(left) we laid down protective paper and plastic. one of the disadvantages to having the floors done “out of sequence” because now we have to strip the wallpaper in the office and worry about damaging the floors with all the water! (right) i don’t know what mathew is doing here, probably taping the heating vent so it doesn’t leak. but i thought it was a funny photo…
mathew adding electrical outlets throughout the room. as always this means making holes in the walls!
…and drilling down to the garage so the wiring has somewhere to go. this always freaks me out but mathew seems to know what he’s doing. (right) while he was downstairs in the garage, i was laying down plastic and heard a noise coming from the hole he just made in the baseboard. i was surprised to see this: a drill coming up from downstairs! looks like he was right on target.
(left) i’m always curious to know what the house looked like in 1914. here’s some bright green wallpaper. can’t imagine this covering the entire room. the previous owners were bold with their design choices! (right) the wallpaper and paint in this corner was loose and couldn’t wait to come off the wall. there are some cracks here and water damage is the reason the wallpaper no longer sticks to the plaster.
we rented a wallpaper steamer and the next day we started attacking the walls. we thought it would be a quick and easy project because it was a living room and not a kitchen, so the walls weren’t coated in grease. the coverings should just slide off, right? WRONG. assuming something will be easy, is always our first mistake! it was slow-going (right) and the plastic we taped onto the baseboards wasn’t doing its job. water was getting trapped under the plastic!
(left) on this wall we discovered a completely different original wallpaper: pink and green floral on white. (right) here are i am scraping at the paint, in the hope that the wallpaper would be easier to steam without it in the way. not so much…
it was a long and tiring night. and we still aren’t done with removing the wall paper. do you understand why it’s taken me so long to make a blog post? (right) on a brighter note: mathew finished the shelves for the built-in hall cabinet. popo wasted no time moving her trinkets onto the shelves, of which i don’t have a photo. i guess i’m not a fan of the trinkets… but it’s her space, not ours and we want her to be happy.
last weekend was labor day weekend. and how did we celebrate? with a house full of people and plenty of labor!
saturday morning started with quiet picture rail filling and trim masking.
(left) then the plastic door went up and mathew started painting the walls. (right) mathew’s brother misha is visiting from new york! he put his clothes on inside out and helped with painting.
(left) i spent the entire day painting kitchen cabinet doors in the garage. when the sprayer noise finally stopped i ventured upstairs for a peek. i was shocked by how pink just the reflection of the wall color was. and when i walked into the room it was PINK. it’s actually darker than the photo (if you can believe it.) my grandmother loves pink. last year we painted the living room a very pale “i love you” pink. the plan was to paint her bedroom a slightly darker “valentine’s day” pink, but for some (insane) reason we decided to be bold and paint two walls “pretty pink.” my parents say that my grandmother painted a house this color years ago… we hope she likes it..!
misha’s friend aja is also staying with us and she’s a personal chef! so, you guessed it, we’ve been eating yummy food. we appreciate her sunny presence and patience while misha helps us and we work late into the night.
on sunday my parents arrived. my mom was raving about the new cabinet color and wondering if they needed sunglasses in the pink room.
(left) my dad sanding the wood surface in the built in hall cabinet. (right) mathew priming the picture rails.
(left) while laughing uncontrollably i took this photo of my mom, amazed at her dedication to the project. i certainly hope no one will ever lie down and check to see if the underside of the swivel cabinet door is painted, but if they do, they will be impressed. (right) painting the cabinet doors with a roller and latex paint (instead of oil paint and a brush) makes the project fly by! i even felt a little guilty for keeping this fun and easy project all to myself.
(left) my dad admiring our new porch lamp. (right) here i am painting my “sistine cabinet.” it was now my mom’s turn to laugh at me.
(left) misha, back with inside-out clothing to give the cabinets a second coat. (right) mathew cleaning the shower tile, prepping it for grout sealer. another late night.
(left) monday morning. my mom, up a ladder painting picture rails with semi-gloss. (right) my dad touching up trim paint while enjoying a cool breeze.
(left) mathew and my mom attaching the bathroom vanity door after it has been painted. (right) misha and mathew carefully moving the (HEAVY) glass shower walls and door up from the garage.
(left) my mom chipping away at thick ugly grout where it shouldn’t have been. (right) here i am continuing the painting of the picture rails where my mom left off.
(left) misha installing the window hardware. (right) mathew and the completed shower enclosure. it was another late night. i was in the garage giving the cabinet doors a second coat and then stripping paint off the bathroom door. for the first time in the two years since we’ve been working on this house, mathew came down to tell me he was done for the night while i continued working.
i hope everyone had a nice long labor day weekend!
my mom was painting. my dad was filling and painting.
mathew was stripping trim, prepping for paint and i was up on my ladder finishing the picture rail prep.
filling. sanding.
sanding. sanding. sanding.
painting. painting.
before paint.
(left) mathew sealing himself into the room with the paint sprayer. it’s a smelly noisy process but so much faster than brushes and rollers. mathew sprayed the entire room with primer and the following day he sprayed the trim with semi gloss paint. (right) after paint.
as nice as the trim looks in natural wood, it would take a lot more time to prep and polyurethane it to make it look really nice. so everything is white again, but this time it’s clean and smooth and lead-free.
last weekend more quality time was spent with the rented wallpaper steamer. we were determined to remove the remaining stubborn wallpaper in the kitchen. some people wondered, “why not paint over it?” “why not just tear out all the plaster and replace with gypboard?”
1) painting over the wallpaper was what had been done by previous owners and in most places the paint just didn’t stick well and chipped off easily in large sheets. plus from the way it had browned and aged, we’re guessing the adhesives were not archival and would probably show through the paint over time. 2) and as with the rest of this remodel/restoration project, being as environmentally conscious and keeping as much out of landfill as possible was a big concern. tearing out plaster from all the rooms would require a large dumpster. removing old paint and wallpaper, produces just a few small garbage bins worth of waste. and the old plaster is so much more beautiful and durable than gypboard!
(above left) mathew is removing the door frame for the door that was removed and blocked off leading from the kitchen to the bathroom. (above right) after the trim and wallpaper has been removed.
when the kitchen was almost done i realized “coffee and a kick in the pants” had gotten damaged. all that remained on the wall was “kick in the pants”, “coffee” had somehow gone missing! it’s silly that we got so upset, but it was a clipping given to us by mathew’s brother misha, and it has been with us for 10-12 years! i eventually found “coffee”, it was trying to blend in with the discarded wallpaper on the floor.
around 8pm on sunday night mathew decided we should tackle the second entry/hallway. his only experience with wallpaper removal had been the kitchen and that WASN’T fun. the paint and wallpaper in this hallway flew/melted off the wall and mathew understood what my experience with my mom had been removing wallpaper in the bedroom. the plaster on this wall was in fairly good condition with only a few cracks. it looked like the previous owners had used some sort of red stain/paint on the bare plaster.
next mathew decided we should work on the opposite wall (not shown.) this did not go as smoothly and when removing the top layers the smell of mold surfaced. basically we were trying to remove paint and wallpaper from moldy gypboard and eventually decided to just replace the gypboard.
done a lot of door sanding and finishing lately. this is the door between the hallway of the downstairs unit and the hallway that leads to the upper unit. i’ve developed some techniques that makes it go faster. first we strip off the paint from all flat surfaces. on the first pass, i just work to get as much of the paint off as quickly as i can. janeen is really good at getting paint off the intricate areas of molding.
after getting all the paint off, then we do a second pass to clean up the edges and corners, and missed paint. it works much better to do two passes, because if the paint gets too hot, it melts and smears into the wood.
Then sanding. sanding the flat areas is really fast. the intricate bits are really, really slow though. i’ve added a piece of wood at the bottom of the door. it still needs trimming and filling in the photo below.
i guess the old door hardware did not work very well, so they installed modern hardware. To do that, they drilled out a large hole in the door where the hardware attaches. i’m trying to go back to traditional hardware, so i’ve filled most of the hole that was cut out of the door. The remaining part will be covered by a brass cover plate.
janeen couldn’t resist doing more paint scraping in the downstairs bedroom (below left). we also primed the wainscote in the downstairs bathroom.
i made the top for janeen’s standing desk. got a bit fancy with the edge of the desk, using a 1/8″ thick strip of redwood as an accent. it would look better if the edging were maple (like the veneer on the plywood.) the accent strip would hide the join and look decorative. but i had left over oak from doing the floors, so used that. now it’s an amalgam of woods!
photo above right: almost all my clamps were needed to clamp on the edging while the glue dried. the desk isn’t finished: i still need to make draws. below: the desk in its temporary home, until we get the office done.
we’re reached the point in our remodel where everything is starting to look familiar because we’ve done it once before.
similar to when we were working on the living room on this level, mathew rented scaffolding to prep and install the bedroom and bathroom windows.
first he removed all the interior and exterior window trim and then he removed the big bedroom window.
(left) while all of this was going on, i came up from the garage, took a break from stripping wainscoting and noticed how easily the paint/plaster/wallpaper chipped off the bedroom wall. (right) and i helped mathew install the bathroom window. he set up shims on the window sill inside and had me hold them in place while he inserted the window from the outside. he had me use the level to make sure the window was aligned correctly then he screwed it in place from outside.
(left) next it was time to install the giant bedroom window, but first we had to carry it upstairs from the garage. this was no easy feat, check out the size of the stair well… mathew estimates the window weighs about 100 pounds, and the stairwell is so tight that mathew has to duck every time he walks up or down the stairs. we took the window out of the box and it has these big vinyl fins all around the window, which make it easy for attaching to the outside of the house, but impossible to hold onto or place down on the floor to rest. so we struggled with carrying this window, carefully up this stairwell without hurting the window, the walls or ourselves. let me just say, it was tiring and STRESSFUL. if it were daytime we probably should have carried it up the outside stairs, but since the box had already been taken apart and mathew was determined to install the window that night… we had dinner then came back to install it.
(right) this photo was taken the next morning, AFTER the installation. installing the window was stressful but not as much as carrying it upstairs! the tricky thing was that the window had to be passed through the opening then lifted up into place and installed from outside while standing on the scaffolding. at that point the scaffolding was set up to reach above the window; i had the idea to remove the top bars so that we would have room to maneuver the window outside.
first i went outside onto the scaffolding while mathew passed the window through the opening to me while climbing outside too. then i went back inside and placed the shims on the sill while mathew tried to balance the window on it’s crazy vinyl fins. next he lifted the window into place on top of the shims. it took some adjusting, adding shims until the window was level. we passed tools to each other through the new bathroom window. and while mathew was screwing the entire window in place i was holding a light up in the bathroom window so he could see what he was doing. what a night!
(left) before all of that, i was having fun chipping off the paint/plaster/wallpaper in the bedroom. that splodgy plaster technique (see white wall photo above) is really ugly but i managed to make the room even uglier! (right) mathew took this photo of the chips on the floor but that was nothing. they were seriously everywhere!
on sunday mathew worked on sealing around the new windows and replacing the exterior siding and trim.
i painted the gypboard and backer strips where the wainscoting will be installed, just one more moisture barrier.
(left) and then i got to work installing the wainscoting. because of the uneven floor i have to measure for each piece then cut them on the miter saw. mathew taught me how to use the air-powered nailer, a tool i never thought i’d use, because i hate the gun-like quality and the NOISE involved. it was after i’d installed quite a few of these tongue in groove boards that i realized it was a very simplified version of installing flooring. so, in the end i did get to learn something about flooring! you might wonder why these boards are so ugly… they are RECYCLED. these are the boards i’ve been stripping downstairs in the garage, eventually they will be painted white. in a way, this is MY project: i stripped the boards (with the help of the gee sisters!), i cut and installed gypboard and backer strips, now i’m cutting and installing the boards, next i’ll sand and paint them. except for the painting, mathew did this entire process for the upstairs bathroom in 2008.
(right) the gladiolus (bulbs i planted) have finally arrived!
i hope you’ve got some time to spend here… because this is by far the biggest blog post i’ve ever made since we started this remodel/restoration.
the foyer
(left) in january 2008 my sister-in-law, najia pulled up the linoleum tile that was glued to the old oak floor. (right) in august 2008 mathew’s dad, daniel came over to assess the existing oak floors.
last friday morning, 4.6.09, daniel returned with lots of his flooring tools. he and mathew got to work installing floors, something they haven’t done together since 1996?
(left) after mathew has sanded the old oak. [I sanded the old floor before taking it out so that I could compost it! Also, I was thinking that maybe I’d need to reuse some of it in Janeen’s office, as the wood in the office looked so bad. – turtle] (right) after the old floor was pulled up, paper was put down. the process started with cutting the baseboards with a jamb-saw so that the oak pieces can slip underneath them. normally when installing floors daniel will remove the baseboards, install the floor then replace the baseboards. since mathew and i had already refinished and painted the baseboards, and they are large, old, brittle and intricate, it didn’t make sense to pull them out.
(left) oak floor boards being installed. (right) daniel doing the first sanding after filler has been added to patch any cracks or gaps.
the finished foyer floor after lots of sanding and 3 coats of water-based urethane.
the hall
most of the rooms had carpets and linoleum when we first moved in. none of the floor coverings matched. this hall had (1) brown carpet over (2) really thick pink and blue linoleum over (3) really retro hard linoleum tile (above right, my parents removing it) over (4) a cool printed linoleum “area rug” over (5) red painted fir sub floor boards.
(left) the cool printed linoleum “area rug.” (right) sub floor painted red where it was exposed under the “area rug”
(left) daniel loves to blast music when he’s working. they’re wearing hearing protection most of the time so it makes sense that it should be loud. i’m assuming this is dancing and not some sort of flooring ritual/technique… [he’s managed to get his feet tangled in the air hose, and said he was doing the “floorman’s shuffle” (ie, trying not to trip). – turtle] (right) i took this photo right after i returned from my weekend trip on sunday evening. i surprised mathew when the flash went off after suddenly appearing in the kitchen.
(left) filling (“gooping” is what they called it. is that the technical term?) gaps and cracks in the floor. [twenty years ago, the only filler that floormen used was a brand named “goop” – it smelled really strongly, but held better in the floor than most fillers. the filler we were using now is a water-based filler. the old stuff is probably illegal in California because it has too high VOC.- turtle]. (right) the first sanding on monday morning. “look, no hands!”
(left) mathew edge sanding with a different sander. (right) the big sander tends to pull the filler up so here i am re-filling after the first sanding on monday evening.
(left) i watch as the first coat of water-based urethane goes on tuesday afternoon. (right) on tuesday night after going out for indian pizza (to celebrate my birthday) mathew and daniel sweep the floors with blue paper, after vacumming most of the dust, to remove the last bits of dust from the very fine sanding between coats.
(left) after the sweep, daniel and mathew applied the second coat of urethane. (right) and here it is after it’s 3rd and final coat!
the living room
(left) here’s what the red sub floor looked like. (right) paper added and the beginnings of the border.
the border is pieced and installed first then the rest of the floor is installed.
(left) mathew chose a 3/4″ walnut border to surround each room. he said that adding the border possibly doubles the work time. [at least! we did a five board border. When there’s a border around the room, every piece of wood that fits inside it must be cut perfectly to length — and with me as the perfectionist homeowner, 1/64″ undersize was barely acceptable. I know how the filler will jump out of cracks over time. – turtle] (right) approaching the final board.
the living room after filling, sanding, filling, sanding, sanding, sanding, edge sanding, vacuuming, coating, screening, vacuuming, sweeping, coating, screening, vacuuming, sweeping, coating. did i miss a step? [fine sanding “screening” is done between each coat to smooth out raised grain (we’re using water-based urethane), help adhesion, and smooth off any dust in the previous coat. oh, the final step: everything is covered in a fine layer of dust, so vacuuming of walls, trim, etc is the final step. – turtle]
sooo… i spent most of the weekend in santa barbara with margaret. we walked, we talked, we ate and sort of shopped. mostly we just caught up during our yearly visit.
the office
this is the CHAOS that was my office. since we moved in, in september of 2007, we haven’t bothered (or had time) to organize, plan, paint or even unpack this room.
on monday while mathew was fixing the turkish hacker fiasco (see previous post), i was packing and packing. my office has temporarily moved into our upstairs bedroom, and most of my stuff is in the downstairs kitchen and bedroom. then mathew moved all the furniture and here it is empty again.
the floors in this room are quarter sawn oak. they were old, dirty, tired and stained. daniel was most excited about this transformation.
here daniel is doing the first sanding. already a dramatic difference.
after the sanding they discussed what the next step would be. “to goop? or not to goop?”
old floors like this one were nailed individually and not installed with tongue and groove boards like they are today. so there are tons of little nail holes and gaps between the boards. the decision was to “goop” the floor. (right) mathew is applying the filler with a large spackling tool, working in fast, quick strokes. he’s trying to apply pressure in two directions to make sure the filler completely fills and sticks in the holes. i helped too but only covered 1/4 of the floor that mathew covered in the same amount of time.
(left) completely gooped. (right) the partially sanded floor after gooping. nice!
(left) daniel “rocket-man” vacuuming after the sanding and before the first urethane coat on tuesday. (right) how the floors looked late on wednesday afternoon when i was allowed to walk downstairs in socks. the radio had been on all day because after the final coat it was impossible to get to. daniel coated the floors and made sure he finished at the front door to make his final exit and leave after 6 days of live-in work.
the second foyer/hall
this is the hallway that leads to our upstairs unit. it started with carpet and fir sub floor underneath.
(left) mathew and daniel installing the border, then interior floor boards. (right) father and son happy to work together again. although i was told that working with mathew was like working with a really high-maintenance, picky, perfectionist client who never left the house… during the entire weekend mathew was BOSSY but daniel, as always, maintained a positive attitude with a smile on his face.
the process of flooring is NOISY, dusty and smelly. and hard on the knees, back and i’m guessing, hands. even though i had been looking forward to helping install these floors i was glad to be away for most of the noise. (right) sometimes the last piece of wood is an odd shape and size. here mathew is installing that last sliver after carefully planing and shaping it to fit perfectly.
dumpy watches as mathew goops. mathew was up sanding this bit of floor till almost 10pm that sunday night…
flooring is a hugely labor-intensive process but in the end we have beautful, beautiful new floors. thank you daniel and mathew! it was possibly the biggest birthday present ever.
(right) flowers from daniel. (i LOVE gerber daisies.) vegan chocolate cupcakes by janeen. i plan on celebrating for at least a week… but i’m running out of cupcakes. must make more.
we spent hours sanding and filling the door taken from the basement. this photo shows where a piece of wood had been used to fill where the door handle had been moved, many years ago. janeen counted the layers of color. it was archeology:
dark green
dark grey green
apple green
dark brown
medium grey
mint green
medium grey (again – i guess they decided they liked the color)
cream
pale turquoise
off white
white
we then added a piece of wood to the bottom of the door. the door from the garage is shorter than the opening upstairs by about 5 1/2″. We just added a piece of 2×6 from my offcuts pile onto the bottom of the door. janeen used the biscuit joiner to cut slots for wood ‘biskits’ that will hold the new piece of wood to the bottom of the door. she also screwed in two 6″ long bolts to help clamp the wood while the glue dried.
it’s not ideal. panel doors are built with vertical pieces on each side, and horizontal pieces connected between them. the vertical side members help to prevent the horizontal pieces from warping. the piece we added has no vertical pieces, so it may warp. the bolts may help. we’ll see.
the next day, i planed the wood flush with the face of the door.
above right: dumpy has a palatial new home. janeen finished off most of the trim painting in the front entry foyer.
meanwhile, i tore out the makeshift ceiling and walls in the closets between the bedroom and the living room and framed in a wall between the living room and the bedroom. our plan is to create a bookshelf on the living room side, and a closet on the bedroom side out of this short passage between the rooms.
I made a hatch to get at the space over the closet in case I need to get to the plumbing under the bathroom above, and added in wiring for a light in each of the three closets.
above left: the view janeen saw of me on new years day. on the right, the framing is installed.
we got most of the gyp board on.
janeen painting the trim around the living room doors.
i cleaned up the light in the entry hallway. you’ll have to look back to see how it looked before. but i really like the retro patterned glass. i also painted the cover plate at the top of the light to match the walls: janeen calls it a Mercedes hubcap.
ok, one last thing: this door between the bedroom and the bathroom was closed up. we are planning to re-open it. here you can see how insulation and a wall was framed in front of the door. get ready for ugly.
i sealed the heating ducts with aluminum tape while mathew masked the crown moulding, picture rails and door frames in the living room.
(left) ready for spraying. (right) the color in the living room is a very pale pink (i’ll take a daytime photo soon.) my grandmother loves pink and we thought it would be fun to give her a cheerful, fun color, but when the paint first went on, it was late at night and i was worried i made a bad choice. but now that it has dried and we have seen it in natural light we like it more and more.
on this night we were up till 1:30 painting and i added color above the picture rails and gave the walls a second coat.
we celebrated mathew’s sister evamarie’s birthday on monday. she is visiting from minnesota but will move back to the bay area in 7 months. yay! (left to right: turtle, eva, daniel, elijah, leonora, mole.)
and finally we have color! it was worth it staying up till 1 am painting.
