1925 - J William Beckman House - IN

[Gothichome]

AFox, I think you have a pretty good handle on what needs to be done to bring this room back to it original look and feel. Look forward to the progress pics.

[phil]

" The bigger challenge will be dealing with the damage caused by the screws that were driven into the corners and blew out small craters in the brick. I’m thinking maybe an epoxy faux textured and painted to match the brick might be one solution. "

you might try to pulverize some brick then mix it with epoxy. as long as there is enough epoxy to carry the brick dust it should work. It might not be as dull looking as the rest of the brick but you could experiment. I often mix it with wood dust to make a fake wood product. Id just try a batch and see what happens.

I guess something similar to sandblasting or high pressure water jet blasting might remove paint from brick but I'm not sure how to contain the evil sharp dust indoors. maybe with a shroud with a sealing pad around it , or something? a lexan box perhaps?

stripping all that wood is a daunting task but maybe youd find there is shellac underneath the paint , if so Id try stripping it . If it comes off easy then it might not be so bad but depends what sort of bond exists between the wood and first layer of paint. Faux painting is an option I suppose. or paint that is similar to wood in color might look closer to the original with less labor.

If you did have to repaint brick then maybe the paint could be really flat, like a milk paint or similar, rather than a shiny modern oil or latex? Perhaps if you got the brick mostly clean you could do spot touch ups where the paint was embedded, Just the white specks.
my brother has been trying to make his own paint, I think he is using lie and making a sort of masonry paint. I dont think it's shiny at all. he found some old recipe and wanted to paint his new porch with the stuff. it might harden up a bit like plaster does and if that's the case maybe that could also fill missing brick chunks? you can put plaster on an inch thick and it still hardens up because of the chemical reaction . most paint or drywall compound uses off-gassing of solvents or evaporation of water to dry but things like plaster or epoxy harden by a chemical reaction so they dont need air to harden, therefore may be applied thick.

[Gothichome]

AFox, your leaking roof issue caused me to review your into thread, how did you make out with stripping those glazed bricks around the fireplace?

[A.Fox]

Gothichome, Late reply, but the fireplace and sunroom project stalled out last year. I got as far as scrapping all of the mastic off the fireplace brick, or at least enough that I feel like the rest of the residue should come off with the paint stripping. I think we will try to pick this up again next year.

Meanwhile we are finally getting our window project moving with all of the second floor windows and 3 of the worst first floor windows this year (I’ll share photos once there is more). Basement windows were cleaned up last year by us with the help of a handyman, but for the second floor we decided to hire out. I think I will tackle more intensive detail projects like replacing the glazing compound on the leaded door and sidelights myself.

And the new unexpected project: our air conditioners have “gone out”, which is more complicated than any usual air conditioning project. Our house may have possibly been built with air conditioning of some sort in 1925. Some components such as the well and tank were most definitely built into the house with its original construction. The grandson of the original owner believes his parents installed the current system, but the ductwork is well integrated enough into the design and framing of the house that it feels like it may have been there from the beginning. The structural system even offsets at the basement to allow the ducts to access the primary interior walls flanking the foyer.

The system that has existed since at least 1960s is a two zone water cooled chiller. Water is pumped from a well located in the basement slab into a pressurized cast iron tank. From there it is fed to two chillers which use the ground water as a booster along with traditional refrigerant to cool air which from there is distributed to the house. Pretty much all of the components date to either the 1960s installation or the original construction. It is all very cool considering that this unusual setup was still working 60 years later, but we knew that we eventually may have to look at retrofitting the system. Even though the water made them more efficient, they are still expensive to run, and they were challenged at cooling the house to any temperature lower than 76. Both units also leaked refrigerant, which with R22 Is getting more expensive every year. It’s also a loud system both at the blowers and the valve at the tank which can be heard clicking through half the house.

Even so of course this was not the time that we would have chosen for it to go out (is it ever). It seems the well pump or some component related to it has failed and we can’t find anyone willing to work on a steel well that old, and parts appear to be near impossible to find. Even if they are the rough estimates that we are receiving are half the cost of a new system. Our thought is to abandon the current system mostly in place and drop a new standard air handling unit with outdoor compressor between the two chillers. I like that it preserves some elements of the innovative family who built the house even if it’s a little sad that the components no longer work.

[Gothichome]

Delays in one project and moving forward in others, that is he way with old homes. Your vintage A/C unit gave out after only 60 years, humph, a pretty shoddy system. I wonder if there is warranty? I highly you could get a third of that out of your new system. I have never heard of a water type system, does the refrigerant cool the water and pump it into a radiator of some sort and a fan blows air over the rad?

[mjt]

Pretty cool (pun intended) that they were using geothermal for air conditioning 60 years ago. Are there any geothermal specialists in your area? We'd looked at it as a possibility for Farrington, but the break-even point wasn't workable for us.