Closed on Monday, had the plumbing repaired later that afternoon. Sounds crazy right? It is. Let me explain.
I’m 20 years old, and I just bought an 1889 mini mansion in Downtown Middletown, Ohio. The house has been standing for over 120 years, and it still has a long life ahead of it. It’s been exchanged through many families over the years and each putting their own twist on the house, both for the good and for the worse.
Initially the house did not pass appraisal, due to there being several major plumbing leaks in both the ceiling and in the crawl spaces. This was a pretty easy fix once we were able to get our hands in the ceiling. I left closing on Monday, came straight to the house and started cutting it apart.
Once we got into the ceiling we found a copper elbow had bursted and had been seperated for some time. We first attempted to sweat the pipe and resolder, but didn’t have much luck with it sticking. Later we found out that we were using a lead free based solder, and in order for resweating to work, you need to use solder with lead to get a good hold.
After getting this elbow patched back up, we headed into the crawl spaces to repair two more minor leaks. Unfortunately I didn’t get to snap any pictures while we were in there, I quickly found out why they call it a crawlspace, I was pretty laying down doing my repairs.
With these repairs done we are now able to have the water on fully without any major leaks. We have one small drip coming from our main line into the house. For some reason the plumbers used a paste to hold the pipes together vs. thread tape. We will need to reattach these two pipes in order to have a fully on system.
Overall the house is in pretty good shape. All of the trim has been painted over with many coats of white paint, so without looking very closely the house has a very dull look to it. Underneath all of this paint however, I found a beautiful dark red cherry wood trim, which goes all throughout the entire house.
The wood is such a deep red, it almost doesn’t even need any sort of stain. Unfortunately there are some minor blemishes and spots where I will need to do a light 100-200 grit sanding in order to fully clean the wood. I’ll probably go over the entire trim with a light coat of cherry wood finish and then a poly once I’m finished.
My dad lent me his SpeedHeater 1100s which has been heaven sent for stripping this paint off the trim. It’s a bit different than a traditional heat gun. This tool is rectangle in shape and allows for me to cover a lot of surface area per heat application. What’s unique about the SpeedHeater is that it only gets to a certain temperature and pretty much strips the paint like butter in one smooth chunk each time.
Over the last few days, I’ve been able to strip a good majority of the windows in the front room. After I get most of the bigger chunks stripped, I can then get into the finer details with an acid/citrus solution and a heat gun.
I look forward to continuing to post progress as I can. Hopefully this will inspire some young people to tackle these homes and start rebuilding and maintaining this old architecture.