downstairs – Page 10 – turtle + mole

and another door

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.

Door to upstairs before stripping 03doorpartiallystripped

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.

04doorpaintoff 05doorcleaninguppaint

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.

06doorsandingstarted 08dooraddingbottom

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.

07doorfilling 09doorsandingfiller

janeen couldn’t resist doing more paint scraping in the downstairs bedroom (below left). we also primed the wainscote in the downstairs bathroom.

10janeenscrapingpaint 12paintingwainscote

13paintedwainscote 11deskclamping

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.

00desk 01desk

Living Room Doors

We finished one more thing on the list: the doors between Janeen’s office and the living room. After stripping all the paint off the doors, we carefully sanded the doors.

Sanding living room doors 2livingrmdoors

I then stained the doors with an oil based stain called ‘Old American’. It’s actually a lot more yellow than the photo below right shows. Below left you can see the door before it was stained.

3lrd_before-stain 4lrd_stain

We had some trouble at first figuring out how to strip the paint off the old brass door hardware. It’s much more delicate than the steel hinges, so we couldn’t attack it with a wire brush and heat gun. At first we tried using the heat gun, but the paint just wouldn’t come off completely. Chemical paint stripper and a toothbrush did the trick beautifully, though. And it didn’t damage the black oxide background to the patterns on the hand grips. They then polished up nicely with Brasso. Below right you can see how they looked on the door before.

5lrd_handlespolished Living room door handles before

After two coats of oil based color polyurethane (‘cherry’), the doors are done.

8lrd_fromoffice 7lrd_fromlivrm

I reinstalled the brass hardware, and after a bit of adjustment, it all works quite nicely. The doors are not perfect, but I like the slight dents and imperfections: the doors are 100 years old, after all.

6lrd_handles-installed

Janeen took the photo below. I think she was trying to decide if these are good work boots. The photo on the right shows the stain rags, air drying. Apparently if you bundle them up in a plastic garbage bag when wet, they can spontaneously catch fire. Not good in a wood house.

9jashoes 9rags

We ordered a fancy new desk for Janeen: It’s height can be adjusted electrically, to be a standing or sitting desk. I need to make a top for it, though. Until we get the office complete, the living room will be Janeen’s office.

9desk1-assembly 9desk2-assembly

doors

Right now it feels like we are moving in slow motion. We have got the bathroom to a point where it’s ready to paint. Before we can get the bedroom finished, we need to rent the insulation blower again, and fill the walls with insulation. But all of Janeen’s office furniture is currently in the kitchen (we moved it there before doing the floors). To clear it out, and finish the bedroom and kitchen, Janeen is going to move her office into the downstairs living room while we work on the kitchen and bedroom. This way, we can move onto working on her office without moving all the furniture again.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to get the downstairs living room finished and sealed off. Until now, the door into the living room has been siting in the garage. Janeen had already stripped the paint off the door, and done most of the sanding. Time to stain and finish it.
01_livingrmdr_sanding 02_livingrmdr_sanded

03_livingrmdr_done 04_livingrmdr_done

The stain turned out quite a bit darker than I had planned, but I think it looks ok next to the white trim. Also, I started finishing the double doors that lead between the front and the living room.

To seal the living room from the front room (Janeen’s office), I need to finish the double doors that lead between the two rooms. Janeen has already stripped the paint from one side. The doors had been varnished originally, then painted over in white at some time. It’s obvious there was some incompatibility between the paint and the varnish, as the paint had gone all cracked. The photo on the right below shows the chipped paint, and also the random lines of cracking in the paint.

05_livingrmdbl_before 06_livingrmdbl_before

Stripping off the old paint went really fast, as the old finish must have been waxed. Upon applying the heat gun, the paint just bubbled up and fell off in sheets, exposing the old finish. The finish was a faux wood grain, on top of wood! It’s a pity I could not save the old finish. It’s much too damaged. The faux finish must have given a uniform appearance, and made the doors look like hardwood, instead of beautiful old-growth douglas fir. Well, I’m no faux finisher. We’re just going to use stain and polyurethane.

07_livingrmdbl_strippingpt 08_livingrmdbl_oldfinish

where were we?

this is what happened two weekends ago.

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on saturday i sanded the wainscoting.

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while mathew was down in the garage cutting and shaping the white marble that will go around the downstairs bathroom window.

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(left) vacuuming, prepping for grout. (right) grouting. notice the new marble frame around the window?

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(left) after grout has been applied. (right) white recycled tile and new marble window frame and sill.

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on sunday i deserted mathew to attend my first of three letterpress classes at san francisco center for the book…

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door13_53009 door14_53009

at home mathew had installed glass in the upstairs bedroom back-door.

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here he is creating trim on the router table he made. this is the last piece needed to finish the upstairs bathroom window, for some reason it wasn’t added last year.

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creating the curve that faces out.

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(left) without lower trim. (right) after mathew added the trim and finished caulking the gaps. nice, huh?

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apparently it was a day of odds and ends and completing unfinished projects. here is the exterior side door on the garage. (left) old, ugly, peeling trim. (right) trim removed.

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(left) this looks like a good piece of wood to reuse… (right) this is what happens when the router decides to get creative and goes astray… [I was learning how to use the router table to make trim, so I figured the garage door beside the garbage cans is a good place to start. I had to set up guides at the side and top of the board to hold it firmly in place as it slides through the router, or it gets the dents shown above. – turtle]

trim25_53009 trim26_53009

the new exterior door trim before and after paint. possibly a little too beautiful for an exterior garage door? hopefully the garbage, recycling and compost bins will appreciate the new decor!

…and more tile.

last weekend we were excited to have 3 full days to work on the house.

window window

mathew started by finishing the laundry room frame and wall siding on the new bathroom window that he made and installed. then he covered the plywood with some of that star paneling that was used upstairs on the walls. this will eventually be sanded and painted white to match the rest of the wall. i’ve almost forgotten that this used to be the bathroom door.

tile tile

on saturday all i did was clean up recycled tile. we even got to re-use some of the white tile that used to be in the old (stenchy) pink upstairs bathroom. because the previous owners had used mastic (glue adhesive) instead of thin-set to install the tile, mathew found it was easier to clean using the heat gun in the garage. the white tile looks brand new!

tile tile

on sunday i woke up with food poisoning so mathew worked alone for the rest of the weekend. he finished cleaning all the blue tile, cut and installed it to fit around the window, and floor.

tile dremel

and he even bought a dremel tool to grind out some of the old grout that wasn’t applied correctly. when i wandered down to take photos i was surprised by how much it sounded and smelled like drilling teeth at the dentist’s office. ick.

window wainscoting

and mathew wouldn’t be mathew if he didn’t go one step further with the details. (left) he purchased, cut and corner-rounded some white marble for the window sill. the recycled white tiles are around the inside edge next to the window. more white marble will go around the outside of the window next to the blue tile, to give the impression of a window frame. it took us a while to decide exactly what to do in that space between the blue tile and the window. it would have been impossible (and not very pretty) to cut and install small pieces of the blue to fill that thin space. (right) and he routed and installed wainscoting top ledges that will go around the room. now it’s time for me to sand the wainscotting and make it pretty again.

tile. and other things.

exterior

here’s how the exterior looks after the painting has been done and the scaffolding removed. nice, huh? now when i look at the rest of the house and see peeling paint it makes me want to get out there and scrape, sand and paint. …but one thing at a time.

window window

mathew finished making this bathroom window from the large old bedroom window that was replaced. he cut the metal, pieced it together, cut the glass (with much difficulty) and installed it into the frame. we’ll add a translucent film for privacy since it looks out onto the laundry room, but it really helps to add natural daylight to the room. (right) here it is again with the window trim moulding added which will be painted eventually.

kerdi kerdi

during the week mathew put up kerdi membrane, a special water barrier cloth that goes under the tile where he had removed the old window, tub and shower fixtures.

mathew janeen

last weekend we got to work installing tile in those gaps over the kerdi.

janeen janeen

even though we’ve already had lots of tile experience, installing this tile was painstaking work. since we’re recycling it, it’s no longer in big sheets with mesh backing but in pieces, so we had to apply each small piece and eyeball it to make sure it lined up with the old tile.

mathew tile

(left) here mathew is cleaning out excess thin-set that squeezed out between the tiles. (right) and i am cleaning the backs of more tile to be installed. we need enough to go around the new window to the right and to fill the rest of this wall where mathew is working. it is a very SLOW process.

while we worked last weekend mathew came to the realization that this remodel has taken as long as it has because of mathew’s perfectionism and my desire to recycle and not contribute to landfill…

back to work

We haven’t made a post in a while: It’s because we got some rather unmotivating news; Po-Po has decided that she wants to move into a nursing home. The amount of time this is taking us has probably played into it a bit, but mostly she’s concerned that she does not want to have to cook, wants to have a nurse on call, and does not want to clean. All of this we can come up with ways to do, but also, she’s planning to move into a place with her sister-in-law. We understand that it may be lonely still living downstairs here, even though we are here. But at the rate we are working, she can go check out a nursing home for a few months; if she doesn’t like it or changes her mind, she’ll still be welcome here when we’re done!

We are now floating ideas of what we will do with the downstairs: Maybe a vacation rental?

coolscaffoldphoto

I finally got the window trim back on, painted: finished. then we moved the scaffolding over to do some more painting on the next section of house, while we still had the scaffolding.

windows done more painting 5

There was peeling paint all over the wall, so we encased the scaffold in plastic to keep all the paint chips in. Below, you can see janeen scraping off the loose paint.

more painting 2 more painting 3

Once every loose chip of paint was scraped off, sanded (with a HEPA vacuum attached), cleaned up, and the wall was washed with TSP, we primed and painted it.

more painting 4 more painting 1

On the inside of the house, I finished off the last piece of wainscot (it will be behind the door). Then, for the second time, I installed the shower receptor. Last time, it lifted up as the moisture in the mortar was absorbed into the wood floor and the floor swelled. After the wood dried, it left the mortar up, holding the shower receptor off the floor, so I had to tear the whole thing out. This time I did it right. I put down moisture barrier paper, then the mortar, and set the receptor into it.

last wainscot shower try 2 paper in

To be sure that it was going to stay flat on the floor, I piled boxes of tile into it. The photo below right shows the drain plumbing for the shower. The white pipe is not PVC – it’s a piece of black ABS pipe that I’m reusing that had been painted white. (You are not supposed to connect ABS pipe to PVC – probably something to do with how they glue). It’s all black cast iron pipe as it exits the building, and the P-trap for the shower is also cast iron.

shower try 2 with boxes of tile showerplumbing

here are some photos of me painting the walls with the airless paint sprayer..

dscf0027

more of the same

the last two weekends have looked pretty much the same.

wainscot

i’m slowly working my way around the bathroom installing wainscoting. (right) i’m especially proud of the places where i have to pre-drill or pre-cut for plumbing and electrical outlets.

since we’re recycling wood, i’m also piecing two smaller boards to create one large board most of the time. this was tricky because each board isn’t exactly the same width, there could be a difference up to 3/16″, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you’ve got that large a gap between boards and then it’s not so pretty. so it became a big matching game.

wainscot

(left) this is my 4th pipe in the wall and it falls between two pieces of wainscotting. (right) i clamp two pieces together, measure exactly where the pipe will fit and drill the hole. mathew and i are surprised by how accurate my measuring has been.

wainscot

installing wainscoting is noisy, dusty work so i just wear my respirator mask and ear protection pretty much the entire time. this is a dramatic reinactment where i’ve forgotten my protective eye goggles… if i had them on, you probably wouldn’t recognize me.

mathew exterior

(left) this was my view of mathew for the last two weekends. (right) this was mathew’s view for the last two weekends.

exterior

now that the windows have been installed, mathew has put all the siding and window trim back in place. it sounds simple but involved lots of wood repair, sanding and priming. the brown stuff is bondo for filling holes and cracks, most of it he applied on saturday after the sun had gone down and the mosquitoes were out.

exterior

mathew spent this last weekend scraping, sanding and prepping the entire wall and window trim for paint (oh the noise! can you tell i’m not big on noise?) he did spend some time cutting left-over crown moulding, this involves carefully measuring tricky angles to fit it together under the small bathroom window sill. he wanted to have something pretty under the window in case someone looked out at it. (i’m sorry i don’t have any photos of the finished moulding. i’m not about to climb the scaffolding on this cold monday morning to take the one missing photo.) (right) here is an ugly “before” pipe photo instead.

you’ll have to tune in next week when we post photos of the finished, painted wall!

déjà vu

we’re reached the point in our remodel where everything is starting to look familiar because we’ve done it once before.

scaffolding

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.

mathew mathew

first he removed all the interior and exterior window trim and then he removed the big bedroom window.

wall 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.

stairs window

(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!

wall chips

(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!

window window

on sunday mathew worked on sealing around the new windows and replacing the exterior siding and trim.

janeen mathew

i painted the gypboard and backer strips where the wainscoting will be installed, just one more moisture barrier.

wainscoting bulbs

(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!

a BIG weekend

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

najia daniel

(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.

foyer foyer

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.

foyer foyer

(left) oak floor boards being installed. (right) daniel doing the first sanding after filler has been added to patch any cracks or gaps.

foyer foyer

the finished foyer floor after lots of sanding and 3 coats of water-based urethane.

the hall

hall 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.

hall hall

(left) the cool printed linoleum “area rug.” (right) sub floor painted red where it was exposed under the “area rug”

hall hall

(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.

hall hall

(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!”

hall16 hall

(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.

hall hall

(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.

hall hall

(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

living room

(left) here’s what the red sub floor looked like. (right) paper added and the beginnings of the border.

living room

the border is pieced and installed first then the rest of the floor is installed.

living room

(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.

living room

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]

santa barbara margaret and janeen

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

office before

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.

office before office

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.

office office

the floors in this room are quarter sawn oak. they were old, dirty, tired and stained. daniel was most excited about this transformation.

office office

here daniel is doing the first sanding. already a dramatic difference.

office office

after the sanding they discussed what the next step would be. “to goop? or not to goop?”

office office

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.

office office

(left) completely gooped. (right) the partially sanded floor after gooping. nice!

office office

(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

other hall

this is the hallway that leads to our upstairs unit. it started with carpet and fir sub floor underneath.

other hall mathew and daniel

(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.

other hall

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.

other hall

dumpy watches as mathew goops. mathew was up sanding this bit of floor till almost 10pm that sunday night…

other hall birthday

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.