Spring 2011

So its 2011 now. Two tenants later and now I am living here for a while until I figure out where I am going next. But its nice to see that the house looks pretty much the same as when we finished it in 2007. Azaleas are blooming now. The weather has been awesome and I have been sleeping with the windows open, just letting the spring nights blow through the place.

When I was taking the pictures, this little kitty decided it wanted to be my friend. He was trying to climb my leg or something and saying a whole lot of kitty things. Luckily my dog was in the house.

More Recent Photos

Three Houses Complete (314 is on the far left)

It took almost 5 years, but here they are....

Final Photos (interior)

Here's some pictures of the inside of the house. All of the cabinetry is solid maple about 3/4" thick. All counters in bathrooms and kitchen are solid granite. The tiles around the mantle are shipped from a specialty tile shop in California. The staircase, handrails and balustrades are shown finished. It turned out really nice. Using the solid white oak for the floor and the treads with a red stain made the flooring look more like the old wood.

Final Photos (exterior)

After porch railings and painting, this is what the house looked like. By the way, the doors are custom ordered. There are no seams visible around the glass and they are thermal double pane. the panels are insulated as well.
The colors are Benjamin Moore historic palette of green/grey, cream, and purple. The beading on the porch ceilings are bright white.
The extra door had to be put in since the house was originally a duplex. This is a National Park Service project and the Fed standards had to be followed to the letter.

Getting ready for paint

The outside is starting to come together here in these pictures. The original columns were saved and then when the porch was ready to be put back up, the were stripped, sanded, and primed for paining. This in itself was a major operation. The columns had 100 years of paint layers on them and even with that miracle strip stuff from TV it wouldnt budge (we bought a gallon of that stuff, not sure its worth the price).

Staircase

The staircase was pretty rough. Newel posts busted up or looted. The treads where the original heart pine. And although we could have saved them, they never would have looked right. For one thing, they were chewed up on the edges from 100 years of abuse (and renters moving furniture over them). Also, they were covered with several layers of stain and paint that, even when removed, didn't leave the wood looking natural. Finally, they stair treads wouldn't have matched the floor anyway. After my father died, I traveled to a few home improvement stores trying to find a color that would match the pre-finished floor that I had installed. I bought brand new solid white oak treads and then stained to match the floor. A carpenter installed the treads after I stained and urethane.

Mechanical

All mechanical systems in the house were replaced including HVAC piping (with returns in every room), and exaust ducts.

Electrical

Every single switch, wire, light fixture, breaker, box, etc. was replaced in this house.
It was essentially a new construction job for the electrician since all of the walls were open.
This is the way to do it. No guessing down the road which walls will have to be opened up to replace old aluminum wires. The white wires you see are the security system. Every window and door was prewired before the drywall went up.

Insulation

Here's a picture of the insulation being installed in the walls. Blown in insulation was put into the attic. We had to make the house meet modern building codes for energy efficiency.

Roof and Siding

The original tin roof looked pretty rough and even though it is tempting to just cover it with aluminzed coating and call it a day, its a rather big gamble when you're putting two hundred thousand dollars into the house directly underneath the roof. Also, when you stood in the attic and looked up toward the roof, you could see the sunlight coming in through all the hundreds of little holes, like little stars. Somehow, the holes weren't big enough to let water through, but we replaced the roof anyway. The new roof was installed standing seam metal galvanized with a 50-year warranty (in reality this roof will probably last generations). Considering the tin lasted nearly 100 years, this house will not need a roof for a very long time. In the Florida sun, that's saying something.
You can also see the double lap wood siding being installed. Most of the siding was in pretty rough shape. We didn't realize how bad it was until we tried to fix it and refinish. We found a mill in Alabama that makes an exact duplicate of what we had. We primed the wood on both sides and then installed with ringed nails. Each lap was caulked on the inside to make a seal. Also, the inside of the house was sprayed with oil base paint to completely seal the setup before the insulation was installed.

Fully framed. Actually, this is downstairs now, but you get the idea. There's my dad cleaning up at the end of the day carrying his white 5 gallon buckets full of tools. He always used those buckets for storage as long as I can remember.

A little bit more.....

Here's the upstairs starting to be rebuilt

Interior walls

So now what? my father started on the inside trying to get the house back up to some level of structural integrity. Here's a picture from the second floor. Most of the subfloor and a few of the floor joists were replaced. You may notice that there are no walls anywhere. That's becuase they had evidence of termite damage and were torn out and thrown away (also, we changed the floor plan a bit and the walls were in our way). While walls and ceilings were open, all studs and joists were treated with termite killer as a precuation (this is technique is superior to tenting since the poision stays on the wood). We weren't allowed to go near the place for a while so it must be some strong stuff.
You can see the columns lying on the floor. Those are the oringal columns, each one is a solid tree trunk turned on a lathe and weigh about 250 lbs a piece. they were stripped down to the bare wood, primed, and placed back on the porch once the porches were ready to be reassembled. By the way, the floor is level.

Lifting a house

So how do you lift a house so you can put it back to where its supposed to be? I mean, a house is heavy. You cant use a jack because the bottom floor is trashed, and you'd go through the floor. So my Dad, and inventive guy, realized that the house could be picked up by the 2nd floor since the 100 year old house was "balloon framed" (the studs are 20 ft long).
He put a railroad tie under the second floor (which we winched up there together with ropes) and then he rented this monster diesel fork lift to lift the tie and the floor (along with half the house!). Here's my dad playing with his fork lift. We probably could have gotten away with not doing this, but we wanted the house to be 100% level all the way around.

Floor

About 20 floor joists were replaced in this house.
Not scabbed on to the rotted ones.
This is a picture of a few of them

Foundation

The back corner was sinking and the only right way to fix this was to jack up the house, pour a new footer and replace all the blocking at this corner (now that its painted its hard to tell the difference between the old and new block). If it wasnt my father it probably would have been shimmed up with some wood to bring it back to normal height and then fini!

Porches

In case you dont know, this is the way you rebuild a porch. If you have any question about the structural integrity of the pieces, you just knock the whole thing down and start from scratch. Its very expensive because building code will require that every speck of wood be pressure treated and every fastener be stainless or galv.. That's why alot of people wont do it. Good luck to 'em. My father wasnt going to have anybody falling through his porches.

sewer tap

Turned out the house didnt even have its own sewer service. So where did the sewage go you ask? it went to the sewer pipe to the house next door. A big no no. So here's our first BIG expense right here. Brand new sewer tap. Ouch.

tabula rasa

This is what we had to start with. Not a pretty site to be sure. The only good thing was that the roof had never leaked. The roof was still 100 years old and neither my father or myself felt comfortable with dumping over $200k under a 100 year old roof. All the other houses (302, 308, and 314 E Fourth all looked about the same when we started. Still a cool house nonetheless. it had "tails" on the soffits all the way around and lots of windows and porches. Four porches that went from corner to corner on front and back of the house. What did we find inside? Well an old fridge with KFC still in there, dead pigeons, library books, clothing. All kinds of good stuff. When my friend Bryan and I broke into these houses about four or five years ago it smelled pretty bad. The house had been cut up into little apartments. About 6 of them. One room was painted a high gloss green with popcorn. popcorn was sprayed everywhere, even on the walls and mantle.

my father

To understand the houses that he renovated at 302, 208, and 314 East Fourth Street, you have to understand my father. My father had his own Yankee workshop way of doing things and he seemed (to me) to go a little overboard on everything. He wouldn't be satisfied until the houses were built to his standards. which means better than they were originally constructed.
why would somebody notch the exterior wall studs and put in diagonal braces that weren't there originally and weren't required by code? 'cause my father felt that it would make the house more structurally sound. This is the the essential tao of Bob King. Its something of a cross between pride on one side and OCD on the other side. If he sees something that he doesnt like, he goes in and keeps going at it until he's satisfied that he's done it right and that he will never have to think about it again. My father raised my sister and I by himself from the time we were 2 and 3 years old, he was a lifelong diabetic and had learning disabilities and also had a string of really bad luck over the years. Nothing would stop him and he never showed fear of any kind. When he broke his leg, all he cared about was getting up on his feet again. He told the doctors that he wanted the leg to be better than it was and insisted that titanium rods be installed. he was out of the hospital in no time. When he broke his hip he insisted that they replace the whole shebang (ball, socket, everything) and he wanted to be conscious to make sure they did a good job.
I think if there is a song for my dad it would be "we are the champions" by Queen.
Everything was a challenge and he refused to lose. He really was a champion in the most essential sense of the word. In case you haven't figured it out by now, we lost him last year in July of 2006. He never got to see the last house (314 east fourth) be finished.

Prolouge

Ok, this is the first entry into the blog about the historic houses that my father, Bob King, and I renovated near downtown Jacksonville (Springfield). The last of these three houses is 314 East Fourth Street (to the right are the first two houses - 302 and 308 east forth). Its a beautiful craftsman style house that has been completely renovated.
Ok, let me explain what completely renovated means. Since there are a lot of people out there selling renovated houses or claiming that their houses were renovated. Well let's start with what its NOT:
Throwing on a coat of paint, stripping the floors, replacing wood here and there, replacing some plumbing and wiring and then sticking the buyer with actually doing a real renovation (that they will have to do eventually anyway, but painfully and expensively while they try to live in the place) down the road. There are a lot of renovations in the neighborhood seem to follow this paradigm.
However, my father was a perfectionist, and (unfortunately for my bank account) decided that if it wasnt perfect then it had to go. He was as stubborn as a mule and a real pain in the ass sometimes. But I love the guy and miss him very much all the same. He came from a lifetime of carpentry and from generations of carpenters and craftsmen from up north .