turtle + mole

we continued working on paint prep this week. not a whole lot done, but moving forward.

janeen continued stripping paint from the baseboards and the picture rails. it’s quite satisfying, but really labor-intensive.

we also sanded the ceiling to help the paint adhesion. still to do on the ceiling: finish skim coating. you can see the white patches where i’ve taped over the cracks and the plaster washers.

i reinstalled the old (ugly) ceiling fan in the kitchen. instead of having it hang down – the way it was before – i mounted it up as close to the ceiling as possible. also, because there’s a window directly behind it, there’s nowhere for the power cord.

it used to have a cord stapled to the ceiling and running down the side of the cabinet. we managed to fish a power cord above the ceiling; i was in the attic with the fish tape, and janeen was listening below to hear where it was because there’s no access directly above the kitchen ceiling. amazingly, it worked, so i added a plug in the ceiling to plug the fan into.

there was the annual carnaval festival on our street this weekend. they closed off about 8 blocks for saturday and sunday for a big parade, music, dancing and food; it was really loud and sounded like people had a lot of fun. but we didn’t see any of it because we spent the entire weekend upstairs working on the living room. maybe we’ll attend the festivities next year!

here are some “before” photos. the left side has more of that weird paneling which we’ll leave up for now. the right side had some really bad cracks in the plaster and ugly spots where it had been “repaired.” and all over the room the paint had been cracking and peeling (like a really bad faux finish!)

to start, mathew made a special plastic sheeting door. one layer had a slit and the second layer covered it. it’s to keep lead dust and fumes from leaving the room. next we covered the entire floor with canvas drop cloths and taped them to the baseboards.

we started by scraping whatever would easily come off of the walls.

after mathew did a quick sanding, i screwed in lots of metal plaster washers to hold the loose plaster to the wood lathe behind it.

we stripped the paint from the smaller walls and from the picture rails. (right) this is what was hiding under all those years of paint!

the fumes are toxic so we spent nearly the entire weekend with goggles and respirator masks on.

(left) plaster tape for the cracks in the ceiling. (right) mesh tape for the cracks in the walls.

it’s amazing how dramatic plaster can be!

because of a mother’s day celebration on saturday we had less time to work on the house. but we still made some pretty good progress.

how many weekends in a row have i been painting?

down in the workshop: mathew in his “another pacifist under surveillance” shirt. and baseboards made from the same cedar as the bathroom floor.

the doors get another coat. when they are wet, they are extremely reflective!

baseboards get installed. mathew was chanting: “fit, cut, file. fit, cut, file.”

the vanity makes an appearance upstairs. i helped to hang it on the wall.

mathew finally captures my goofy ladder moving technique. how else are you supposed to move something that big and heavy?? (it’s adjustable and expandable and weighs 60+ pounds.) right: mathew cutting a hole in the temporary plywood vanity counter.

getting there…

there’s been a lot of door drama this week.

we bought some polyurethane/stain for the new door (on the left) that was supposed to match the old bedroom door, a deep cherry wood color. mathew prepped the new door and sanded the old door (on the right) because it had dents and scratches (kids writing, etc.) after he was done with the second coat the new door was very splotchy and the stain wasn’t quite the right shade.

so he bought a new shade and sanded the doors (again) and coated them (again.) because the doors are made from different woods the color is coming out differently. i don’t think they’re quite right yet (by mathew’s standards) and i believe he is sanding and coating them (again!) tonight…

there was a lot of finishing and painting this last weekend. and don’t let the photos of mostly-mathew fool you! my parents were also here again, helping us paint. (walls with lots of trim take a long time!) we had some interesting conversations while we worked, each of us in different rooms upstairs, so we could hear each other but we couldn’t always see each other.

medicine cabinet refinishing. custom-sizing the new bathroom door.

sanding bathroom floor. dumpie makes a new friend.

refinishing a cutting board counter. bathroom floor with polyurethane.

(placeholder: mathew wants to take a photo of my goofy ladder-moving technique. it’s making me stronger.)

re-stained bedroom door. the fridge gets a new home. (but we may get a new one, this one is ancient.)

and mathew feels like he didn’t get anything done this weekend…

janeen’s parents were over this weekend, again: they spent all sunday painting the upstairs dining area.

on the left above, this is how the previous kitchen looked. it’s a photo mole took when we were first looking around the house. on the right, i have removed the hood over the range, so you can see the window on the back wall. it makes the kitchen so much brighter. now we’re trying to figure out how to have a hood that does not block this window. any ideas? you can also see the mold in the lower left of the photo – the old cold box is rotting away.

turtle sanding the kitchen.

mole and her mum, painting.

mole’s dad priming the kitchen. looks so much better already. originally we had been planning to paint the trim white and the rest the same yellow as the dining area. once it was painted with white primer, mole decided the keep the whole kitchen white.

last month our friend alex made the suggestion to hang the bathroom vanity off the wall instead of support it on the floor, to make the bathroom feel larger. at that point i’d already finished making the cabinet, it was ready to polyurethane. on sunday i hid down in my workshop, taking it apart and altering the pieces. fits with this home remodel project: do everything twice! it’s now glued up again, and clamping.

sunday morning started with more paint prep: sanding, scraping and cleaning.

mathew set the ladder up on the stairs, which seemed scary at first but worked quite well.

after sanding the walls and trim we cleaned with TSP to take off any grease so the paint will adhere better, then we rinsed and applied a base coat of primer.

with all this scrubbing and painting i couldn’t help but think about the movie, karate kid. mr miyagi, i’m ready for my karate lesson! wax on, wax off.

where’s dumpie?? at one point i couldn’t find dumpie! it’s a game i play with my brother, justin. in almost every post, if you look closely at the photos, you’ll find dumpie in at least one photo (you could go blind playing.) but on sunday dumpie went missing and it was a real game of “where’s dumpie” for me. eventually i found him in the kitchen.

we painted until 11 pm, cleaned the brushes and rollers, then went downstairs to have dinner.