Our New Old House

Spring is here, people! That means I get to work on my windows!

My goal for the windows is to take them apart, reglaze them, refinish the wood, and put them back together better than ever.

Here I am with my first window to dismantle.

I took off the front stop and then the lower sash came right out.

The stop between the two sashes was a lot harder to get out. It’s not just nailed onto the frame. It is inserted into the frame about half an inch. I’m going to have to break the stop and then insert a new one when I put it back together.

Once I got that stop out I was able to lower the top sash to take it out too. The top sashes were all terribly painted shut and I spent a good 20 minutes tapping a putty knife into the cracks around the edges to loosen the paint.

Here are the ropes for the weights. Someone must have replaced these sometime in the recent past because they’re in great condition.

Now with the sashes out, there was a giant hole in my house!

Here are the windows waiting to be restored. I need to finish stripping the paint off the frames before I start working on these.

I made sure to label each one so I know where to put them back when they’re done.

I took more pictures but I guess they haven’t ended up on my Flickr account yet. All the windows are out of the front bedroom now, though, and I’m working on stripping the last of the paint off the window frames.

[tags]bedroom, windows, paint, woodwork, photos[/tags]

This weekend I stripped another door.

Today I put another coat of polyurethane on the test door. It’s looking so cool!

Then I worked the rest of the night on the front bedroom. No pictures yet because darn it, after all that work it doesn’t look like I did much. But I kept heat gunning the paint off the window frames and baseboards, then I applied Citristrip to the front window frames to take off what was left of the paint and the excess varnish. It needs another round.

It feels like I’m getting nowhere right now, but I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning. My arm’s just sore from all that scraping.

[tags]varnish, woodwork, heat gun, Citristrip, paint removal[/tags]

Today I started removing the paint from the woodwork in the front bedroom. With the heat gun the paint just LEAPED off the wood. I swear I heard it whimpering, “I surrender!” on its way to the floor.

After I removed the paint in the bedroom, I went downstairs to spray some paint onto the metal I stripped last month. I chose a hammered bronze finish.

Here are before pictures:

I’m sure you all remember my super flattering shot with my gas mask:

Here are after pictures:

Baby steps…

[tags]bedroom, paint, photos, woodwork, heat gun, stripping paint, registers, fixtures, doorknobs, spray paint, Rustoleum[/tags]

I enlisted Brandon’s help this weekend in mixing plaster for me while I put it on the walls. Eventually he started putting it on the walls himself, so that part got boring, but together we finished patching all the cracks, holes, and corners in the front bedroom.

Pictures!

My first corner!

Kind of blotchy after wet sanding.

See how bad our corners are? This one has fiber tape over it.

Gosh, is that how my hair looks from the back?

I’m not particularly proud of how this corner came out. I’ll sand it down a bit and add another smoother layer.

Ok, enough about the plaster. Let’s talk about the weather! It’s been cold here! So cold I can’t think up a colorful simile with which to describe how cold it’s been. (Leave me a comment if you’ve got a good one.) Anyway, it was a great opportunity to show just what a difference plastic sheeting can make when you’ve got leaky windows and worthless storms.

Here we see a window with plastic sheeting intact. Notice: NO FROST! That means no warm, moist air is leaking out into the frigid outdoors, and no frigid outdoor air is leaking inside.

Now let’s look at a window on which the integrity of the plastic sheeting has been compromised by the claw of a scheming cat.

And in other news…

I FOUND MY SCRAPER!!!

See if you can spot it in this photo:

How about now?

Yes, folks, the scraper was INSIDE Brandon’s bicycle. How it got there I’ll never know. But I’ll tell you, the only way I found it was by buying three new scrapers of the exact same kind that very morning. (Still sale priced at Menard’s, btw.) After I’d safely tucked them away in my tool box where they belong, the prodigal scraper glinted at me from inside the bicycle and we were tearfully reunited.

If I can stop hiding things from myself, this house may actually get done someday!

I’ve made a little more progress on the walls in the front bedroom.  It’s a slow process and I’m maybe working a little too meticulously.  I worry that I’m trying to be a perfectionist with these walls.  One of my fellow housebloggers at This Old Crack House is crazy for smooth walls and I may be sliding down that slippery slope.  It starts with patching a few cracks before priming.  It ends with applying a skim coat over the whole room and agonizing over every tiny ripple and dent.  I’m not there yet, but I can see it from here!

 I did my first corner last night.  Pictures are coming soon, I promise.  All the corners in this room are cracked and separated.  Structurally, the walls are sound, it’s just that nobody repaired the plaster that cracked as the house settled, so the cracks have just been growing under layers of wallpaper for 50 years or so. 

 Like I said before, I’ve never done this plaster thing before so when someone recommended using a wet sponge to smooth the plaster after it had dried, I figured I’d try it.  A sponge didn’t really do much, but a regular kitchen scouring pad worked great.  Nate, my friend!  Why are you submitting your lungs, your eyes, and your roommates to the dust of dry sanding?  Wet sanding is the way to go, bro!  Maybe dry sanding is faster?  Anyway, there will be no dust angels in my house, at least not from plaster dust!  Maybe I can make paint chip angels when I start stripping the woodwork.  (shudder)

I did a corner over the door last night and it turned out pretty good!  When I started getting sleepy and frustrated, though, I put away the plaster and worked on taping the rest of the cracks in the room in preparation for plastering later.  I got almost all the taping done last night so I’ll have a jump on things when I get back to it this weekend.  We’re supposed to get a snow storm so it’ll be a good weekend to stay inside playing with white powdery stuff.

 Let’s see… what else have I been doing around the house?  Oh, I’ve been stripping more paint off the door in the basement, getting Brandon’s help on getting the paint off one of the registers using ammonia, and perhaps most dramatically, continuing my quest for a razor scraper.

 Those cheapo utility scrapers just aren’t cutting it for me anymore.  So on my last trip to Menard’s I picked up a better quality, slightly larger hand held razor scraper.  I got it home, tried it out, found myself perfectly satisfied with it, and promptly LOST it somewhere in my house!  I don’t know what could have happened to it!  Somewhere between pausing in scraping the dining room floor and stepping into the hallway to get the broom and dustpan, I put it down somewhere and haven’t been able to find it since.  Brandon helped me look for it all that evening.  We continued the search the next day.  We overturned every item in our house, looked in all the least likely places.  I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster we looked in the refrigerator!  It’s still missing.  I may have to buy another one until it turns up.  I hope they’re still sale priced at Menards when I go. 

That’s it for my update for now.  Happy Wednesday, everybody!