While the last blog focused on the work that was done on the exterior of the Award winning project at 533 Sherwood Dr, in Webster Groves, I will now cover some of the extensive interior work in this issue. 

            When the owners first looked at this house, it had already been neglected for some time.  It was immediately obvious that the house was going to need a lot of work if the house was going to be livable. 

    The most alarming aspect of the house was the condition of the infrastructure of the house.  It was evident that some electrical upgrades had been attempted, but upon closer inspection, the entire house was operating on less than 10 circuits.  The core of the electrical system was an Edison Type T fuse panel handling the 60AMP service.  In far worse shape was the plumbing.  There was obvious leaks coming from all of the second floor bathrooms, the iron stacks in the basement were all suffering from advances stages of decay.  The water service was coming from a ¾ inch lead line.   The real peach was the environmental systems.  It was obvious that there was not central air conditioning, because nearly every window had an air conditioner sticking out of it.  Most were permanently attached.  However the heating system was a real gem.  This huge house was heated with radiators in each room.  However, the core of the heating system was a 3000 pound iron boiler that had been retrofitted from coal fuel to natural gas. This behemoth was built in 1919, and the house was probably built around it.

            Much of this was not a surprise, since this stuff is seen in most houses that were built in 1924.  The troublesome fact was that nothing had been done to make any significant repairs throughout the life of the house.  The ceiling in the living room revealed the full extent of the neglect when it collapsed only days after closing the sale.  The collapse was due to the leaking pipes from the bathrooms on the second floor.  Over time, the water softened the wood joists to the point that they reached their point of failure.  Several joists had split or broken under the weight of the iron fixtures and tons of mud-set and tile.  (tons is not an exaggeration.  An average bathroom using the traditional 4” mud-set and tile floor will contain about a ton and a half of materials when dry.  If the mud-set soaks up water, that figure can quickly multiply.)  In our case, an estimated 3 to 6 tons of dead weight was bearing down on over-spanned, rotting, and broken joists.  The only result is for the second floor to make a surprise visit to the first floor.  Luckily, only the ceiling dropped from the joists, but the extent of the damage was clear. 

So here we are.  Day one and we have an uninhabitable house, with nearly 50 citations from the city, and the only thing we have going for us is…nothing.  In all honesty, this house should be condemned and destroyed.  But the homeowners had taken note of the rarity of the Tuscan style of architecture, and wanted to make an effort at restoration, truly, a diamond in the rough.

After a demolition phase that took almost two months, every single wall and horizontal surface had been stripped or removed.  Many of the failed joists had been removed and we were prepared to start replacing the joists.  This gets tricky as roof loads had to be transferred from old joists to new, all without allowing a complete structural failure.  As you can see from the above pictures, the entire house was skeletonized during this repair process.  These are pictures taken from the basement looking up at the windows on the second story.  We reused what joists we could, which ended up being about 10 or 15, the remaining joists (about 70) were replaced and resheeted with ¾ inch plywood.  The subfloor was fastened with construction adhesive and screws, thus creating a unified floor structure throughout the whole level.  Once the subfloors were laid, and the bearing walls established, the partition walls were next.  The overall floor plan followed very closely to the original plan.  The only deviations were the number of bathrooms on the second floor.  Each bedroom was given a closet, and the steep narrow staircase to the attic was framed to conventional dimensions. 

This is just the first look at the undertaking of restoring the interior of this home.  The next issue will finish out this project.

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