Is it weird...

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?

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!

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

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

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

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!

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.