Bathroom update, and Steel Valley

 

We've begun working on the first floor bathroom. It had an ugly tub, not framed in, a dropped ceiling, and a cracked pedestal sink that leaks. We started by removing the ugly dropped and stained ceiling tiles. It turns out that the dropped ceiling was added to cover some plumbing that was added to upgrade the second floor bathroom. You can kind of see that the window was just divided by the dropped ceiling. When we took off the tiles, it turns out there was yucky mini blind at the top of the window, also obstructed by the dropped ceiling. We got all of that down. 

There was a door in the living room that appeared to go into the bathroom, but from the bathroom, it wasn't there.  It seemed like it was a second door into the bathroom that had been long since nailed shut from the living room,  and wall boarded over from the bathroom. When we took off the wall board in the bathroom, we found the remnants of the door. The bathroom is too small of a room to have two doors, but we will probably swap out the current door from the kitchen, and instead use the door from the living room.  It will make the bathroom flow better, and it will give us more wall space in the kitchen. Unlike previous remodels, we will remove the door frame we aren't using!

The next step for the bathroom will be to have a plumber do the rough-in plumbing, and then we'll put in cabinets, flooring, sink and shower.  

When we removed the wall board and filthy insulation, we found a lot of black dirt.  Like, a lot.  The same black dirt that covered the blinds and the walls.  

We had a contractor come over to see if he wanted to help us with our little project. He asked if we'd come across any black soot.  Um, yes.  Well, it turns out that being six blocks from what was at one time the largest steel mill in the country means that the houses built around the turn of the century have loads and loads of coal dust.  So it's not dirt or soot. It's coal dust, and it's everywhere. I took a cover plate off a switch, and there was coal dust in the switch fixture.  It is absolutely everywhere.  We've since heard from two people whose parents who either worked in the mill, or commuted from Homestead to Pittsburgh.  They routinely brought a second shirt and suit coat, because their first one would be filthy just form the air particulates.  Another worker folded his shirt cuffs up, so that when he got to work, he could unfold them and they'd be clean.  

The houses built around the turn of the century were built when the air was thick, and apparently, it always looked like dusk, from the coal dust.

Here's a picture from the Library of Congress of the Homestead Steel Mill, around the time our house was built.      

After we cleaned up from the coal mine that is our house, we went for a great bike ride. We rode along the Monongahela River, that would have been at the far edge of the mill in the picture above. Now it's a beautiful river, with lots of green and a great bike trail. We rode past the pump house, which was apparently the site of the infamous Homestead Strike.  In 1892, Carnegie was out of the country and his deputy, Henry Clay Frick (of numerous art museums) was in charge. There was a threatened strike, and Carnegie told Frick to handle it.  Whether he knew of Frick's excessive plans or not is unknown.  But Frick ordered armed Pinkerton guards to come and protect the plant, and allow people to come in to work.  It got ugly, and eleven people died, mostly the Pinkerton force.  According to law friends, the Homestead Strike was a key event in labor law precedent, as well as labor movements in general.  Here's a plaque honoring the clash.  

And here's another plaque with a great summary.              "The Pump House symbolizes the sacrifices and struggles American workers endured - and continue to endure - to secure their fundamental human rights as workers and as citizens.'

Here's our bike route. It took us through the cities and boroughs of Munhall, Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, Swissvale, Edgewood and Pittsburgh, not to mention a long stretch through Frick Park. 

And if there's any question about the coal mine that is my house, here's my beloved before he cleaned up.  Yes, he had a mask and eye protection!