So that's why my basement is damp!

When first I bought my house, something I thought I'd do right away (right after replacing the kitchen counter) was go to the archives and look up my house's history.  I didn't know exactly what I could learn there, but I was hoping at least to find out when it was built and who first owned it.   The kitchen counter took fourteen years to get to, but I'm proud to say it only took eleven years for the trip to the Archives to happen.  

Back in 2011 when I got to the Archives at Davenport and Spadina, I was surprised the first thing I had to do was sign up for a membership card, and even more surprised when I had to put everything I'd brought with me into a locker.  All I was allowed to bring into the room was a pencil and paper - no phone, no camera, no pen to take notes.   I guess those are precautions the archivists take so nothing in their care gets damaged or taken.

City of Toronto Archives "Stagnant Pond" 1913

Goad Fire Atlas 1903 - Plate 24

Goad Fire Atlas 1913 - Plate 24

Goad Fire Map 1924 - plate 24

Once those formalities were taken care of the archivist was very friendly and helpful.  She suggested we look for photos first.  Aside from being beautiful and old and belonging to me, my house is pretty unremarkable so it seemed unlikely someone would have saved a picture of it at the archives.  "You never know," she said, so we looked up my neighbourhood as I expected we didn't find my house, but we did find this picture taken by a crew of City surveyors in 1913.  "Stagnant pond" it's labelled, and it's of a place near my house where there are no traces of a pond anymore.  

"Wow, that explains why there's so much moisture in my basement!" I said.  "The cement floor is always damp, like there's water seeping up from underneath."  I decided I'd been wise never to finish my basement.  

Next the archivist showed me how to look at the old Fire Plans for the city, which are available online.  She said they were made to show where buildings were that might burn down, and whether they were made of wood (shown in yellow) or brick (shown in orange or red).  The 1903 Fire Plan shows only a smattering of buildings in my area, and the pond looks like it was a marshy gully that extended southeast to join up with the old Garrison Creek, now also underground.
 

After that there must have been an explosion of construction, because the 1913 Fire map shows practically the whole neighbourhood built up, including my house.  The pond/gulley is still there, but I assume the photo the surveyors took was to help plan how to bury it in culverts, because by the time the next Fire Map was done in 1924, all traces of the pond/gully are gone. There are buildings and roads on top of most of it.

So, from the Fire Maps I knew the construction of my house happened somewhere between 1903 and 1913.  To narrow it down further was much more painstaking.  I had to look through successive annual Assessment Rolls and City Directories on microfilm. Eventually I determined that the first year someone lived in my house was 1907.  The Directory told me his name and profession, and even his religion!  

There's still more I can learn, the archivist told me.  If go back through the files for each street for each year, I might be able to find the building permit, which would tell me how much it cost to build and who the architect was.  I still plan to do that.  Hopefully it won't take another eleven years. 

My kitchen tiles made me realize I'm conservative

When I first viewed the run-down old house I ended up buying fourteen years ago, I fell in love right away with the the old-fashioned tile-work in the kitchen. It amazed me to think those tiles had survived so many years and were still (mostly) intact. I imagined the owners back in the 1930s planning their renovation and how they would have thought the white tiles and black trim were the height of modernity. The house was built in 1907, so presumably the original kitchen would have been quite a bit more rustic.

Some friends in my kitchen the day I took possession.

On the night I took possession a few friends came with me to toast my new home, and of course they liked the tiles too. But they also had plenty of ideas for kitchen improvements: one suggested a dishwasher, another new cabinets, and they all agreed I should tear down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room (on the right side of the photo to the left), and put in an island. They thought the resulting open concept space would be amazing.

I will admit to being tempted, but in the end I resisted all of their suggestions because following any of them would have required getting rid of the tiles. 

I'd never owned a house before, and I was surprised to discover my feelings about it were fundamentally conservative. Politically and socially I'm not conservative at all. I believe in changing things for the better, sometimes in fundamental ways (solar power instead of coal; bike lanes instead of road widenings, etc). But when it came to my house, I didn't want major overhauls. I just wanted to restore it to its former glory. And in the kitchen that meant restoring the tiles.

I loved the tiles but some were missing and left ugly gaps.

Keeping the tiles presented a number of challenges though, as I was soon to discover. Several were missing, leaving unsightly gaps, and replacing them was not a simple task. It turns out 4" x 4" is no longer a standard tile size. 

Nowadays tiles are all either 6" x 6" squares or 3" x 6" subway tiles. It also turns out that there's no such thing as "white" when it comes to ceramics, and the ivory tone in mine proved quite hard to match. 

Replacement tiles were hard to match.

I went to Home Depot and New Canadians Lumber and nothing was even close. Then one day I was riding my bike along Dundas and noticed the ML Tool Rentals and Tile Center. There I found some 6" tiles that seemed like they might be good enough, and they also rented me a tile cutter so I could cut them down to size.

My parents happened to be visiting from Ottawa for a few days so my Dad helped me install them. He mixed up the grout for me and after we got the new tiles in place he kept going, covering up the old discoloured grout between the neighbouring tiles with bright new white grout. The result looked much cleaner, he said, and it was true. I told him I'd regrout the rest of the tiles later that week, after he'd gone, but I didn't get around to it.

My dad helped me with the repair, look closely and you can see the whites don't match.   

I suspect to some degree I inherited my affinity for preservation and restoration from my dad. He came of age in the depression and always preferred to fix things rather than throw them away. He learned how to re-bind books for example, and took great care to fix my mom's well worn Fannie Farmer cookbook, taping the cover back on whenever it was in danger of coming off.

Over the years I replaced the faucet, counter, sink, and missing tile.

Over the years I've undertaken several more tile repairs. Once for the narrow tile under the faucet that was missing, another time a tile got damaged during plumbing repairs, and then some tiles popped out during a window repair. Each time when I had the grout mixed I took the opportunity to cover more of the old unsightly dark grout, and then I would call my dad and report proudly about my progress. I've made other kitchen improvements too, replacing the faucet, and then the  stove, and finally building a mini-island out of a a friend's discarded birch countertop.

Spontaneous crack from shifting house?

By the end of last year, I thought I'd done all the tile repairs I'd ever need to do, but then over the winter the house must have shifted because a tile just spontaneously split down the middle and popped out. 

My dad was sick at the time with prostate cancer, so I didn't have time to fix it. I was spending all my spare time going to Ottawa and visiting him.

In September I finally had the sink and countertop replaced, another task that's been on my to-do list for years. And then last week I fixed the cracked tile. Once again after I got the replacement tile stuck in place I did a whole bunch more regrouting. I thought of my dad while I did it. He died in July, so I can't call and report to him on my progress anymore.

The kitchen I've ended up with definitely couldn't be considered "modern," like it would have been back in the 1930s.  But it's my kitchen and I love it.  I hope my Dad can see it from where ever he is.  I think he'd like it too.

It's done! My new sink and counter are in...

It's done! My beautiful new sink and counter are in. Well almost done. As with all such projects there's one lingering detail - the back trim. I hadn't ordered it ahead of time and it turns out retro-style aluminum cove trim isn't widely a available. On Monday I've got to order it from a supplier in Minnesota.

AFTER

DURING

BEFORE

Bidding goodbye to my Frankenstein countertop

When I bought my house fourteen years ago, I thought replacing the counter would be one of the first things I did.  The laminate had rotted away in places to reveal black, soggy,  plywood underneath.  To keep it from peeling up the last occupants had nailed it down, and the rusting, randomly organized nail heads lent a Frankenstein aura to the thing.

The sink was also intolerable, or so I thought.  The enamel was largely worn away and what was left got stained very easily.  More importantly, there was no way to plug the drain, so it couldn't hold water to wash the dishes.

It's amazing what you can get used to though.  As a temporary measure I covered the plywood gaps with white vinyl shelf paper, painted the rusty nail heads white, and bought a plastic dish tub to hold water in.  Fourteen years later those temporary measures are still in place.  If I squint, everything looks fine.  

But soon, I won't need to squint anymore.  I have a brand new sheet of butter yellow laminate waiting to be installed, as well as a stainless steel American Standard sink.  The handyman is coming on Tuesday.   Stay tuned for the after shots!