# South Texas Ranch House Do Over



## Wado

Here it is, not quite a century old. The house was moved from another ranch to this location I think in the thirty's, I would have to check with my cousin to see if he recalls when they did this. It was remodeled sometime in the fifty's and they put an oak floor in the living area. When we did the bedrooms and bath a couple of years ago there was a layer of linoleum and a layer of vinyl then carpet on the floors. Under that was pine that was beyond refinishing so we installed vinyl plank and some kind of sheet vinyl in the kitchen area. The bathroom was totally remodeled and ceramic tile was laid. The old bath was about eight feet by five and had a claw foot cast iron tub in it. One tiny wall hung sink and a closet, pretty tight area. They did have an inside toilet done during the first remodel but didn't have a water heater until the sixty's, I remember heating water on the stove for winter baths. All clothes were washed out in the smoke house in a wringer washer with hot water from a cast iron wash pot that came from a cistern. Rain water makes clothes soft unlike the hard well water up there. I really don't know where to start on the outside, we've been working on the inside mostly and now the exterior is going down fast. Lots of bad weather and hail the past couple of years is working on it pretty hard. It's going to have to be all me on this with exception of the roof. The last contractor we had in there was ninety bucks an hour, I just can't handle that again. He handed his last bill to us and wanted to know when he could come back and shoot the trim in the bathroom and start on the bedrooms and I shook his hand and thanked him for the last time. He did good work but you get to the point where enough is enough. I still have the ceiling tile to do in the living room and the two bedrooms are in good shape since we redid them. I bought all the stuff to clean up and refinish the wood floors but got side tracked on the barn project up there. Look at all the windows in this thing, that's going to be some work and I already removed one. At least the kitchen and bath have new ones.


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## FLAT FISHY

nice


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## Fishing Logic

Cool place but, that looks like old asbestos siding. It's not really a problem till you go trying to work with it. I would want to know what it is. It can be painted over to seal.


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## cubera

No reason to seal it, just another urban legend.
Some of the best siding ever made.
Not a problem working with it, simple precautions must be used. It's not going to jump up into your lungs and kill ya.
Clorox and Tide wash up make it look like brand new.


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## Wado

*Asbestos Shingles*

When we started on this project I asked the contractor about this stuff and was contemplating removing it and doing Hardie Plank but it's in pretty good shape so we let it be. I had to take one window out and luckily they had left me some of the green shingles to cover the hole up. Hardie makes a replacement but I think they are thicker so I am being real careful not to break any more. He installed three new vinyl windows and had salvaged the green ones from another job to do the fill in. I talked to a salesperson at Sherwin Williams about painting this stuff and they said they have a primer that will do it so it's on the schedule if it ever dries up and gets warmer. Out of the blue I got a call yesterday from the guy that did my metal building and he said he might be able to work me in for a roof so that's good news for me. I found a dealer in Victoria for Krestmark replacement windows so once the roof is done I start on them. There is only one dreaded problem I hope we don't have to address and that's the foundation. The side the fireplace is on has already been repaired when it separated from the house. I went under there with a sure enough professional from San Antonio that works in the King Williams area when he got the fireplace and floor re-leveled about eight years ago. I wish I had let him go through the entire house and replace the cedar posts that hold this thing up. He did way more than we had intended to do but only had so much money to spend so we cut it short. The ones we found that were rotten were mesquite, not cedar. He said cedar lasts a lot longer than anything else. If any of you guys have ever painted this kind of siding please let me know what you used I have never painted this stuff, I figured it would be like Hardie Plank just use an acrylic. Thanks in advance.


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## cubera

Give it a good wash down and use a good quality exterior latex and you'll be fine.
Washed and painted or just washed a bunch back in the 70's.


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## Wado

Good deal, I will clorox it and I have a lower pressure washer I will rinse it with before painting. The south side looks real good compared to the north side.


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## Fishing Logic

My Grandpa use to work with that stuff a lot. He died at the young age of 94 I think it was.


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## Tortuga

Heck...I thought it wuz gonna be something like this...:rotfl:


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## dbarham

Looks good

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## peckerwood

Nice,comfortable looking home.Kids and baseballs were murder on shingled houses.You get it clean,and painting is a snap with a good roller.Looks like you do good work.


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## Wado

Tortuga said:


> Heck...I thought it wuz gonna be something like this...:rotfl:


In my dreams! I think there is even a squirrel in the yard at this one. That's more like the rich neighbors place.


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## Wado

*Progress*

Well, the roof got put on last month just ahead of a lot of rain thank goodness. Rohde Welding out of Devine did the work and built my metal building at the ranch as well. The close up pictures show the condition of the windows but I have to admit I backed out on replacing them myself. I had Window World do them and that's a whole another story in itself. I will get some pictures of them when I get back up there. I got a call this past Tuesday from a neighbor there and he told me I was extremely lucky. I don't know when it happened but there was a huge tree at one corner of the house that got uprooted in a storm and fell away from the house right after the windows were done. I just bumped my insurance up to cover all the improvements, at least we will have some firewood.


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## sleepersilverado

So are the panels fastened to the furring strips with screws through the metal?


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## Wado

*Metal Roof*

Yes, the sheets are screwed to the strips with metal to wood fasteners. I can't remember if they are 1 5/8" or 1 1/4" long. They have a rubber washers just like the metal to metal screws. The strips are anchored with 3" countersunk wood to wood screws on every rafter. The old roof had ridge vents so they pulled them off and found the rafters and went from there. Rohde told me he never had a screw go soft on him, hit solid wood every time so he either hit the rafters or the roof deck might have been ship lap and 3/4 plywood on top of that. Pretty solid being as old as it is. Next step is painting the old tile siding and trim. We even put gutters back up and the cistern is full again.


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## Wado

*Windows*

I made a trip up to the ranch this past weekend to survey the damage. A big tree fell over in one of the storms and luckily missed the house. The windows sure made a difference in the looks and noise inside the house. I hope they help out on the air conditioning so far I have it off but will soon need to set it on eighty degrees. As soon as schools out we are going to do some painting and that should really brighten it up. Window World out of San Antonio did the windows. The work was pretty good and reasonable, I was dreading doing it by myself.


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## Whitebassfisher

From anything I have heard about asbestos, the danger is in cutting it or grinding it or somehow causing airborne fibers.


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## Wado

*Asbestos*

I had to cut some so I just put on a dust mask and put the wind at my back. I used a Porter Cable reciprocating tool with a carbide spade looking blade. I think the blade was made for ceramic tile but it did the job. I tried scoring it and snapping but that didn't work too good. It's fixing to get doused in paint.


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## sleepersilverado

Looking good, that old galvanized rigid pipe hand rail reminds me of my grandparents old house.

So about that romex attached to the window trim??


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## CAPT. DORADO

Looking good


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## Wado

sleepersilverado said:


> Looking good, that old galvanized rigid pipe hand rail reminds me of my grandparents old house.
> 
> So about that romex attached to the window trim??


Uh Oh! Ain't quite up to code. That wire runs out to the smokehouse where the wringer washing machine was kept and also fires that bug light on the porch. At the front of the house my grandfather had ran three single strand wires overhead out to the garage for lights and a plug in his little shop I guess you would call it. I looked up at them one day and there wasn't any insulation left in spots but he had them on glass insulators and separated. If you would have gotten against the hot and neutral at the same time it would have lit you up. I found the breaker and cut all three wires and wire nutted the ends until I could get in the ceiling and disconnect them from a j box. There was all kinds of surprises in the breaker boxes and the water well still had glass fuses. Yep, that hand rail was bent and made right here, I still have the pipe threader in the barn. We used to have a windmill before the submersible well was drilled and it pumped water into a cypress cistern. When my dad was a kid he said they had ducks and they somehow got in the cistern and was swimming in it, I think they all got parasites from the ducks polluting their water. I was about ten years old when they finally got a cement storage tank. That windmill just about got three of my fingers, usually the stuff my grandfather made was indestructible but it was my lucky day I guess.


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## Wado

*Super Paint*

Well we loaded up Sunday and headed down to the ranch for a week of fun. Monday was power wash and prime the wood trim day. I used a cocktail of bleach and Jomax mold killer to kill the mildew and mold and let me tell you one thing, you don't just spray it on and hose it off. Of course this house had never ever been washed in I don't know how many years so it took some work. I mixed 10.5 quarts of bleach with a half a gallon of Jomax and six or seven gallons of filtered water in a big sprayer tank I have on a Polaris to do the spraying. I ended up making two tanks of this stuff before it was over. Spray it down and let it sit then scrub with a deck brush until you almost pass out and then repeat. The north side was the worst and I almost bought a new pressure washer before we went but I took my old 120 volt 1200 psi one with the worn out nozzle to do the washing. Wasn't no fun. Tuesday the relative humidity was about 20% there and was a perfect day to paint at 72 degrees until about two o clock and it was in the low eighties. I got two coats of Sherwin Williams Super Paint on four hours apart with my Titan airless with a 517 tip. No primer and that stuff dries in about forty five minutes. Dang good paint but hard to brush it dries so fast. I had a couple of over sprays but I ain't no painter and I am cheap so you get what you pay for. It ended up taking two days to do two coats on the trim because a thunderstorm popped up Wednesday towards Tilden and I shut down early, drank beer.:brew2: Glad this mess is over just a little touch up with white around the windows and overspray. I would still like to get that stucco or gunnite that is around the bottom of the house cleaner or stain it somehow. I washed the heck out of it but it still is dirty looking. I hate to try muriatic acid, I have messed with that stuff before and it irritates me bad. Colors are Sherwin Williams Steely Gray and trim is Nomadic Desert.


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## Hooked

What a difference. Looks great!! I know it was a LOT of work but it sure paid off.

Congrats.


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## Wado

*Paint Job*

Thanks, I'm not much for painting. I have the equipment but I don't care for it. Sure made the place look better for sure. That asbestos is some tuff stuff, I have no idea how old it is. I really want it to look like somebody lives there, not too many people in that area. We do have a State Trooper a mile up the road but he works the Valley and is gone a lot. I sure like seeing that black and white cruiser sitting in the driveway, keeps the night riders leery.


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## sotxks

Looks great Wado! It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do! What area is the ranch in? 


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## Wado

Between Pearsall and Charlotte in Frio County. Some call it Schattel Community.


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## sotxks

Nice! That's a nice area to be in! 


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## texcajun

About that asbestos. Think about it, what other siding material out there has been around for 100 years? The house may fall down in another 100 years, but that asbestos siding will still be alright. My sister lives in the house we grew up in. It's over 100 years old and it still has it's original asbestos siding. Heck, even the roof had the original asbestos shingles up until 10 years ago when an even older pecan tree decided to shed on of its limbs. Show me a house with a 90 year old roof!

Hardy plank may last 100 years, but we'll have to live long enough to find out.


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## peckerwood

Cotton-pickin fantastic job ya'll done!Great looking house.


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## Wado

*Progress*

Thanks for the comments, the place needed a little TLC is all. I don't think Hardie Plank can hold a candle to asbestos, if you immerse Hardie in water it will de-laminate. I don't think moisture will affect asbestos but missing a nail when you are putting it on is a disaster. I used a caulk called Loxon I bought at Sherwin Williams to seal the seam where the shingles meet the stucco at the bottom and used it to patch some of the broken pieces as well. It's their equivalent of NP1 but sure is a lot smoother and easier to pump out of the tubes. It troweled easily and didn't sag, worked a lot better than spackling. I got back on the inside last week and put ceiling tile in the living room and need to do some sheetrock repairs in the kitchen dining area and maybe repaint a different color. I bought a wood floor restoring kit that Bona makes and might give the oak floors a try. That ought to be fun.


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## FLAT FISHY

looks great


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## The Last Mango

Guys, Wade is a Master Craftsman , he built some windows one time for my shrimp boat, they look like they should have been in one of Trumps Towers


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## peckerwood

I can't stop going back and looking at your pic's.That's how much I like what you've done.


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## Wado

peckerwood said:


> I can't stop going back and looking at your pic's.That's how much I like what you've done.


I really appreciate that, I was contemplating demolition but for what we spent on the last improvements is about what tearing it down would cost. You can't just walk in there and set it on fire. Our plan is to get a lot more years out of it and if the right person comes along we may rent it. We still have a ways to go. I wish I had gone to my Great Aunt's ranch and took some pictures of the house there before it was demolished three years ago. I don't think it was salvageable, the entire foundation had been destroyed by termites I assume but it was still standing and full of furniture that had been there since the early 1900's maybe even earlier than that. I would ride my motorcycle there when I was 12 or so years old and hang out with my Great Aunts, they were a hoot. She had an old Willy's jeep with no brakes she let me drive when we checked the cows and fed. I took out the gate and fence by the house on one of our excursions, forgot to put it in neutral and coast to a stop. All she did was laugh and talked about it for days. I was pretty animated while we were crashing through the gate. Good ole days.


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## saltwatersensations

Great job. Just needs a big wrap around porch.


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