Kitchen/Laundry Flooring

Unfortunately, I can't paint the subfloor under the linoleum, as I had planned, for two reasons. First, it's not tongue and groove 1x4 fir as is usual for older subfloors. Around this time, it was most typical that they would lay down 1x4 t&g and then tarpaper and 2" wide 5/16" red oak. The t&g sealed the floor from drafts from the basement. If someone didn't want to pay for oak, then the subfloor would be painted. I thought painting the floor would be a quick solution with an older look. But it couldn't be that easy. Nothing else in this house has been easy so why would this be?

Typical subfloor 1x4 Doug Fir Tongue and Groove

In bathrooms, they would use regular 1x8, since the mortar bed would seal the cracks in the boards. We have the second kind of subfloor. 

Also, the original floor tile looks like it's lotsa asbestos. It's over burlap. When I tried to pull up a little piece, it created a little dust storm. We will have to seal it and cover it. 

I'm going to go with some type of marmoleum. It fits the feel of the original floor. 

I think this color would look good and it's on sale for $4/sf in click which would be easy to put down.

Update: nailed it! 

Found the original flooring in the dining area added to the front of the kitchen in '39...

Hard to see but it's like the same stuff but a little darker green with a trim strip. 

This flooring I've chosen is an illustration of how I try to improve and update the house while being respectful of the original style.

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