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!

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!

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.

Before:

During:

After:

Before:

During:

After:

Scratch is impressed.

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!

• CitriStrip
• Mineral Spirits
• Fabric Softener
• Laundry Detergent
• Bleach
• Rustoleum spray paint
• Tea tree oil & lavender
• Nachos

It’s been a busy weekend in Our New Old House. We set ourselves a deadline of Dec. 19 to have the living room and dining room done – or at least done enough to host a big holiday party. That meant we have to get the following list of things done:

• Strip paint off woodwork
• Finish scraping up crustified carpet padding
• Paint the walls
• Rearrange the cables and electronics in the bookcase
• Paint the cold air return grate
• Make everything tidy and pretty

I think we’re on track to make all of those things happen. Dining room is painted. Today Brandon primed the last bit of the living room that needed it. I spray painted the grate. Woodwork is done except for a couple of troublesome spots with stubborn paint. Sections of carpet padding in the dining room are soaking, to be scraped tomorrow after work.  I bought the supplies I’ll need to stain parts of the woodwork and polyurethane it, but I think those final steps will have to wait until after the party. For now, the woodwork looks lovely just stripped of paint. It’s got a nice rich color and a smooth finish so that’s good enough for now.

It’s time for me to take a shower and get to bed. I’m exhausted, but I can’t wait to show off our progress. I’ll have some pictures soon of our living room and dining room, as well as a little treasure Brandon found behind one of the built-in bookcases.

Pictures!

Oh yeah, and I accidentally touched the metal tip of the heat gun to my arm as I was reaching for the paint chip bucket. I burned my arm, but it will be fine.

More to come! Come back soon!

Yes, Kelli. NOW it is time to paint.

“Woo hoo!!”  *Kelli does a little happy dance*

I started with the Merlot paint for the bottom section of the room.

Ooh, this paint is thick!

First coat looks more like Kool-Aid than Merlot, but I’m gonna go with it.

I did the very first coat with a brush because the wall is so uneven and has so many imperfections. I wanted to make sure to get paint in all the little nooks and crannies before I started going over it with a roller.

I cut the corners in with the brush one more time so I could use the roller next and not get too close to the edges. With this second coat the color’s starting to come through nice and rich.

After the first pass with the roller. You can see that I’ve cut the corners in with the Bone White above too.

With the first coat of Merlot drying below, I tackled the first coat of Bone White. I left a little undone for this pic so you can see the contrast between the paint color and the primer.

Also, a quite note about the woodwork: I intend to strip all the woodwork to expose the original wood, but since that’s time consuming and I needed a project that would show me fast results, I just stripped the outer edges where I’d have to put masking tape. I did a couple of extra spots to expose the wood and show what it would look like later, so you can see the top corner of this window is done and the top corner of the attic door is also done. I’ll do the rest after I’m done painting.

Check back soon for Part 4 in which… I’m still painting. Guess which color.

Check back soon for Part 3 where there will be actual paint!

The room has the original crown molding. Sometime in the 60s or 70s, the previous owners had the room paneled and the ceiling was sprayed with popcorn. Rather than having the crown molding covered and painted or something, they just popcorned right over the crown molding.  Yup, I cringed too.

Here are some “before” pictures of the dining room.  (And that’s not a bed in the middle of the dining room, it’s my piano and dining room table bunched together with an old polyester bedspread draped over them for protection.)

Here’s a closeup of the popcorn-stricken crown molding. You can see on the left I rubbed some off with my hand. I found out that it actually comes off really easily with water.

So I scrubbed…

And scrubbed…

And finally had it clean enough to paint.

I thought about stripping the paint off and restoring the original wood underneath but I already have too many wood stripping projects that are unfinished. I decided to spare myself this one and paint the crown molding with a layered metallic technique the paint guy at Menard’s told me about.

First I put up masking tape, of course.

Dutch Boy has combinations of base colors and metallic glazes. Here are the labels of the two colors I used so if you want, you can duplicate them.

I applied the first coat of the base color. “Keoki Coffee” is a rich chocolate brown. After a couple coats of this I’d go over it with a metallic glaze with little gold flecks in it and the result would be as subtle dark bronze.

It turned out pretty good! Here’s a picture with the masking tape still on:

Check back for Part 2: more prep work!