Four rooms
Three, actually, but some with 4 walls. Okay, all with four walls, but the point is – the painting in the bedrooms is done. Hey look, it doesn’t look like a tenement anymore!
Only a couple of small projects left upstairs, but I’ve been bogged with actual work (Alumni Council Weekend this weekend is sucking my office’s lifeforce) and a minor cold for the last couple of days. Mofre updates next week, fingers crossed
New tag
Posted by aaron in advice wanted on 12 September 2008
I’m adding an ‘advice wanted’ tag to the blog for projects and peculiarities I’d like to try and crowdsource. If you’re looking for a puzzle, these would be the posts that need addressing.
Right now the main point to ponder is at the bottom of this post – how do I get the paint off these spindles so I can repaint everything?
No longer a hole in the wall
Readers may remember the section of wall in the back bedroom that needed repair and how locating a plug to match the old 1/4″ wallboard was proving difficult. I decided to just break out the plaster down to the lathe and plug it with drywall instead.
Fortunately I don’t think there are other sections of plaster/wallboard that are cracked and buckling, so I shouldn’t have to do this – or something smarter – again soon.
This section of wall was clearly redone at some point – we’re talking 40+ years ago no real idea if there was a door or different wall there, or if there was damage repaired, or what. If anyone knows when they stopped using horse-hair plaster (which covered the lathe on the left side) and started using the more uniform plaster (used to cover the right), that might give me a sense of whether this remodeling was connected to the back addition (circa 1920) or something else.
In any event, clearing just this section of plaster(s) was an adventure, involving all the tools below plus an aborted attempt to use a circ saw. The ‘newer’ plaster was very disinterested in budging, which I suppose bodes well for the long term integrity of the house, but sucks for me trying to get this done in a day.
On the left, the drywall plug set to replace all the plaster on the right:
There’s some slight unevenness with the two sections of lathe, probably due to the studs not being perfectly aligned. The screws seem to be holding the plug in fine, and I filed the edges a little to create a better gradient. Then used up a quarter of my jug of spackle:
After I was done I realized I’d missed a great opportunity to install a safe or secret compartment. Ah well – plenty of other walls in the house.
Not much to report
Posted by aaron in Uncategorized on 6 September 2008
Been moving things around in anticipation of tomorrow’s (today’s) garage sale. If you’re in town, come over and take this stuff. Please.
After that’s gone, all I need is to figure out where I’m putting the shed out back (still… yes… I know) and then I can move the rest of the things I don’t need in the house out of the house. And THEN I can get some work done.
It’s not even Labor Day…
Posted by aaron in bathroom, kitchen, living room on 31 August 2008
And I’m still doing so much work! Thanks, I’ll be hear all millennium.
Tasks tackled lately:
– more paneling hung. Have not yet reversed last week’s error though.
– installed a double roller catch in the kitchen passthrough so the door stays closed. Would have installed two but I didn’t see that the second one I bought was broken.
– finished off trim on window in upstairs bathroom. You haven’t done mental geometry until you’ve tried to match your measurements on a square frame to a series of 45 degree mitre cuts on 90 degree cap molding.
– other stuff I’m sure…
Scraping and painting, and problems with both (now with pictures!).
Plenty of both the last couple of days. I’ve got one renter moving in right now and am trying to get all the upstairs rooms painted (if they need it). This is mostly standard stuff – tape off, roller, brush, clean up (got an excellent selection of self-priming paints from Sherwin Williams so things go even faster) – but I have one problem in the back bedroom:
A section of the wallboard had cracked and buckled, probably from someone years ago putting their elbow through the other side of the wall. Whatever the reason, I needed to cut the section out down to the plaster. The plan was to buy some drywall or wallboard of the same thickness, tack it into the space, spackle the edges, and paint the whole wall. Unfortunately, this wallboard or whatever is just under a quarter inch thick and something like it probably hasn’t been manufactured in years, according to other people who know old buildings. Home Depot certainly doesn’t seem to have anything. I’m thinking about just spackling the entire hole, although that seems like a huge waste of spackle, or tacking luan or other wood into the space, although that seems like it will produce a wall with wildly different surfaces.
I’m also continuing to hack at the porch. I finished the entire lower rail today, plan to get the entire ceiling done within the next couple of days, but am really not looking forward to dealing with the spindles which have thick paint that is either cracking or not moving.
The past couple of days…
Posted by aaron in exterior, living room, porch on 28 August 2008
Have been a veritable flurry of activity. I scraped about 1/10th of the porch. That’s a lot when you realize this is the paint on my porch:
At least three layers, at least two of which are heavy-duty exterior paint. Not heavy duty enough, because this is what I’m tackling before I can paint anything:
At the rate I’m going (couple of hours, most days), it should be done by early next week. If the weather holds, I can paint all at once. And maybe even put a coat of the new blue (very similar to the old blue) on the front shingles. You know, the ones that needs painting the least.
Meanwhile, inside… I don’t know how the hell this happened:
A tip…
Yes, yes, I know I said I’d be posting in this thing daily. But between work, friends in from out of town, the county fair last weekend (combine… derby….), and today’s important home improvement tip, I haven’t always been at the computer with thoughts to share.
Today’s Important Home Improvement Tip:
Do not go into your attic in the middle of the afternoon during the summer. If you do, don’t expect to get much work done.
Note: No, I didn’t pass out.
Step one: Tyvek
Forty-five minutes is at least 20 minutes longer than I expected this to take:
Major sources of delay: discovering the bathroom vent pipe wasn’t solidly hooked up inside the wall (solution: snip the end of the short pipe so it could be collapsed a little and slide inside the pipe in the wall); and realizing ex post facto that a utility knife would have been a better choice to cut the paper than the shears I brought with me.
Still – some nice old wood under these shingles. I continue to indulge the fantasy of having all the shingles removed, finding not a single spot of rot or weakness or air gaps underneath, and painting the entire building to last, low maintenance, for another 100 years.
Until then, I’ll be back up on the ladder soon to put shingles over the paper. I’m looking for the answer to this question – can I use a nail gun to attach the shingles, as opposed to predrilling both shingle and the board underneath, then tapping two nails through each shingle? That’s the way the previous owner did it, but if a nail gun with the right size nails and the right pressure setting can do the job then I’ll gladly spend the money to spend that much less time.
So close…
See, if the neighbor’s cat was really a good hunter, I wouldn’t have to call a pest control guy to get two squirrels removed from my porch roof…
This squirrel is missing most of its tail, though, so one of the cats has had some mild success. I can’t wait, though – I’m scraping the porch now and want to take out the broken soffit board (where the squirrels got in), replace it, seal all the cracks all along the whole porch underside, and paint it within the next week or so. Then the place won’t look QUITE so run down from the outside…