because that really led me to believe that Ican build furniture. You know, I went through the old fashioned approach of you will notfind a fastener. If you look at the that desk, the drawers are all dovetail. Everything iscompletely hidden yet I built in all sorts of lights in it so that you can see the computerthat you're dealing with. And, you know, a bunch of different aspects like that, that let mefeel like I can do something a lot bigger in the future in terms of furniture building. Thenext biggest one are probably that both bathrooms that we did, we're both very proud ofthat. And I'm going to say we hear a lot too Even though it's just me giving and doing theinterview right now because Wendy and I have been a team on this and our our teamworkon this has helped build a stronger marriage has helped us have a better outcome from allthese projects because the two of us working together, she's sort of the brains of all of thethe the aesthetic and what it should look like and we'll work with Through the idea withme on, on how we're going to build things out. And then the next step beyond that is she'sshe assists me in terms of the implementation, and helps me work through problems thatI'm running into. And she may not be every step of the way in terms of building or workingon the projects. But she ends up really assisting the process along and helping me moveforward, especially when I inevitably hit some major roadblock that just makes me shutdown because I'm not really sure what my next step is, that would never happen morethan on the bathroom project because I kept getting to these points where I would finishsomething, and then she would help me on because I had a mental Roadblock, that I was

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just too concerned about taking that next step. And then when it comes time to finishingout these projects that we're really proud of, she steps in and she is the kind of designaesthetic implementation in terms of the curtains, the color choices, the the Soft touchesthat actually make a space feel wonderful and inviting.


Right. That's great. We'll put-- hopefully you can maybe give us some pictures that wecould put on our show notes for this episode because I'd love to show absolutely whatwe're talking about. Now, I've seen the bathroom and I assume it's the one you're talkingabout. That was actually an old house journal. Is that correct?

Alex S. 24:18Yep. Okay, yeah, it was the one they did a pretty nice spread on it. I really liked how itturned out.


Right. I'll try to link to that issue as well. So people can see maybe it's online or at least alittle excerpt.

24:31

[Music]


Okay, Devyn, new season. new commercial. Let's take just a minute to tell people the waysthey can support True Tales From Old Houses.

Devyn Caldwell 24:39You can support us by sharing us with your friends. You can share us on social media. Youcan leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Those ratings andreviews really help us.

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They do it's true. The other way you can help us is by making a one-time or reoccurringdonation to the show. We have a PayPal button directly on the show notes for thisepisode and over on TrueTalesFromOldHouses.com, but mainly what I want to say is justhow grateful Devyn and I are for all the donations we received last season. It gave me somuch joy to send out those mugs. And I just want you to know that we spent your moneyfor things like hosting, and sound tech, and it really helped us out. Thank you so much forthe donation.

Devyn Caldwell 25:22Yes, thank you.


Without you, there would be no True Tales From Old Houses. [end music and commercial]I'd love to start talking about your Foursquare project because you, let's see how long didyou have the Alexandria row house before you decided that you wanted another house? Imean, I guess you needed more projects? You needed something new? What was your...

Alex S. 25:49Yeah, I think so. It was it was a equal parts ambition and foolishness.


And your you've been working on that for six years?

Alex S. 25:57Yeah, just shy of six years. It'll be six years in our in October. We actually, I think we wereabout 11 years in on Alexandria, and this is actually an idea that Wendy had had for a littlewhile she has had this dream of at some point living on the water. You know, we've we'veseen a lot of our our friends, as they've gotten older, they've had children, and they've soldtheir house and moved into a bigger house. And we have four-legged children, and four-legged children don't need bigger houses. So we started to look at the option of,potentially instead of, because we don't need more space in our in our small row house inAlexandria. It's 15 feet wide, it's perfect for us. It's exactly what we need. So when we

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started looking at our options here, we said, well, rather than trying to move up to abigger house or something like that in Alexandria, why don't we try to maybe fulfill ourdream of, of trying to get something on the water and something more more remote sothat we can get out of DC and and have some time to relax on the weekends? And also, Imean, this is part of the issue, relaxation for me is working on things,


Sure.

Alex S. 27:08So I wanted somewhere that we could go and work on how so we set up a search, and thesearch was pretty much anything that was older than 1920 on one acre or more, that waswaterfront within about two hours of DC. And where we ended up is down kind ofSouthern Maryland area. So it's south of DC. And we've been here for six years and again,tackling it one room at a time one project at a time.

Devyn Caldwell 27:37So tell us about that time in the pipes froze.

Alex S. 27:40Oh, wow, that was wonderful.


I'll never forget this ever.

Alex S. 27:45Yeah, it was, it was one of the most difficult experiences we've ever had in terms of owningan old house because we felt completely crippled when it happened. So you know, it waslike just this idea of We've now had this disaster now what? I can't do anything, you know,we've everything is frozen, everything's a mess. It's and because it's a second house. It wasthis idea of Okay, it's it's out of commission now. Right? You know, we've got to deal withthis.

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So let me go back just a little bit just to give listeners an idea of what we're talking aboutin case they aren't as up on this what happened, but this is your Foursquare, your secondhouse, and you were away from the house and the pipes burst, right?

Alex S. 28:28So I'll take it, take it just a step back. We had a cold snap in DC, which is pretty out ofcharacter for for DC where it was sustained highs of about five degrees, I think, or 10degrees, something like that. That's pretty uncommon for our area. So we were here andeverything was fine, though, the week before over Valentine's weekend. And it was coldout and there was a huge windstorm that came in actually pushed all the water out of outof the water in front of our house and just made it absolutely beautiful and everything wascovered in ice, and it was just this this odd scenario that you don't normally see in thisarea. But it was, I don't know, it was an omen for what was to come.


Foreshadowing.That was all foreshadowing.

Alex S. 29:11Yeah, exactly. And so we went back to Alexandria, and we were in Alexandria and itcontinued to be really cold that week. I actually-- my wife Wendy is a realtor and she hada client that was about a block away from our house in Alexandria, and it was undercontract and about to close and because of the -- the owner of the house actually washad already moved out of the area. So Wendy was sort of handling everything for and shewent over to the house one day and one of the pipes had frozen and burst and she-- andit was in the the ceiling one of the rooms and she ended up having to get a plumber andget it taken care of and it was just a huge mess. And she--I remember coming --hercoming back that day, and saying, you know what, this was just an absolute disaster. I'mglad we caught it early on. Cuz it could have been so much worse. But, you know, I can'tbelieve how easily that pipe froze. It had insulation all around it, but it's just that cold andit froze and it burst in this in this person's kitchen. So we went through the week and weended up headed back down to our Foursquare on that following Friday. And when wegot here, it was probably around 10 o'clock at night, maybe nine o'clock at night. Wewalked into the house and the house had an oil-fired boiler and, that it was a big old oil-fired boiler that was doing pretty well before but it was loud. And it sounded like a jetwhen it was running. So we walked into the house. And I remember immediately, as soon

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as I walked in, I could see my breath. And she said, "Something's not right here." And I said,"Yeah, it feels a lot colder than it should in here." I went right into the utility room andnotice that the boiler wasn't running and it should have been running full time at thatpoint. So I went I looked I said, "the boilers not running," and I checked the circuit breakerand it was like No, the breakers on It's okay. You know I don't know what's happening, hitthe reset. Nothing happened. And then I took a step back and I realized that the pipesabove the boiler, I found one icicle hanging out of it. And I thought, Oh no, we've got afrozen pipe here. This is this is a huge problem. And then I traced it up a little bit furtherand there was another split with another ice icicle. And then I looked up another, anothermaybe foot and one of the elbows had pushed off of the connection and I could see thesolder and then we started looking around the whole house and every room up the pipeshad burst and there were literally icicles hanging out of the radiators in every single room.And some of them and I've never seen this before, because of the way that it burst and itwas so cold, were these pigtail icicles because the radiator line would start would burstand it would spray and as it sprayed, it would freeze and it sprayed and it froze and theseweird kind of pigtails. And it was the oddest thing to walk around the house and see thatyou're entire house's plumbing, both heating and plumbing, was completely destroyed.The even the bottoms of toilets had broken because it had frozen in the tank and thebacks of the toilets and pushed everything out. So it was just this, this discovery where itjust kept getting worse and worse every single room we went into. And then it was thismoment of like, oh, okay, how do we fix this? Where do we start? You know, it's notsomething like we can patch this hole and then move on. There's no heating in this house.There's no plumbing in this house. So we got-- and here's the silver lining moment for you.We got incredibly, incredibly fortunate. We were able to use a hairdryer to thaw the valvethat was the main shut off to the house and shut off the water to the house. Because itwas so cold, we hadn't gone through a freeze thaw cycle over several days. So the wholehouse had frozen. So we could, we could throw that valve, shut it off and then go homeback to Alexandria for the night, and then come back. First thing in The morning afterabout three hours of sleep, and start collecting space heaters from friends, taking spaceheaters from home, and trying to thaw the house out as much as possible. And we hadabout a day where we thawed the house out and slowly drained every line from the housegiving you know, where we were yelling to each other from one room to the other, saying,"Oh, we've got a leak in here one of the ice dams gave away and now you know bringtowels!" and and the fact that we were able to do this in a controlled manner, meant thatall of our 112-year-old floors now are were saved. We didn't have to tear out walls oranything like that. We just got to the point where we could replace the heating systemand replace all the plumbing and do it right and do it in a way that will work better in thelong run. Wow, that is the silver lining. I can't even imagine. We spent the next eightmonths installing geothermal geothermal system and getting rid of the oil-fired boiler andgetting rid of the oil tank that was buried and getting ourselves a much better eco-friendly


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solution and running plumbing that wasn't run on the outside of baseboards, becauseplumbing was added to the house as an afterthought after it was built. So now we haveplumbing that is completely concealed. We have forced air and we have air conditioningnow where we didn't have central air conditioning, and it's so much less expensive toactually operate it month to month.


Right, and you have remote monitoring now as well, I believe, right?

Alex S. 34:30Yep. remote monitoring, remote leak sensors, cameras, security, temperature monitoring,you know, kind of keep our tabs on the whole house.


Right. That's great. So we've talked about both of your houses, and I guess I--since you'vebeen doing this for so long, I was very curious about your method of project planning.Clearly, you said you do one room at a time. I think Devyn and I both wonder, are youdetailed planners or do you just have a general idea and you figure it out as you go?

Alex S. 35:00We figure out, we figure it out as we go. For the most part, I would say we are planners.But at the same time, we are also able to kind of constantly assess and figure out what'smore important. Here. A good example is we finished the downstairs hallway in ourFoursquare, and we could have easily moved on to doing the kitchen, we could have alsomoved on to doing our master bedroom. But because of where its proximity was to theupstairs hallway, and the fact that it carries straight into it and the rooms are related. Wefigured we should go ahead and move forward on the upstairs hallway. We hadn'tplanned on doing that when we started the downstairs hallway. It wasn't until we finishedup the downstairs till we realized, you know what, we should just go ahead and do this,and this is that eight week project thatI'm finishing this week, 10 months later,

Devyn Caldwell 35:47But it's gorgeous.

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Alex S. 35:48And if you ask Wendy too, we talked about this, and she said, "How long do youreasonably think this is going to take." and I kind of went through my head and I broke itall down and I said, "Well, it's going to take us two weekends. to strip all the texture off thewall, and then, you know, three weekends to replaster everything. And then we've got to,you know, go through it that way," and I came up with a legitimate eight weeks,


Right

Alex S. 36:13Ten months later, the end result is, you know, will we play things by ear and kind of gobased on how the current project is going. And we make changes based on critical itemsthat come up. We had no anticipation that we were going to replace the entire HVACsystem, but a whole house that's frozen really kind of forces your hand on that to do itwhen it's time to do it.


Sure. sure.

Devyn Caldwell 36:37It does,


How do you budget for your projects and we don't have to talk specific numbers but likesomething like an HVAC--well, I guess you got an insurance settlement, but you know,what kind of advice could you give someone as far as budgeting goes someone who'strying to work on a cash basis for these projects?

Alex S. 36:51Budgeting is is interesting because we've never formally had a set budget for a givenproject. It's been more--sometimes we'll do a materials budget, where, you know, I keep

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going back and forth on this with a lot of people when I talk to them, it's the idea of good,cheap, or fast, you get to choose two, and usually in old houses, you really only get tochoose one, right? So, budget has always been one of those things that that we've not letit really define exactly what we were going to do for a room. Instead, we just take a lotlonger. So our bathroom is a pretty good example. Start to Finish. It was seven years thatwe were working on that about, yeah, we did a whole lot of other projects in the process.But seven years when we were doing that, there were things that we did during the earlyparts of that bathroom. We actually lost our dog to cancer or our dog Oliver to cancer.


I'm sorry.

Alex S. 37:48Thank you, and it's actually we now have two wonderful dogs, but ultimately, when wewere doing that, we ended up having to shift because we were doing cancer treatment forOliver, and that took us a significant amount of our extra budget that we would havespent on our bathroom. And as a result, we just made our project take a lot longer, so thatwe could spread the cost out over a longer period of time. And I know a lot of peoplereally probably wouldn't feel very great about having a project that takes years like that.But when we did it, we kind of paused on some of the bigger things worked on smallerprojects so that we could feel like we're accomplishing things and then revisited thebigger things.


And that is a strategy. I think it's hard to talk about budgets sometimes becauseeverybody has different income levels. They have different priorities. Sometimes peoplehave large families or small families or no children, but it's nice to hear the strategy, Ithink, and so you address that really well because you're living a different life thansomeone like me or someone like Devyn.

Alex S. 38:46Right. Exactly. And I and I think too, we end up doing things so slowly and collecting thingsover time, whether we're talking about furniture, we're actually working on the projects,that when you spread it out that much like I said it feels a lot less than it actually is,regardless of how much it is. Whenever we do end up ultimately hiring somebody, even if

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it's a reasonable cost for the work that's being done, because it's all happening in fourdays, and we're paying for the whole thing in four days, it feels a whole lot different.


Right.

Devyn Caldwell 39:18It certainly does. Yes. So you've been doing this so long that you may feel like starting overin some areas, in the row house, or is there a project that you wish you could do again,and that you have more experience? Or perhaps your decor choices would have beendifferent over time?

Alex S. 39:30I think decor evolution is a natural process, and that's something that that Wendy reallyputs a lot of time and effort into in terms of updating things periodically. So that it's it'snot a situation where it's completely dated. We've started to do that just recently wherewe repainted and I say recently, two years ago, probably repainted our dining room


Eight weeks ago, right?

Alex S. 39:54From the--Yeah, exactly eight weeks--We we repainted our dining room. That used to bethe real bold red color. And we made it far more neutral. It was feeling very dark. Youknow, it was one of those things where that red was popular. Back when we painted it. Youknow, a lot of people had red dining rooms or red rooms at that time, especially in rowhouse.


Guilty. I had a red room.

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Alex S. 40:17Yeah, exactly. And, and, and then, at a certain point, we realized that it was making theroom feel smaller, more closed in because of it. So Wendy wanted to refresh, refresh it andgo a little bit more neutral. So we took a weekend, and this is a case where we actuallytook a weekend and we painted a whole room and then it was done. And our work wasdone. And we moved back to whatever we were doing before, which was wonderfullyfulfilling. But in terms of projects and redoing projects, because I kind of consider that alight refresh, that's a decor choice or something along those lines. It's interesting youasked this because we're going to be launching into this in the next couple months.Because the very first projects that we did when we bought the house in 2003, andactually the first room was our living room. That room has plaster damage that we didn'tknow how to address before and had been addressed by the prior owner, it was only amatter of time till it fell apart. So we need to correct that we need to restore the window inthat room, we need to while we're doing that fix a bunch of failures in the caulk that weused on the crown molding. So over the next few months, we're going to be essentiallygoing back to the roots of what we did right when we moved into the house, fixing theplaster in that room restoring the window, fixing the plaster on the ceiling and the walls,not just the walls like we had done before. And the Harlequin diamond pattern in thehallway that's immediately adjacent to it. We're probably going to be skimming over thatbecause I use the wrong approach and no fiberglass mesh in the plaster restoration withthat. So the cracks that we covered before coming back through again. So I'm going to fixthat once and for all and then we'll probably end up doing wallpaper in that roomcovering over that Harlequin that, that we've been looking at for, you know, over a dozenyears now.


Right. I know. I mean, just from talking to you today, I think I had a question about do yougenuinely enjoy DIY? And now I know that yes, the answer is yes.

Alex S. 42:15Oh yeah, absolutely.


I think I'd like to ask you, what is your very favorite DIY task? Like what's the one projectthat you're always ready to do?

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Alex S. 42:22Oddly enough, and so I talk a lot about plaster and plaster rest. Yeah. And it's one of thosethings, I enjoy it because of the end result. It looks wonderful. And using lime plaster nowand having kind of the evolution of technique and getting it to the point where I can getthe wall almost perfectly smooth. And it can, it can look as good if not better than itlooked from the day that it was originally floated onto the wall. It's so fulfilling, but it's alsoone of those projects where in the middle of it, it becomes a slog, especially if it's a reallybig room, and you just want it to be over. So As much as I enjoy plaster and the end resultand I really, really, really enjoy helping people plaster, because of all the experience that Ihave with it, I think woodworking is by far my favorite DIY project, you know, furniturebuilding, and working on creative implementations of molding door casings, crownmolding, the the salvage beadboard wall that we just did in the in the basement, youknow, those sorts of things really kind of give me a lot of fulfillment, because I feel like it'sgetting back to that, that tried-and-true approach to carpentry, that kind of is nostalgic,and I really enjoy.


So of course the flip side to that is what is your least favorite DIY task?

Alex S. 43:44I hate painting. I hate it, and I've been doing nothing but painting over the last little whileand I'm really, this is it--his is kind of a weird brag, but it's like oh yeah, I'm really good atpainting. I've gotten I've gotten really good, at cutting in. I've gotten really consistent andable to do a good job and and have it look really wonderful when it's done. And I hateevery single minute. But the fact that it looks really good when it's done makes it so that Ican keep doing it and justify it to myself rather than having somebody else come in andactually do the work.


That's funny. One task that I just despise is caulking, and I worked for--I've done thisseveral times now for Habitat for Humanity, and the joke is always like, if you tell themyou're good at something, then that will become your job. So I'm really good at caulkingreally hate it-- every second of it, the gun, my hand kind of cramps, I just, you know,dragging my finger through it, and so they said, "You need to tell them what you're goodat," and I thought, I'm not telling them that. Are you kidding me? I don't want to spend myeight hour daycaulking around windows. No way.

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Alex S. 44:49Yep, exactly. And I would say this is sort of DIY related and what I'm good at and what Ienjoy. I really really, really like helping people that are trying to do all this stuff. You know,it's it's something where I didn't, I didn't have a whole lot of help coming into this anddiscovered the rich online community that existed in 2003, and has only continued togrow here. And helping people through sharing my experience, and giving them some tipson on how they might try to accomplish what they're trying to do is one of the mostfulfilling aspects of this. And it's not anything that's moving our projects forward oranything directly. But it ultimately is because I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing withplaster, and I would still be doing the same thing I was doing years ago, if not for learningabout it because I have a desire to help other people learn from the mistakes that I madebefore. And that's such a huge thing to me. It's just, you know, giving back to thiswonderful old house community that we have that is on Instagram, is on the internet, islots of different places and you know, pushing my comfort zone and learning newtechniques, so that so that I can hopefully help other people in that process.


Alex, thank you so much for being here today. Like I said, we've been wanting to have youon the show for a long time. I've enjoyed our time together. Thank you for just everythingfor being encouraging. I'm very encouraged after listening to what you've said, because Ithink it's really easy to get discouraged when there's so much work ahead of you with abig old house project like this one.

Alex S. 46:28Well, thank you very much for having me on the show. I can't tell you how much Iappreciate you taking the time to talk with me about this. And like I said, you know, theold house community is a vibrant one. And I love interacting with everybody onInstagram. And I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to be on your show and that I'vegotten to know you guys over the year.

Devyn Caldwell 46:47Thanks, Alex. We're really really glad to have you on the show.


All right, so we're gonna have to say goodbye, but I'm going to link your Instagram

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account and your blog on the show notes so everyone can find you and we will see youlater. Later.

Alex S. 47:00Thank you.

Devyn Caldwell 47:01Bye for now. Thank you for tuning in to our first episode of Season Four of True Tales FromOld Houses. You'll find everything you need to know about this episode including links andtranscripts over on the True Tales From Old Houses website,


Season four! Until next time.

Devyn Caldwell 47:15Bye, for now.

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episode #33: that'll take eight weeks and other lies€¦ · episode #33: that'll take...

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