bungled

Yet another issue... of course.

2010-05-27T16:50:00.001-05:00

So a couple of days ago, I planted all my new plants in the native gardens I am creating out front. When I put new plants in the ground, I tend to get a little obsessed with their well being, so I went out to check on them that night. When I came back in through the porch, I saw light streaming up through the floorboards. Hmmm...

Now I should mention that we have a full basement under the porch. Before checking on the plants, I had done a load of laundry and left the basement lights on.

I decided to investigate. I went to the basement and noticed the ceiling looked strangely like porch flooring. I also noticed the joists were a little off. There were twenty four inches between them. I went back up to the porch. I walked on it. It bounced. There was no subfloor!

At this point, I brought in reinforcements (Kevin) who said we needed to call more qualified reinforcements (my dad, an engineer). He was surprised no one had fallen through the porch. With the combination of no subfloor and widely spaced joists. So now the plan is to add joists downstairs and use the old porch flooring as subfloor and install new floor over it to act as the new floor. We are also breaking tradition and staining it rather than painting porch floor blue/grey. We found straight grain fir at a really good price; it would have been painful to paint it.

Thoughts?

It has begun...

2010-05-20T20:53:00.001-05:00

Last summer we took off the asbestos cement shingles from the west side of our house and began restoring the original clapboard siding. There is a whole series of posts I wrote on this if you're interested, starting here. We are planning on going around the house, doing one side at a time. This summer, we are beginning with the front of the house, including the front porch.

Here is a picture of the porch before we began. It is not a traditional bungalow full-front porch; it's small, about 5ft. x 15ft. The wicker couch and footstool were a curb-side freebie. There was that red plastic outdoor carpet on the floors, plywood on the ceilings, and some odd issues between the ceiling and floor.

The porch had always been part of the plan for redoing the front of the house, but neither of us had expected the extent of work that was required. We found rotted wood everywhere, plus a lot of poorly done repairs (I use the term repairs lightly in this case). So, we ended up replacing every single post! Luckily, we had help:

That is our almost brother-in-law, Ken. He's done this kind of thing before, and proved to be a huge help. While the dudes worked on the posts, Kevin's sister (also Sara) stripped paint with me on the interior of the porch. She looks like a pro!

They were a huge help and even talked of coming again! I guess the Bungled House didn't scare them too much, although I don't think Sara will ever look at her new house the same way again....

My dad came to finish the job with Kevin on Sunday, so we really made a lot of progress. Here is a picture taken early in the process. This is of the doorway. There is no support behind the trim! EEK! And the trim is rotted! EEEEK!

They went around the porch, replacing the trim and installing 2x4 support under all of the new trim. Kevin just has one area to tweak and one more post to install, and that part of the job is done. Bonus: Wherever there is new wood, I don't have to strip paint! Yes! This side of the house actually should go quickly. There is a dormer on the front of the house that has cedar shingles, so we just need to repair the bad ones and wash and stain. There is trim that needs to be stripped up there, but not too much, so that shouldn't be too painful. The clapboards on the bottom of the house are going to be stripped using a Paintshaver, which will make it a lot faster and not kill my native gardens. On the side yard, the plants took a beating because of the tarps covering the ground. Hopefully with the Paintshaver, we'll just have to cover the specific area we are working on, as it hooks up to the Shop-vac and the paint shavings will be captured.

As a reward for all the boring paint stripping on Friday and Saturday, I pulled down the plywood covering the ceiling. Guess what I discovered? Haint Blue!! And a hole, but that's not important. Here's an article on the history of painting porch ceilings blue. I am so utterly excited about the blue. although the bead board is in pretty rough shape. I think we're actually planning on putting plybead (plywood beadboard) up because of its condition- painted Haint Blue, of course.

The floor is also in rough shape, but we are planning on stripping it and repainting it Porch Floor Blue (they should really think of a catchy name for gray-blue floor paint).

Okay, Online House Community and Friends, here's where we need your help:

1. Should we keep the porch open or reinstall storms? It had a full set of storms and screens, but they were ALL in very rough shape- we think a PO of this house had a crooked saw. Seriously. Should we go with tradition and have no storms and screens? Or should we make new ones?

2. Should we paint the inside of the porch to match the exterior of the house? There are clapboards inside the porch, as you can see from the picture above, but do they have to be the same color as the house? Or could they be white? And then what color should the beadboard surrounding the interior of the porch be? Here is our color palate on the actual house:

I'm just thinking with the gray floors, the gray all over the porch might be too much.

Please weigh in, I'm all ears--or eyes, I guess, right?

You know it's time to landscape when...

2010-04-30T20:04:00.000-05:00

the weeds are almost as tall as the shrubs you planted last year. Really, it was getting embarrassing. I could sense the neighbors all breathing a sigh of relief when they saw us pull up with a truckload of bricks and mulch. I didn't think to get the camera out until the project was almost complete, but this is the end result. I went cheap with the bricks and got them in the masonry section at the Big Blue Store instead of going through the landscaping section. This cut costs almost in half.

I think eventually the bricks will weather to the shade of the concrete sidewalk. I also plan to plant some perennials that will cascade over the side a bit to make it look a little less formal. For now, I'm happy with the results, and very excited for the Friends School Plant Sale next weekend.

And the we did nothing for two months....

2010-04-08T22:03:00.000-05:00

No, actually we've been plugging away on projects, just not plugging away on blogging. Sorry. Although we did take a break to do this last weekend:

The stairs are almost done, at this point I am just waiting for Kevin's carpentry skills to reattach some pieces. He's really the brains in this operation if I haven't mentioned that before.

Here's a close-up of the stairs. I finished the treads over my spring break with a base coat of amber shellac and a few coats of Minwax Polyurethane for Floors. While we waited for them to cure, all fifty pounds of Arlo had to be carried up and down for bed. We're all glad that stage of the remodel is done, especially him, since I bumped his head a few times on the wall while I was carrying him.

The banisters and other trim will be done this weekend, I hope, and then... we tear down each and every last crumb of cement asbestos siding!! Or at least everything we can reach without renting the scaffolding yet.

Housiversary

2010-02-14T22:10:00.000-06:00

What kind of crazy people buy each other a house for Valentine's Day? We do, of course. For our second anniversary of Bungled House ownership, we didn't do any house projects. We went out to eat, we cooked good food, and sat around and watched the Olympics. Wonderful.

After, After and In Progress

2010-02-10T20:38:00.002-06:00

Because what's the point of finishing a project if you haven't already started a new one that will monopolize your time?

First, I will start with the Hallway before:

And hall after:

It just feels more like an old house now, doesn't it? The color of the walls is actually green, though it looks kind of grey in some photos. It is a Behr color, Spiced Oregano, but I have never been impressed with Behr paint, so it is actually Olympic Premium Paint. Olympic Premium is a zero-VOC paint, and since I've been meaning to explore the low/no-VOC paint world, I decided to give it a spin in a small space. I'm pretty particular about my paint quality; actually I'm a little on the obsessive side. I enjoyed using this paint, it had good coverage and very little odor. I really love the color with the wood, too.

We are still hunting for a door to replace the white one in the picture above. It is the bathroom door, and someone was not kind to it; it's badly dinged, there is a mortise cut out for a hinge that doesn't exist, and all of the panels are cracked or covered in holes from towel racks. So eventually the plan is to use it in the kitchen for the doorway down to the stairs (currently void of a door) and find a replacement for the bathroom. We're in no hurry, I actually don't mind the white door for now.

For the next before and after, I give you Beast to Generic-Modern-Day-Furnace-Not-Yet-Worthy-Of-A-Catchy-Name (or GMDFNYWOACN, for short):

I don't really have much to say about this, considering I did zero percent of the work. It's a Trane, 95% efficient. I can now walk everywhere in the basement and not hit my head. Kevin can too, as long as he walks only North to South and doesn't try to go West.

Finally, I give you in progress:

This is where I left off on the stairs on Sunday to become a Saints fan and football fan all in one night. As you can see, there is still paint in all the crevices and cracks, which will take me most of this next weekend to pluck and sand out, but I think I made good progress. I think I can hear the bungled house thanking me for rescuing its wood from the dreaded paint-over -- either that or it's the new furnace starting up.

We've killed the Beast

2010-02-03T21:40:00.000-06:00

That's right, our sea-green beast is dead. I was at work, so Kevin and the dog were there to witness its last gasps. When I got home, I have to say, Arlo was visibly shaken. Either he thinks he's next or he's afraid of the five electric heaters strategically placed around the house. Come to think of it, he's giving the heater that's pointed at us right now the shifty eye, so the evidence is in favor of the latter of my theories.

Anyway, enough about the dog. It is COLD up in here. At last read, which was about five minutes ago since I'm obsessively checking it at this point, the thermostat is reading fifty-nine degrees. I have two blankets on and I have only gotten off the couch twice since I got home from work. One of those times was to stare at our basement in awe.

This might look like a concrete floor to the untrained eye, but I'd like to draw your attention to the faint square imprint. That used to be our furnace. The one that was kind of handy to have around in February in Minnesota. The temp outside right now? Nineteen degrees.

See? No furnace. This picture also shows two of the five heaters. The new furnace is going in tomorrow, so really I'm being dramatic right now. Like I said, the asbestos abatement guys left us some heaters. They also left our basement spotless and smelling of Simple Green cleaner. Mmmmm. I'll write more about abatement when I can get Kevin to explain the process in detail.

I go back and forth about the furnace. On one hand, the old furnace worked just fine. Yes, it was from 1946, and yes it was a little on the creepy side, but on the other hand, it was a reliable appliance. Gravity heat, for those who have experienced it is quite nice. It is quiet and the furnaces last forever because there are no moving parts. We are replacing something that lasted 64 years with something that will last 20 years. However, I think, in the end, it was a good decision. For one, our neighborhood offered a deal where we would get a 35% rebate. That is on top of the federal Energy Star rebates. That comes out to 65% off of a new furnace. Wow. Also, we had gravity heat in a duplex before moving into the Bungled House (and enjoyed it thoroughly) but we felt that others who may eventually want to live here might be a little more freaked by the Beast. Not everyone has a fondness for giant green hunks of metal.

How many pictures of the lack of a furnace can one put into a blog post? I'm thinking three is the limit. That was the last, I promise. It's just so weird!

Right?

Right?

A Newel Post

2010-01-31T09:50:00.004-06:00

Get it? A newel post? Ha.

I will be honest. The hall is not done, and I started a new project. Why? Well, it turns out, trim installation is a lot harder than it looks. In the twenty minutes I attempted it on Friday night, I cracked two boards and a wall. Ouch. Lucky for me, Kevin is a much more patient person, he is more methodical, and he doesn't mind finishing my abandoned projects. We tend to compliment each other well when working on the house. He is really our detail man, whereas I am the blunt force. I am good at removal and power-tooling; he is good at finishing and picking paint out of cracks. He is good at power-tooling too, but only after I've destroyed something enough that he is over the fear of wrecking it. Without me, projects would take months to get started. Without him, they would never get finished.

More on the trim, installations and decisions in another post.

Anyway, we need to get the trim installed today because the furnace is finally going in on Wednesday, and we can't have stuff everywhere in the basement. So Kevin is installing the trim, while I begin the hall stairs. There are five stairs from the main floor, then a landing in which you make a 180 degree turn, then go up the rest of the way. I am focusing on the stairs on the main floor, and leaving the top half until we are working upstairs again. Kevin and I are getting sick of feeling like we live in a crackhouse whenever we have guests, so main floor first.

Here is a before shot, taken on the day we bought the house. You can just barely see the carpet on the stairs...mmm minty green goodness.

Here is What we did to the stairs on the day we closed on the house:

Why is it that new homeowners always feel the need to rip out carpet the first day? It's like a hazing ritual from the house.

Anyway, here are the stairs about midway through the day yesterday.

I took off the trim around the newel post and I am planning on trying stripper on it, as they are small pieces and I don't want to sand them too much. Our stairs have this glossy yellowish finish from the 50's. Here is a close-up.

Anyone know what this is? You can see the grain through it, so it's not paint. We know it was put on circa 50's because the crappy built-ins in the dining room also date to the 50's and the finish is on them too. It reminds me of a glaze.

I would love to hear from you all:

What was your first project after the keys of your house were handed to you?

Step Five: Finishing the Wood

2010-01-23T23:13:00.000-06:00

So this is where all of the work from the last three months will pay off. Seeing gleaming finished boards ready to install is a wonderful thing. I will write an after post once things are installed, but first, Step Five: how we finished the wood.

When I left off, we had sanded the boards down to 220 grit sand paper. The first thing we did to prep them for finish is to wipe the dust off the boards. A tack cloth works best for this, though ours keeps running off, so I just use a clean, lint free cloth.

After wiping down the boards, I put on a thin coat of shellac. This keeps the boards from taking the stain unevenly. Once this is dry, I stain.

The woodwork in our house is pine, according to Kevin, and was originally stained very dark to look more sophisticated. We are keeping to the original spirit by staining the boards, though we are going a lot lighter than the original. The stain we are using is Minwax's Vermont Maple. Kevin held up a bottle of genuine maple syrup to a board, and it does have an uncanny resemblance.

Anyway, I digress. I use a cloth and put on a liberal amount of stain to all sides of the board that will be public. I then wait 1-2 minutes and use another cloth to wipe off excess stain. If the boards are small enough, I put stain on one, then another, then wipe off the first and then the second. If it's too long a board, I just wait about half a song (listening to music is a pretty good way to time it), then wipe it off.

Up until now, we've been finishing everything (a spare bedroom and the three restored main floor windows) with shellac. I like shellac, and I understand it is the historically accurate finish, however, I think I need a higher skill level to use it. It dries incredibly fast, which makes it rather hard to apply. Kevin and I thought long and hard about whether we wanted to keep going with the shellac, or switch to something else. The trim is going to see a lot of abuse and use, so something strong was essential. Shellac has a tendency to get water spotting and reacts poorly to alcohol. Also, I am not happy at all with how it's held up on the window sills we've restored just last year.

After reading a lot of advice from Fine Homebuilding magazine's online archive, we decided to switch to a oil-poly blend they recommended:

So far we are really happy with this product. It is a wipe-on finish and has a three hour dry time, which makes it easy to apply. I put on a third coat today. The plan now is to install everything with three coats, then apply a fourth coat to the installed boards after filling nail holes. Here is what the finished boards look like:

Pretty, huh?

Step Four: Sanding

2010-01-16T13:34:00.001-06:00

This is the fourth part of my series about stripping woodwork. This is the step we really didn't want to do, but since the stain originally put on our wood work became blotchy when we took off the old shellac, we had no choice -- we had to sand. It really did slow the process down. Any regular readers might recall I was planning on doing the entire main floor this winter. I am still in the hall I started in. So it goes; we didn't really think I was going to have such high productivity did we?

Anyway, on to the sanding. Any area that could be power sanded, got treatment from the random orbital. While doing the outdoor project, we invested in a hose attachment and connectors so we could hook up the shop-vac and the sander. It really cuts down on the dust produced by the sander. We got the hose attachments at the Orange Store.

For sanding the trim, we went with four grits: 60, 100, 150, and 220. During the finishing phase we are using 400 to sand between coats. Looking at the boards that are done, there are a few things I would have done differently. I have a few of those curly scratches from the random orbital sander, and I think from now on, I will check the boards more carefully and hand-sand any of those out. I will also work in a more well-lit area of the basement so I can see them better.

The trickiest part of sanding for me is when I am hand-sanding. The boards that must be hand-sanded are the ones with the curves and detail. It's hard to make sure I am keeping the profile crisp. I use a combination of hard sanding blocks and those soft foam sanding blocks that you see by the sanding paper at the store. When I feel like the block itself is losing its grit, I just wrap new sandpaper on top. I use the foam for any curves and the harder sanding block for corners and hard edges.

Once I was done sanding the boards I removed, I also began sanding the boards that remained installed. These are the door frames. I found something kind of interesting when doing this. The round doorway has a stop installed, like it used to have a door. There are no ghosts of hinges, however, so I think the stop is just decoration. Anyway, we thought removing the stop would make sanding a lot easier, so I began to pry it away. The stops on our windows is mounted flush to the frame. On the round doorway, however, there is a channel cut into the frame. The joinery is so tight that the wood underneath hasn't even aged.

This picture above shows the straight piece of the stop removed, and the rounded still installed. I don't dare try to take it off the rounded area. I have a theory that the stop must have been installed before the frame was put in; all of the nails are sticking point side out. Incidentally, it is a good thing there are no small children running around this house, because there has been at least 20 nails sticking straight out of the doorway for a week.

This picture gives you a good idea of what the wood looks like sanded down with 60 grit. I make a point not to sand it down to make it look like perfect, new wood. If there is a scratch, I don't sand it all out. Although there is still some blotching I will sand out in future passes.

When working on the frames, I went to strip the paint on the kitchen doorway, and discovered it had always been painted. I had mentioned what wood that was originally painted would look like when stripped. This is a good picture of it; see how underneath the paint it looks almost whitewashed? It also shows the paint color we decided on for the hallway (the green on the left). I plan to strip this doorway and repaint it to match the kitchen woodwork.

And what has Kevin been up to while I have been working on the hall?

Making himself a woodworking bench. It is his pride and joy; the top is individually laminated solid pine, when finished comes out to about 4 inches thick. The legs are also laminated together, all of it was hand-planed down smooth, and all of the mortises are hand-chiseled. He really is a pretty talented guy.

And finally, a sneak preview of the finished boards. Next, I will report on the finishing and installation.

Textured Walls

2010-01-14T22:04:00.002-06:00

Any opinions on what we should do about our badly textured walls? I'm talking about the sand-paint look, seen here on the right side of this photo. It isn't original to the house, but is it really out of character for a house of this vintage?

Options (I might make this a poll):

1. Leave them and retexture over repair work

2. Re-skimcoat the entire house ourselves

3. See how much it would cost to get professionals to skimcoat

4. Other option I haven't thought of....

Share your thoughts!

There might have been a reason....

2010-01-14T20:37:00.003-06:00

that the PO calked the windows shut. I am seriously cold right now, and I am sitting inside on the couch. I can feel a breeze coming through (okay, that might be an exaggeration). I don't remember it being this bad last year, but we messed with the weather stripping while restoring the west-side of the house, so that might be part of the problem. I think we're going to look into blow-in wall insulation.

However the new furnace, with a whole-house humidifier, is going in soon so that should help the dry-air aspect of things considerably.

The new furnace, incidentally, is very exciting to me. We knew, when buying the house that we would eventually have to replace it, as we were the only people dumb enough to buy a house with such a creepy old furnace. However, cost-wise, it never made sense. Based on online calculators, the payback period was up to 15 years. However, our neighborhood association has a rebate program using federal stimulus dollars that is offering 35% rebates for qualifying energy improvements. So that rebate, coupled with the federal tax rebates, made it much more feasible and put payback time at 8 years. Minneapolis residents take note: here is the website.

I don't know how these things work in the real estate world, but I would imagine when we finally tear ourselves away from this house, we will get some money back by having a furnace that doesn't look like it came out of a World War II submarine. Right?

Finally, in a vein completely unrelated to HVAC, we bought the house another Christmas present with our Christmas money from my grandparents (Thanks!!!). We're really just too indulgent when it comes to the bungled house. That, or we're trying to apologize to it for all of the unfinished projects.

This one is for the outside of the porch; there is currently no light there at all.

This one is for the inside of the porch. There is also no light there right now, but there is a hole where we ripped the old one down and put it in a closet. It was ugly, and we killed the electricity to the porch when we rewired the house. It was one of those "we'll just temporarily not have electricity out there, say three months until warmer working conditions?" that turned into two years of no porch lights.

Step Three: Getting rid of the old shellac

2010-01-04T20:26:00.006-06:00

So when we last left off, the board looked like this:

The next step is to get it looking more like the right side of this board:

Removing the old shellac is pretty simple, though a little messy. If you're lucky, you can go right from removal to finishing your boards, which was our plan... that fell through. More on that in a minute.

Anyway, tools you need are:

1. Denatured Alcohol, the solvent for shellac.

For more information on shellac, check out this Wikipedia Article.

2. Rubber or latex gloves.

3. Steel Wool or Synthetic Steel Wool

4. A bowl (doesn't matter the size, though it might be nice if it had a tight lid).

5. A rag (any rag).

Get your gloves on. Pour some alcohol into the bowl and dip the steel wool in. I bought synthetic steel wool for the first time on this project, and I must say, I like it a lot better than the real thing. For one, I don't have to worry about metal shavings ending up in my wood. Also, I don't like the feel of it. Though I can touch it unlike my mother-in-law who wouldn't even stock it at the hardware store she used to work at. I don't think she or I are alone in our distaste for steel wool.

Anyway, back to the process after a lengthy diversion.

Begin scrubbing the wood with the steel wool dipped in alcohol. When the alcohol gets too cloudy, pour some new stuff in your bowl. When the boards start to take on a dull appearance, the shellac is off.

Now, this is where we were going to go ahead and refinish. What we didn't count on was a stain below the shellac. This stain, while removing the old shellac, became blotchy. After reading about fixes for blotchy stain and trying talk ourselves into liking the look, we gave up and decided to sand all of the boards down to get rid of the blotchy stain.

So, stay tuned for sanding and finishing!

An Ode to the Beast in the Basement

2010-01-04T19:29:00.005-06:00

Your subtle warmth has graced this house

for 64 long years,

and you have served it faithfully

--though your demise will cost me no tears.

Why?

When every fall we lose the fight

and temperatures dip too low,

it is I, dear furnace, who must go below

and light your pilot light.

I face your rusty, blue-green frame

(you really have let yourself go, by the way)

and my heart begins to pound.

(Yes, I know that fearing you is really pretty lame.)

I will miss the sense of accomplishment I get

when I hear your familiar Whoosh!

(Especially when it's not followed by BANG!)

However, I must say, the damage you do to our utility bills

are something I won't soon forget.

So goodbye, dear beast, it's been real;

your replacement is on its way.

I assure you it's nothing personal....

We just got a really good deal.

Every House Deserves a Christmas Present!

2010-01-04T19:10:00.004-06:00

Here is ours:

This is one of those splurges we could justify no other way, except to gift it to the house. We've been eyeing house numbers like these for some time now, and decided that installing them in the below zero weather we've been having in Minnesota would be fun. Actually, I think they will wait until spring, since we are planning to do to the rest of the house what we did to the west side last summer. We also ordered new lights, an outdoor sconce for the front and a matching ceiling fixture for the inside of the porch. I'll post pictures of these when they come.

It has been busy here at the bungled house, so the posts went off my to-do list for awhile, though the projects have been going smoothly. I am going to post a ton, now, to make up for it. Sorry for playing catch up.

By the way, on New Year's Eve, we saw this house for the first time two years ago!

Step Two: Stripping the Paint

2009-11-16T16:59:00.004-06:00

Note: I should probably back up here a little bit. If you are not sure whether or not your house's woodwork was originally finished or painted, test a small area with either stripper or a heat gun. If the paint slides off easily, and you can see the wood underneath, you have finished wood. If it is harder to get the paint off, or if the wood has paint "in its pores" and it has a whitewashed look, it was originally painted.

Tools You Need (From top to bottom):

Respirator: Kevin and I tend to be overly cautious maybe when it comes to safety, so go at your own risk. Personally, I kind of like the respirator. Also, it's a lot easier to breath for a long time in a respirator than in a dust mask. Just don't sneeze....
Gloves: The temperatures can get pretty hot when using heat to remove paint, so a good pair of leather gloves is important. FYI for good quality leather gloves that fit small hands (or oddly shaped hands) go to Ubers .
Goggles: just to be on the safe side. A burning paint chip in the eye just sounds really painful.
Pull Scraper: The one we have has a lot of angles (convex curve, concave curve, right angel, point etc.). It works well for curved and detailed pieces.
Five-in-One: a stiff putty knife would do the trick, too, but my five-in-one has a blunt blade, meaning there's less chance I'll nick the trim.
Heat: We recently purchased a Silent Paint Remover, and though they cost a lot, there are deals to be had. We got a deal on ours at Ebay.

It really does work a whole lot faster than a heat gun, but our trusty heat gun still has its advantages over the SPR sometimes (hard-to-reach corners and details). Why no chemical strippers? For one, that can get expensive. Two, they're a mess. Kevin wrote his one and only blog post about stripping a door using various methods, and I think it is a good case-in-point.

Method:

I will also talk briefly about how to use the heat gun, for now I will focus on the SPR.

Find a good, heat-proof surface to lay the SPR on when not in use. I actually just worked on my basement floor, but I did get sore after a while. Choose a flat, no frills board to begin with. Put on the respirator and gloves, and turn on the SPR. Once it's heated up (only a few seconds), place the SPR on the board you want to strip. It has a nifty arm that can make it rest at an angle if needed, as seen in my pictures.

After a few attempts, you'll get the hang of how long to leave the heat on the board. If it's not left on long enough, the paint won't come off, and for whatever reason, it always seems to come off best with the first pull. If left on too long...fire. Basically, when the paint is bubbly and smoking a little, take off the heat. Note: you should also know where a working fire extinguisher is, and maybe even keep it close, just in case.

Once the heat is off the board, work fast; it cools quickly. Take the scraper and either pull or push the paint off, depending on the type you are using (the wood handled one in the picture is a pull scraper, the five-in-one is a push).

Get off what you can in the first pull, then heat it up and go again.

If you are using the heat gun, it's more of a fluid motion. With one hand you hold the heat gun, and the other you use the scraper. Move slowly along the board pulling the heated paint with you as you go. The heated paint should be bubbly and smoking a little.

At the end, your boards will look like this:

Don't worry, they don't stay this ugly.

ONE LAST SAFETY NOTE: The SPR should be used with its protective screens in place. It keeps the heat at a safe distance from the wood. The heat gun should be used on the lowest effective setting. Both of these tools have a real and serious risk of starting a fire if not used properly. Yes, we at Bungled House have started fires with both. Both times we were being stupid. And yes, I did it twice before changing my method. Please be safe. And learn from your mistakes the first time.

As always, if you have comments and or advice, please write!

Getting the Nails Out

2009-11-15T10:34:00.002-06:00

This is what I love about the houseblogging community. At the time I wrote that first post in the series about removing the woodwork, I had only removed a few nails. After doing quite a few more, I realized I could have written a whole lot more on the subject of proper nail removal.

And then...

I checked the blog and discovered Bennington Colonial had done just that! And recommended an awesome tool that we are totally getting. It is actually made to pull nails out of wood through the back. So please check out Bennington Colonial's post if you are going to take off your trim.

This Series Will be Interrupted....

2009-11-13T09:48:00.005-06:00

By the house's not-so-subtle hint that our efforts should be focused on the disaster that is our kitchen.

Here is the kitchen sink on the day we bought the house. Notice the backsplash (how could you not)? That's drawer liner, not wallpaper.

This past weekend, we had dinner guests, so of course, the faucet cracked and started leaking.

This put us in a dilemma, that I'm sure many of you have faced. This room is obviously on our to-do list. Or, to be more specific the gut-to-the-studs list. I don't really want to replace things right now, I want to do it in a couple of years in one glorious purging of our bank accounts. So I went to the Orange Store.

Orange Store Employee: "Can I help you?"

Me: "My faucet cracked apart. I was hoping you had a replacement part."

OSE: "Is is a Moen or a Delta?"

Me: "It's an ugly faucet from the seventies."

OSE: "Maybe you could call the company?"

Me: "I don't think it has a company."

OSE: "Would you like to look at our new faucets?"

Me: (sigh) "I suppose."

Now at this point, we had to make a decision. Either replace faucet with a cheap one, or go all out and buy one that we actually like and hope it will work with our remodel plans in the future. We opted for option 2 (Kevin didn't like the 3rd option I posed, which was to just gut the kitchen and be done with it). We reasoned that buying a new ugly faucet only to replace it in a few years seemed wasteful, and we had a pretty good idea of our future faucet needs anyway.

So, early Sunday morning (before doing the dishes, which in hindsight could have turned out very badly), we set to work removing the old faucet. Only to realize that in it's forty years of service, the particles of food and rust had joined together and welded the faucet in place. So Kevin did what anyone would do in a similar situation: he brought out the Sawz-all.

With the old faucet finally out of the way, the new faucet could be put in:

It's like looking at a beautiful swan surrounded by a psychedelic swamp.

Day One: Removal

2009-10-31T18:20:00.006-05:00

To remove or not to remove?

When we did the trim in the bedroom upstairs, some of the woodwork had been removed for the electrical project and some remained in place. We decided it would be a good opportunity to see which way worked better.

There are pros and cons to each method, but ultimately we decided to remove the trim for this project. For the following reasons:

We are doing this over the winter and paint stripping creates a large mess that we didn't want to be living with.
It's easier to get crisp lines where the wood meets the wall if it's removed.
When the wood is left in place, the cracks and corners are really hard to get into, which means lots of work with dental tools picking out little bits of paint.
The finished job looks better where we removed the woodwork than where we kept it installed.

The cons for removing the trim:

Okay, so that's a pretty unlikely occurrence, but the point is you can get plaster damage. You can also crack the trim (I had a couple mishaps of that nature today), but usually both cracked (or missing) plaster and cracked woodwork can be fixed. I would rather fix that than spend hours with dental tools, but it's really a personal choice.

If you would like to remove the woodwork to strip it, read on. If giant chunks of plaster falling off scares you, wait until the next installment.

First step: gather your tools.

Stuff you Need:

Marker or pencil
tape
utility knife
five-in-one or stiff putty knife
hammer
crow bar (the little ones work well too, I just couldn't find ours)
stiff piece of plastic or wood (I use a plastic putty knife)
drop cloth
Shop-Vac
Vise-Grips
small step ladder

Step One:

Score the paint. Kevin uses a utility knife for this and runs it between where the wood meets the wall or other trim piece. I like to use a five-in-one tool and gently tap the end with a hammer to break the paint. If you don't do this, the paint can sometimes be bonded to the wood so badly that it will pull chunks of the wood off.

Step Two:

GENTLY, GENTLY, tap the five-in-one with the hammer at the edge of the woodwork. Move up and down the entire length of the trim gently prying it away from the wall. Once you get enough room, you can move to the crow bar. This is where the stiff plastic comes in. I use the plastic putty knife because the handle is easy to grip. Place it between the crow bar and whatever surface is behind it so the force of the prying is on the plastic. You'll do less damage this way. Focus on the nails that are nailed into other woodwork, as wood is much stronger than plaster when it comes to prying.

Step Three:

At this point, the trim should be off the wall. This is where the marker comes in. Label it. My labels look like this:

"Hallway- S. Side- E. of Kitch Door"

I try to be as detailed as possible, because I am kind of scared of putting it back together.

The tape is for taping pieces that become cracked back together. Our trim style is unusual enough that the cap is not available in the twin cities. I save even little chips that fall off by just wrapping some tape around the board with the chip in place.

Step Four:

Get the nails out. This is where the Vise-Grips comes in. The key to pulling the nails is to pull them through the entire board from the back, not pry them out from the face. This way, you don't risk break-out from the force of the nail.

Finally, interesting pictures from the day of trim removal:

Here is a shot of the round doorway. The trim is removed on one half.

The fruits of my labor. I just hadn't removed all the nails yet. There were four doorways in this hall, so a lot of the work was vertical.

If done really well, this is what the plaster should look behind the trim. I'm not going to lie, this is the only one that looks this nice.

Finally, hidden treasures. This is the original wallpaper I unearthed behind some of the trim. It looks almost stenciled. I might use the design somewhere eventually.

And finally, a partially disintegrated crayon that a child pushed down a crack in the molding. Can anyone date it?

Stay Tuned for: Stripping....

Paint Removal 101

2009-10-31T18:01:00.005-05:00

My sister and her husband bought an old Victorian in our hometown recently and it, like our house, has painted woodwork. Except for the room that the previous owner started, realized what a pain in the neck stripping woodwork is, and just put a coat of polyurethane over her half finished job, paint chips and all. Maybe she was going for a distressed look?

Anyway, since we are once again on a paint stripping adventure, I thought I'd document our process for her and anyone else out there interested in stripping their woodwork.

Our project is the entire main floor of our house. We have stripped the paint on three main floor windows already and an entire room upstairs, so we have had the opportunity to experience multiple different methods. I plan to write a series of detailed posts using the methods we have found to work best.

Note: If anyone would like to add their suggestions or tips, please comment. I would love to hear other ideas!

Because we can't just sit still for a weekend...

2009-10-20T19:35:00.005-05:00

We are going to sneak one little mini-project in before the great main floor bungle-revival begins: rewiring the basement.

In the first few months of us owning the Bungled House, we tackled a complete rewiring of the living room, dining room, foyer and all three bedrooms. This replaced some scary electrical work the house had acquired over the years. For more on this project, go here, here and here.

However, knowing that a full remodel of the rooms was underway, we left a few areas unfinished (no, there's no exposed live wires anywhere). For instance, there are a lot of things like this:

Note the bad plaster job around the outlet and the giant pink foam block. That is a plug, as it is an outside wall. Interior walls were simply ignored. Seriously; there are giant holes in the molding all over our house. Why, you ask, did we not just install the outlets in the giant holes? well for one, it's not code, and for two, we felt the holes in the molding were done in poor taste. Solution?

It's not perfect, but Kevin tried to match the wood grain and I think he did an excellent job. This was also a first attempt, and if we've learned anything from do-it-yourselfing, it's that the first attempt takes the longest, looks the worst and irks you every time you walk past it.

Anyway, back to the original message of this post: rewiring the basement. Two rooms, the kitchen and bathroom, were not rewired in the original project, as both these rooms will require a total renovation some day. Our solution was to run dedicated circuits to every outlet in the rooms so we knew we wouldn't run into any unknown live wires. In the process, we killed the basement electrical. There is one working light in the basement currently (and a few lamps) and one or two outlets. Our plan is to have five lights and two outlets per wall throughout the basement. All lights will be turned on by a switch at the top of the stairs.

I hate dark basements.

It was always one of those things we meant to come back to, as it would really only take a weekend if well planned, but other things just kept getting in the way. Now, however, two things are pushing this project up on the list. The first: trim stripping is going to take place in the basement, and the lighting is seriously subpar right now. The second: the rewiring also cut-off the low voltage wires for the doorbell, and I want it working for trick-or-treaters this year.

I think this might be the original doorbell (or at least the first installed in this house). It worked before the wiring project. It is made by the Edwards Company and has the original installation and maintenance instructions glued onto the back. I will post more pictures and information about the doorbell as I work to revive it this weekend.

I hate houses with broken doorbells. Tacky.

Before

2009-10-14T16:11:00.012-05:00

A warning: This is an honest portrayal of the condition of the three main level living areas we are going to be restoring this year. You may see some disturbing images. You'll cringe for sure, and be thankful you don't live in such a dwelling.

So I ask, try to see it how I do (on good days). The floors are refinished. The trim is stripped. The walls are painted and the ceilings are deglitterpopcornified (I totally made up a new word there--think it will catch on?).

Our house has three things going for it that make it work for the kind of total restoration we plan to do. The first is its size. At 1100 square feet, projects are never more than we can handle (or at least don't appear that way until we've gone too far to go back). In this picture, I am standing in the northwest corner of the house, and you can see the door on the south side of the house in the upper right. It's only about 26 feet long.

The second is its condition. It's livable, but at the same time, because no real work has been done to it for so long, I never feel guilty about replacing something or redoing someone else's work.

The third is also related to its condition. Even in its 101 years, its owners have seen the value in some key old house features. It had seven original light fixtures when we bought it. The beveled glass front door, though in need of some help, is intact.

All of the original window and door hardware is still here.

Even the hardwood floors have never been refinished, though they sat hidden under linoleum and carpet for over sixty years.

Kevin and I had always intended to do a lot of the work ourselves on the house, but we always thought we'd be open to hiring things out as well. The more we do ourselves, however, the more connected we become to the house and its quirks. And the less we trust others to complete the job to our standards. At this point, it's almost a challenge to me to see what we can do ourselves. I love looking at the pieces of the house that we've restored and knowing the effort and value we take in the work has paid off in some beautiful way.

Our latest project is a catastrophic undertaking, especially for two people who have been on a one-wall kick for some time. We plan to restore the trim back to a natural wood finish in the foyer, living room, dining room and hallway.

Here are two half-hearted attempts (I said I'd be honest), really more tool experimentation than anything else. We have completed a whole room upstairs already, so this isn't a new skill for us.

While the trim is off, we are going to take down the ceilings. They are already all drywall, but the job was done rather poorly, and they are popcorn and glittery and gross. So we are going to knock them out and reinstall drywall the right way this time. Then we're going to tackle the walls. Cracks will be repaired (Kevin's specialty) and I'm going to do a test to see how hard sanding off the texture will be. Then everything is going to be painted. NOT WHITE. This house has been too white for too long. It is aching for color. I can feel it.

While I'm doing a lot of the finish work on the trim, Kevin is going to be building new corner cabinets. The originals met their demise back in the fifties by the looks of it, and their replacements are ugly and weird. It's like someone poured mustard on them.

Finally, we will refinish the floors. This might be the one thing we hire out (but I doubt it considering our history on these things).

Like I said, a huge undertaking, and I know, like everything else it will take longer than we plan. You'd think we would get better at time estimation, but the thing is, deep down, I like to grossly underestimate the time it takes us to finish a project.

Although it does drive Kevin crazy.

Update

2009-10-13T21:30:00.006-05:00

I need to get into the habit of writing every weekend again.

Windows have been the theme of house remodel lately for Kevin and I. He has been hard at work making combination wood storms for the side of the house we repainted this summer. He installed the first two today, finally (the installation was interrupted by my parents when they came to take us to the last Twins game in the Metrodome on Sunday).

Here's a detail shot of one primed. I will take pictures of them on the house when it's not dark. Note: As promised, pictures of the storms have been added.

This isn't a storm Kevin made, but one we restored. The color on this is more accurate than the picture of Kevin's storms.

Here are Kevin's storms installed:

The first storms went in our bedroom, and with winter coming a little early this year in Minnesota, the comfort level in the bedroom is sure to improve. It's been especially hard getting out of bed knowing I'm about to walk into such a cold room. They look beautiful, but if you talk to Kevin, he will tell you they are riddled with mistakes. Either he's too modest or they'll fall off the house in a few years...stay tuned.

The dining room window is also getting a homemade combination wood storm. I know I have mentioned this before, but the window is huge. The wood part of the storm had to be bungeed to the top of our car because it wouldn't fit inside. Which really bummed me out because we have fit quite a laundry list of things inside this car before with no problems. Although the apple tree is still leaning a little....

I have been working on a bedroom window that I took out in May when I was bored between the fence project and the siding project (there was only a week between these two projects, by the way). I thought it would be a nice little activity to tide me over. Like I said, the siding project began and my window was forgotten. Until I realized it was getting close to heating season. And then the temperature dropped fifteen degrees. And then it snowed. And now the heat is on and there is a gaping hole in our house. Okay, fine, it has a storm window, but it's a cheap metal one.

So I have been working on the window. Once it is done, however, it will mark the first truly finished room in the bungled house. See, it's getting less bungled every day.

On the last day of summer, which also proved to be the first and last day of fall as well, I went crazy on the yard while I was waiting for paint to dry on the window. There was this patch of yard that had been largely neglected by the PO, and was in desperate need of attention. There were cement chunks and a subculture of daylillies that decided to secede from the mainstream society of daylillies on the other side of the yard.

So I ripped everything out. Then I went around the yard and transplanted all of the ferns that had been growing in nooks and crannies and looking very uncomfortable and made a little fern bed of sorts. The only other plant I left was the ivy growing up the fence, because last year, when we actually had fall, it turned a brilliant red. In the spring, I'm going to fill in with a groundcover. My goal is to eventually fill in this whole area with plantings to cut down on mowing.

Still Alive...

2009-09-15T20:52:00.002-05:00

Sorry it has been awhile, the school year started and, frankly our current projects (organizing and cleaning the garage, basement and back porch) just weren't that interesting to take photos of or blog about. Though the car fits in the garage for the first time since the beginning of the fence project in April. Eureka!

This is especially nice since our garage comes right to the alley and we have no driveway, so it had to be on the street. Unfortunately I am now too lazy to park in the garage because we don't have an automatic door opener, and it's a real hassle to get out, open the door, get back in, back the car into the garage and close the door again. For me, this all takes a certain amount of finesse because if the door goes up too far, I can't reach it and have to jump or stand on the bumper of the car to get it back down, which is just not something you want to do after teaching 30 4th graders all day.

Kevin is making our combination storms as we speak, and those are worth blogging about, though not by me. I'll see if I can persuade him to write in the nest couple days. They look spectacular, from what I've seen.

We have painted our last paint....

2009-08-09T22:33:00.005-05:00

The house painting is done! I love to be able to do one of these posts where months of hard work comes together into something we are really proud of. I know it's just one side, and there are three more to go and all, but it feels really good to say look what we did!

I apologize for the angle on all of these, but there's only about 9 feet of space before I hit the neighbor's fence, so full-on pictures just aren't happening. Although I have thought about asking if I could prop up a ladder on his porch....

The storms aren't back on yet, because Kevin is actually going to whip together some combination wood storms. They will have panels you can put on and remove from the inside. All of the storms on the house are either in really bad shape or aluminum, so new storms has been a priority. He is estimating about $50 a storm in materials, so I would expect them to come out around $75-100 because it's home improvement and everything always costs more than you think it will. Although we are beginning to factor that into our budgets. We were originally going to reuse the panes on the aluminum ones, but who knows, we might have to buy or make some new ones.

In that picture above, you can see part of the windows we refinished last summer. I like the white and gray with the shellac.

Here's a close-up of where the trim meets the clapboard. The Duramax paint is a winner. It coats so well and looks great. It's really thick, so when it dries, everything looks smooth.

Kevin had to get on the roof to do the very peak, because our ladder couldn't quite make it up that high. The roof is a pretty steep angle and he had to use the chimney and vent stack to rest his paint bucket on while getting up and down from the roof. He is happy to report that the roof is still gray; no paint was spilled.

And finally, a picture of our new addition: A Honey Crisp apple tree. Incidently, Honey Crisp apple trees also fit into our car, though I don't think it was too happy. I drove fast.

Before and After

2009-07-31T18:05:00.007-05:00

I should have posted pictures of the garden before, but I was writing the post late, and it was dark and my pictures ended up looking creepy rather than freakishly large.

When we first bought there was no garden here, but evidence that our PO had done a little planting (the neighbors said a couple tomatoes and annual flowers). I made a long skinny garden, roughly 2x8 there last year. It is lined with the Purlington bricks that are from the old street out front. The bricks actually have a neat history. They are from the street we live on, when, about forty or fifty years ago, the city replaced the bricks with pavement. They also replaced the sidewalk at that time. If you look in yards down our block, you will almost certainly see some of these bricks. Our PO saved a whole pile of broken sidewalk pieces in our back yard too. Far less cool than the bricks.

This year I went crazy with the tiller and expanded the garden to it's current size, which is about 5x20. Here is the garden on May 1st.
Here is the garden today. Note that you can't even see the 4ft high currant bush at the other end of the garden.

A view from the side:

Here is my tomato cage supported by bungee cords. These are all heirloom tomatoes I planted from the Friends School Plant Sale. I would give you specifics on this monster, but it devoured its tag and I don't remember which order I planted them in.

I do, however, know what these are. These are Black Cherry Tomatoes, though by the size of them they should really be called Black Golf Ball Tomatoes. This is my first tomato to begin showing color. Things seem to be ripening later this year. This weekend is my nephew's birthday, and I remember trying to get his sister and him to eat the tomatoes last year at this time and they refused.

This is a picture of my rogue tomatoes. The ones that mysteriously came up from seed. They are uncaged and haven't been touched; they are as big as the heirlooms. They are sweet 100's.

Finally, my coneflowers. I am really enjoying these guys. They cheer me up every time I pass them.

Is our garden on steroids?

2009-07-28T23:40:00.002-05:00

I want to preface this by saying the garden is surely NOT on steroids, or anything else for that matter. I put some compost in, tilled it up this spring, water it sporadically, and generally neglect it. The dog, since discovering rabbits frequent it despite the fence (they get in below the neighbor's fence) now considers it his personal hunting estate, hiding under the tomatoes and belly crawling toward the carrots. This is really the extent of care (or neglect) the garden has received.

Yet, mysterious things have been happening in the bungle-garden. For one, ground cherries, tomatoes and snapdragons are coming up. Which wouldn't be weird, since I planted all of these things, but is weird since I planted them LAST YEAR. What is going on? Was it the tilling? These aren't little tomatoes, either. Some of these plants are attempting to take over the garden. They're huge. They are growing from seed (which up in Minnesota isn't supposed to happen unless you start indoors) without cages. There has been at least ten of these garden crashers this year. I have let a few live if they are respecting the plants I spent money on. Others have met a much sadder fate (me yanking them out with a dumbfounded look on my face).

Okay, so ghosts from summer past is the first weird thing. The second also involves tomatoes, these planted by me this year. Heirloom tomatoes from the Friend's School Plant Sale. They are giants. They have taken my tomato cages that I inherited from the previous owner, laughed at their poor little wired frames, and tipped them over from their sheer girth. I have had to resort to using bungee cords in my garden to keep the cages upright. Bungee cords! Our neighbor's garden is on the other side of the fence (chain link) from ours. They planted the same weekend we did. Their tomatoes are just barely cresting over the tops of their cages.

So I ask this, as a novice gardener, WTF is up with our garden? Anyone? Again, this garden is completely organic. No fertilizers, pesticides, nuclear reactions, or performance enhancing drugs. Just good old sun, water when I feel like it and occasional weeding. And rabbit eating and dog trampling thrown in for good measure.

Soon we will be buried in tomatoes. We will have to eat our way out of the back door.

Best Craigslist Deal EVER!

2009-07-26T22:33:00.005-05:00

Okay, so Kevin is in the market for a table saw. (Or was, anyway, he is currently setting up his new find in the basement).

Kevin calls about an ad and is given directions to a tattoo parlor in our old neighborhood. We walk in and there are two heavily tattooed guys sitting around talking. The owner of the shop takes us to the back, then down a set of stairs into the basement where he has a really nice little workshop. Kevin looks at the saw and decides he wants it, but here we have two problems: one- we didn't have enough time to go get cash before we left and two- we drive a compact car, and though we have fit a lot of things in it (a wicker couch, a Poang chair with ottoman, lots of lumber, a six foot high tree, and ten currant bushes to name a few) we didn't think it could handle that saw. "No problem, says Tattoo Shop Owner, "You can borrow my truck." Yes, you read that right. Borrow his truck. So while T.S.O. and Kevin are taking the motor off the saw, I run to the ATM to get money.

I get back just as they are loading it into the truck and Kevin is getting directions on how to operate the truck (it was old and had developed a few quirks). As we are pulling out, he shouts (with a smile), "Just don't crash it or anything, I don't have insurance on it."

To make a long story less long, we got it home, drove the truck back and all is well. With all the bad press Craigslist is getting these days, a lot of times you can really feel the mistrust between people during transactions. This guy let us use his truck! Two people he didn't even know. Thanks, T.S.O.

PAINT!!!!!!!!!

2009-07-26T21:46:00.004-05:00

As we were painting the house today, we got into a discussion over which part of the project was our favorite. Kevin said that scraping was his at first. I think he changed his mind after I pointed out that with all of the respirators and power tools during the paint scraping process, it wouldn't have been possible for us to be carrying on a conversation like we were.

I had no hesitation. I love painting. It's just so satisfying to see the paint up on the house, transforming it into the vision we had all along. Here is how we left the house last weekend:

Here is how we left it this weekend:

It is so close to being done. That is with one coat of paint. Kevin finished more than half of the shingles tonight. The new ones show up, but I think with a second coat it shouldn't be too noticeable. Here is a close-up of the shingles:

I don't know if you can really see it or not. I'll have to take a better picture. We would have been done this weekend for sure except on Friday we took advantage of my dad's truck and went on two dump runs. One for the asbestos siding we took off the side of the house and one for random stuff like The Dryer That Almost Killed Kevin and the fake wood paneling from the kitchen wall (What is with us and only doing one wall?). Factoring in the hour there and back for the truck, the dump runs took 12 hours. Turns out they like to keep the landfill wayyy out in the middle of nowhere. The dump runs are really part of our new project... cleaning! We have a back porch on our house that has served as the dumping grounds for junk that we don't want to deal with. It also houses our bikes and power tools because things of value don't seem to do well in the garage. They walk off. So that needs some major organizing. I had this thing that unlike other urban folk who seems to have garages too full to fit their cars, my car would always be able to fit in the garage. That was before the fence project and the siding project. So that needs to be rectified, because, after six years without a garage, I refuse to scrape my windows in the winter. We also have an office that is pretty full of crap. We would totally be kicked out of a condo if we ever lived in one.

Finally, Arlo's latest garden antics. I snuck up on him eating the snap peas, vine and all. This might have been my fault, because I've been sharing sweet peas from the farmer's market with him.

Is it just me...

2009-07-12T22:26:00.006-05:00

...or are rabbits getting bigger these days?

This is what greeted us after a few panicked minutes of not being able to find Arlo anywhere in the yard yesterday. Finally he poked his head out from behind the broccoli leaves. I think he was a little perturbed that we took pictures and laughed at him before helping him out.

Anyway, on to the house. We are officially done scraping paint! And it only took about two months! We are now onto repairs and cleaning. The repairs actually are going pretty fast. Here's a nifty one to hide the fact that the facia slipped down slightly (look up at the peak of the roof):

I also filled all of the nail holes, which added up to quite a few with both the old siding and the tar paper behind it nailed in. Sorry there are no riveting pictures of filled nail holes. We filled nail holes and repaired damage (of which there was surprisingly little) with this:

It's pretty smelly stuff (I actually donned the respirator even though it was supposed to be my first day without it), but it worked really well. It's actually an epoxy more than a wood filler. If you're going to use it, do it when it's shady--it cured too quickly if the sun hit it.

We're also repairing a piece of the skirting. It had bowed out, and the siding had come in slightly to make a weird gap. We used shim to bring a couple of clapboard pieces out slightly, and then took out shims that were behind the skirting (who knows why they were there in the first place). Here is the spot where the board is removed.

And here is all of the nasties living behind the board...eeew! That's dust, among other things.

We also had to remove one damaged clapboard as part of the fix on this corner. I believe these actually aren't clapboard at all, but beveled siding. Anyone know anything more about this? Or where we can get a replacement? We are planning to take the broken one down to Siwek's Lumber and have a new one milled, though I think this is going to be expensive. Here's the profile.

Another, and perhaps the most involved project (especially since Kevin's parents have our miter saw for the weekend) was replacing the broken shakes. Here you can see the dog eared edge pieces.

This is about how we left the house after the weekend, although as a final project, Kevin cleaned it, so it looks much fresher. This picture was taken yesterday.

We would like to have at least a coat of primer on by the end of next weekend. How exciting!

Not much to report...

2009-07-05T19:59:00.003-05:00

But it's been too long between posts, so I thought I would catch up.

We have been working pretty much every weekend (except this last one) on the siding project, and have most of the paint removed. Next weekend we will be cleaning and making repairs. I am really hoping that will only take one weekend, but knowing how this stuff goes, it will probably take two. Then, we prime and caulk the weekend after, and finally paint.

We are trying to think of ways to speed this process up a bit, considering at this rate, it will take four years to finish the outside of the house. I think our problem is only being able to work on the weekends. Evenings don't work for two reasons: one, Kevin works evenings and two, we both spend our time during the week to catch up on things we don't get done during the weekends (grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, etc.). Also, summer weekends tend to be busier for us.

We ended up hand-scraping the entire house because the Paintshaver really ate up the siding. That is another reason it took so long. Anyone out there have any ideas on how to make this job go faster??

School's out for the summer....

2009-06-04T21:58:00.005-05:00

Okay, really I have three more days, but I can dream, right? We took a short break in house project spending to blow some money on a new computer, as the one we had (with the Obama sticker) refused to charge properly anymore. Here they sit while we are busy working on the house on Saturday, happily transferring data. I have to say one thing about Apple, and then I will start writing about the house, I promise. The process of switching to a new computer was effortless. They hung out in the living room all day, and at the end, it was like using a newer, shinier, hipper version of my old computer. Everything was in its place.

Okay, we now return to the house blog.

The siding project has been going on steadily. We decided, even though we have all those fancy tools, that hand scraping the clapboards is the way to go. I spray it down with the hose, then scrape, in an attempt to keep the lead dust at bay.

Why, you ask did we decide to scrape by hand? The paint failure on the clapboard was significant, meaning on most parts with a little muscle, the paint kind of flies off (goggles are a must). The Paint Shaver, though integral to the trim, seemed like overkill for the siding itself. About 2/3 of the house is scraped, and Kevin is much further along on the beadboard soffits. This photo was taken before we began work on Saturday. I would go out and take one now, but it is dark and it would be hard to see. Picture most of the gray paint and most of the white paint gone and you'll get the idea. We plan on this being our last paint scraping weekend. Funny enough, we've had people lining up to help paint, but no one wanted to help scrape. I feel like the Little Red Hen.

Last, I give you a helpful tip we've discovered:

This is our tool basket. Everything for the project (that doesn't have its own case) goes into the basket. I have yet to go hunting for a tool during the project, and carting things in and out is a breeze.

A Quick Update

2009-05-25T18:43:00.002-05:00

We spent the weekend stripping paint off the trim on the house. We are actually pretty close to a point where we will be able to start fixing stuff and priming. Maybe another weekend worth of work paint removal. I would post pictures but the battery on the camera is dead and I am too tired to charge it and take pictures. Sad.

Our neighbors are having very different reactions to this project. The ones closest to the side we are doing are thrilled, which is good because the paint shaver is not a quiet tool. They really like the look of the house and are excited about seeing it brought back to it's glorious little bungalow state.

Our neighbor on the other side laughed at us when we told her what we are doing. Not a mean laugh, more of a laugh of disbelief. Both of our current project and our project output in general. She said we are making her feel lazy. I think we are getting a reputation....

Hello Bungalow!

2009-05-18T16:16:00.003-05:00

So we got carried away yesterday.... and turned our house into a bungalow. Just to give you an idea (lucky we did the fence project or we would have no before pictures of this side of the house) this is what we began with:I know it's not the best picture, but you get the idea. We lucked out (so far). There is not one clapboard that needs to be replaced. There are maybe ten shingles that need to be replaced due to splitting from nails. We LOVE it. I don't think I can even express how much I love the siding. The shingles have a docked corner where they meet the sofit. If you zoom in on this picture, you can see it.

This is not to say everything is perfect. We need to redo the corner trim. The skirt is missing some trim. Poor girl.
Also, the beadboard is giving us trouble. There are roofing nails sticking into it, so the heat gun, scrapers, and the new paint shaver are pretty useless. It is protected, so a lot of the paint is in good condition and won't come off. We are considering Peel Away. Anyone used this? Is it worth it? Any other ideas? Other than the beadboard, the rest of the project seems doable.

The old cement asbestos shingles are double bagged sitting in our garage. We wore respirators the whole time, and maybe cracked 10% of them, so safety-wise, I think we're doing pretty well.

And I LOVE it.

Burning down the house....

2009-05-16T21:16:00.004-05:00

Okay, so it just smoked a little. That's right, Kevin started the house on fire. Seriously, with the nice work on the fence and our finished bedroom, I was beginning to think we needed to change the name of the blog to reflect our mad skills. But I was brought back down to Earth today.

We were maybe ten minutes into the project when Kevin, who was on the ladder tackling the beadboard with the heat gun calmly asked, "Sarah, would you get a spray bottle?" I was busy into my own work, and told him just a second, until he asked again, this time with a little more urgency. That's when I looked up.

A comic (if you weren't us) routine followed, including a mad dash for the hose, running over to the burning corner, realizing the water wasn't on, and finally spraying from all angles and getting everything wet in the process. In case you are wondering, everything is okay (I can't even see where it's burned), and we live two blocks from the fire department, so even if we tried we would have a hard time doing too much damage. Needless to say, Kevin has been working with the heat gun on a much lower setting.
This is a shot of Kevin's progress for the day. The very corner, in the upper left of the picture is the infamous burned area. See? You can't even tell. The black area closer to the house in the photo is not from us. Wood rot??
Here's my progress form the day. The window is pretty close to being done, and will probably be done tomorrow, after I make a run to my sister's new house (they bought a Victorian) to give her rhubarb and onions. Finally, here is a close-up of the clapboard we stripped. It looks like it's in great shape, no?

Distractions

2009-05-15T19:10:00.004-05:00

This is a post meant to distract you from the lack of work on the bungled-house lately. Actually, we've been doing plenty on the yard, thanks to the Friends School plant sale bounty we recently brought in.
This is my expanded garden. It used to be about a foot wide and about 3/4 as long. It's been quadrupled. We are growing lots of edibles this year, including grapes, blueberries, watermelon, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, strawberries, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, currants, rhubarb, carrots, beans, peas... yum.

Now, you might say, "Boy, Sarah and Kevin, your water bills are going to skyrocket with all of that stuff to water!"

Not with this!
It was my birthday present from Kevin. We got it at the Reuse-it Center. By the way, if anyone has any advice on how to get it to seal, let me know. We can get it to fill about half-way, but it still has see-through slits.

Finally, to distract you further from our lack of starting on the siding project, pictures of officially finished fence.
Look at that beautiful gate!
And what a beautiful section! The top rail is the newest addition.Last but not least: Dog Enjoying Fence.

Planning for a Job

2009-05-05T20:31:00.004-05:00

Before the first hole is drilled, paint is scraped or post is set, a lot of behind the scenes action goes on over here at the bungled house. A lot of fast-paced, exciting action. Like this:Okay, so that picture was taken three years ago (about a week after we got Arlo). However, the job he is modeling, that of researcher, is of utmost importance.

For instance: the paint job on the exterior has not yet officially begun, but research has been conducted for months. Kevin and I spend a lot of time on this step. We look at tools, how-to guides, and products. I would say, in the last month or so, I have read no less than six "how to paint your house" articles. Everyone has an opinion about techniques, paint and primer. When their is disagreement, we try to find some actual research to back up claims. See, mom and dad, those liberal arts college degrees are paying off in ways you never thought possible.

So, I now present to you our research findings in,

How to Paint your House Bungled-Style*

*Subject to change once we get into this project and realize all our research was for naught.

1. We are going down to bare wood. First, neither of us like the look of a house where just the loose paint has been taken off. Second, we have massive, massive paint failure on the entire house.
See that? Yuck. We have the alligatoring too. And the blistering.

2. Okay, so that first one wasn't really a step in the painting process, more of a decision we have made. That decision, however, leads us to method: how we are going to scrape the house. The methods most people use are: dry scraping, dry sanding, the Paint Shaver (or similar product) heat (in the form of blowtorch, heat gun or Silent Paint Remover), chemical strippers or pressure washers. We are still debating this one. We bought a Silent Paint Remover, and while I think it will do wonders on the interior trim, I have my doubts about the exterior. The Paint Shaver is really appealing, but I have heard stories of gouges and it is expensive (though we could probably resell it for close to its original value). I'll keep you posted. If anyone has any questions about why we are not considering any of the other options, leave a comment and I will let you know more.

3. Wash the house. Some say to use TSP (tri-sodium phosphate), others say bleach, and others say mild detergent. I am leaning toward a lean mixture of bleach and detergent. The TSP can be harmful to landscaping, and though I know the bleach water isn't great either, it will do the job of fighting mildew well even when diluted significantly. We are planning to borrow my parent's pressure washer to do this, and use it on a very gentle setting.

4. Repair any damage to the wood. This is a good time to announce that we are in fact ripping out the asbestos siding. We are going to be gentle and use all the proper precautions. However, this means that we will have nail holes. A lot of nail holes. There may also be some split wood if a nail was driven too close to an edge. We are crossing our fingers on this one. We also have to repair any rotted wood, which seems to be focused so far on the front side of the house. I will let you know which products we use for this later. Any suggestions?

5. Sand. We are using 80 grit to give the paint something to grip onto. We will be using my Makita random orbital, though rumor has it Kevin broke it.

6. Prime. Here is a HUGE point of contention among pros. Oil or Latex Primer? I wish I could link to the article in Fine Homebuilding that goes into great deal about primer, but we have a subsrcription, so it's not free. Anyway, the main point is, a good 100% acrilyc primer will flex with the wood and last longer. There is a chance of water-borne stains showing through, but they are easy to find and those can be sealed with oil based primer without compromising the felxibility of the latex. If you are a research nerd like us, it's worth it to have a subscription to the online archives of FH. Another interesting fact from the article is that you should go with the "sister" primer of the paint you choose. So, Behr paint = Behr primer, Valspar paint = Valspar primer, etc.

We are still not sure how we are appliying the primer/paint. If we rent a sprayer, we'll have it for months, and that can't be cheap. So that is up for debate.

7. Paint. Honestly, right now I am leaning toward Duramax by Valspar. If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said Duration by Sherwinn Williams, but (notice a theme) according to my research, Duramax is about the same quality-wise if not a little better, and much cheaper. Again, all this could change. An added benefit of not using Sherwinn Williams is that there was an incident involving Kevin's dad, Sherwinn Williams and the Twins in the World Series that is still very raw, in that we were told never to use Sherwinn Williams paint.

So, there you have it. I am sure this will all change, and I think I forgot the step about caulking, so I will be adding on to this as we go. I just needed to wrap my head around the scale of this project. Which leads me to the next post: our plan.

Fence post

2009-04-28T21:42:00.006-05:00

I apologize for not posting about this project sooner, but I thought we'd be done a couple of weeks ago.

One of the things we've always planned to do in the yard was to fence it in. Here is the yard before fence (with set posts). By the way, the white monstrosity replaced a singe stall stucco garage that matched the house beside it. Sad.

Here is the same expanse with an almost finished fence.

We chose to build the fence from scratch, rather than using pre-made panels. For one, it offered more ability to design it how we wanted, and for another, we could custom fit areas and (I think) build a higher quality product.
This is the fence from the outside. Our design was based off a picture in a fence book we bought at the "orange" store. That, combined with the multitude of how-to books from our local library (that reminds me, they're overdue) gave us most of our inspiration and methods. The first weekend, we had help from my dad, my grandpa and my sister (who came on her day off!). This sped the process up greatly. Without their skills, tools, suggestions and labor, we would still be setting posts. The fence is five feet high, and made from surplus playground cedar. This allowed us to have a cedar fence at a much lower price. It came pre-stained, too. the only downside was that some of the boards had pre-drilled holes, but many of these could either be cut off or used.
All in all, we are very proud of the fence, and have received a lot of compliments from neighbors. A boy on his bike even stopped and said "Wow, that looks beautiful!" We've met some neighbors too, and have given and gotten fence-building advice.

I thought I had true after pictures, but I don't, even though the fence is finished. I will post those soon, along with a picture of my newly expanded garden.

Mostly, it's satisfying to actually finish a job on time and be happy with the finished product. Arlo loves it too. Although, after one Peter Rabbit-esque incident involving a panicked rabbit and a dog fulfilling his innermost desires, the rabbits have left the yard, much to his dismay.

A new development

2009-04-05T18:22:00.003-05:00

So, the beadboard was giving us a lot of trouble, and after giving up and taking a nap, we decided to go to Home Despot to get a ladder. Why do you need a ladder to install beadboard you ask?

You don't. However, you do need a ladder to investigate the top half of your house to see if you have clapboard or shingles. Like a lot of bungalows, we have a horizontal trim board on the ridge-line of our house, which separates the siding from the...

shingles! And they are stained! The color is dark green and in good condition (at least the little peak we took). This is very exciting to us, as we both love the look of siding on the bottom half and shingles on the top. The fact that they have never been painted is also very exiting. Shingles take a lot of work to keep up if painted.

Anyway, keep the comments coming. If you have done a project like this, or even any project with your siding (painting, removing, repairing, etc) please share your experiences. If you really think this is a bad idea, let us know that too. Also, if you have cedar shingles, is there anything we should know? Thanks!

Yet another ridiculous project we are contemplating

2009-04-04T09:33:00.003-05:00

This is the siding currently on our house (actually that's the garage, but you get the idea). It is known as cement-asbestos siding, and was used extensively in the 40s to 70s. It is kind of like an old version of Hardyplank, fake wood grain and all. It isn't bad, but it's not in character with the period of the house and, well, a little too frilly for my taste. As part of Kevin's birthday present, he was allowed to peak under the siding to see if the original clapboard was there and what the condition was like, as the current siding is more of an annoyance to him that it is to me.
It was there, and in pretty good condition. The paint was practically falling off. There were a lot of nail holes, but the wood looked good.

We HAVE to paint the trim this year, as it should have been done about five years ago. Theoretically, it would be a good time to do the siding removal. I say theoretically, because, a project like this comes with some risks. Following is a list of pros and cons to this project. I have included a poll on the side bar, and I encourage all to vote. Also, if you have experience with a project like this, or a strong opinion, please leave a comment.

PROS:

1. The clapboard would be so pretty. See, here's Tom Silva from This Old House installing some:

2. I could paint the house the colors I want.
3. It would not be blah and white.
4. There is very little risk in handling asbestos siding as it is only about 5% asbestos, and that is embedded in concrete.
5. My parents own a truck and are gone frequently in the summer....what do you say, Dad?
6. The house would be back to its bungle-splendor on the outside.
7. We could buy this nifty tool:

8. We have nothing better to do.
9. It would not be blah and white and frilly.

CONS:

1. The condition of the original siding is really unknown, but the stuff we found underneath seems like it's in good shape. (People generally installed it for the same reasons they install vinyl siding today: a salesman came to the door and told them it was maintenance-free; not because the siding was falling off the house)
2. It could get expensive if the condition of the siding is in bad shape.
3. The top of the house might be clad in cedar shingles, but for complicated reasons involving a scary wooden ladder that came with the house, we haven't checked yet. That could also get expensive.
4. Asbestos will be annoying to deal with: we would have to wear respirators and be very gentle with it, as it is only dangerous when broken.
5. It could be a lot of work (though see PRO reason #8)

What could be more fun than

2009-04-02T21:40:00.004-05:00

Backing the car up into your backyard because you can? I mean when you have big loads, like dirt for the yard, a wicker couch for the porch you grabbed off the curb, my birthday present (a wine barrel turned rain barrel!!!!!) or Kevin's birthday present:
I mean look at that thing. There was no way I could carry it through the garage. That would be at least four additional steps I would have to take. Plus, it's just fun to drive in your yard. Why own a house if you can't abuse the privilege? Who's with me?

P.S. I also dented the trim Kevin just installed when bringing this into the house. I say it adds character, though I think he might be less than thrilled.

More from the Spontaneous, Ridiculous Project

2009-04-02T21:29:00.005-05:00

Here is a close-up of the fifties wallpaper. Of course I saved lots of it; it was just too...kitschy to throw away. There's even numbers on the measuring cup!

Here is the wall in all its painted glory. Colors never show up well on the computer, but it is more blue than it looks. Picture a sky right before it rains. The beadboard is going in this weekend. On a side note: see in the left-hand corner of this picture where the door frame is? That's the door to the basement. This is the thought process of our PO:

Wow, this wood paneling is going to look amazing. I should take down this old growth, beautiful trim and replace it with plastic. While I'm at it, I should put in fake wood trim on the door leading to the rest of the house, too. Now what to do with the door to the basement? What to do... I know! I can use a piece of the old door trim to top it! Beautiful!

Spontaneous Home Remodeling Gone Awry

2009-03-29T20:36:00.009-05:00

So right about at the time we were finishing the bedroom, okay, right before we finished the bedroom, Kevin did a bad thing.

He peeked behind the wood paneling in the kitchen. That is me demonstrating the peek. We didn't get the original peek on camera.

Which sort of spiraled into an incident that included a crowbar...
And a Sawz-all...
And lots of fifties goodness.
See that fifties goodness? That is fake tile, of course.

We took it down to bare wall. The plan is to have bead board partway up, which we are almost ready to install. The walls are slate gray. I will post when it's done. We are calling it our concept wall.

We can't afford to redo the whole kitchen right now, and for that matter, we don't really want to. So we decided to do one wall. See why this makes no sense? What a ridiculous project. Are you with me?

Stripping doors

2009-03-26T22:43:00.011-05:00

Kevin, here. My fine partner asked me to write up a "how-to" on stripping a door so here it goes. I must warn you, I am not nearly the writer she is. Her writing is clear, funny and quirky, my writing is none of those things.

So I went through several different paths to strip the doors. It seems the best approach is a combination of several stripping techniques. This is because there are so many elements to a frame and panel door. Also, there are lots of cracks and crevices and if you are like me it is just not worth doing if you leave a speck of paint. This mentality drove my dear partner out of her mind as she watched me spend hours with the dental pick going after paint specks.

This is roughly the the process we used to restore the doors.

1. My lovely partner used the heat gun (thanks Jim) to strip the majority of the paint off of the door. As always, this worked best on the flat surfaces and left a lot of paint in the curved surfaces.
2. On the first door, not thinking about logical sequences, I then went straight to using some medium steel wool and denatured alcohol to remove the remaining paint on the flat surfaces. I did not want to have to sand the doors. You will understand why this was dumb as we go forward. The alcohol and steel wool works very well except for where the grain goes wild. You can see in this photo where the grain goes swirly right above the outline of the door plate. The paint embeds itself really well in that type of grain. It leaves behind a very light shellac finish that is still colored by just a little bit of the dark garnet shellac. So when it got too hard trying the get the paint out of that grain with the steel wool and alcohol I skipped to dealing with the paint wedged between the panel and the stiles.

3. You can see in the photo the white line where the vertical stile meets the panel. At first I tried picking out the paint with dental picks. This was slow and did not work well at all. I wanted to try this because I did not want to resort to stripper. In the end though, the only way to really get at this paint was with stripper. We had been using Citri Strip for the windows, but for this paint I decided it called for hardcore, super-toxic paint stripper to get into all out of the cracks. I got the sense that I might be going too far when I poured the stripper into a glass jar and the fumes coming out of the can looked like heat radiating off of a hot asphalt rode. I ignored this first warning sign. Then as I was starting to brush it on a drop fell on my wrist and I could have sworn my sweet partner was poking me with a cattle brand, again I ignored this warning. This stuff worked incredibly fast. In fact, it dissolved the paint into something resembling half and half. No big deal, I thought, I will just wipe it off and clean the remainder off with mineral spirits as the directions instructed. The mineral spirits did absolutely nothing. The stripper sort of adhered itself to the door. So I tried putting water on it, since it is the universal solvent. This turned it into hard little beads. Finally with enough scrubbing, water and cursing I got most of it off. From what I can tell this stuff is basically meant for flat surfaces where you can just scrape it off, but then why not just use the heat gun?

I went back to the Citri Strip and the 12-24 hour wait. The Citri Strip is actually really good for this type of stripping if there is shellac underneath the paint. I found a toothbrush and lots of time was the best approach for getting the paint out of those crevices. Then I just cleaned up with water. It is important to get the paint out of those edges, otherwise when the panels contracts there will still be paint on the farthest edge of the panel and I am pretty sure you would have white outlines around each panel.

4. As the door dried from its deep rinse, I noticed that the stripper had stripped a one inch border of the shellac residue left behind by the alcohol and steel wool treatment around each panel. This made all of that work a waste. I could never even this out with new shellac, so I ended up having to sand the whole door. This did solve the paint-in-the-swirly-grain problem though. In the process I killed my forgiving partner's favorite tool, her Makita random orbital sander. It doesn't orbit very well anymore.

5. The next problem I ran into was trying to remove 50 years of human hand oils from the top right corner of the door. This hand oil had congealed into the most impossible to remove goop I have encountered. If I tried to sand it, it just clogged the sand paper. It was impervious to heat and the stripper did nothing. I finally resorted to paint scraper. It works as long as the blade is sharp.

6. This led me to using my cabinet scrapers to clean up the contours of the panel frames and in generally using the scrapers to prep the door before starting to apply finish. They leave a nice almost iridescent look to the wood. Just make sure you figure out how to sharpen them; otherwise they are next to useless.

7. Then I got out dental picks and got to work on every corner of the panels and the joints where the rails meet the stiles of the doors. It is worth it, really.

8. We installed the newly stripped hardware and mounted the doors in the frame. We applied the shellac to the doors once they were mounted so we could do all the sides at one time.

9. I then took a step back, cracked the top off that can of hardcore paint stripper and marveled in the restored door.

Once I had the process down, the other three sides of the doors went fairly quickly. I could get a whole door stripped and sanded in a weekend. This is probably the reason why professionals can work so much faster and get better results; they know what works and in what order to do it. The only remaining item left for the doors is rubbing out the finish. I would like to do this so the sheen is even across the whole door and the get rid of some of the imperfections in the door. Sarah won't let me and since I have never done it and cannot make a convincing case. So I leave it to the readers to write in and convince her to let me try.

The Friends School Plant Sale is Here!

2009-03-26T20:54:00.002-05:00

Okay, well, the catalog is, anyway. If you are a resident of our fine city (or a nearby city almost as fine) check it out. It is the best plant sale EVER. It is Mother's Day Weekend at the State Fairgrounds, and the money goes toward scholarships for kids to attend the Friends School.

Ta-Daaa!!!!

2009-03-23T19:42:00.007-05:00

The room is done! And now, for your enjoyment, some housey goodness....
This is the two doors, on the left, the main door, on the right the closet.
With the doors closed. This one also shows my mad skills with a miter saw. The quarter-round was not original anyway, and we make it a rule to only strip original. So we bought new. And I sawed it.This is actually our bedroom, but it is a good representation of what the woodwork looked like before.
This is the closet before...

and the closet after.
And finally, some good old before photos. The day we purchased the house:When my sister lived with us about this time last year. Betcha would have made your bed if you'd known this would be blogged, huh, Chris?After, now our TV room. The yello above is more like the actual color. It's not as yellow in real life.

We're SOOOOO close!

2009-02-23T20:28:00.002-06:00

The room is sooo close to being finished! We have been working very hard on it over the weekends, and the blog has suffered. I am going to get back on track, I promise. I have also been spending a lot of time doing work from home for school. What's worse is, on February 14, it was our one year anniversary of owning the house! And I didn't even blog about it! Poor house. However, we did work on the house that day. Then we cleaned up, got dressed up, and walked to dinner at a neighborhood restaraunt. It was a pleasant housiversary and Valentine's day.

Especially considering last year we ripped out carpet and ordered a pizza.

Update on Colors

2009-01-13T10:27:00.002-06:00

Okay, here is what we decided for colors:

Storms: Rainstorm blue
Trim: white
Body Bottom: Squirrel (Arlo is exceedingly pleased that he will be living in a squirrel-colored house)
Body Top: Dusty Mountain (on same color swatch)

I am pleased. We painted the new storm door the body top color, and it looks wonderful.

Our Appliance Replacement Philosophy

2009-01-13T09:57:00.005-06:00

When appliance is threatening to burn house down, then, and only then, shall you replace it.

Now, this is not to say that we are trying to flirt with death, just that the appliances around here like to give us little warning of their imminent demise. Take the stove (first appliance to be replaced). One day, we happened to notice it was scorching the cabinet beside it. It was a Montgomery Ward gem from the 60s or 70s. It's replacement, a generic, white Maytag was our joint birthday present to each other. How romantic. Anyway, the latest appliance to die was the dryer (also a Montgomery Ward from the 60s or 70s--mustard yellow, no less). Now I never trusted the thing, so the chance of me actually killing Kevin in this instance is rather low, but who knows. A week or two before Christmas, I was getting ready to go out of town to make cookies with my mom and sister. I had thrown in a load of jeans to dry, because I had wanted to wear a pair of them. As I walked into the kitchen to head down to the basement to get the jeans I smelled smoke.

Had I not smelled the smoke, this is where the potential Kevin death could have occurred (he was upstairs sleeping in by the way). I could have gone two ways: either I would have grabbed the jeans and left the rest in the dryer to finish drying (and killed Kevin), or I would have grabbed the jeans and had the rest finish drying when I got back (see the part about me not trusting the dryer). Personally, I think my distrust of the dryer ran deep enough that I would not have left it running with him still sleeping. The only times I ever left it running while I was not home was when the dog was out of the house with me.

Anyway, as it happened, I smelled smoke, ran downstairs, and stopped the dryer. Now, at this point, we had no money at all (see the last post about me finally getting a job) so a new dryer was out of the question. I strung lines up in the basement, but our clothes were stretched funny. Luckily, Christmas money came through, and we were able to purchase a beaut off Craigslist (and persuade the couple to deliver it for us). So now we have a generic biscuit-colored dryer in the basement purchased as a Christmas present.

I fully expect the fridge to burst into flames in time for our birthdays in March.

I got a job!!!

2009-01-13T09:35:00.003-06:00

I am officially a Minneapolis Public School teacher. 6th grade!

Which explains the lack of posts lately, because I have been job hunting.

Anyway, on to the house:

Apparently, our photography skills have been lacking as of late. I thought I had a good one of Kevin installing the new storm door in a blizzard, but I don't. All I have is a picture of Kevin looking for the strikeplate he dropped in the snow. We were going to buy a new one, but (have I mentioned we're cheap) decided to just wait until the snow melted. So you'll have to use your imagination on what the whole process looked like. Notice it's dark, too.The new door looks beautiful, and I will post a picture of it when it is above zero again in Minnesota (sometime this weekend). I am trying not to go outside.

For now, our family Christmas photo:The beauty of this idea is we didn't have to get dressed up. Some people didn't get it, though.

Bungle-cabin?

2008-12-17T23:07:00.004-06:00

This is a picture of my parents' cabin. My dad designed it himself, as well as the house I grew up in (by the way, both are painted the same colors). Note the one-and-a-half story construction, the exposed sofits and beams, the prominant front porch, and the steep roof pitch.

We think he was heavily influenced by Arts and Crafts bungalows. What do you think?

Reading a little Gustav Stickley there, weren't you dad?

House Colors

2008-12-17T22:19:00.007-06:00

So at the risk of sounding obsessive, I am having major exterior paint issues. The paint on the majority of the trim on the house is flaking off. Literally. A scrape and repaint is in the plans for next summer. Also, our house is covered in the infamous asbestos shingling. See it here in all its wavy ugliness? That's actually the garage, but you get the idea. In a weak moment last fall, I gave into Kevin's pleading to peak under the shingling to see if the original clapboard was there. It is. In an even weaker moment (he's a persistent one) I agreed to the removal of the shingles as we paint the trim. To my credit, at the rate we finished things last summer, we won't go broke doing this project because it will take us so long. See, I think these things through.

What, you ask, does this have to do with now? It's the middle of winter. Why are you even thinking of painting? Don't you have better things to do, like strip paint?

You may recall, I mentioned the storm door having issues. It's getting worse. We have it's replacement, and have had it for some time, (we dumpster dove for it from a foreclosure a few blocks down), but I haven't wanted to put it in. Why? Because our current storm windows are this color:
That would be bright cherry red. The color we are painting them is this color: Dark grey-blue. Which is what color I would have also painted the storm door, except bright cherry red plus dark grey blue (it can look VERY blue when the light hits it) plus white house equals red white and blue house. Which I just couldn't do. So here we sit, storm door falling off. Did I mentioned that my mom invited like fifteen people to our house this Sunday? Which, by the way I am thrilled about, becuase they are some of my favorite relatives, and I am excited for them to see the house. However, I don't want the front door to fall off in anyone's hands, and although I know there is absolutely nothing we can do in three days to make this place look fit to live in, I still what the house to make a good first impression. So back to the paint.

If I am going to paint the storm door a different color, then I need to have it match the color that is currently there (or at least not look horrible) and still match the new, because once I paint the door, I am not doing it again. So really, I need to be making some decisions here about paint color for the whole house. My artillary includes Sherwinn Williams Arts and Crafts Collection swatches, the book Bungalow Colors: Exterior by Robert Schweitzer and my own crazy ideas. By the way, yes, I know blue isn't a traditional bungallow color, but look how pretty it looks from the inside: Besides that, when I picked that color, I hadn't yet researched bungalow colors. The white trim is staying too, because there is evidence which leads me to believe it was original. Now our roof is gray, so our colors so far are:

Roof: grey
Storm: blue
Trim: White
Body one (for the lower part): ?
Body two (for the upper part): ?
Storm door: ?

Ackkk! I just can't deal with this decision. I have trouble deciding what to have out of a vending machine.

Our First Christmas

2008-12-07T22:12:00.004-06:00

Every year since we've been married, Kevin and I have bought our tree from the University of Minnesota's Forestry Club. For those of you city dwellers, they are located just North of the St. Paul campus. They have a nice little trailer where they hang out, and usually they give the tree a fresh cut and carry it out to the car for us and everything. This year, when I was trying to find their hours online, I discovered they've been selling trees since 1905. That means that the very first owners of this house could have purchased their tree there. Hopefully, we've unknowingly continued a house tradition.

This year, we may have gone overboard. See the star? See how it's about an inch away from the ceiling? The tree is over 9 feet tall.

The ornaments on the tree have been slowly accumulated by each of us, from grandparents and parents, church and school, siblings and friends. The first year we were married, our two small boxes of ornaments merged. New ornaments have been collected, and the tree now represents our two lives merged. What makes this even more special is that one of the ornaments we collect is hand-carved by Kevin, symbolizing a major event of the past year. This year I'm hoping for a double hung window. Or maybe some knob and tube wiring.

By the way, the new glazing on the storm is curing, the storm door is still broken, the porch did not sink into the ground, and I have regained my Christmas spirit.

Bah Humbug

2008-12-04T15:43:00.002-06:00

I am writing this quickly because if all goes according to plan (which it won't) the automatic timer will turn the lights on outside and I won't be mad anymore because it will be all pretty. Right now, though, I'm quite peeved. It took three extension cords (only one of them that green color that hides well, the other two are red and orange) to hook up the lights outside. Which means we no longer have extension cords to use inside. Bah.

When I got home from the store an hour ago one of the porch storms had fallen off, and there was shards of glass all over my native flowers. Plus, our porch door is broken. I am fully expecting to find the porch sunken into a giant hole in the ground tomorrow. Humbug.

Halloween

2008-11-26T18:02:00.002-06:00

Those of you who have received our annual Halloween cards might have wondered where it was this year. Student teaching, helping to elect Barack Obama, and house projects ate it. We took the pictures, but never actually got around to sending them. Better late then never? Here it is:
The caption was going to be: "Isn't there laws against dog child labor?"

Is it weird...

2008-11-26T17:06:00.005-06:00

That I really enjoy stripping paint? I mean, don't get me wrong, the dangerous lead issue is no fun. However, watching the paint bubble up, and then scrapping it off in ugly, lead infested ribbons makes up for the hassle. It's a little like Christmas: what is the grain going to look like under here? Oh! I think there's a knot coming up! Look at that tight, old-growth grain! Wow!

Kevin and I have been taking the lead thing seriously lately. Me, because I would like us to be able to reproduce someday (not any time soon, mom), and Kevin, though he wouldn't admit it, probably has the same thought. Also, the other things lead paint does to you aren't pretty.

For this project, as prep, I laid down cardboard, brought up the saw horses, the shop-vac (it's like our second pet, it goes everywhere with us), respirators, all of the tools I could think I would possibly need, and a fresh set of work clothes. This is a big part of lead prep. Once I seal myself in, I don't like to leave. This is what I did for this room:
I used duct tape (none of the door frame wood work has been stripped, so I don't care about wrecking anything) to seal the door way on the top and right side. Then I used tape rolls on the left to make an opening. The plastic also overlaps the doorway. On the floor, I tape about half-way, then use a cardboard box to weight it down. It's not a perfect seal, but after working, when I leave the room, I can't smell burning paint fumes, so it must work.

We keep our work clothes in the room for the duration of the project. We take off whatever we're wearing and leave it outside the door, then go in and put on work clothes. And of course, like all the cool people, we both always wear our nifty respirators. The other thing we do is use the shop vac periodically as we're working to get all the chips we can up as we go, so there's less chance of stepping on them and crushing them.

This is the heat gun we use. It is on loan from Kevin's uncle, Jim. Thanks again, Jim! It has variable heat settings that are really useful. It tells you the temperature it's set at. Which is especially good if you know that lead fumes vaporize at 1100 degrees. It also blows at high and low speeds. It's a Wagner, but we haven't seen one like it at any of the hardware stores we frequent, though we forgot to check Seven Corners last weekend (I just looked in the catalog, and they have similar models). We love it, and it's been put to good use.

Basically, our process is this: I strip a section with the heat gun. Kevin comes behind me and uses 0000 steel wool and denatured alcohol to get up any bits the heat gun missed and to take the old shellac off. This is what it looks like after I run over it with the heat gun: That is the closet door, and no, I'm not leaving the panel like that, I was just doing the easy flat surfaces first. Anyway, see the bits of paint? Now Kevin comes along this is what the wood looks like after he is finished:
Pretty, huh? It's pine, really nice old growth. This is a shot of the profile of the two pieces of molding, yet to be stripped. There's also quarter round. You can see how they fit together if you look at the shot above. There's about three layers of paint, and one swipe with the heat gun (if you're as good as me) usually takes it right off. It helps the wood has shellac on it underneath the paint.
We are kind of trying two methods with this room. Half of the molding was taken off for the electrical project, so some of it we are stripping in place and the other half we're using the horses for. Believe it or not, I think it is more comfortable to work on the molding in place. We pry it slightly away from the wall so we can get the edge really clean, but we don't risk cracking the molding.
Also, when it's on the wall, I don't bump my head on the slanted walls as much.

Have I mentioned we're cheap?

2008-11-25T23:09:00.010-06:00

I came home from work one day, and lifted the lid of our mailbox to get the mail. It snapped off in my hand. Now, lets be clear. I know that's how a lot of things happen around here. Like the faucet or on the first night we owned the house, when the front doorknob came off in my hand when the pizza guy came? Or the walls in the office? Okay, I admit, I picked at those. Anyway, I digress.

The mailbox we had was from the seventies, you know, the generic one that looks something like this?

Picture it older and uglier and you get the idea. Anyway, we had always wanted a more period appropriate mailbox, so we viewed this as the perfect opportunity to get one like this:
Last weekend, we went salvage shopping. At one place, as we were walking out the door, the owner asked us what we were looking for. He happened to have a mailbox in the back that just came back from the sandblaster. While there, a very important piece came off: the bracket that holds the lid on. It was lost, and now he had this beautiful, but useless, mailbox. We (see title of post) asked how much he wanted for it. He said, "As is: $25.00." Now, we had been looking on Ebay, and these normally go for $90-100. We saw this as an opportunity (again, see title of post). So we left for a quick stroll around Home Depot to think of how we could fix it. Enter FastSteel, a moldable, metal epoxy. Jackpot! We dashed back to get the mailbox. I think the owner was sad to see it go, he took forever to ring up our bill. After a failed attempt at using just plain FastSteel (not strong enough for moving cast iron) Kevin created this:It is a bracket made of a copper coupling. He screwed it on the back.
Then he made a mold from the bracket on the other side. In this picture you can see the bracket in the top right corner, and his mold out of FastSteel in the middle.

Then he carefully used his mold to make a new "bracket" over the copper coupling.

Our finished product:

And the detail shot:
Now, in the pictures of the repair, you might notice the surface he is working on. Wow, you might think, that looks like a really nice work bench. And then I would tell you, no, no, no, that is not a workbench. That is our coffee table. Oh, you would say. Oh. And then you might wonder, with trepidation, did he clean up the coffee table when he was done? And I would have to answer

No.

We're alive!

2008-11-25T22:31:00.001-06:00

Student teaching is over, my life has returned to normal. Well, except for the fact that I am now waiting around for my teaching license which shouldn't show up until the beginning to middle of January. So aside from finishing up some paperwork, I am unemployed. Which is good news for the house, because that is what I will be spending my time doing. That, and working on Kevin's super secret special Christmas present. A quick house update:

THE WINDOWS ARE DONE!!!!!!! The Curtain rod has to be hung on the foyer window, but other than that they are done and looking beautiful. Kevin is in charge of hanging the rod. I have done four compared to his one, and every time I do it, I ruin a drill bit. We have walls made out of concrete. Either that or the horse hair in the plaster has surprising strength.

I broke the mailbox, which gave us the perfect opportunity to buy a new one. More on that in another post.

One day, while I was at work, my dad came over and he and Kevin blew "an obsessive amount" of insulation into the attic accesses and knee walls. He had worked for a week on sealing holes and such, and installing baffling, which led to endless jokes about being baffled.... Really, we laughed so hard Arlo was giving us baffled looks. Um...yeah. The best thing about this project was that when I came in the door, dad was using up the last bag. I imagine that must be what it is like to hire someone to work on your house. It was wonderful!

We also discovered a new architectural salvage place, Architectural Antiques, which, if you live in the Twin Cities Area, is definitely worth checking out. It is our "if we can't find it anywhere else and we really want it" place. It has two whole wood paneled rooms! And two whole entryways, complete with doorbells! And a crucified Jesus!

As part of our attempt to cut our heating bill, I put plastic wrap on the upstairs windows. They haven't been refinished yet. In the process, I did this:Yup, that's my cellphone and the double-sided tape encased in plastic. Smart, huh?
Arlo did this:
He thought laying on the plastic would give it that lived-in look, like everything else we own. You know, wrinkled and full of dog hair.

Happy Birthday Arlo

2008-09-20T22:32:00.003-05:00

Arlo is three, sometime during this month. We got him at the Golden Valley Humane Society, and he was found as a stray. So we don't know his real birthday.

Glad you're our pup, buddy and sorry about the occasional mess....

Window After Pictures

2008-09-20T21:56:00.003-05:00

We had a bit of a camera dilemma so pictures were sparse for awhile, but I went back to the last two posts and added some pictures, so if you read them already, go back to see pictures of our yard and the window in progress.

Here's where we're at on the project that was supposed to take a few weeks back in May.

Living room:
Done!

Foyer still needs:
Shellac
Spring Bronze
Paint
Sash cord
Parting Bead
Hardware installed on sashes

Dining Room still needs:
Stripping
Sashes painted
Glazing to cure
And everything still needed on the foyer

To make us feel better, I am ending this post with after pictures of the living room window.

This is the screen that we bought at Bauer Bros. The paint was chipping and its mortise and tenon joint was pulling apart. I spent a lot of time fixing it up: stripping paint, gluing, etc. We bought new screen and I tacked it in with galvanized nails, which I think looks pretty sweet. You can see them in the detail shot below. You can also see the house is in great need of a paint job.
These are of the actual window. This is the same window, one picture had flash, the other didn't. I would say the brighter one is a little more realistic in color. Like I said, we used stain and spar varnish on the sashes. On the interior trim, we used garnet shellac. I think it turned out beautifully, but we both agreed that for the other windows, we're going to cheat and stain first, rather than try to use shellac to match the finish. It took a ton of coats, and shellac dries so quickly it's a pain to work with. I like the wood, white trim and blue screen. It looks very nautical to me.Finally, this is the hardware. I have a confession to make. I followed the advice of many online and boiled off the old paint on my hardware. We were confronted with pretty dull hardware that had a copper color to it, when it still had the finish on. Otherwise it was just raw steel. They are pitted, and are in need of a replating that is not in the realm of What-Sarah-and-Kevin-can-afford. So...I used Rub n' Buff. I coated it in clear spray on shellac. The other options: to try and find matching replacements at a salvage shop or to buy new at Home Depot were not appealing. First off, my tube of Rub n' Buff (in Autumn Gold, you can find it at your local arts and crafts store, come on, you know you want to...) was a couple of bucks. New hardware, or new-old hardware, would have been way more than that. Also, The new stuff looked so cheap, and even the quality at the salvage places didn't seem to match what we had. I think I chose right, do you?
I would like to find the oil-rubbed bronze Rub N' Buff color and put it over the coppery color I have on now, because it seems like that was the original finish on most stuff.

As promised, a yard post

2008-08-22T21:44:00.004-05:00

Our yard, like the rest of the house, hasn't really been taken care of in...oh...TEN YEARS. There are giant weeds, who believe it is their right to inhabit our yard. There was a patch of daylilies that had decided it should own most of the vegetable garden, and three overgrown evergreens in the front. There was also a strange patch that had cement chunks and more weeds, daylilies, and vines.

There are a lot of good features of the yard too. Our PO grew a giant rhubarb patch on the side of the yard, which makes a great conversation piece. There is a currant bush that I used when making some pretty good scones. The trees in front, recently planted, are just what I wuld have planted. One is a gorgeous maple that I can't wait to see change in the fall. The other is a cute little flowering tree that looks a lot like an apple but hasn't produced any fruit. Just pretty little white fragrant flowers in the spring. The next door neighbors have a tree that flowered at the same time, so I plan to ask them what it is. Also, I have yet to be without cutting flowers in bloom. We have had fresh bouquets all summer. We have had Lily of the Valley, Peonies, Lilacs (the neighbors), Daylilies, Snap Dragons and Asters (I planted these). I had a bridal shower for my sister and was able to create some pretty stunning bouquets for it.

We've done some things this summer as well. There were a few areas that were terrible to mow, like by the neighbor's fence. So I planted some hostas and took advantage of the city's free wood chip piles. Which, as you will see is a common theme to my gardening. I also transplanted some daylilies from our massive bunch on the side of the house over to the side of our garage were there was a patch of hard-to-mow grass. I built a little brick retaining wall from some random bricks around the house. Yes, we have random bricks.

Finally, I planted two native gardens in the front. This is a picture of one. They are both mirror images of eachother. So far they seem to be thriving.

We're back!

2008-08-22T19:45:00.003-05:00

Summer has been pretty busy, and due to both lack of free weekends and lack of funds, posting has been pretty scarce. Hopefully we'll be better now. We've been working on the windows when we can, and we actually have the living room one almost done. It just needs a final coat of shellac around the frame.

The foyer window is taken apart right now, and the glazing is curing on the bottom sash. Here's the second half of how to restore an old wood window.

When we last left off, we were still debating what to put on the inside sash (varnish or paint) and I was working on the screen.

1. Put finish on the inside of the sash. We decided to go with spar varnish for the inside of the sash and Behr Exterior latex in white for the outside of the sash. We put the finish on before glazing so we don't have to work around the glass. We also prime the exterior side of the sash. I use latex because I've heard it's better for the wood.

2. Buy more glass because you broke it trying to get it out of the frame.
3. Glaze the window
a) I use glazing putty to put a small cushion for the glass to rest in. I try to get a uniform thickness for this, maybe 1/8 in.
b) Put glazing points in. I have tried both the triangle ones and the fancy newer ones. The triangle ones can go further into the wood, but I couldn't comfortably get them in without feeling like I was going to break the glass. They take a lot of force to get in. So I prefer the newer style.
c) After all the points are in, I turn the glass over to see if there is any of the bead of putty showing through. If there is I clean it up.
d) I roll out the glazing putty on the window pane to get an even thickness. Then I use a putty knife or 5 in 1 to pull it up at an angle. I use my finger very gently to smooth it out as a final step.
e) Let glazing putty cure for two weeks
4. Paint the window
5. Realize the latex paint cracks when put over oily glazing.
6. Repeat step 3
7. Prime putty with oil-based primer.
8. Paint window.
9. Meanwhile, spouse has been working on the frame. He has stripped it and put shellac on the parts that we plan to leave natural wood. He has also dripped shellac all over the primer I put on the sill.
10. Sand off shellac spots, and reprime the sill.
11. Strip all of the frame because it just looks silly now with all the rest of it looking so pretty.

12. Shellac the stops and the new parting bead.
13. Work on the screen some more because spouse is hogging the heat gun.
14. Attach hardware to the sashes
15. VERY CAREFULLY replace the old sash cord. For a good how-to video, check out This Old House
16. Put spring bronze weather stripping on while watching Micheal Phelps win his eighth gold medal.
17. Get frustrated with the spring bronze, but feel the Olympic spirit and persist.

18. Hang the top sash
19. Put the parting bead in place.
20. Hang the bottom sash
21. Nail the stop in place.
22. Stare at the window in wonder and amazement.
23. Get over fear of touching it and play with it for an hour.

Somewhere in all of that we put the screen in too. I painted it Rainstorm, a deep blue. This is the color I will eventually paint all of the storms on the house. It is a Sherwinn Williams color, Duration exterior, and I have to say, I wasn't very impressed. I am kind of picky about my paint, and I have yet to find an exterior I like.

Hopefully we will get all of this going on the next window, and get these done before winter. Otherwise, I see a dining room darkened by a peice of rigid foam in our future.

Truckin'

2008-07-01T22:25:00.002-05:00

We still exist, we're just working rather slowly. I started a new job, and haven't had much sitting around time lately. One window sash is glazed and sitting in the basement curing. Kevin has the stain on another and a third sanded. So it's going, just slowly. I have been doing a lot to the yard, so I will post about that in a bit, with pictures of the stuff I've done and the areas yet to be covered.

Lovin' the hood.

2008-06-11T13:32:00.003-05:00

Last night at the park near our house, there was a movie playing outside. We live in a very kid-friendly neighborhood, so I thought it would be a cartoon, and I just wasn't in the mood. On our way back from HD, though, we decided to take a look. The SANDLOT!!!!!! So we dropped off our goods, grabbed a blanket and the dog (he was super intrigued by The Beast on the big screen) and caught the last half. How perfect is that?!

And, my peonies are blooming! I think that is one of the best things about buying in the winter. Every week brings new garden surprises. I have been waiting to see what color these are for months. I'm not usually a pink fan, but they are gorgeous and I am totally smitten.

Windows: Step-by-Step

2008-06-11T12:33:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I am actually writing this not for anyone's entertainment, but for my own sanity. Ever since our $100 a-week house budget went into effect, buying things for projects has become a test of our strategic abilities. For instance, when do we NEED the glass for the windows? When do we NEED to buy the primer or the paint or the sash cords? We spent a good hour in HD playing this game last night. It might get old soon. Who knows.

Quick side note: Last night we made an accidental discovery I feel is worthy of sharing with all of my cheap... er, I mean frugal, house restoring pals. We walked to HD to get some window stuff. One of the things we were going to get was a gallon of primer. After walking around the store with it for a while, we put it back. Too heavy. Purchase averted! Except that we kind of do need it soon to proceed with the window project. Hmmm.

Back to the original purpose of this post. I am going to write a quick step-by-step of our window project to organize my thoughts. Note to people tackling this project. This is not always the most logical order, so you know, rearrange as necessary. And of course, if you want real advice, read Working Windows by Terry Meany.

Windows:

1. Remove bottom sash.
a) break paint seal all around with razor blade and putty knife. Remove caulk (who caulks a window shut?!) I found grabbing at a chunk of it with a needle-nose pliers is a pretty quick way to get it out in one piece.
b) remove stops gently with a five-in-one painter's tool. I usually put a cloth or piece of
leather under it to protect the wood.
c) gently wiggle the sash back and forth until it comes out.
2. Remove old glazing on outside of sash.
3. Become impatient, try to remove glass too early, break glass.
4. Spend more time removing glazing. (This is actually really important. The whole track needs to be very clean before trying to get the glass out. We've found that heat reflective tape and our trusty borrowed heat gun make things much easier.)
5. Begin stripping paint off with heat gun in garage/basement. Be careful of lead paint! (See your state guidelines for proper removal). Our heat gun has variable heat control. We use it at a relatively low heat, not hot enough to vaporize the lead. We clean up with water and mop afterwards.
6. While spouse is taking FOREVER to strip the windows, get bored and remove all the bottom sashes.
7. Realize it was stupid to have three windows in progress at once. Hit yourself on the head while saying. "Stupid, stupid" repeatedly.
8. Spend at least a week asking your wife, "Should we paint the inside? Should we varnish it? What color should we paint it?" (add your own variations for variety.)
9. Treat wood. We're using boiled linseed oil, but I've read other wood conditioners are also recommended and maybe even better.
10. Remove top sash. Again, same idea as the bottom sash, but instead of the stop, you remove the parting bead. And break it. Is there no way to remove it without breaking it? We found it easiest to take off the storm and work from both the outside and the inside.
11. Gaze adoringly at the hole in your house that used to be a window.
12. Buy screens at salvage place. Begin stripping those to add more to the to-do list.
13. Walk to store to buy primer, realize it's too heavy to carry home, buy screen material instead.
14. Sand and prime screens because you have the week off and you're bored. (Okay, so I haven't done that yet because it's rainy and icky and I have to wear my respirator and I don't like to wear my respirator. It bruises me nose.

Okay see, here's where I have to stop. What do we do next? Prime first and then install the glass? Do we prime the track where the glazing goes? Or leave it bare wood? Anyway, T.B.C.

Windows the Second

2008-06-08T20:47:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, we took out our first top sash. It was a little harder than the bottom because the parting beads (the long skinny board that keeps the top sash in place) are really hard to get out. I broke them both, but they are pretty easy to replace from what we've heard. The living room window, the one we're working on, is the only one I have seen so far with any rot issue. It's not too bad, both sashes have very minimal damage. It really just got the parting bead. We're planning on painting the sashes white, inside and out. The rest of the interior woodwork, though painted now, will eventually be stripped to natural wood. We went with paint because of durability issues and because the windows, though painstakingly stripped by Kevin, didn't look that great once he was through because of the rot and just general water exposure. Kevin is going to post about this once I talk him into it. The exterior trim will be painted white next summer when we paint the house, so that's why we went white all around. I think it will look really sharp.

In other window news, we got our first pane of glass out without breaking it! Kevin used the heat gun and put heat reflective tape on the glass to get the glazing putty out. I have a week off (with a little work to do from home) so I plan to strip the paint on the window frame, strip the screens, and paint them "Rainstorm" blue.

The house did not come with screens, which shouldn't have surprised us, since the windows were caulked shut. We found some replacements at Bauer Bros. Salvage last weekend. This place, located a dangerously close three or four miles from our house, is huge. There is an entire floor of windows. That picture is all storms and screens! Do you even see the end of it? We eventually found exactly what we needed for a great price. By the way, when I said we had giant windows, I wasn't kidding. We only found two that would work. They are literally as tall as me (5'1"). Which made it a lot easier for me than for Kevin to look at a window and see right away if it would work or not. It became a game, Kevin getting his hopes dashed every time I would stand next to one. That tall white one on the right might be one of ours. See how big it is compared to the others?

In other non-window related news, we found out the two giant concrete slabs in our backyard do not cover up anything scary. Our neighbor's parents used to own his house, so he has lived there his entire life. He was also good friends with our PO's son. He is a great asset to our curiosity. I mentioned something about the bricks we used to make a border around the vegetable garden, and he said the bricks and concrete slabs were from some street work they did a long time ago. The bricks were the original street, and the concrete was sidewalk. When the city began tearing up the road, all the residents grabbed what they could. All of the houses on the block have some of these bricks in their landscaping. It's kind of a cool connection to the neighborhood. And also good to know there is not a body buried in our backyard.

Warning: I am about to complain.

2008-06-03T19:12:00.004-05:00

I am sick of our money going into this house. We're pretty frugal with our finances, which is why two mid-twenty somethings could afford to buy a house in the city. When we aren't going through major job transitions, we usually have money in the bank to spare. Ever since the house came into the picture, however, our bank account can't seem to grow. Part of it may be the huge electrical project we took on without realizing the magnitude of it. Part of it may be we just got done paying monthly installments of my grad school. Actually, those two things just might be the culprits, now that I think about it. Of course then there's the Beast in the Basement...No, not that beast, though he's not cheap. And no, we do not keep him in the basement; he followed me down and then looked at me like I was crazy for taking pictures of the Real Beast in the Basement:

Anyway, this beast caused quite a jump in our utilities. Then, last but not least there's Ronald, the deceased PO of our house. He is the cause of things like this and this and these. He is also the resident scapegoat. Storm window stuck? Ronald. Refrigerator making weird noises? Ronald. Now, to be fair, he is the cause of many problems in the house: the basement staircase being held up by one lonely 2x4, installing cement asbestos siding over the original clapboard, and the fugly Kitchen and Bathroom remodels. All of which, I might add will eventually cost a lot of time and money for us. Some days, (did you guess yet that today is one of them?) I really miss our clean, modest little duplex. I miss the shiny hardwood floors, the convenience of calling our landlord when something didn't work, being able to clean the whole house in two hours, and the ability to sit around on weekends under a blanket on the couch together and not have projects hanging over our heads. Of course, our landlord didn't really fix things very well and our bedroom had a significant mold problem. But still, we had money. A nice little nest egg. Which has now become a house with crappy floors, no windows and holes everywhere (from the electrical project). All day today, I kept wondering when we were ever going to have money again. How long will it be before our bank account starts growing? Seriously, how do people do it? Does everyone else just have massive credit card debt?

I just want new clothes.

Oh, Cursed House

2008-06-03T19:03:00.003-05:00

I was only trying to turn off the water.... However, in case you were wondering, Vice Grips make excellent replacement knobs.

oops

2008-05-30T13:00:00.003-05:00

As part of our rewiring project, the basement lights got all screwed up. They used to be operated by pull switches and used the old wiring. We cut a lot of the wiring during the rewiring, and have plans to wire the lights so they all turn on with one switch. We haven't gotten there yet, though, and as a result, our basement is pretty dark.

Anyway, the point of all this being that when I grabbed clothes out of the dryer this morning to wear to work, I grabbed my gardening jeans rather than the nice pair in the same load. I didn't notice until confronted with my image in the mirror at work.

Oh well.

Windows

2008-05-27T19:59:00.007-05:00

I know everyone and their mom posts about restoring their windows, but I think our situations are all different, and so it would be worth writing ours up as well.

First off, we have giant windows. There are actually only three that we will worry about for the time being. One in the dining room (2'8"x 5'5"), one in the foyer and one in the living room (both 2 1/2' x 5 1/2') What makes our situation interesting is that the PO decided to caulk the windows shut. Yes, you read that right: caulk. On both the top and the bottom of the bottom sash. Supposedly this was a way to keep out drafts. Personally, I would have tried fixing the windows, but hey, at least they didn't replace them, right? Anyway, the bottom sashes were successfully removed from all three. Unfortunately, the glass on all three broke while I was trying to remove it. Which I guess is fitting to the title of this blog. Especially since, after breaking the first one, we didn't change our methods. Cause doing something the same way that didn't work the first time (or the second) always works, right?

I want to make it clear we did research before jumping into this. We actually do an extensive amount of research before jumping into projects. We knew how to remove the glass. What we didn't factor in was the hundred year old glazing putty, coupled with the two or three patching jobs from various decades over the hundred year old stuff. What worked for one chunk didn't work for another. Now we're going to try stripper or the heat gun with heat reflective tape. Anyway, as far as the window frames that I broke go, Kevin has one window almost stripped, and I have two more frames lined up for him to do.

Note From Kevin who is dipping his feet in this blog thing: The big question: should we paint the interiors on the windows or not? The opposing sides of this argument are that they look neat as natural wood versus they will be better protected from UV light if they are painted.

Anyway, here is a picture of one of the windows. I know that's not the best picture, but it gives you an idea of the size.

Quick Note: This picture, for some reason makes me proud. It was taken the day we closed on the house. The carpet? Gone. The vinyl roll shade? Gone. The ugly plastic like curtain and ugly metal rod? Gone. Gone. Oh yeah, and the ceiling fan? You guessed it. Gone. We put in a 1930's? glass bowl light fixture.

The dog?

He stepped out for a moment.

Cheating

2008-05-27T18:58:00.003-05:00

I know I said hardware store break in that last post, but over the week it kind of evolved to Home Depot break. So we tried out a new hardware store in the neighboring suburb. It was a nice change. It smelled like a hardware store. People were friendly, and helped us find things. Which poses a dilemma for us: when possible, Kevin and I try to live responsibly. We try to shop locally, walk or bike places, and buy used when possible. We haven't purchased meat in almost two years
(with a few rare exceptions). We own one, small compact car, and Kevin commutes by bike. Anyway, the dilemma: walk to Home Depot six blocks away, or drive to the suburb to shop local?

Really, though, we totally cheated and bought house stuff.

House Philosophy and Crappy Rooms

2008-05-19T19:28:00.012-05:00

Kevin and I are taking a hardware store break. This doesn't mean we are not working on the house, but rather we are not spending any money on the house. Ideally, this serves two purposes. The first being we won't spend any money (the $200 weekends were getting old) and second, it forces us to finish tasks that require no money but are just as important. For instance, Kevin rehung the garage door so it now closes and locks. It is important to us that we don't go into a huge amount of debt on the house. Therefore, we plan to only do projects as the funds become available. Unfortunately, it means that things stay crappy for longer.

Those pictures are of our bathroom and kitchen. The shower curtain has been removed, but the gold fleck still remains. On everything. The kitchen might just win an ugly kitchen prize. That flowery stuff acting as a back-splash is contact paper. The countertops have a metal edge that most certainly has collected food for thirty years. There is wood paneling covering the other walls. I have dreams of this kitchen gutted. The more we live with it, the more satisfying its demise will be.

This weekend was beautiful. We spent most of our time outside working in the yard. Kevin's parents came up and I put his mom to work in the front yard with me. We planted MN native wildflower gardens where the overgrown bush used to be. Once the rain stops I will go out and take pictures. It's not much now, but I think it will look great in a month or two.

Kevin and his dad finished mudding the drywall we put up in the hall ceiling. Then we all cleaned up and went out to eat to celebrate his cousin's college graduation. Congrats, Sam!

I always love when our family and friends come over and seem impressed by the work we've done. It's hard to put the house into perspective when we're living in it.

Bravery

2008-05-19T19:12:00.002-05:00

After a beautiful weekend, I got home today to find the house at a chilly sixty degrees. I grabbed a blanket, the dog and the laptop and settled in, determined to not turn on the furnace again (we had turned it off last week). When the dog/blanket combination seemed to do nothing, I spent about a half an hour working up the courage to turn on the heat. Why, you ask did it take courage to turn on the heat? Because we have an old gravity furnace that scares the living bejeebees out of me. The thought of turning on the gas and sticking my hand in to light it took some serious contemplation.

Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I went down to the basement. The furnace and I stared at each other awhile, trying to decide whether or not to trust one another. It took me a few minutes (fine, twenty minutes) to figure out how the pilot light mechanism worked, and then, in one glorious whoosh! we had heat. The dog and I ran upstairs and warmed our toes in front of the vents, listening for explosions.

So far, so good.

Moral of the story: before cutting down a tree, check for nests.

2008-05-13T18:04:00.003-05:00

We had a giant overgrown bush (an ewe, I think) in front of our house. It blocked the view, probably dug into the foundation, and just looked weird. It was taller than the house. Plus, it was dying. I say had, because on Sunday, Kevin's uncle, Jim, came over and chopped it down with his chainsaw. Very exciting. Until... Kevin spotted four baby robins laying on the ground. We stopped everything. Jim put the birds back into their nest, and moved it to a nearby tree. I went in and called a wildlife center. They said to leave them alone, and if the parents didn't come back to bring them in on Monday. We went inside and watched as both mom and dad robin tried to make sense of the missing tree. Finally they found their babies, but wouldn't go and feed them. We thought they were just making sure it was safe. Mom and Dad hung around in the yard all day, so we figured they must have eventually started to feed them again. Kevin checked on the birds today. All four were dead.

We have light!

2008-05-07T21:18:00.006-05:00

When I would tell people we were rewiring our house, they would almost always have the same reaction: something relating to blowing ourselves up, starting on fire, or electrocuting ourselves. Which, when my dad and Kevin were first talking about rewiring the house, was my reaction as well. I mean, it does sound like a scary project. Especially for someone whose electrical understanding consisted of teaching fifth graders how to make a flashlight out of pop cans and duct tape.

What I realized, as the project went on, however, was that it's actually pretty simple, and pretty benign. Kevin says it's like paint-by-numbers. As far as danger goes, it's hard to mess up rewiring to the extent of starting your house on fire. And the house is much safer now than it was before. The smoke detectors are hardwired together so if one goes off, they all will. We put in arc-fault circuit breakers for all three bedrooms. Also, the whole thing was checked by an inspector.

The only scary part was when Kevin installed the circuit breakers. The main power to the house is shut off, but there is still live power coming into the box. It is considered safe to work on, as the power would be pretty hard to accidentally touch, but it still made him nervous. I sat on a five-gallon pail beside him for moral support, though I was armed with a wooden broom handle and a cell phone. We flipped on each circuit breaker together.

I think the whole project came in a little under a thousand dollars. Most of that cost was in the circuit breakers and wire. The boxes, outlets, switches and cover plates were all pretty cheap, but we installed over fifty.

Light fixtures were one of the least expensive aspects, actually. I rewired the originals from the upstairs, and (gasp!) spray painted them antique bronze. Before anyone freaks out, they are metal, not worth a whole lot, and pretty darn ugly. Now, I think they look quite nice. I would say they were each about ten dollars to restore. I also rewired the cool porcelain fixture that used to hang in the foyer. It's going in the downstairs hall. The new foyer light is the one at the top of this post. It was cheap at the Depot. Don't mind the bad plaster job in the photo, just hasn't been fixed yet.

Anyway, point being, electrical work is not so scary. Especially once you're already in over your head financially and your moral has been strangled by extension cords. We've decided to take a project break and build up funds and energy. One can only go so long peeing by camp light before the ripped-up house thing gets old.

An open letter to my sister

2008-05-02T18:50:00.004-05:00

Note: My sister moved into our house the day after we did to do an internship in the cities. Yesterday was her last day at our house.

Chris,

We, Sarah, Kevin and Arlo, would like to apologize for robbing you of your innocence. Parts of the life you once pictured, an old house to fix up, a dog to play with, have been tarnished in the short time you've been with us. These are the specific incidents I feel like we need to apologize for. If there are others we've forgotten, please remind me.

We're sorry the floors of the first room you lived in were so slanted your furniture wouldn't stay in one place. We're sorry that when you tried to clean the tub, it turned into a two-day project requiring plumber's putty and a gasket. We're sorry that you came back from a weekend away to find extension cords running throughout the house and wires sticking out of your walls. Most of all, we're sorry that when you left a month later, there were still extension cords running throughout the house and wires sticking out of your walls.

Arlo would also like to apologize for ruining your idyllic visions of life with a dog. He is sorry for throwing up all over your window. And eating it when you went to find something to clean it up with. He's sorry for jumping on your bed and getting mud all over it. He is sorry for sucking on your pillow, stealing things and running away with them, and getting dog hair all over your bed.

Anyway, I hope this covers most of our wrong-doings. Understand that we meant no harm and truly enjoyed your stay. Know that you're always welcome, and that future visits will not be so painful. We hope.

Love Sarah, Kevin and Arlo

First Impressions

2008-04-24T19:58:00.003-05:00

I have noticed a trend in the reactions we get when people see our house for the first time. They either love it or are appalled by it. For instance, when the assessor came to look yesterday, she was horrified enough to drop the tax value down $60,000 dollars. Apparently they have a remodeling formula they use that is pretty accurate in estimating value. She didn't think it would work in our case. Ouch.

I think their reactions are based on two factors: their ability to visualize the finished project and their experiences/feelings about old houses. For instance, those who appreciate old house charm seem to love it and brush off its flaws as "old house quirks." One of my friends told me her boyfriend's old place had the same floors in the same condition. Kevin's uncle shrugged off our electrical issues. Our parents think our freak-outs when things don't go as planned are laughable.

I tend to take house reactions pretty seriously for some reason. I think it's because I want reassurance that we aren't crazy. Some days when I wake up and go down to the front closet to find clothes, turn on the camping light we shower by, and blow dry my hair in the hall, I feel a little crazy. Then a friend or family member swoops in and recalls their wiring experience, and I feel a little better. So if you ever see our house, go easy on me. Laugh behind my back. And please, make sure when your jaw drops you have a ready excuse.

crazy folk.

2008-04-22T22:53:00.000-05:00

When we received our county tax statement, the value of our house was 50,000 more than we paid for it and had it appraised at. So I called and complained. The woman at the assessor's office sent me a form the next day, which I filled out. Yesterday, we got a call; someone is coming to look at our home to reassess! Which has most likely dropped in value since we bought it. Did I mention the hole in the floor covered with planks? Or all the holes in the walls from the electrical? The floors?

You know, considering our end goal is to improve upon the house, we're not doing too well. Is it normal to buy a house and make it worth less than what you paid? I mean, who does that?

More lessons learned

2008-04-18T16:13:00.000-05:00

Push button switches are cool. Or at least that's what we thought when we saw them during the showing. There were three in the house, all on the same wall. We figured they must have skipped that wall during the electrical updating. No big problem, Kevin took home electrics in high school, he could fix it. Except, that wasn't the only thing. There was the fact that the foyer light was operated with a pull chain. That most of the light fixtures seemed original to the house's first wiring.

Hmmm.... The house has new electrical, right?

Well, no, not exactly. What it has is a new circuit box updated to 100 amp. There is a little Romex in the basement, but other than that, our wiring could serve as a museum exhibit: Wiring Throughout the Ages. There's a little of everything, mostly knob and tube. Scary.

Now, the thing about rewiring is, once you get going, it's hard to stop. everything is connected. So what began as an upper floor rewire soon became an upper-floor-and-most-of-the-main-floor rewire.

Our house is a weird design for a bungalow, which I attribute to it being relatively early on the scene. It was built in 1907. It has an upper floor with three bedrooms and a hallway. All of the bedrooms have slanty ceilings. The bathroom is downstairs, off the "hallway of doors" characteristic of bungalows. We have an eat-in kitchen, living room, dining room and huge foyer. The stairs are not hidden, but a fixture of the foyer. Anyway, the reason this is significant for the electrical is that we have scads of crawlspaces. Five, to be exact. Which makes rewiring a lot easier. We really only had to cut out a section of ceiling in the main floor hall, and everything else was accessed through crawl spaces.

Along the way, we've found some questionable wiring practices. My favorites:

Though we are not doing the bathroom or kitchen rewire yet (we're waiting until we remodel), we found this gem while removing our old stove. The wood paneling is the wall, gray linoleum the floor. That pipe is the gas to the stove. That snakey thing is Romex wire, coming up from the hole for the gas, and going into an unused outlet. From there it goes up through the wall to a light fixture with an outlet on it where the stove was plugged in. Real safe.

Next we have wiring installed under the quarter round in the master bedroom...

and a nail going right through the wire.

We are sooo close to being ready for the rough-in inspection, and I think after this weekend, we can start the fun stuff (new fixtures!). Until then, we have three working outlets in the house, and a lot of extension cords. Wish us luck.

Floored

2008-04-18T14:52:00.000-05:00

We researched extensively on home restoration. We read other blogs, heard others' tales of misery and woe. Our house wouldn't be like that-- it would be easy. The same family had lived there for 5o years. They bought it when their first son was a month old, and went on to raise four children in it's 1100 square feet. It had been loved, not abused. Yes there were problems, but they all seemed straightforward, like cracked plaster and an ugly kitchen. Things we could easily fix.

We've grown a lot since then.

Picture us, two young twenty-somethings and their mixed-breed dog, turning the key in the lock of their very first home. We go inside, dance around, open every cupboard, window, door and appliance. The dog runs in circles, creating dangerous levels of static electricity from the carpet. The carpet. That was our first project. There were hardwood floors underneath, which meant it had to go. We pulled up a corner in the foyer. Guess what we found?

That would be vinyl flooring. Covering the entire main floor of our house. The hardwood floors were under it. Now, what gives this particular event a major twist is the fact that most vinyl flooring from that era contained asbestos. Because we're cheap, we didn't pay to get it tested, but because we're cautious, treated it like it was hazardous. This meant quarintine. We bought respirators, sealed off the rest of the house, sealed off the vents, turned off the heat, and started working.

The Minnesota Department of Health has a great website on do-it-yourself asbestos removal. The key is a lot of water, because it's only dangerous when particles float into the air. To get water, we had to decontaminate (strip down to nothing) in the back porch and trudge into the basement to fill 5 gallon pails. It was below zero, so we had to work until the flooring was gone so we could turn on the heat. It took thirteen hours. Want to see the floors we found underneath?

Like I said, we've grown a lot.