Our New Old House

So, way back in November when we hosted the Des Moines Rehabber’s Club’s inaugural meeting, I met a guy named Todd who blew my mind with his crazy talk about how I could strip stubborn layers of caked on, baked on paint that has covered all the metal fixtures in my house for aeons.  His suggestion included only one ingredient: ammonia.

“Just regular old Bo-Peep ammonia, soak your fixtures in a bucket overnight, and in the morning the paint just peels right off,” is what he said.

I was skeptical.  I went to the Internet and worked all my librarian magic in searching for evidence that this might work and found none.  Well, with nothing to lose but a few bucks’ worth of ammonia and a night’s worth of time invested, I set myself up an experimentation lab in the basement.

Here’s where I’m going to interrupt my story to interject a story from my childhood. When I was little, we had cable TV for like, three years. During those three years I watched as much Mr. Wizard as I could because I just knew I was going to become a scientist someday. So my five-year-old self started stealing things like oven cleaner from under the sink to spray on aluminum foil and watch it dissolve, and pouring ground pepper into a pot of water so I could watch a drop of soap disperse it. It drove my mother crazy, and led her to post a poison control phone number next to every phone in the house. One day she read in the paper that the producers from Mr. Wizard were auditioning Midwestern kids to appear on the show and that they’d be making a stop in Des Moines. She dressed me in my cutest jumper and my red yarn leg warmers, and we trucked on over to the mall.  We waited in line for what felt like hours, but at last it was my turn to audition.  I don’t remember a single thing about the audition except that I was very confused the whole time and I knew when I left that I wasn’t going to get to be on the show.  I don’t think I was crushed or even overly emotional about it.

So, back in the present, inspired by my childhood hero, I set about preparing my experiment.

Remember the extra doors I wanted to practice on before I tackled anything upstairs? They came complete with painted over hardware that I felt ok about throwing away if this didn’t work.

Here they are soaking in the radioactive-looking ammonia. I didn’t buy just “regular old” ammonia, I bought “lemon scent” ammonia. Don’t be fooled, people. The lemon scent is only there to mock you while the ammonia kills you slowly. This is nasty stuff.

I put the lid on the plastic tub, went upstairs, and forgot all about it until the next day. I half expected to come back the next morning and find just cleaner, lemon scented paint still stuck tight to the hardware.

But when I lifted the lid and pulled out the first piece of hardware… Heavens ta’ Murgatroid, it worked!  I grabbed a piece of scrap wood from the floor nearby (you need very specialized tools for this kind of work, you see) and started scraping away and the paint just slid off the metal like cheese off a greasy pizza.

When I finished the test pieces they looked like this:

I grabbed my husband, stuck a screwdriver in his hand and said, “Quick! Take off all the doorknobs and faceplates and door hinges all over the house! We have to soak them! We have to rid our house of the awful layers of paint and restore the metal! Do it now!” I grabbed my own screw driver and started removing the nasty old registers from the kitchen and the dining room. Fortunately, Brandon didn’t go about his task with quite as much zeal as I’d hoped to inspire in him. He dutifully brought me the hardware from two doors, which was about all I could handle in the tub at one time. It’s good that I have someone to keep me grounded in times like these.

So I soaked the registers and hardware with yet more ammonia and they looked like this:

(I added some more ammonia to the tub after I took these pictures so the hardware was actually covered.)

After about a day and a half of soaking I started cleaning off the loose paint. By this time it was just falling off the metal.

A quick scrub with a scouring pad got the leftover bits of paint from the grooves and corners.

They came out looking pretty good!

After I rinsed them off in the sink, I laid them on the floor and dried them really quickly with… you guessed it! The heat gun! I didn’t want any more rust forming than had already started on these registers.

I’m now on a search to find out how I can spraypaint or otherwise treat the registers to give them a bronze color or at least protect them from future rusting. As always, I’m open to suggestions.

And as a final thought…

Someone asked me about the shirt I was wearing when I did all this wierd science. The shirt simply says, “PANTS!” and comes from a group of badass musicians called $trick9 and The Truth. I got them all to sign my shirt at their CD release party last Friday, so in the hopes that some of their badassness would rub off on my blog, here is the PANTS! shirt.

(The shirt is inspired by this video and you can check out more about the band at www.yostrick9.com. They’re loads of fun.)

It’s Christmastime! I decorated Our New Old House with lots of lights so Santa will be sure and find our house. I do worry how he’ll get through the glass door on the front of our wood burning stove fireplace though. Must remember to leave the latch undone when I go to bed on Christmas Eve…

Admittedly I was not the first to do this, but it seemed an appropriate sentiment for this year’s Christmas.

Today, this gross and smelly kitchen becomes Kitchen Stadium! But on this version of Iron Chef, we do not have a theme ingredient. We have a theme power tool! Witness the stunning culinary prowess as our Iron Chefs create a traditional American comfort food using only a Pro-Line Heat Gun!!! (It’s Iron Chef meets Red Green! Did I watch too much TV as a child? Yes. Yes I did.)

Alle cuisine!

[Announcer's voice from the stands:] The most important thing to remember about making a toasted cheese sandwich is that the butter goes on the OUTSIDE! Let’s see if she remembers this crucial technique.

Beautifully done! You down there on the stadium floor! Ask her what she’s going to put inside the sandwiches! [Voiced over by a translator:] “I’m using a delicate blend of co-jack cheese, sliced extra thin at the local deli counter, and pre-packaged store-brand mozzarella cheese.” Back to you!

It seems she has handed off the bag of cheese to an assistant to cut open, lending credence to the rumor that Kelli-san is not allowed to play with sharp objects in the kitchen. [Kelli-san again voiced over by a translator:] “Tee-hee! I’m hopelessly inept at opening resealable bags without tearing the plastic zipper off. Somebody please invent a power tool for THAT!”

We can see here that she has expertly piled the mozzarella on TOP of the co-jack.

And now she carefully begins heating the cheese using the low setting on the heat gun. 750 degrees should be plenty hot, don’t you think?

With the sandwiches put together now, she starts browning the outside, melting the butter and crisping the crust SIMULTANEOUSLY. I tell you, you don’t see these kinds of old-world skills anymore.

The crowd is now hushed in anticipation of the final unveiling of this culinary masterpiece! The first test: the pull-apart string of melty cheese…

Bravo! Just like in the Kraft Singles commercials! Now, the most important test of all… Judges, what do you think?

It’s unanimous! Kelli-san is the new Iron Chef! Her power tool cuisine reigns supreme!

[Voiced over by a translator:] “Tee hee! I’m burning my tongue! Take the picture!”

My uncle Mike has his very own forest and he has generously shared some pieces of his forest with me!  Now, normally I’d generously share a photo of the pieces of forest with you, but today we had an ice storm and color me indifferent, but I’m just not going back out there.  If this makes you feel like your happiness is less important to me than sitting on my duff watching reruns of old BritComs for the evening, then let me save you a couple hundred dollars’ worth of therapy and tell you it’s all your mother’s fault and you shouldn’t rely on distant, small, cranky housebloggers to find happiness.

Still cranky,

Love,

Kelli

Oh yes, my friends, there is more wallpaper. In fact, I probably haven’t gotten through half the wallpaper in this house yet.

(Consider this fair warning: I am cranky at the time of writing this. I worked overtime at my day job yesterday. Then I battled my way in to work this morning through an ice storm so I could work some more overtime. Meanwhile my darling husband’s day job called him this morning and told him not to bother coming in, they were closing on account of the weather. What makes getting out of bed on a cold, crappy, icy day even harder? Leaving behind a warm and snuggly somebody who gets to sleep eight more hours than you do. So, I’m cranky. Try not to hold it against me. Or, you know what? Hold it against me. I kind of feel like picking a fight right now anyway. But I digress…)

This weekend I scraped the last bit of painted wallpaper in the front bedroom, which left me with walls full of brown paper residue. Here’s the progress midway through scraping all that residue off:

I got bored of that room so I went on to the bathroom, which had sad looking strips of peeling wallpaper everywhere. I pulled it all down and made a pile in the hallway:

When I was done pulling, the walls looked like this:

Here’s why having wallpaper in the bathroom (anything more than a border or a trim) is a bad idea. See those water spots over the window and over the woodwork behind the shower? There was mold growing on that paper. The mold was hidden behind a layer of “bathroom ready” wallpaper. Wallpaper in the bathroom? Just don’t do it.

Now the joyful work of removing at least three more layers of wallpaper can begin! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip… oh f*** it.

While I was in the bathroom with a stepladder I took a picture that tells another cautionary tale. Well, two cautionary tales. I want you to look at the picture, see if you can guess what it is, and then don’t bother to tell me your guesses because frankly, I don’t care. Ok, you ready? Go.

The previous owners of my house smoked. A lot. Everywhere. Including the bathroom. An interesting fact about the bathroom in my house is that it has never had a shower. Just a clawfoot bathtub. Brandon and I installed a shower and have been happily cleaning ourselves in it ever since. But one day I looked up at the ceiling over our shower and found these puzzling spots. Turns out the tobacco residue on the ceiling paint has been loosened by the steam of the shower and is now congealing in little blobs over the source of the steam: the shower. So, the moral of the story, kids, is DON’T FREAKING SMOKE A PACK OF CIGARETTES WHILE YOU’RE ON THE JOHN!!! Or if you do, then just never install a shower. Either way.

Cranky Kelli, over and out.