Newborn House

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Some weeks, you work and work and work, and have little to show for your efforts. But then some weeks, you work and work and work and have a lot to show for your efforts. This weekend was the later.

During the past few weeks, Andi had completely stripped all of the woodwork in the parlor and refinished it with polyurethane. It looks amazing. In the meantime, we also had managed to re-wire the room, patch all of the rough spots in the plaster, and caulk around the window and French doors.

The good news, however, is that we were able to start painting the room. It's going to be a very pretty room. The color scheme is a series of greens -- a pale green for the main walls, with a dark green around the top of the room. The dark green area is covered with a very intricate stencil pattern. The small crown molding and the picture rail are painted white.

The stencil (from Alley's Treasures) is one of Andi's terrific E-Bay discoveries. This pattern is about 22" x 22" and has hundreds and hundreds of small areas cut-out to create a very intricate pattern. The process is time-consuming, but the effect is worth the effort. With any luck, we'll finish painting the parlor this week and call another room complete.

I figure it's just a matter of time until HGTV discovers Andi's amazing work and offers her her own series!

Stay tuned.

Posted by Tim at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Before and After Above: Doors before stripping. Right: Doors after stripping and refinishing. Click image to see large version.

For the past few weeks, Andi has been involved in a tedious, time-consuming, wearying, exhausting, finger-numbing process stripping the many layers of paint from all of the workwork in the parlor. All of the workwork in the house is made of heart pine, which was probably milled from local timber more than 120 years ago. The wood is tightly grained heart pine that just isn't available today.

In the parlor, we have two pocket doors that are more than 10 feet tall. Each door includes six panels, each of which is made from a single board approximately 18 inches wide. When we bought the house, all of the workwoord was painted ... and much of it had been painted multiple times.

To accentuate the beauty of the woodwork, we decided to strip all of the painting in the parlor, including the baseboard trim, window trim, French doors and trim, pocket doors and trim, and the mantle. To say the least, it was a major undertaking.

To get there, Andi went through a painstaking series of steps:

1. Strip the top layers of paint with the Eco-Stripper.
2. Using a chemical stripper and paint scrapers, remove the next layer of paint.
3. Using a series of ever-smaller tools (paint scraper, razor blade, pecan picker, etc.) remove the next layers of paint.
4. Sand the wood with a random-orbit sander.
5. Sand the wood with a mouse sander.
6. Hand sand the wood.
7. Steel wool.

It was tedious and time-consuming. In the end, though, we think it will be worth the effort. We are now in the process of putting a polyurethane finish on the woodwork. After that, we'll start with the painting, which we hope will be largely finished by this weekend.

In addition to the paint stripping, work in the parlor included a complete rewiring of all of the electrical work, including wiring the room for cable and network.

In my next update (very soon, I hope), I'll update you on some of the progress on the exterior work, plus a roundup of our six month's progress and a story about the barn plans.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Tim at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Blogging is hard work. Not like real work involved in the sweating, persistence, patience and commitment to hard work of house restoration that surpasses what normal people are willing to endure. That's why it's amazing how much progress Andi has made over the past few weeks, while I have made very little progress on our online progress reports.

As a quick catch-up, here are links to my most recent photo galleries:

Weeks 20 through 23.

Weeks 24-25.

More updates to come soon. Really.

Posted by Tim at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)