Category: entry hallway

way behind schedule

sorry, too much time has gone by since my last post. 1) we’ve been busy. 2) i’ve been lazy. 3) we’ve barely taken any photos (there’s only so much paint stripping you can photograph.) 4) mathew was in new york visiting his brother. 5) and there was one more reason that i’ve forgotten…

mathew installing new picture rail in the hall. (he wanted me to mention that this was a two-person job. i helped and took photos afterwards.)

(left) yay! i stripped all the paint on the door frame and double doors between my office and the living room. (now i just need to sand them…) (right) the foyer with new plaster and stripped wood, ready for paint.

(left) foyer baseboards after paint stripping (ick.) (right) baseboards after sanding (ahh.)

this time around we’re painting with an industrial paint sprayer, this involves masking everything we don’t want painted.

mark moved out at the end of november. mathew opened the door that was sealed shut between the bedroom and living room. and on monday he pulled up the carpet to find foam padding and linoleum.

(left) the picture rail in the foyer. unfortunately in most places it has been stubbornly unstripable. the paint just chipped off of this section to reveal red and gold underneath. (right) we received this weird cauliflower cousin in our organic box delivery today. i’m sure many of our smarty-pants friends and family know what this vegetable is called. i don’t feel like looking it up at the moment, but we thought it was really cool looking.

house monsters

it’s funny (or not!) how it really does have to get ugly before it gets pretty.

(left) stripping paint. (right) stripping more paint.

we now have two heat guns! last weekend the original heat gun died so mathew bought another one. and during the week he successfully fixed the broken one. and then there were two. now we can both strip paint at the same time. yay! more paint fumes!

(left) removing anaglypta in the entry. (right) stripping adhesive in the built-in hall cabinet.

(left) mathew built me this little paint stripping cove to protect my office from dust, paint chips and fumes. (right) and look, here i am doing more paint stripping! (big surprise.)

(left) the anaglypta in the entry was pretty badly damaged by a leak. (right) mold was hiding under the anaglypta.

(left) mathew took over the anaglypta and wallpaper removal in the entry while i moved on to finishing the paint stripping on the built-in cabinet. (right) this is what we looked like all weekend. actually, i pretty much wear the respirator mask all weekend, every weekend. whenever mark’s girlfriend, atsuko sees me she laughs; i guess it’s a pretty funny sight. and she’s started calling us “house monsters.” yes, we are creatures who lurk around, destroying things, making bad smells, loud noises and causing chaos.

on vacation

i took the week off work to try to make things go faster. it has been quite successful. so far, i’ve done two more skim coats on the ceiling.

skim coating the ceiling

i’ve also plastered the remaining two walls in the entry hallway. above right, i’m plastering the wall that’s westmost in the entry hallway. that’s the door to the entry foyer and front door.

second wall completed plaster, looking into entry foyerlooking towards living room, final wall

after plastering that wall in the morning, i moved onto the last wall in the afternoon. i can never judge how much plaster to mix; i always mix too little. you are supposed to coat the whole wall, then double back and put a second coat from the same mix. if you do that, the plaster behaves a lot better, it’s easier to smooth, and it is much more predictable and strong. it’s all supposed to be out of the same mix, and the plaster sets in 20 minutes. yep, gotta move really fast.

looking towards kitchen and living room, with last wall to be plastered on the rightmathew putting plaster on the wall above the door

in the living room, i added a junction box where there were just two wires sticking out of the ceiling (for the light). then, this evening, janeen and i installed the medallion. i put glue on the back side, then fit it up around the junction box.

there are two tricky parts: getting the medallion aligned with the room, and holding it up while the glue sets. janeen came up with a really clever system; we put bubble wrap over a bucket, then set the bucket on top of the ladder, and spaced it up with a box and some pieces of wood.

temporary support for the medalion while glue sets

starting plaster

This weekend we did quite a lot. The old anaglypta, while quite nice, was rather badly damaged, and had so many coats of paint, it was difficult to see the pattern. janeen took some photos (the color was white — something funny with the incandescent bulb made it look orange…)

so we bought some new anaglypta wall paper, but have to remove the old stuff first. a multi step process. at first, we tried using the heat gun. slow and messy. then i attacked it with a scraper. the paper separated in the middle leaving a layer of paper on the wall. we then used wallpaper remover to get down to the plaster.

removing the paper that was still stuck

above right, janeen painted all the walls with pink plasterweld. she kept finding more loose paint, and so eventually almost every square inch of walls had been scraped clear of paint. i think janeen made two full garbage bags full of paint scrapings from this one room alone. i sanded all the walls and ceiling, and washed the walls and ceiling with tsp.

hallway ceiling with plaster washers for support

here you can se the state of the ceiling. all the little dots are plaster washers. i probably put up more than 200 plaster washers on the ceiling and on the walls. in the pictures below, i’m adding tape along all the cracks. took a long time to tape around a circle. lots of little pieces of tape.

this is the first of three skim coats of lighweight joint compound that i put on the ceiling. it’s starting to look more even.

we then finished preparing the walls for plastering, and we plastered the wall between our hallway and the entry hallway. janeen likes the shadows…