Another Maybeck looking detail uncovered

I have been working on undo-ing some linoleum that was probably added in the '50s and I uncovered what must be the original kitchen floor tile.

Looks like... yes... asbestos! Old grey fibrous and often cementitious type materials are usually asbestos. Here you can see the linoleum looks like that, on top of Masonite, on top of Maybeck-looking (and asbestos-looking) flooring on top of burlap? I would've expected tar paper.

1/4" Masonite underlayment under the linoleum

Yes the original flooring was set on burlap it appears. Probably felt good underfoot, but a recipe for rot in a wet room like the kitchen. 

Back to the suspected Maybeck feature... 

Does the above pattern look familiar? 

Yup. 

Compost

I am new to composting but I need to get rid of food scraps and put some life back into the soil and garden. 

Overgrown trees everywhere have blocked light to the soil and stopped the natural processes that create rich soil. It's a lot of dry, exposed dirt. Worm "casings" as they are called euphemistically, helps bring nutrients back to the soil. 

I'm going to try an experiment to start out composting. I call it the two buckets technique. Two 5 gallon buckets will allow me to turn over the compost between them to access the casings and aerate the soil. So to not start from scratch, which you can do, I'm going to use half a bucket of high quality topsoil.

Here I have some green leftovers from pho and artichokes we ate over the last week. It is all green waste. 

It's good to have a balance of foods so you can add some strips of newspaper to help provide and alternate type of food for the worms. Strips are important to let air into the compost. Composting is an aerobic process. Brown food should be half the weight or less relative to green food for the worms. That means you probably can't put in your whole weekly newspaper unless you have a serious operation going.

I filled up a bottle of wine so I wouldn't add too much water, just enough to dampen the newspaper and soil that dried out in the sun a bit

I got some red wrigglers from the bait shop. 3 packs of 50 worms. Go to town boys! 

I hear it's also good to have layers because it streamlines the composting process. I put the green at the bottom, then newspaper, then worms, then topsoil. After a while, as the food is eaten off the bottom, I can flip the buckets and the casings will be on the top and the food I will have been adding on the top will be the new bottom food. This is just a theory. The bottom is also the most wet and if the food is rotting more than being eaten by the worms, I'll change up the operation. 

Soil on top

Day 2

I was worried that the compost was too wet so I flipped it today. It definitely was too wet. Penicillin like fuzz was already growing. I think I'll flip it every day for a while and leave the lid off to help it dry out. 

I did get to see the worms getting after the newspaper! 

Bunch of worms already eating that newspaper.

The thing feels very much alive already. It's pretty cool. Wriggling worms, roll-e-polies, different types of flies, and the stink of the wet greens says there's something, probably anaerobic, eating them. If it's too wet it will stink a lot. You shouldn't be able to squeeze out water drops with your hand.

More plumbing fixtures

Couple things I mentioned in the last post. ..

Here's that lavender bath set I mentioned. The house has wall tank toilets. This one doesn't have its tank but I have a white one from the original downstairs toilet. I would like to restore one of these 5 gallon flush wall toilets for the master bath and convert it to dual flush. But for now I'll stick to regular toilets until I have time.

Lavender bath set circa '28-30s. '28 is the first year for color and wall tank toilets were phased out sometime in the 30s I would guess. The toilet would have a brass tube that comes out the back and curves up into a 5 gal. tank bolted to the wall.

I would like to add a bathtub to the master bath. A tub like this is very similar to the original in the house. Circa late '20s

For the laundry, I think something like this may have been there originally.

The reason I say that is - 

-There is a tile backsplash that is 46" long, 46&3/4" if you remove the plaster, and this one below is 47".

-This is something that was used in the '20s

The holes in the back of it are to bolt it to the wall with large washers.

Summary: 

The concrete sink is readily available and affordable. It is era correct. It fits the space. I think it will work well

Sink-in'

Got a sink today for the downstairs bath. Upon realizing 2 of 3 bath sinks had been replaced around '39-'50, it became glaringly obvious that they did not match the other fixtures or the house. A lot of time when working on old houses, I aim for cohesion. Along with updating the plumbing, foundation, electrical etc, I try to clear away the years of random fixes and "updates" done to the house because they are usually crappy. If I can afford to buy the house, it's usually so ugly and crappy that banks won't even finance it because it's unliveable. 

My logic for making the house cohesive is simple - I use the original style as a guide. I usually love the original style of houses made in the '60s or before. I just have to undo the "updates" they did in the '70s, '80s and '90s which match the style of the time but usually look dated in retrospect. It's easy to make the house look right - you just have to go with the flow and not force hard lines of modernism onto your craftsman bungalow, for example. 

I'm ranting again. Anyway... 

Sinks of the 1900s to 1920s and 30s are round. They have round, large radius edges. All the way through 1928 when Crane came out with first colored porcelain bathroom sets (which are super cool and I want to use for the master bathroom), they were round. I don't know if this is because they were usually cast iron during this period instead of solid porcelain or glazed steel, but it may have something to do with it.

Here is the original 1927 tub. Round round round. Round edge, round basin, round knobs:

And here is a sink from the upper bath, possibly original. How nice and round the bowl.

Then here is the sink from '47 that was added at some point, on the left:​

SQUARE. It's seems as though someone invented square fixtures, and it blew everyone's mind because nearly all sinks switched to this style in the '40s. Above on the right is another sink I am selling. It is a pre-war Crane Drexel sink which was made from around 1930-1970. It's rounder, but still square edged. (You can tell it's pre-war by the knobs which were bon bon shaped after the war.) It's a beautiful sink, but my plan is to make the bathrooms all '20s, even though the master bath was probably added when a lot of work was done in '39. Again, I'm going mostly for cohesion and not so much accuracy to the additions made through the '50s because this house is a mess design-wise.

Drexel hanging out in the M bath has got to go. "It's not you, I swear. I think you're a great sink. It's just that we're too different... not to mention the 13 year age difference," said the house. 

I found a wall sink the right size and feel at Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley (so awesome). It was $75 which I think is fair. It has round edges! I know it has a similar shape to the old one, but it fits better I think.

It didn't come with the metal hanger brackets so I had to make some with steel washers and long zinc coated bolts. They feel solid. 

I wanted the main sink edge at 33" high. Kitchen sinks are 36" high for reference. The '47 sink was this high so I went with it. Pulling off the '50s bamboo weave exposed bolt holes, likely where the old sink hangers were. It's hard to see in the picture, but the front edge top of the sink is exactly 4" from the bottom and the hangar lip is 8" from the bottom.

11" on center (O.C.)

It's up! The sticker glue on the side needs to be cleaned off. The wood trim sticking out on either side is for hand towels, I believe. Putting fresh towels on there will give it a nice fresh old-bath-still-being-used-and-loved feel.

Many sinks and toilets have a stamp on the bottom, often the date, but not always. The cross knobs would be unusual for something from '51, as would be the overflow style (those three holes for in case you leave the water running) and cast iron build. 

The two late 30s to 40s sinks earlier in the post are both porcelain. It makes sense for something hanging from the wall to be less heavy so that if the porcelain sink comes off the wall, it might be held up by the chrome uprights (water supply lines) and the chrome p-trap drain. If this sink comes off, it's going down and ripping out plumbing with it and that would be a big mess. Better tighten down those hangers and make sure to tell roomates where the nice new red handled water main shutoff for the house is located...