Our New Old House

Who’d have ever thought I’d be using the mirror I carry in my purse to help out on a house project?

I wanted to make sure I removed all the paint from the inside of the parting bead because the moving window sashes would eventually break away the paint and release lead into the home in years to come. I was surprised how much I had missed when I finally pulled out my mirror to take a look.

One more round of chemical stripping, coming right up!

Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward getting over it. In my case, blogging about having rehabber’s block helped me re-focus my attention on the things that have been holding me back.

In the case of my window restoration project I kept running into setbacks with the hardware and the fact that I got bored sanding by hand. I decided I’d just have to suck it up about the sanding but the hardware was a tougher problem.

Like everything else in our house that shouldn’t have been painted the window hardware was all painted over. I used the handy dandy ammonia trick as seen in this post but the paint was hard to get out of the moving parts.

I soaked them too long and they rusted.

So I got hung up on how to fix the hardware. Finally, I just said, “You know what? I can get new hardware that looks like old hardware for the same amount as it would take to restore the old hardware.” Block dissolved.

Don’t worry, preservationists, I’m going to pack the old hardware away for any future rehabbers who want to take on the task. But as I looked through the rest of the hardware on the windows around my house, I noticed a few have missing pieces anyway. I might as well make them all match.

So with that block out of the way I continued working on the window frame I’m prepping.

I wanted to make sure and remove all the lead paint from the areas that will have moving parts, so I used Zinsser 5-layer chemical strip and then sanded the last bits of residue off. I followed each pass with the sandpaper with a wipe down with a wet cloth so the dust wouldn’t be airborne. I wore a mask and dusted the rest of the room with a damp cloth afterward too.

The frames are looking pretty good now!

Next up: replacing a broken sash cord and the benefits of being a girl home rehabber!

I don’t have any exciting dramatic pictures of progress to show off this week, but I did spend some time moving things along in my refinishing workshop. Let’s take a tour!

This room in my basement is where I do all the wood refinishing projects that aren’t stuck to the wall. Currently I’ve got a door propped up on sawhorses soaking in Citri-Strip, a table for heat gunning paint off the trim pieces for the windows, and a table for Citri-Stripping other trim pieces. You can see a door propped up on the right that’s been refinished — I just have to put the hardware back on it and hang it back in its doorway — and a stack of windows from the front bedroom waiting to be reglazed, stripped, and refinished.

Closeup of the trim pieces ready for Citri-stripping:

So that’s my little workshop! Hopefully I’ll have some nice progress pictures for you soon.

I’ve been making slow but steady progress with stripping the paint off the woodwork in the front bedroom. Here are some pictures.

Before:

During:

After:

Before:

During:

After:

Scratch is impressed.

Here’s where we were on Tuesday night. Party’s on Saturday. Can we do it?

I think we can.

We’ve made some good progress on the dining room. Here’s how the dining room windows looked mid-chemical strip:

And with chemical stripping done, waiting for wood filler to dry so I can sand it.

The rest of the woodwork in the dining room is coming along nicely. I finished stripping one side of this door.

And the rest of the woodwork on the doorways:

Here’s the kitchen doorway mid-chemical strip:

Brandon took off the door so I could get the rest of this doorway stripped. It’s pretty much done now except for some minor clean up of putty between the pieces.

And the kitchen doorway very close to finished:

In the living room we still had a section of wall that needed priming.

So Brandon primed it.

Also, I heat stripped the paint off the window frame and baseboards on that side.

There are still sections of the floor that need to have the carpet padding scraped off so I’ve been finishing that job this week.

Finally, in preparation for the party, I made a batch of cookies. Ok, really this batch was just to motivate myself to keep working. Well, ok it was to bribe myself to keep working. Whatever. Cookies rock.

Last night I painted the whole living room with the same bone white that is in the dining room. I was only able to do one coat, but it’s a huge improvement from the stark white primer. Tonight I’m going to finish scraping the dining room floor (finished the living room floor on Tuesday,) do a couple of touch ups on the wood work, and possibly heat strip the woodwork around the living room front door and front windows. Brandon started putting up the wallpaper border in the dining room last night and we’ll finish that tonight. Then Friday will be for arranging furniture and cleaning up.

Phew! There’s nothing like marathon house fixing!