This strange old house

[bmxdad]

My daughter is thinking of buying a house, through a lease to own deal. The cost is about what the land is worth, so not to bad a deal .... however ...

House is a craftsman style built in the early 1930's, located in Pierce County, Washington. It's had a few additions added to it, considering it looked like a one bedroom, with an out house. Now has two bedrooms and 1 1/2 baths. The weird part is the construction. Framing looks like typical balloon style with full dimension wood, 2x4s are a full 2" x 4".

The strange part is that every single interior wall has shiplap siding. Looks like 1/2" thickness, with some type of cloth used as a wallpaper. I was wondering if anyone has worked on this type construction. Is it structural? I'm thinking yes, but thought I'd throw it out to the GJ crowd ... lot of experience out there.

Some picture included ...
#1 is a view of a door frame, both walls are interior.
#2-4 is a bathroom with the shiplap removed, done by the previous owner.
#5 is a wall in the kitchen, showing the covering.

 

[FullRaceMerc]

Lots of Craftsman houses were built by homeowners. There were plans & magazines that encouraged building your own with local materials. The builder might have had access to ship lap cheap, or didn't have plaster skills & found a shortcut.

As for structural, I don't see any diagonal bracing in the pics. Normally on older homes there is some diagonal bracing (Plywood sheer panels in newer homes) to prevent the walls from racking. The horizontal ship lap might add some minor diagonal support, but not as much as a single diagonal piece. If you remove it be sure to add some sort of shear. Maybe even if you leave it.

My house (Not a craftsman) has some odd stuff. Steel wiring. It's a pre/mid WW2 house & is finished with whatever materials they could get. It starts out solid, but towards the end gets weird. Framing below is normal. Exterior walls are built with diagonal 1x8 sheathing everywhere under the stucco. Looks like overkill, but I'm not tearing it out. The rafters look like salvage from some old fence. 4 different types of windows, mixed door knobs, & so on.

 

[Justanoldguy]

Very Typical '30's to '50's build style here in NZ.
Shiplap over 2" x 4" framing.
Then SCRIM over that and wallpaper to finish.

see here about scrim.

http://www.propertytoolbox.co.nz/blog/2010/06/29/what-is-scrim-and-sarking/

 

[58Yeoman]

The last house I lived in was built in 1936. All the subflooring was used as forms for the basement walls. You could see each individual board in some places on the walls, and you could see the concrete 'residue' on the floor boards looking up while in the basement.

 

[readhead]

I've worked on several houses like that. It may have been a kit. Also consider where you are. Wood was cheap. Plaster would have been a luxury on a small house like that.

 

[kgordon]

I would take it out if you don't need it. That said you will never had to hunt for studs to hang rock or pictures ever again. Kinda an upside i think. Unless your doing electric.

 

[theoldwizard1]

Full dimension 2x4s are not uncommon in pre-WWII buildings.

 

[Steevo]

I'd leave the boards on the walls wherever possible, for the convenience of hanging pictures, shelves, etc. Just use thin sheet rock over it for finishing.
You won't be able to find cheap pre-hung doors though, because the wall thickness will be non-standard for today's big box store offerings.

 

[My Old Tools]

Looks just like a house we had built in 1909. Shiplap inside and out (long leaf yellow pine in our case, bends nails like crazy) and wallpaper hung on cheese cloth. I rewired the old spool and tube to Romex by cutting holes where ever I wanted in the shiplap. Then we just sheetrocked over it all when we were done. The shiplap is the structural integrity of a balloon constructed house. It you remove it you will have racking.

 

[capww8]

That is exactly like my house, which we have (and continue to) remodel extensively. Please let me know if I can help at all.

Echo what others have said, leave the 'keyboards' in place unless they cause a real problem for some reason.

Buy a Fein Multimaster - it is indispensable when roughing in anything in a house like this.

Pull the nails and slap up 1/2" drywall over the existing walls, and finish normally. You'll have to build your door frames, but that's no big deal.

 

[larry_g]

As you said a few additions, like my old house. At one time many of the interior walls were outside walls hence the shiplap.

lg
no neat sigline

 

[DC73]

You won't be able to find cheap pre-hung doors though, because the wall thickness will be non-standard for today's big box store offerings.

Actually, you can still use the standard pre-hung doors if you don't might a bit of trim work. Just install the door with the hinge side jams flush to a wall and then extend the jambs on the other side by buying or building some trim.

DC

 

[bmxdad]

I'm real concerned about removing all the shiplap from the walls, for a structural reason.

How about this for an idea ... remove it from floor level to about 3' to 4'. Leaving the old wood, and using the stuff from below to make sure only good wood is shown. Sheet rock the bottom piece, almost like a reverse wainscoted wall. Heck, even a real wainscoted look would be nice by leaving the bottom wood and removing the top part of the wall. They like the look of the old wood.

This would, or should, keep some structural rigidity in the wall a nice step molding could be used to transition top and bottom. This also opens wall up so they could add some new wiring and data lines .... what do you think?

 

[Bib Overalls]

Recently we took down a similar building in Lake City, Arkansas. It was built out of locally milled cypress. The inside walls were covered with boards, then pasted on newspaper followed by a heavy wallpaper with what looked like cheese cloth embedded in it. We had to take it down because there was serious termite damage, the wall studs were randomly spaces, and the headers over doors and windows were, where they existed, undersized. Ate our shirt on that one.

 

[bmxdad]

Yea, that's what I'm seeing too. Studs are varying from 18" to 30" OC ... and doorways have no doubling of studs and the headers are just nailed in place blocking. But I think that is how a balloon structure is built. How it's lasted so long, with all the quakes, is amazing. Either its like a noodle and going with the flow, or the shiplap is adding a lot of rigidity.

 

[arenbesu]

There were plans & magazines that encouraged building your own with local materials.

 

[AndyCBR]

I'll echo what others are saying. Pretty common construction practice for the time even down south. The houses tend to hold up well because like you said the lateral boards stiffen up the structure even if it is a little "under-framed".

Mostly I think because the construction pre dates the wide availability of sheet goods and the 4x8 world we have now.

Lots of shotgun elevated homes around Baton Rouge have this construction that were built in the early 1900's. Even my buddy's 60's era house has no sheet materials in the framing at all.

Most of the older elevated homes around here that have that construction fail from sinking piers and/or wood rot due to condensation issues in the crawl space (a result of air conditioning these old leaky homes that never were designed for it).