Taking On Another Dilapidated House
From James Donahue’s Journal
When we moved into the house on Elk Creek Road we moved into a real mess. I relied on Aaron to take on a lot of the projects that I would normally have been doing.
Among the first jobs was the replacement of the broken windows in some second-floor bedrooms and also the basement. There was an open cistern in the basement that was full of water from roof run-off. Animals that got in through the broken basement windows had fallen into the cistern and drowned. We hired a contractor to pump out both the cistern and nearby sump pump hole and then flush both of these with acid to kill any bacteria and eliminate odors from the dead carcasses. Winter was upon us, so I paid a man from our church to install plastic covers over most of the windows that had no storms.
We also bought and installed a large wood burning furnace in the basement that sent heat right up through a big floor grate between the living and dining rooms. With the stairway door open that furnace was capable of heating the entire house, although the upstairs bedrooms were always chilly in the winter. We transported enough cut logs from the other house to heat the place for the first year. An oil furnace, which we found in good operating condition, was turned off. We only used that at times when we were away from the house for any length of time in the winter, which was rare.
I decided the electric service was the first thing that needed to be repaired before we started doing any remodeling. The house only had a 60-amp service and there were obvious electrical problems throughout the house. Some lights flickered. Some didn’t work at all. And the three-way switch to the light over the staircase was incorrectly wired. Sometimes it failed to turn the light off and at other times it would not turn the light on. If the switches were turned a certain way, there was a short that blew a fuse in the basement.
We were doing this work right at a time when Michigan and Sanilac County were under great pressure from building contractor organizations to adopt standard building codes and create building, plumbing and electrical inspectors to oversee work being done by home owners. The new BOCA codes coming out were designed to make it so hard for homeowners to do their own work and meet the codebook rules that they would give up and hire contractors to do it for them. This, of course, quickly brought an end to the big self-home-improvement boom of that era, and forced the price of housing through the roof for everybody. I saw this coming so we rushed to get the wiring the plumbing work done on the Elk Creek Road house before we were stopped by the new restrictive codes.
We still had to get past an electrical inspection by Detroit Edison Company before we could get the service to the house upgraded from 60-amp to 200-amp. And without the installation of a 200-amp electric box which was connected to new Romax wiring throughout the house, that was not going to happen. Thus we went at the entire project backwards and in secret. I began by putting up a 200-amp box next to the old box, then jumping the main line so there were two service boxes, both connected to the same main. While I only had the 60-amp feed, I wired for much more, all of it leading into the new box. We broke up circuits and made room for many new ones to come later.
I began by running a line to that strange troublesome light over the staircase. We had to fish wire through the walls, and in places open up walls to accomplish this. In doing this we discovered spliced wires behind walls that were not taped or even put in closed electric boxes. We realized that it was a marvel the house had not burned to the ground before we bought it. I began to understand the need for building codes….at least the electrical codes. While I knew wiring and was teaching it to Aaron, it was obvious that a lot of home improvement junkies were doing things they should not have been tackling. When we rewired the stairway light, and connected it properly to the three-way switching system, it worked just fine.
We ran separate lighting to the top floor for the lights and the wall plugs. I couldn’t go up ladders and climb into the attic, but Aaron was willing and able. I showed him where to put the boxes and how to connect the wires, and he crawled around in the dark attic, with only the trouble light at the end of an extension cord to guide him, and got the job done.
Eventually we had the entire house rewired, with all of the new circuits running into our new box in the basement. I was confident that we had done a very good job. In fact I enjoyed laying out that wiring job and placing each line into that box. Gradually all of the old circuits to the 60-amp box were disconnected and removed, and we had all of the power jumping into our new box. That was when I called Detroit Edison Company and got them to switch to a larger service.
The plumbing work was a bear of a job that had to be done next because it also involved the possible cutting open of walls and floors, at least on the main part of the house. We had water and drain lines running to and from the kitchen and a single bathroom located right off from the kitchen. The drain emptied in a septic tank that was plugged. The overflow drain was leaking into a ditch that was running off into Elk Creek, which did not make me very happy.
Doris’ brother Wayne volunteered to plumb our house. I bought copper plumbing pipe, connectors and all of the other things needed for such a job and he went to work on it. While he worked I was making constant trips to town to buy other parts that we had overlooked. Some connections threaded backwards. Some had to be moved to larger or smaller sizes at connection joints. It was a maze of frustrations. There was a time when both Doris and I were driving back and forth to town, passing one another on the way. I would be on a return trip and she was off on yet another trip after another needed thing was discovered. At last the plumbing was completed. We turned on the water and discovered a few leaks. That meant shutting off the water, draining all of the pipes, and re-soldering those leaky connections. Copper plumbing work is not something for the faint of heart.
Finally everything was working and we turned our attention to the old septic system. I had a septic cleaning service come, find the old tank, pump it out, and treat it. The tank was pretty small and I looked into installing a larger tank with a drain field. I was told to leave that alone. Under new state laws, the soil around our house contained too much clay to allow for a proper septic drain field. The county could not approve it. If I applied, I would be required to have truckloads of dirt removed and replaced with a sandy loam. It was going to be a very expensive thing to get done. Because the house was already there, we had to get by with the septic system we had. To fix the problem I ran a plastic drain pipe underground to the drain and let the tank overflow into the creek. I couldn’t afford to do what was right.
Before we were through with that house we had a new roof installed, a new well drilled, new storm windows and screens installed, and I went through the house, remodeling, painting, papering and repairing every room. I did extensive plaster repair even in the walk-in closets. We installed a parlor wood burning stove in the living room and a beautiful old wood burning range in the kitchen. All of the chimney pipes feed into a single chimney flu which, I later learned, had no lining. It was a wonder we didn’t burn that place down. I bought chimney cleaning brushes and for a while advertised to do chimney cleaning in the area.
We found beautiful French doors that fit between the dining and living rooms and got them finished and hung. We put down carpet and bought new furniture. We installed new cupboards in the kitchen and Wayne helped us cut and fit the counter top. It called for a 45 degree angle cut and he successfully cut that piece with such precision there was no crack to be found between the two parts.
We finished that house and expected that it would be our last home . . . one that we expected to retire to. Little did we know that this was only going to be just one more stop on our long journey through this strange walk.
From James Donahue’s Journal
When we moved into the house on Elk Creek Road we moved into a real mess. I relied on Aaron to take on a lot of the projects that I would normally have been doing.
Among the first jobs was the replacement of the broken windows in some second-floor bedrooms and also the basement. There was an open cistern in the basement that was full of water from roof run-off. Animals that got in through the broken basement windows had fallen into the cistern and drowned. We hired a contractor to pump out both the cistern and nearby sump pump hole and then flush both of these with acid to kill any bacteria and eliminate odors from the dead carcasses. Winter was upon us, so I paid a man from our church to install plastic covers over most of the windows that had no storms.
We also bought and installed a large wood burning furnace in the basement that sent heat right up through a big floor grate between the living and dining rooms. With the stairway door open that furnace was capable of heating the entire house, although the upstairs bedrooms were always chilly in the winter. We transported enough cut logs from the other house to heat the place for the first year. An oil furnace, which we found in good operating condition, was turned off. We only used that at times when we were away from the house for any length of time in the winter, which was rare.
I decided the electric service was the first thing that needed to be repaired before we started doing any remodeling. The house only had a 60-amp service and there were obvious electrical problems throughout the house. Some lights flickered. Some didn’t work at all. And the three-way switch to the light over the staircase was incorrectly wired. Sometimes it failed to turn the light off and at other times it would not turn the light on. If the switches were turned a certain way, there was a short that blew a fuse in the basement.
We were doing this work right at a time when Michigan and Sanilac County were under great pressure from building contractor organizations to adopt standard building codes and create building, plumbing and electrical inspectors to oversee work being done by home owners. The new BOCA codes coming out were designed to make it so hard for homeowners to do their own work and meet the codebook rules that they would give up and hire contractors to do it for them. This, of course, quickly brought an end to the big self-home-improvement boom of that era, and forced the price of housing through the roof for everybody. I saw this coming so we rushed to get the wiring the plumbing work done on the Elk Creek Road house before we were stopped by the new restrictive codes.
We still had to get past an electrical inspection by Detroit Edison Company before we could get the service to the house upgraded from 60-amp to 200-amp. And without the installation of a 200-amp electric box which was connected to new Romax wiring throughout the house, that was not going to happen. Thus we went at the entire project backwards and in secret. I began by putting up a 200-amp box next to the old box, then jumping the main line so there were two service boxes, both connected to the same main. While I only had the 60-amp feed, I wired for much more, all of it leading into the new box. We broke up circuits and made room for many new ones to come later.
I began by running a line to that strange troublesome light over the staircase. We had to fish wire through the walls, and in places open up walls to accomplish this. In doing this we discovered spliced wires behind walls that were not taped or even put in closed electric boxes. We realized that it was a marvel the house had not burned to the ground before we bought it. I began to understand the need for building codes….at least the electrical codes. While I knew wiring and was teaching it to Aaron, it was obvious that a lot of home improvement junkies were doing things they should not have been tackling. When we rewired the stairway light, and connected it properly to the three-way switching system, it worked just fine.
We ran separate lighting to the top floor for the lights and the wall plugs. I couldn’t go up ladders and climb into the attic, but Aaron was willing and able. I showed him where to put the boxes and how to connect the wires, and he crawled around in the dark attic, with only the trouble light at the end of an extension cord to guide him, and got the job done.
Eventually we had the entire house rewired, with all of the new circuits running into our new box in the basement. I was confident that we had done a very good job. In fact I enjoyed laying out that wiring job and placing each line into that box. Gradually all of the old circuits to the 60-amp box were disconnected and removed, and we had all of the power jumping into our new box. That was when I called Detroit Edison Company and got them to switch to a larger service.
The plumbing work was a bear of a job that had to be done next because it also involved the possible cutting open of walls and floors, at least on the main part of the house. We had water and drain lines running to and from the kitchen and a single bathroom located right off from the kitchen. The drain emptied in a septic tank that was plugged. The overflow drain was leaking into a ditch that was running off into Elk Creek, which did not make me very happy.
Doris’ brother Wayne volunteered to plumb our house. I bought copper plumbing pipe, connectors and all of the other things needed for such a job and he went to work on it. While he worked I was making constant trips to town to buy other parts that we had overlooked. Some connections threaded backwards. Some had to be moved to larger or smaller sizes at connection joints. It was a maze of frustrations. There was a time when both Doris and I were driving back and forth to town, passing one another on the way. I would be on a return trip and she was off on yet another trip after another needed thing was discovered. At last the plumbing was completed. We turned on the water and discovered a few leaks. That meant shutting off the water, draining all of the pipes, and re-soldering those leaky connections. Copper plumbing work is not something for the faint of heart.
Finally everything was working and we turned our attention to the old septic system. I had a septic cleaning service come, find the old tank, pump it out, and treat it. The tank was pretty small and I looked into installing a larger tank with a drain field. I was told to leave that alone. Under new state laws, the soil around our house contained too much clay to allow for a proper septic drain field. The county could not approve it. If I applied, I would be required to have truckloads of dirt removed and replaced with a sandy loam. It was going to be a very expensive thing to get done. Because the house was already there, we had to get by with the septic system we had. To fix the problem I ran a plastic drain pipe underground to the drain and let the tank overflow into the creek. I couldn’t afford to do what was right.
Before we were through with that house we had a new roof installed, a new well drilled, new storm windows and screens installed, and I went through the house, remodeling, painting, papering and repairing every room. I did extensive plaster repair even in the walk-in closets. We installed a parlor wood burning stove in the living room and a beautiful old wood burning range in the kitchen. All of the chimney pipes feed into a single chimney flu which, I later learned, had no lining. It was a wonder we didn’t burn that place down. I bought chimney cleaning brushes and for a while advertised to do chimney cleaning in the area.
We found beautiful French doors that fit between the dining and living rooms and got them finished and hung. We put down carpet and bought new furniture. We installed new cupboards in the kitchen and Wayne helped us cut and fit the counter top. It called for a 45 degree angle cut and he successfully cut that piece with such precision there was no crack to be found between the two parts.
We finished that house and expected that it would be our last home . . . one that we expected to retire to. Little did we know that this was only going to be just one more stop on our long journey through this strange walk.