Bungalows of Austin's West Line District

I have spent quite a bit of time trying to find out anything I can about my house and the neighborhood. There is a fabulous history center a few blocks away that I discovered when I was doing some research into buying a dilapidated mansion on the street next to mine. I have been meaning to go to the history center to research my current house, but haven’t had a chance yet.

Not a bungalow. 1872 stone mansion. The very first house in the neighborhood.

Side note: I didn’t buy the mansion because I discovered it would cost a bare minimum of $100,000 to make it habitable. It had sold at auction for $300,000. The buyers were asking $500,000. Restored it’s probably worth at least $2 million. A deal either way you look at it, but I didn’t/don’t have that kind of money. Someone else bought it and tore off all the various additions to the original house. I hoped they would restore it to its former glory, but they are turning it into a McMansion. Ugh!

Anyhow, despite all the info I found about the Old West Austin Historic District and Clarksville Historic District, neither officially included my street or house. I finally discovered my house is actually in the West Line Historic District. I entered that into Google and BINGO! There was all the info I’ve been looking for. I found a 107 page-long registration form for national historic districts.

My house was actually built in 1925, not 1928 which was on the realtor's documents. It is officially a contributing building of the historic district. There is one paragraph that specifically mentions several of the houses on my street (but not mine): “As the old estates were broken up for new subdivisions, a new class of resident arose on the West Side. Raymond Heights was no longer the exclusive realm of judges and state officials. Developers carved the old estates into standard-sized lots for smaller houses. As a result, middle-class families could afford houses in the western suburb. In fact, subdivisions in the once-exclusive enclave were heavily promoted to working-class families with the means to own their own homes in the 1910s and 1920s. Early residents along one block of T------ Street in the 1920s illustrate the trend: Olin D. Farquhar (800) was a bookkeeper at the Austin Statesman, L. B. Randerson (804) was a clerk at the post office, as was William R. Warrick (806). James H. Cummings (811) was a paperhanger, Edward W. Seiders (812) was a checker, and James D. Dunlap (815) was a trainman for the Austin Street Railway (Austin city directories, 1920-1929). All of these residents owned their homes but roughly half the people living on T------ Street in the 1920s were renters. Few T------ Street residents held professional positions or owned businesses during this period. Nevertheless, it was a respectable, middle- and working-class address.”

The big house next door to me may have been owned by a checker at one time but I found out it was built by a contractor—Jacob J. Wattlinger, a partner at Wattlinger Brothers in 1922 and is eligible to be a historic property on it's own (not just as part of a historic district). Unfortunately the 90+ year-old woman who owns it has let it decay. There are two guys renting it right now. They pay for all the repairs but it doesn't look like they do a whole lot. It's desperately in need of a paint job. The shutters and some of the window trim has rotted and fallen on the roof. Judging from the units sticking out the windows, I don't think central air or heat was ever installed. I wonder if it still has all the old built-ins. Maybe I'll have to get myself invited over and find out.

The house next door. Notice the two front doors?

My little section of the neighborhood has modest bungalows. Some of them in the 500 square foot range. The section immediately east has slightly grander homes. I'll show you a few of those another time, but here's a sampling of the wonderful bungalows in my 'hood.

The garden is gorgeous!

Purple trim!

Charming

For Iroquois

This one is lovely. I want a screened in porch!

  Here are some of the ones I call the itty bitty bungalows.

 There are four bitty bungalows in a row on this street

Bitty bungalow with funky paint

It still has the 5 panel doors with crystal knobs

This last one is currently for sale. 528 square feet on a 3,000 foot lot. Tiny! It's a bit of a mess and they are selling it for the lot. The asking price is $250,000.

Notice the two front doors again. Two front doors on a one bedroom, one bath house.  This was a popular style at the time. I've heard the architectural style referred to as Cumberland style. My house had two front doors at one time too. I can tell from where the baseboards were spliced in the front bedroom. I've heard that the houses were built this way for a couple reasons. One was for multiple family use of the house. Each door opened into a private bedroom. The public areas of the house--kitchen, living room, etc. were shared by both families. I had a friend who lived in a house built at the turn of the century that was still laid out that way. The other reason was for ventilation. Both doors, usually a  bedroom and living room, opened to the porch for cross breezes and to cool the rooms.

Bathtub in the Dining Room and Remains of Vintage Wallpaper

There is a bathtub in my dining room. However, I much prefer it to the time there was a toilet in my living room.

What's wrong with this picture?

Why is the bathtub there? Because a few of the old galvanized pipes were jolted during leveling and are leaking a little.

See the holes above the pipe covers? The walls moved, the pipes didn't.

I am going to have all the old galvanized pipes replaced with PVC. The sink in the hall bath (photo above) needs to be removed to fix the pipes. Since that’s happening AND the walls need to be floated and textured again because of the cracks, I am going to have the ugly, moldy, oversized cabinet removed.

Remember this?

It's a little better now, but not much. Not only is it ugly and moldy but it's way too big for the space and crowds the tub and sink.

Since that’s happening, the tub had to be moved. Since the tub had to be moved, I was convinced this was the best time to replace the ugly, crumbling, weird, dark tile in the bathroom. Yes, it will save me money to do it all now, but it’s money I wasn’t planning to spend now.

The nursery rhyme about the lady who swallowed the fly to catch the spider, etc. keeps running through my head--except with new words. She tiled the floor since the tub was moved, she moved the tub to tear out the cabinet, she tore out the cabinet because the sink was moved, she moved the sink to fix the pipes, she fixed the pipes because they sprung a leak during leveling. I don’t know why she leveled the house. I guess she’ll go broke.

This is what the bathroom looks like without tile and sheetrock. Tres outhouse chic. No?

The left side of the photo above is where the cabinet used to be. P thinks perhaps this was where the water heater may have been originally. On the right side of the photo is the GIANT GAPING HOLE in the floor. That's the dirt under my house you see. Perfect way for a) stinky uninvited guests to enter and b) wily dogs to escape. P but boards and blankets and ladders over it for now.

Window sill has rotted out.

So what tile will I use instead? I found this 1" white porcelain hex tile. To do the entire floor, it will cost me around $150 ($400 with grout, sealer, labor, etc.) It would have been nice to do marble, but that costs 10 times as much. Even black or other colored accent tiles drives the price up.

But the white is nice.Way better than this.



And only half the floor was done plus half one one wall. Weird. I am not tiling the walls. Just the floor. The entire floor.

I'll replace that ugly cabinet with an appropriately sized curio cabinet. I have seen some nice ones on Craig's List in the $50 range.

I was considering changing the wall color when I discovered two layers of vintage paper under the sheetrock. One is white or cream with metallic silver swirls. Below that was what was probably a really cool art deco print. It looks like it was white with a black botanical print and some kind of red accent. Next to the black (photo below) you can barely make out the rest of the bleached print. Maybe the glue for the swirly print paper removed the color? It was attached to a thin fabric similar to cheesecloth.

It's got me thinking that maybe I'll do wallpaper instead of paint. Maybe a deco reproduction? Then there is this fabulous print by Grow House Grow called Ms Ward. I love it, but it's cost prohibitive. $180 a roll.That means almost $1,500 to do the tiny bathroom. Uh, no thanks. But it IS neato.

Photo by Grow House Grow

A Peak Under the Skirt (of my house, you perverts)

The leveling is done...sort of.

Here is my cheesy, not-to-scale diagram of how the steel pier system works. You can read more about it here.

Here is an actual photo of the diagram above. Obviously you can't see the part below ground.

Here is a photo showing the new piers  before painting and before all the old piers had been removed.

Unpainted pier and new beam. When they bring the house to the correct height, they weld the pipe to the angle iron in which the beam sits.You can see the joint in this photo.

New piers with a coat of primer

Painted with all the old piers and debris removed. There is no more wood touching the ground. Yeah! What you are looking at is the underside of my pine floors. There is no insulation. Nada. Zilch. That needs to be installed before the pipes get replaced. More on that later.

Look at the spaghetti of old telephone and cable wires. Those need to come out. 

This used to be the entrance to the crawl space. That will be relocated. The cement wall on the left is my porch. I think the metal pipe you see is the gas line. There is a small spigot sticking out of the floor next to the fireplace, which is weird, because it's a woodburning fireplace. Perhaps there used to be a radiator?

Because the skirting has been off for so long, I suspect someone has moved under my house. A rather smelly, furry someone:--black with a white stripe. Sound familiar? I've smelled skunk in the back yard several times. One night I smelled skunk IN the house. Not surprising considering there are unplugged holes in the floor where cable lines used to run. Roni was excitedly running from room to room sniffing the holes.

This worries me especially now that there is a GIANT GAPING HOLE in the floor of my bathroom. Stay tuned to hear why.

The Good the Bad and the Beautiful

Good

I went to see Mr. Fix It (Michael of FITT Therapy) yesterday. He told me my back problems were due to the fact that my sacroiliac joint was out of place. The SI joint is right were your butt and back meet. The muscles all around it were super tight.  Yes, you heard right—expert medical opinion is that I have a tight ass.  Anyway, he popped the joint back in place. I made a sound like this, “Aaaaaiiiieeeeeeee!” Hurt like hell but it feels SO much better now.

The way the house was leveled is kind of cool. They use a tool called a Zip Level. It’s a box attached to a roll of cord. The cord is filled with liquid. They put the box in one corner of the house and set it as ground zero.

 

At the end of the cord is another small box. When put in another corner of the house, it reads the pressure difference in the water and tells you the height difference between the two spots. Neat-o.

Bad

The day after my last post the kitchen was leveled. In the process, the drain pipe below the kitchen sink broke in half. It’s an old cast iron pipe. The house came up three inches but the pipe in the ground wouldn’t budge. It ripped in half like the Titanic. When it happened, the workmen noticed a big hole in the same pipe a foot away from the break. All the water that’s gone down my kitchen drain or was used in the dishwasher for the last year went into the dirt under my house instead of into the sewer. Sucks that the pipe broke, but at least it made me aware of a problem.

Ew!

Side of my house ripped open and new drain pipe installed.

Closed up with new cleanout. Do you think my house needs to be painted?

The pipes in the front bathroom didn't break, but they were rattled enough that there are little leaks now. The plumber gave me a quote for the repairs, but said for $1,500 he would replace all the old galvanized pipes with pvc. I was quoted $8,000 for the same job when I bought the house. It is much easier to do when the skirting is off the house. I am going to do it. Here's the immediate to-do list:

Replace pipes/fix leaks;
Then the stucco skirting goes back on;
Then the cracks inside the house get fixed (and at the same time the ugly bathroom cabinet comes out).

Beautiful

I got a new (old) stove. I traded my non-working 1950s O’Keefe and Merritt for a perfectly working late 1920s Chambers. For the first time in a year, I have a working stove. There are a couple websites dedicated to vintage Chamber's stoves. They had features that are just being introduced into modern stoves today. They are so well insulated that the gas shuts off and they continue cooking and can hold the temperature for hours. The sales pitch was "Cook with the gas turned off!"

There's a 1920s stove in my 1920s house. Cream with sage green trim. My kitchen walls are sage green. It just belonged in my house. I think it’s happy to be here because everything I have cooked on it has come out perfect!

 

The autostat

Original knobs (hehe, I said "knobs")

Diary of a House Leveling (Abridged Version)

Crack in front bedroom.

If I had kept a daily diary of the process of leveling my house it would look something like this. I didn’t, so I’m making some guesses on the actual days/dates, but you get the idea.

Day 1: The fence came down, the stucco skirting was removed. My house is being supported by orange jacks and there are holes being dug.

Days 2-5: Rain delay.

Days 6, 8, 12, 14, 15: The holes get deeper and the pile of dirt in the yard gets bigger.

Day 16: Concrete supposed to be poured but the pump truck breaks. I am beginning to get stressed which causes me to develop a spasm in my lower back on the left side. (*spasm*)

Days 17-22: Sub-contractor scheduling delays. (*spasm*) 

Crack in front bathroom.

Day 23: Attempt at concrete pouring. Hose keeps clogging. Pump truck guys accuse concrete guys of using the wrong mix. Concrete guys accuse pump truck guys of having low-powered pump. It almost comes to blows. They empty all the concrete onto my front lawn. Part of it washes into my neighbor’s driveway. Concrete is remixed, pumped and poured. I’m promised the concrete in my yard will be removed. (*spasm*) (*spasm*)

Day 24: The dog escapes. I have to insist that the concrete is cleaned out of my neighbor’s driveway. (*spasm*) (*spasm*) 

Day 25: The dog escapes. (*spasm*) (*spasm*) 

Day 26: The dog escapes.(*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) 

Day 28: The beam work starts. Most of the concrete is removed from my lawn but there is a thin grey film over 1/2 of it. (*spasm*)  (*spasm*)  (*spasm*) 

Day 30: A worker cuts the gas line with a sawzall. Luckily there were no sparks so neither the workers nor my house were blown sky high. A plumber is sent out to repair it. (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*)  

Day 31: A worker cuts the water line. The plumber comes back out and repairs it. (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*)  

Day 32: Rain delay.

Day 34: Beam work continues.

Crack in kitchen. There used to be a window here. It wasn't framed in properly when it was removed. My laundry room is on the other side of the wall.

Day 35: First day of actual leveling starts. I watch HUNDREDS of small and several DOZEN large cracks appear in the walls. (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) 

Day 36: The dog escapes.

Day 37: More leveling. More giant cracks. (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) (*spasm*) 

Day 39 (today): As I get ready to leave for work, the final beam is being installed. Later today the leveling is scheduled to continue. There is a chance it will be completed today or tomorrow.

After the leveling is done, the inspector will have to come out. Then the skirting replaced. Then work will move to the interior. I had hoped the cracks would be small enough that some mud and a can of texture would do the job. No such luck. Entire pieces of sheetrock will need to be replaced. The texture sprayer will have to be brought in. Major repainting will have to happen. There is going to be dust and mess in my house for quite a while.

The bottom half of the same crack.

I know it will all be worth it when it's done but this has been a major pain in the ass--literally! At this point I think my left leg is shorter than my right and I will probably limp around like the crooked man in his crooked house on crooked lane for the rest of my life--only my house will be perfectly level. (*sigh*)

The Escape Artist

Part of the fence was removed to give the workers access to the foundation. The skirting has also been removed allowing anything that can fit under the house free access to the back yard from the front and vice versa. I have used all kinds of things--storage sheds, planks, rugs, wheel barrows, etc.--to block off the exits so Roni doesn't go wandering.

For three weeks, this worked fine. This week, she decided that she wanted to see the world. She has gotten out three times that I am aware of. Each time, I think I found the way she escaped and shored it up. But she keeps getting out! I owe several thank you cards to friendly neighbors who found her in the streets and called.

Luckily C has been able to go retrieve her each time. He set up a camera to recreate the crime.

I thought perhaps she got out out here.

Or here.

 It was much easier. Please excuse the sideways view. I couldn't figure out how to rotate the video.

This morning she pulled the lattice off the bottom of the deck and escaped again. She somehow pulled the nails out of the wood. Did I mention that she is incredibly good at problem solving? I think she just gets bored when I'm not home.

I am afraid she is going to get run over, or get in a fight with another dog, or that I won't find her. I practically had a panic attack the first time I came home and she was gone. I found her in the neighbors yard two houses down. This morning a neighbor down the street found her. Thursday she made it two streets over before being rescued.

C says her name should be Hairy Houdini. I will be so happy when the fence and skirting are back in place.

Day 7,834 of my captivity. Today I almost escaped, but they tracked me down before I could meet up with the getaway car.