Out of Denial and Into the Stairwell

Now that the spraying operations are winding down, I can turn to one of the last things I’ve sort of ignored for the last two years: the bannister. It’s pretty and old, but a little worse for wear. I was imagining for a while that I could strip the handrail alone (which will be easy because there is varnish under the paint) and leave the balusters in as found condition. I guess I never took a good look at them. Probably because I didn’t want to. They look more like candles than millwork grade wood.

Ack. That’s definitely a little more abuse than anyone could ever call character. What to do about it? I really wanted to make this an easy job. And oil based paint on wood with no varnish under it is not easy to strip. Plus, going to all that trouble just to repaint seems unrewarding. My first thought was that the top layer of latex paint is so thick, I could probably sand the runs off of it without going through to anything that contains lead. (Note: This is called cutting corners and is not a lead safe practice.) But (luckily for my health) the candle wax faux finish started peeling off in sheets. Like Saran wrap.

And so I got busy picking at it. This quickly became addictive.

But not really. Because the cure for this “addiction” was to keep doing it. And I realized that this approach wasn’t working so well. Sometimes big, satisfying sheets came off. Other times they didn’t. I went to the Home Depot to get a spray bottle of latex paint remover. This didn’t turn out to be the magic bullet I hoped for. It’s really made to take spills and overspray off of things, not to strip full coats of paint. And plus, the oil based paint underneath still wasn’t wonderful looking. I asked around for advice. My dad proposed using the belt sander. This is a terrible idea. But I was tempted. My co-pay on having the lead chelated out of my blood might still be cheaper than having the railing restored professionally. My mom chimed in with a little much needed moral support: “Lorraine and David were stripping theirs but they only got through 3 posts and then they gave up.” Thanks Mom, I feel so much better now. Then I asked the Irishman. He said dismantle it and number all the posts and run them through a planer. Nope. Nope. Nope.

And so Sunday morning I bit the bullet and got to work. No I didn’t. I went to a brunch potluck and whined about the job ahead of me to a bunch of people. Then I got back and on went the SoyGel.

I didn’t bother with Saran wrap because I thought it would be brutal to get it tight around every spindle. Instead, I just let it do its thing for a couple hours and sat Indian style – and remember, my hallway is narrow and I can barely fit doing this. Well, it’s clearly going to need another coat of SoyGel, but at least the square posts are starting to emerge.

So, do you think I’ll be a stripper forever, or are you optimistic that soon I’ll move on to more respectable work?

A slow start to Operation Spraybooth

This past week we got started on the actual job of using my house as a spray booth. Well, the whole first floor and one bedroom. To start, we had to scrub everything down with steel wool, wire brushes, and sandpaper. I stripped parts of the bedroom furniture that peeled and the one piece that I redid with latex paint when I was a teenager. Word to the wise: don’t paint your furniture with latex paint. And then everything got a vigorous cleaning. All the furniture and the whole house (yay). See? Mommy is really going at it.

The armoire got a really neat distressed look at this point. Too bad the colors wouldn’t have worked just like this for my parents. But whatever.

And then I wire brushed, vacuumed, and washed the radiators. This dirt is just from 2 of them. And yes, I’ll never buy buckets again. The joint compound left me a lifetime supply.

And then we got out the electric sprayer and got to priming. The people at the paint store recommended a very high grade acrylic primer. No latex, just acrylic. It worked really well on the furniture. But I guess we were assuming that the old paint on the radiators was fully protecting them. Do you see where this is going?

Gasp! Rust spots everywhere!

Even bigger gasp! This one peeled!

So… we decided to cut the radiators from the job, get the furniture done, and get on with things. I need my floor space back. As if I ever had it. And so Monday came around and my dad and I got started with the spraying. Or I should say I got started with the spraying. Slowly, methodically, carefully, I followed the back and forth and up and down motion the instruction manual said to make.

Do you see where I went wrong? Yes, I moved slowly. And as I was going about with the sprayer, my dad let out a blood curdling scream. There were runs everywhere! And he started running around brushing them out. And hollering that brush strokes are better than runs. And that the plan to get a second coat on the same day was out the window now that the first coat was an eighth of an inch thick. This repeated for a while until I went out to lunch. Alone.

But it’s been resolved. When I got back the muttering was different. “Well this was a learning experience.” We’ve gotten along really well through all this work. Of course I’d better be nice since everything besides this that he did was huge favors that kinda saved my life. We went down Tuesday night to sand and things didn’t look so bad after all. And I got the radiators sprayed with Rustoleum. And yesterday I went back and touched them up again so now I feel confident that there will be no more spots coming through that oil-less oil based paint. And now the plan is to bang out everything tonight and tomorrow. Everything! Do you think it’ll work this time?

The death of a small project

You know what they say about the best laid plans. Much like those wacky ideas I had about putting 20% down and starting an IRA after confirming that my house didn’t need much work, the furniture painting project was not to be. In this case, the culprit is once again old, beat-up, and painted red. You may have seen my grandmother’s armoire in photos before. Last summer I pretended it was a refrigerator in my kitchen mock-up.

Much like all the furniture I’ll be using, it came from my grandmother. She bought it at a flea market and directed my grandfather to paint it distressed red. This is proof that interior design trends always progress in circles, not in lines. He lined the interior with fabric to hide the crude construction of the piece, fitted it with shelves, and then my grandmother used it as a curio cabinet. I found you a before picture where you get a bonus view of my surprisingly attractive parents, circa 1984.

So on Saturday we pulled off all that fabric to get it ready to paint, and I started to notice things. The whole thing is kind of rickety and the shelves were crudely done, just perched on corner braces. It would never do to load them with heavy things. And the shelves aren’t made of good, flat wood. Plus, all shelves should be adjustable whenever possible. Don’t you agree? And then there are drawer fronts at the bottom just nailed on. Isn’t it a pity to waste all that space that could be drawers? And the panels on the doors are nothing special, just flat sheets of thin oak plywood nailed onto the backs of the doors. If it’s ever to be a curio cabinet, it would be easy enough to knock them out and put glass in. The doors with the scalloped detail at the tops would remain.

And… once we take it back to the suburbs there will be no Irish carpenter next door to make quick work of all this. Mommy agrees; it would be nice to turn it into a functional piece right away if we can. But I want to be ready to paint Sunday. If we can get the Irishman’s help, fitting out the inside of the cabinet shouldn’t be a problem. But the drawers will have to wait. For now, I’ve decided to knock the drawer fronts and door panels off, paint the piece, and reattach everything so it’s removable if we want to change things around later.

Hopefully this doesn’t mess things up too much because I have that other bigger, more expensive, more beat-up red painted thing to get back to. (Yes, my original Victorian brick is painted red. For now. I long to fix everything that’s wrong with this, but we’ll get to that in like 2 years.)

The house. Facade restoration to come.

And a bonus question. Back to that other bedroom set I’m repainting along with everything else, let’s see who can guess why these holes are drilled into the tops of this dresser.

What’s old, painted red, and costing me way too much money?

Nope, not the house! Though it is also all of those things, today I’m talking about the car. It’s gotten in the way a good bit lately. You see, my hood hinge started to crack. Which means there was very little holding the hood onto the car and I had my annual scare about having to buy a new car. Now is NOT a good time!

But I decided to try to fix everything I’ve been ignoring. My driver’s door has been stuck shut for 6 months and the rear suspension was wrecked. Might have something to do with all that plaster I piled on the back seat and in the trunk. Or the radiators?

And the hood itself wasn’t quite right to begin with. It sounds like maybe the salesman rigged it with that fence tie to hide the problem from her. But in the end it stopped working.

And instead I rigged it wit hood pins. Remember this shot from the last time I complained about my car?

But everything hinged on this much more serious new hood problem. So when I found that I could get a hood, hings and all, up near Reading, I was elated. I left work a bit early and headed up, and one of the guys at the place drove me up through the junk yard. This was totally amazing. It looked like a parking lot for a music festival, except all the cars were opened up and had lots of parts missing. But would you believe that the hinges were gone? They didn’t go up and check the car when I called to inquire, just assumed they’d be there. They sourced the one I needed from another junkyard, for another 20 bucks, and I had to make the drive a second time after it was delivered. Another evening lost, but at least driving in the country is pretty.

And so on Friday we got started. Off came the old hood, and the hinge snapped with just a little tug. But to get it out we had to undo like everything. Why do they make cars like this? So it got dark and we covered it with a tarp. Classy.

Classier still, the old hood is now bent in half and plopped into the ivy next to my parents’ driveway. Mommy is not happy about this. And the best/worst part is that plot of ivy is on the neighbor’s property, I think. This will head to the Crooked house after work on Tuesday. The night before trash day the scrappers come around and they’ll carry it away for me.

And then I did something really weird. Like, totally not something I’d ever do. I washed my car. The scrap yard dirt was pretty intense. And no. I’m not repainting it. I don’t like to part with my money, unless it’s for essential things like enormously expensive historically accurate woodwork.

So crisis averted! (And the crisis would have been choosing between dumping all my money in a car or taking out a loan. And I don’t really want to take out a loan where I’m guaranteed to have negative equity the next week) Have one more look at this thing of beauty.

Taking one for the team

It’s been a while since I’ve written. But I’m finally done with those doors! They’re now stacked up in a closet upstairs again. For new progress, I’ve moved on to getting ready to spray paint. It might seem like I’m jumping around for no good reason, but (and I’m not going to name names) someone went on a long trip to Ireland and messed up everything. Changing gears isn’t so bad though. It meant that I had to finish that God-forsaken job of stripping the doors and move on to the even worse job of stripping a radiator. But now all that is done! In the end I gave up on the radiator and decided to turn it around and leave the residue of partially stripped paint facing the wall. And just like magic, look how clean it is!

Totally paint grade at least. And. I got 80 bucks for those bricks! Sold them to a guy up in the Northeast who wants to cut them down and use the faces to veneer a wall, and then mix up special mortar with horse hair in it and figure out a technique to make it look like mine. And of course mine looks the way it does just because I didn’t work to hard to get my bricks clean.

I’d love to see how that turns out. Sounds like a fun project So then, I power washed the living daylights out of my back yard and went to a yard sale and bought a whole bunch of flower pots.

This sounds crazy, but it’s not as bad as it sounds because I needed to make it nice before I bring in my grandmother’s wrought iron patio furniture. It’s supposed to go to my sister, but she’s going to have trouble getting it up to Boston. And I love her so much that I said I’ll keep it as long as she needs me to. So tomorrow into the city it comes. Sigh, I guess I can handle it.

And that means that for the time being, that cute oak bench is going back to the attic from whence it came. Much like my house, it needs way more work than I thought it did at first glance. So good riddance. I’ll pull it out in a year or two when I can stand to think about extra projects.

And… my neighbor gave me his vestibule door! I had a kinda decent one, but this one is acutally old, drilled for a mortise lock, and fitted with beveled glass!

But it gives me a dilemma. I have a set of cool art deco hardware that came with my house.

And I have 3 of these, enough for my entire first floor if I use something else in the basement stairwell. But… I could also keep this other knob that came from the house across the street if I want. And I think it’s even nicer. At least quality wise. But I only have 2 of these back plates.

So I should be back with talk of things I can stand soon. Plus some more jobs I can’t. In the meantime, what do you say about my hardware dilemma?

Cashing in Favors

I learned from being in the Crooked House that favors are a form of currency that can be held, exchanged, and transferred at will. I don’t know if this is because he’s Irish, he’s crazy, or he works in the building trades. Maybe it takes all of those things. But I learned from it and brought a friend over to help me with stripping my doors. She got a few from my hoard earlier this year. The doors are still coming out different colors, some mahogany and some more medium toned and orangey. The darker ones have loads of patina and I love them. The medium toned ones are nice, too, but I’m not sure if they’ll ever look as awesome as the others because the look kinda new. The plan is to eventually get them to be kinda close to the same color. For now I’m just working at those last infuriating little bits of paint! My friend taught me that I can use the hose and steel wool, and boy was this a help.

And I de-nailed them. These doors must have been in a boarding house or something because it looks like there were a lot of signs tacked to this one.

Then I started stripping the stairs with Peel Away. My inside woodwork is all going to be painted except the doors and the stair railing.

It made quick work of the old oil based paint on here. But there’s a problem. I got a little bit of it on the oak and it made black ammonia stains. Nothing conspicuous, but I’m still kicking myself. I’ll try to bleach them out the same way you deal with pet urine. Arg! Hopefully it bleaches out at least a little bit!

And I brought over my first piece of real furniture! I think it suits the house… it’s a total disaster.

It’s going to need some serious help. The paint failed and isn’t protecting the wood anymore, the seat came unglued, and you can see what happened to one arm. But once it gets some TLC, I’m thinking it’ll look great out back painted apple green. In the meantime, don’t you dare sit on it!

And one of the last dreaded jobs before I do the spray painting: this radiator. I wanted to have it blasted but decided it would be too much work to get it down the stairs and that I’d be better off stripping it myself. Was I right or was this a terrible idea? We’ll find out next time. For now, here it is looking extra gross with all that goopy latex paint starting to bubble off.

And finally, I’m not just cashing in favors. I’m also trying to cash in bricks. There’s been a pile out back since the patio door project, and I finally got it on Craigslist. I called them historic Philadelphia building bricks. They may only be half as old as what most people call historic Philadelphia. Details. Just don’t you dare call them common.

Doors! Doors! Doors

Yep, I’m finally back onto doing stuff. All my upstairs doors are now stripped of paint! A few that were never painted still need their varnish stripped!

How did I manage this so fast? I found a corner to cut. I’m not doing anything to the back sides of the sliding closet doors. They’ll remain like this. I’ll probably give them a light scraping to knock off what’s loose. The neighbor’s kids are the only ones who might shut themselves in the closet, and they can judge me if they want.

Awesome door. Yes it’s upside down. Trust me, the other one looks the same.

Now I don’t mean they’re completely done. I still have some bits here and there and the original varnish that didn’t come off is getting a little globby. Still, it means a lot to be done with the thick, heavy paint. Like this. Mmm, beans.

So my original plan was to use wood filler and repair all the gouges and paint the doors white to match the trim. The wood messed up this plan. It’s just too nice. Now instead I just want to get some kind of consistent coloring between the doors. The flaws stay as they were. They just look like character on nice wood.

So the rest of the doors. I have these for all openings from the upstairs hall.

I suspect that they’ll all end up kind of a medium wood color like the one on the left. All the doors have the awesome reeding on both sides except the linen closet and bathroom doors, which will have them on the hallway side only. I’m using these with white porcelain knobs.

And then in the back bedroom I have this awesome tall pair that forced me to build a sloped ceiling.

They’re not getting stripped because the paint is sound and I suspect that they were never stained and that the wood is paint grade.

Then there’s a bit of abuse I have to fix. The linen closet door looks like its previous owners mortised hinges with a Sawzall.

Though I’m leaving a lot of holes where they were, this abuse has to get cut off. And then I need to take off from the other side for symmetry and stain the new cuts to match the old door.

The massive heavy doors on the front bedroom closet are gonna slide. The pulls I got are big enough to hide the doorknobs but not this patch where there was once a lock.

I might just paint them brown to match the wood. So, any advice? I’m thinking I’ll keep the doors as light as possible. Not blond. I want them dark enough to contrast with the floors. But I could go to a dark brown if I wanted to. Let me know what you think!

Getting my own house in order

Now that I’m getting toward the end of my burnout, it’s time to remember that the to do list before having the floors sanded is getting tantalizingly short. And none of it is going to cost me much! That’s important right now.

I basically have to spray paint the radiators and furniture that I’m doing for my parents. Then there are the doors that I have to strip, stain, and varnish. And I’ll strip my railing, get some woodwork up, and hang the bathroom door. That’s about it! Now the bed is back in the green bedroom. And it turns out I do like the green. Either the color changed or it just looks different when it’s up in the whole room. But I swear, there was something I didn’t like about it before. It glows in bright light just like I wanted it to, but is also soothing when the light is dimmer. Which is good for a bedroom, right?

Then the doors and radiators are all in the front bedroom now, where I can start stripping them. (Only one radiator needs DIY stripping.) This will be tedious but it’s almost done. I might cut corners by sending one of those giant doors out and by leaving the sliding closet doors unstripped on the back sides.

Then I have a list of chores for my plumber to do to make up for the fact that I patched the walls. He says next Wednesday, so it looks like I have one more weekend without a fully working bathroom. But with the holidays and my frusturation I haven’t been staying there much anyway.

• I want these broken parts replaced and my sink reinstalled. After getting finding the source of the leak, I went through a little bit of dysfunction. I used the bathroom sink, forgetting that the drain wasn’t hooked up. Then I realized what I did and hooked it up. Then I realized water dribbled behind the cabinet, so I pulled the cabinet out and snapped the drain.

• Then there’s the shower handle. It wouldn’t stay attached. I was gonna fix this myself but it’s not my job anymore.
• And there are the toilet bolts. I think they were brass plated because they got rusty after just a few months. I specified solid brass this time around.
• Then I want the manifold mounted to the wall, but not with a family heirloom. I want everything except the kitchen sink hooked up and labeled correctly. More important, I want the pipes that aren’t working disconnected. I’m terrified of my own plumbing now. When this first went in it was exciting and wonderful and inspired envy from my dad.

Here’s what the bathroom looks like now. Once again it’s dirty, everything is out of place, and the water is shut off. But Wednesday (the 15th) my plumber is coming and fixing it!

So, we’ll see if I get back into the swing of things now. Hopefully something fun to show by the end of the weekend.

Hook, Line, Sinker, and Burnout

Yep, that last post was fake, and a lot of people fell for it. Even people I know in real life! I got a nice lady who was pushing a stroller up Pelham road to take the photo, and I stopped traffic when I was putting up the sold sign… with Scotch tape. So to review, I don’t have a trust fund, I don’t want a lawn, I don’t have enough clothes to fill a dressing room, and while my disdain for those vinyl windows was real, I would take care of the water damage and the broken panes in the original windows (which should stay!) first. Unless I was loaded. Then maybe I’d do everything at once. The only part of that post that was true is that I would live very much to see 349 Pelham Road restored. If you want to do it, I can promise you all my love and lots of free beer. And… West Mount Airy is pretty great. You’ll like it there.

But the fakest part of that post was all that ambition. The truth is I got fed up and decided that my sanity was more important than my (already blown) schedule. Last weekend I went to a potluck on Sunday and for a change of pace on Saturday… I helped a friend patch cracks in his plaster. I also got one halfassed coat on my own holes. So yes, this means that I don’t have any mold or other damage! And it’s only the one patch next to the recessed light that will even show. The one where the tape started to peel off in one corner, of course. Arg.

I’m putting a second coat on the other two anyway.

The plan was to paint the kitchen Easter Sunday. But since I didn’t do anything to the house since that quick patch job Saturday morning, that’s not happening. One other thing I did was retail therapy. Philadelphia Salvage was also in Mount Airy so after posing for the fake photos, I bought a window sash lift for the pocket door to my upstairs hall coat closet. The plan was to use one that’s left over from my parents’ house (also pictured) but this one is so much better.

So there we are, I was upset with a lot of things, including my disappearing money. And my solution was retail therapy. But it was kinda cheap!

Movin’ On Up!

The Crooked house is approaching an inconceivable place: a state of good repair. An as it needs me less and less, I’m finding myself falling out of love with it. I’ve been lusting for places with serious woodwork, light from all 4 sides, and some space to plant things. So, I’ve negotiated early access to the family trust fund and taken the plunge!

I LOVE MY NEW HOUSE!!! It’s in the Pelham Historic District in West Mount Airy. If you don’t know Philadelphia and are older than me, it might mean something to you that it’s the neighborhood where Thirtysomething was set.

Just look at these stairs!

And the dining room has an inglenook that’s big enough to be a dining room! I finally have room to really entertain!

The floor plan is wonderfully open. No more 14 foot lots for me!

And the front door is just like The Money Pit house! Love!! I don’t think I’ll have problems like in that movie. It’s a very well built house.

And I finally have a closet with enough room to hold all my clothes. Plus some pretty sick paneling.

It does have a few flaws. These inappropriate replacement windows will have to go post haste. Just no. Especially with the transoms in place to remind you how much better the original windows were. I’m seeing if the Irishman can make me some true divided light wooden casements. This is basically my first priority after I take the place over.

Have another look!

The good news is all that ornament is pressed metal. The nylon cup brushes I just bought to clean up my old bathroom floor should make it look like new in a jiffy. I figure a couple months to give the place a spit shine and I should be ready to move in by labor day.

Anyways, we’ll have so much more to talk about very soon!