countdown to grandma: 8 weeks
last weekend we declined two parties to work on the house. we thought it would be all about plaster prep and plaster, but as we’ve learned, this house often has many surprises and nothing is ever THAT simple…
early on saturday morning we found that the top two+ layers of paint chipped off rather easily…
so instead of sanding and prepping for plaster we found that we needed to scrape loose paint from the walls and ceiling.
we found that the beige layer had a waxed coating that released the paint quite easily. we’re wondering how many gallons of paint we’ve removed… before we plaster/repair these walls we’ll have to sand and clean with TSP to remove the weird coating. mathew had to go to work on saturday afternoon so i spent the day and evening scraping and stripping paint.
on sunday morning mathew began by working on the front door which i had started stripping the day before. there had been many locks added and changed over the last 94 years so the door frame was full of weird holes, cuts, repairs and plaster. and the door never closed that easily.
mathew filled the extra holes with wood and bondo and sanded the frame to make it one solid piece again.
next mathew worked on running wires within the walls instead of along the outside of the trim (that always bugged us!) this spot with the thermostat was tricky, we needed to fish a wire from downstairs in the garage and bring it up through this hole. the only problem was it had to come up through holes in wood inside of the wall that we couldn’t see, and they weren’t in a straight line! mathew had seen this technique in his electrical book that he wanted to try. so, in the garage, mathew was pushing a hooked wire up into the space right below the hole (shown left) while i was up here with a “fishing reel” trying to catch the wire and pull it up and through the hole, all while yelling to each other through the floor. i really didn’t think it was possible, but it worked!
next mathew moved on to creating another switch and outlet at the kitchen entrance, using quite possibly the noisiest tool ever.
while mathew worked on his switch and outlet i continued scraping and stripping paint.
and all of this time there was the crazy annual day of the dead parade going by outside of our house. mark and atsuko watched the entire thing from the front steps. mathew and i sneaked out to watch some of it but continued working through the noise and chaos.
hope everyone had a fun halloween! and day of the dead is over but it’s always good to remember and celebrate those we have lost.