Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

We realized today that wonderful desk we found will not fit down the very narrow hallway to the office. The legs are one piece from top to base, and although Sean mentioned cutting them to just under the cabinet area then putting them back together, I didn't like that idea.

However, after I did some quick measurements, we can fit it through the window if we take the sashes out. We'll be doing that in a bit after we clear out the needed space to maneuver in the office.
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awomanwithahammer
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by awomanwithahammer »

Oh, how aggravating!

The next owners of Beebe will be cursing the POs--"how in the WORLD did they get this thing in here?" :-o :icon-lol:
Bonnie

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

awomanwithahammer wrote:Oh, how aggravating!

The next owners of Beebe will be cursing the POs--"how in the WORLD did they get this thing in here?" :-o :icon-lol:
Yeah, we thought about that too and laughed. They might think it was put together in this room. I might have to make a note of how we got it in there in my "house book" I've been working on when I can spare the time.

Because of the jut out for the cellar stairs enclosure leading to the yard, you can also only get it in one way, sideways, using the angle to get the first set of legs in before moving it in further to get the other set inside. (The desk has four legs on each side of the cabinetry, for a total of eight.)

I told Sean we wouldn't be able to do it with the legs closer to the jut because it wasn't enough room (without even measuring), but he insisted we try...and I was right! So we had to set it back down in the bed outside the window before turning it and then doing it with the legs facing the other way.

We barely got the steel case down the hallway, but for that one we could take the footers off on either side of the cabinetry.

After we got it in, because life is the way it is, I wound up with the wood, and now Sean has the steel for the time being. He kept swearing that the steel was my birthday gift and this was in no way him trying to Homer birthday it. :P I know he wasn't, it just made more sense that way because I like sitting on the right side of the back facing window as I'm on the computer during the day more, and that way I can look at our lovely yard. Since the steel desk was 10" wider than the wood, we decided it made more sense for me to have that one given the window's position so my monitor would no longer block the window at all. If I took the left hand side, the view would mostly be of our neighbor's above ground pool which is...eh. This desk also blocks the window itself less than the steel did as well.

I promised him that sometime in the next 10-15 years, I'll make him a wood desk similar to this one, and we'll move the steel one to the shop. He thought that was a fine idea. (And I knew he really wanted a corner desk anyhoo which is what I'll make him then.)

This set up also worked out well because we could put the step side table Kira's basket is currently on all the way to the window, so she can sleep in the sun now and look out the window any time she wants without having to climb on top of my desk (which she did do so often, we had a blanket on the corner for a while :lol: ). Before, it didn't fit between the desks we had.

Now I just need to find something to rub on a few drawer sides so they slide better.
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by phil »

depending how old the desk is and how its put together you might be able to break the glue joints with a sharp rap with a hammer. You might split the wood somewhere.. there is some risk and if it is hide glue the glue itself may break easier, then you need some clamps and glue to put it back together.. or as you say take the window out.. you could study how it's put together and use a block of wood so you aren't hammering on the piece itself but often a well planned whack will break it in such a way that the parts still fit and if you can re-clamp it and keep exact position of any parts that you broke no one would notice it's been repaired. I wouldn't cut the legs off. obviously not somethign you are going to do to your favorite high end piece. Hey does the to come off? maybe it's held by screws and could it be removed for clearance? id flip it over on the floor and study how it's put together. maybe there is some glue and dowels holding the top on and you could break that joint.
high humidity might help, it could fog the finish but if you wrapped it in wet towels and plastic it might soften the glue too.
another way to break glue is to do it when its frozen, then the glue might be weaker but you'd need to wait for a cold snap. Ive heard of people "harvesting" veneer from old pieces by giving it a whack when it's frozen and dislodging the veneer to be re-used in other pieces. If it's a veneer piece then you might not want to do much with moisture or you might break the bond of the veneer.

If it's modern glue it might be tougher to break , but if you break the wood and glue it back together with a good fit then its often just as strong as when you started, but the fit of the pieces and good clamping are important. glue won't fill the gaps if parts don't align quite right but normally if you break something and glue it immediately you can get away with a lot because the break line will fit exactly right. check the fit before you put glue on it sometimes you might have a few splinters preventing good contact and you can remove a few splinters if they are in the way, to get a better fit
also maybe just removing one or two legs is all you need, dont' remove all 4 if you can get clearance by only doing one.

try wax on the drawer slides, got a candle? use that if it is a traditional drawer with wood guides. dont melt the wax just rub some on.

or if you are planning to work on the windows maybe that could be a scheduled event involving the move and some window restoration. of course that's less damaging if you like the desk. I'm visualizing it as an old oak teachers desk , that could be hide glue..

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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

phil wrote:Hey does the to come off? maybe it's held by screws and could it be removed for clearance? {snips}try wax on the drawer slides, got a candle? use that if it is a traditional drawer with wood guides. dont melt the wax just rub some on.
We did bring it through the window. I'm sitting at it as I type this.

The top does come off, which I found interesting. It has four screws with a very thin flat bracket that were obviously put in place just for that. I'm actually wondering now if it was custom made for the family we bought it from, as Sean and I just talked about when we took it out of there, and we had to turn it sideways to get it through the doors. (Going through a side porch, so interior plus exterior.) I didn't think to check at the time if we could have removed the top. If we had, I'm fairly confident it would have fit as it was just too big when we first tried the usual way before turning it.

The trouble with that it still wouldn't have been enough if we took the top off. The short hallway past the door down to the cellar is only 28 1/2" wide, and that's if we removed the doorknob to the cellar door. Even if we also removed the trim and moulding for more room, that'd give us a bit more, but still not enough. I'm pretty sure code wise, you'd never get away with a hallway this narrow nowadays.

In all honesty, I've been surprised by about how much furniture has not fit here because it's a 1935 home. In my head, I was thinking it's not like a Colonial or a servants' quarters where "comfort" might not have been a priority. First we had the stairs issue, now this. Well, we lucked out with the steel desk in that the footer wasn't rusted, so the screws came out fairly easily. The footers are typical MCM airline style tall, so that left us with just enough height, erm, width since we turned that on its side, to squeeze it down the hallway. We did scrape a bit because I didn't think to take the doorknob off, but the small scrape is an easy fix when I finally resurface the plaster anyhoo. I only recall one screw giving us a bit of trouble, because it wasn't in quite straight.

Speaking of resurfacing the plaster, I recently put a desk lamp (finally) on my desk, and now a glaringly bad patch is all I can see in front of me when the light is on. :doh:

Both times we had navigation issues, it made me wonder about the furnishings they had before. Though in all fairness, the downstairs bedroom we use for our office wouldn't have the furnishings we have because I believe it was always a bedroom. It has reminded me (though you'd think I'd never forget after the chifforobe incident) that if we are to move any further furniture down this hallway, we need to measure it beforehand, depending on what it is. :lol:

So far as I've seen, no modern repairs other than some later built balsa separator panels for the notched areas in the drawers. There are also a few of the original separators too.

This piece is all solid wood, except for the two side drawer cabinets' side panels and drawer bottoms which have a nice quality sheet good slotted into the supports. The top does seem to be two wide boards with a veneer, which was done amazingly well because if there wasn't a small chip on the one top edge, I would have sworn it was two seamlessly jointed boards for the top. You can't feel the seam at all along the edge facing you when you sit at it. The edges are softly rounded, which may have helped that, rather than harder edges which might catch easier in time. The desk was obviously crafted by one or more folks who take pride in their work. Even the drawer slides have an interesting mild curve to them which seems to ease their movement. On another quality point, all the drawer pulls are wood and just feel like a perfect fit when I put my fingers in to pull out a drawer. They gave the perfect depth to brace your top knuckles before you pull sort of perfect fit. I don't know if that was intentional design or not, but it works so well, and it took me a full day to realize it.

The one oddity we haven't figured out yet is that although there is a lock (no key yet, though) for the center drawer, it doesn't seem connected to the locking rods which prevent the drawers from moving. So the lock is just for that center drawer. At some point, I'll be taking a closer look at that mechanism because I did have a devil with it when I was trying to remove the drawers when it was turned sideways. I found the "button", but Sean somehow got it to work when I couldn't.

There are a lot of small triangular wood brace blocks. One of them jiggled loose during the move, and whenever I get around to refreshing the finish, I'll figure out where that came from. So far, I can't tell.

Yeah, I know we have candles somewhere around here. Just haven't found the box yet. We hit the six month mark of closing a few days ago, and some days I am so annoyed at how many boxes we still haven't unpacked. That's usually a day one at least gets opened to see how mixed up the contents are. :D
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Nicholas »

This moving stuff in and out of old houses reminds me of what we went through. We were barely able to get a couch and love seat in through the front door of this house, which had a door that needed to be replaced. So we did, after the sofa etc was in the house.

Then, we decided to trade the too big refridge with our daughter's smaller one. The one that came with the appliance package took up too much of the small kitchen.

So, the uhaul with the ramp is backed up to the front door, and we roll the fridge....and it won't go through the front door, by about 1/2 inch total. (1/4 each side)

"Did they bring the fridge in through the front door"? Yes says Honeybee. So what happened that..........oh...we changed the front door including door jamb etc.

Allright, lets try the back door, which was not replaced. This time I measure, and it won't fit there either. Well I wasn't about to mess with the new front door, so I removed the back door and carefully removed the trim and one door jamb, and we wrestled this monster through there and out side door of screened porch. Then I carefully put everything back together, good as new, in fact better than before.

I guess when the time comes the sofa and love seat aren't leaving this house in one piece.... :think:
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

Nicholas wrote:This moving stuff in and out of old houses reminds me of what we went through. {snip}
Just this week we found four low wood casters that Sean couldn't recall where they came from until I reminded him that they were from the couch left behind by the former tenants at the upstairs apartment I used to manage. The only way we could get it downstairs was by removing the railing and those casters. Since the tenants didn't want the couch anymore, I kept the casters for a future undefined project. :lol:

Your ears might have been ringing yesterday, as we were talking about Irma, and my Floridian born spouse pointed out that so far, it looks like you should be in the clear. The owner of the house I used to manage might not be, though. He's in Sebastian.

The last time we were in Florida for a convention in Tampa, there was a hurricane (Charley maybe?). They actually made up T-shirts last minute that said "Hurri-con" for the event. Our hotel lost power, and I just remembered they gave everyone glow sticks.

Sean's flight back was canceled, and the soonest they could get him out was Orlando the next day. So he stayed with family nearby and did shotgun on the porch duty while his uncle slept because looting was typical enough to warrant it in that area during storms bad enough that most folks would leave. Sean told me he only had to fire a warning shot once when someone got too close and didn't stop after a verbal warning. Then they moved off quickly. They must have been new to that area. His uncle (now passed) was a locally known notorious prepper, and usually during hurricanes his son would come over so they could do porch shifts. They had a bomb shelter under that house that was bigger than the actual house. Then Sean got a ride to Orlando the next day and slept all the way back to LA (Cali), where we were living then.
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by SweetCottage »

In my 1920s house the staircase has a very tight switchback landing. You can just barely get a full size mattress/box spring up the stairs. I had a queen mattress that I didn't want to give up. Luckily this house has a small, second floor porch and french door into one of the bedrooms. The railing is only calf high! (There are other similar porches in the neighborhood that are larger and have zero railing!). So my dad and I rigged up a rope sling and two extension ladders and we each hoisted one end of the mattress up the ladders until we could get it onto the edge of the porch. Then we repeated for the box spring. I'll have to throw them back over the edge of the porch if I ever leave this house.
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Nicholas
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Nicholas »

Lily left the valley wrote:
Nicholas wrote:
Your ears might have been ringing yesterday, as we were talking about Irma, and my Floridian born spouse pointed out that so far, it looks like you should be in the clear. The owner of the house I used to manage might not be, though. He's in Sebastian.

The last time we were in Florida for a convention in Tampa, there was a hurricane (Charley maybe?). They actually made up T-shirts last minute that said "Hurri-con" for the event. Our hotel lost power, and I just remembered they gave everyone glow sticks.

Sean's flight back was canceled, and the soonest they could get him out was Orlando the next day. So he stayed with family nearby and did shotgun on the porch duty while his uncle slept because looting was typical enough to warrant it in that area during storms bad enough that most folks would leave. Sean told me he only had to fire a warning shot once when someone got too close and didn't stop after a verbal warning. Then they moved off quickly. They must have been new to that area. His uncle (now passed) was a locally known notorious prepper, and usually during hurricanes his son would come over so they could do porch shifts. They had a bomb shelter under that house that was bigger than the actual house. Then Sean got a ride to Orlando the next day and slept all the way back to LA (Cali), where we were living then.


Well I am facing the idea that I may actually lose this house. I will probably lose the barn and back porch at least, if what they are predicting holds true. All it will take is a major breach of some sort, and I could be facing a condemning instead of a rebuilding.

People say not to worry, that it has been through many storms, including Charlie, but this one is a bit nastier and it looks like the eye will pass close to if not over this area. I have the precut and predrilled plywood ready to go up.

Expecting the worse, hoping for anything better.
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by awomanwithahammer »

Nicholas, I didn't realize you were in Florida. Are you evacuating? Be safe. Good thoughts going out that your house will be OK, and that you will be able to come back to it.
Bonnie

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