House Hunters - Page 4

>> I broke a tile trying to lever a
>> hearthstone up - using a tracklayers bar I found buried in the back
>> yard. Where I also found a motor bike buried. When the railway
>> workshops closed, anything not screwed down disappeared apparently.
>
> Buried, huh. I guess it's one way to get stuff out of sight when one

> longer wahts it. Sort of like buried treasure for later inhabitants ;)
>
> It makes sense in a way that people would take whatever trhey could

> onc somethign is abandoned. In a way, it's sad, becasue it's hard to
> piece together the history afterwards, but one can't say it isn't
> *practical*.

>
>>
>>> THe boiler ash part also is interesting. THe building that was
>>> described sounded like an interesting thing overall.
>>
>> The place was thought to be a bit rough. Paid 3,500 sterling for the
>> house in 1978. Sold up in '86 for about 2.5 times what we paid for it.
>> The terraces are probably heritage listed by now and worth a bomb ...
>>
>> There had been a Roman fort just up the slope above the tavern, and
>> Llewelyn, last Prince of Wales, was buried just up the road a bit.
>> (Well his body was apparently. His head was sent to London.)
>>
>
> THat's the thing that amazes be about Europe and Asia, the thousands of
> years of history that can turn up almost (sometimes?) literally in
> one's back yard.

> The Americas were settled so mocu more recently, and worse, much of
> what there was of the first cultures was obliterated - a lot of the
> things they made and used, of course, were also ephemeral.

>
> Gone a bit OT but never mind ...
>
> [snip]
>
>>> I broke a tile trying to lever a
>>> hearthstone up - using a tracklayers bar I found buried in the back
>>> yard. Where I also found a motor bike buried. When the railway
>>> workshops closed, anything not screwed down disappeared apparently.
>>
>> Buried, huh. I guess it's one way to get stuff out of sight when one
> no
>> longer wahts it. Sort of like buried treasure for later inhabitants
>> ;)
>>
>> It makes sense in a way that people would take whatever trhey could
> use,
>> onc somethign is abandoned. In a way, it's sad, becasue it's hard to
>> piece together the history afterwards, but one can't say it isn't
>> *practical*.
>
> In a way - but in WW2 the local Home Guard were given a box of hand
> grenades which didn't get handed back at the end of the war.
>
> Found the hard way by a farmer's plough. He survived but the plough
> was scattered everywhere ...

>
> Another questionable practice - numerous drums of railway-issue
> bitumen squirelled away in the attics of the houses. Not too bad maybe
> - unless there was a fire. The fire-separating walls in the roofspaces
> had all been knocked through to install electric cable, hadn't been
> bricked up again, so if one house had gone up the rest would have been
> history.

"collectors" <ahem!!>
>>
>>>
>>>> THe boiler ash part also is interesting. THe building that was
>>>> described sounded like an interesting thing overall.
>>>
>>> The place was thought to be a bit rough. Paid 3,500 sterling for the
>>> house in 1978. Sold up in '86 for about 2.5 times what we paid for
>>> it. The terraces are probably heritage listed by now and worth a
>>> bomb ...
>>>
>>> There had been a Roman fort just up the slope above the tavern, and
>>> Llewelyn, last Prince of Wales, was buried just up the road a bit.
>>> (Well his body was apparently. His head was sent to London.)
>>>
>>
>> THat's the thing that amazes be about Europe and Asia, the thousands
>> of years of history that can turn up almost (sometimes?) literally in
>> one's back yard.
>
> I sort of miss it in way, but it was often a problem - every time a
> job involved digging a hole.there was always a chance of finding
> something, then everything being put on hold until the archeologists
> finished checking it out. Human remains anywhere meant an inspection
> by the Coroner. I was on a job once where we found the skeletons of 5
> dead miners in a drift mine shaft. We knew they'd been there a while
> as there were cages with canary bones in them. So whatever it was, gas
> or a tunnel collapse, had happened before the miner's safety lamp was
> invented, about 1832. Also found a Roman septic (wastewater) system.
> Pattern of stone arched tunnels a few feet down, near the site of a
> Roman fort. Still in good order and operational. When a farmhouse was
> built centuries later on the same site, they must have found the old
> ceramic pipes, and connected their ablution facilities into them.

>
> Charnel pits would get exposed from time to time - places where the
> victims of Beubonic Plague were buried - hundreds of them at a time.

>
>> The Americas were settled so mocu more recently, and worse, much of
>> what there was of the first cultures was obliterated - a lot of the
>> things they made and used, of course, were also ephemeral.
>
> Similarly here in Australia. But here in Townsville we have General
> McArthur's bunker, complete with operations room and metre-thick
> concrete walls. Still in good shape - part of my department's offices
> are there, and the bunker is used by the Council for storing files.

>
> There are places on the coast north of here where there are miniature
> under-sea mountains built entirely of jeeps, trucks, etc - pushed over
> the side of supply ships.
>

>>>>>>> nmbexcuse> wrote
>>>>>>>> don't like carpets, does not work in hot/humid Florida anyways.
>>>>>>> Well somebody must have thought otherwise cause carpet has been
>>>>>>> everywhere in FL since the early 70's.
>>>>>>> Everyhouse we lived in had carpet cept the last one.
>>>>>> Well, they are ALL wrong. I am right :)
>>>>> We got a type of tile in this house that feels, dunno how to
>>>>> describe it, almost "fuzzy" when you walk on it, because it's
>>>>> ceramic but not super- smooth. It sounds odd because I don't knwo
>>>>> how to describe it well, but it's actually pleasant. I never much
>>>>> liked the shiny/slick tile - even tho' it's easy to clean, you
>>>>> still have to keep up with the grout.
>>>>> WHich brings up a question I've long had: why does tile *need8
>>>>> grout lines in the first place? Why not a very thin bit of cualk
>>>>> and jam them up close to one another? Is grout supposed to be
>>>>> "decorative", or is ther ea physical reason for the grout spacing?
>>>> We had a house in Mid-Wales UK, built in 1875 by a railway company.
>>>> Cavity brick walls (9" and 4 1/2", 2" cavity, slate damp courses).
>>>> Expanding footings went down maybe 6ft or more - never managed to
>>>> dig far enough down to find the foundations. The houses needed a
>>>> degree of earthquake-proofing with heavy steam engines and coal
>>>> trains passing by. The back kitchen/living room floor was "quarry"
>>>> tiles ( 6" by 1/2" ceramic) laid over about a foot of compacted
>>>> boiler ash. No grout, no gap. Still servicable 110 years later. Only
>>>> problem was if a single tile cracked, then you needed to replace it
>>>> quickly before the adjacent tiles started to creep.
>>>> The place also had very hard 8" by 3/4" concrete skirtings all round
>>>> the internal walls.
>>> Wow, I wish I could see that!!, do you have any photos?
>> That quarry tile was probably Welsh "Heather Brown" by Denis Reuben
>> (sp). An old high school classmate of mine began importing it in the
>> late 50's as a lark. It is indestructible. He hit it rich when the new
>> Boston City Hall was built with all public areas paved with the tile,
>> and it still looks good 42 years later. I put it in the first floor of
>> my Boston House, and 27 years later it was untouched. Stays clean with
>> a light mopping. Around here it can be purchased from Shep Brown
>> Associates. EDS
> Is it installed as was described, with no gap/grout? THat'd be
> interesting to see; it must look like a solid slab of stone. THe boiler
> ash part also is interesting. THe building that was described sounded
> like an interesting thing overall.

>
>

>> Is it installed as was described, with no gap/grout? THat'd be
>> interesting to see; it must look like a solid slab of stone. THe
>> boiler ash part also is interesting. THe building that was described
>> sounded like an interesting thing overall.
>
> I installed it in what is called a "mud job". My original softwood
> floors were on 2x12's at 14" oc spanning 13.5' with 2 layers of 1"
> sheathing (all full size). House was on piles on filled land, and dead
> level. I laid down 6 mil plastic on the original sheathing, and then
> 1.25" mortar bed, leveled it out, and then laid down the tile in grout
> with about 1/8" joints. Grouted the joints, waited a few days, and
> occupied the floor. The quarry tile has lovely variances in color
> ranging from brown-orange to brown purple, often within one tile. AIR,
> it is also frostproof, and relatively non-skid. EDS

> [snip]
>>> Is it installed as was described, with no gap/grout? THat'd be
>>> interesting to see; it must look like a solid slab of stone. THe
>>> boiler ash part also is interesting. THe building that was described
>>> sounded like an interesting thing overall.
>> I installed it in what is called a "mud job". My original softwood
>> floors were on 2x12's at 14" oc spanning 13.5' with 2 layers of 1"
>> sheathing (all full size). House was on piles on filled land, and dead
>> level. I laid down 6 mil plastic on the original sheathing, and then
>> 1.25" mortar bed, leveled it out, and then laid down the tile in grout
>> with about 1/8" joints. Grouted the joints, waited a few days, and
>> occupied the floor. The quarry tile has lovely variances in color
>> ranging from brown-orange to brown purple, often within one tile. AIR,
>> it is also frostproof, and relatively non-skid. EDS
> Sounds great. I like stone a lot. WE ended up with ceramic tiles because
> they're so much less expensive, even cheaper as the grout-gaps are almost
> a
> half-inch :p , but if I could build a place that was built *to last*, I'd
> like to be able (budget permitting) to put doen stone, and some hardwood
> (recycled, pref.).
> Although I'm not one for renovating, I'm always gald some people are, to
> preserve some of these gems. It's also neat IMO to see how people in the
> past did things. I liked the "bed of boiler ash" tidbit in Troppo's post,
> describing that 110+ yr old flooring. REsourceful, IMO ;)