Lessons in Paint

Now that motorbike season is over, and the weather is turning, there's been some progress on the house.

Way back in July, when the cabinets were being worked on and paint was being purchased, I bought paint for the walls in the kitchen. When we moved in, it was a pale yellow color, and it was ok, but given that neither of us is really a big fan of yellow, and the whole outside of our house is yellow, we decided to change it.

The new color is Obstinate Orange, appropriate to me since I wanted something more muted, but the hub really wanted something bright. He won. After a week of working on it, and a little more to do I have a few comments on this process.

1. Semi-gloss paint is the devil if you have an old house. It shows EVERY flaw.

2. Semi-gloss paint doesn't like to stick to old semi gloss very well, and so especially when painting something in the bright and dark end of the spectrum, you MUST use a primer. Three coats and a gallon into it, and the splotchyness is mostly taken care of.

We now have a very shiny, and very orange kitchen. It's actually a deeper, redder orange than I thought it would be. I'm not down with the shine, so for a final coat with a new gallon of paint, I may ask if I can use eggshell.

3. Since the old paint was semi-gloss, and I made the mistake of not using primer, I really should have TSP'd the walls to at least clean them and cut the shine of the old paint. Oh well.

4. Since the house is old, the corners where the walls meet the ceiling are not really very straight, and so making a nice, crisp line around the ceiling between the dark orange and the white ceiling is nearly impossible. There's a wood trim piece that goes all the way around the kitchen about a foot down from the ceiling. I should have just painted that part white. would have saved SO much time and energy, and probably would have lightened the room and looked better. I may still do this.

Skelaxin and La Fin Du Monde are a Sketchy Combination

No one carries Blanche de Chambly around here, but La Fin Du Monde, and it's 9% alcohol content, is seemingly readily available. There is a field trip to Discount Liquors in order methinks, we need to find more gluten free beers as well. (Lakefront's New Grist is the winner so far.)

Skelaxin is a muscle relaxer that I've been put on for my back. (Which would be one of the several reasons for there not being much progress on the house.) The combination of the two totally knocked me out last night. Guess those warnings about not mixing it with alcohol are to be heeded, although laying on the couch watching gymnastics until midnight could put anyone to sleep. I had a damn hard time getting up the stairs though.

The downstairs bathroom is mostly back together. It's livable for now, but the molding around the top needs to come down and be stripped, and the walls repainted. The hinges on the cabinet door were polished with the new grinder, but the door only got a fresh coat of paint, rather than stripped which should still be done... along with the door, window and trim. Later on we have to figure out what to do with the base tiles, which are ugly, and a couple are missing.


Polishing Cabinet Hardware
We have a 6" bench grinder that I bought with the specific purpose of polishing hardware in mind. (And of course it's a useful tool for other future purposes.) We got a fine wire wheel and a polishing wheel for it to do the refinishing, and so far I have a couple notes.

- Vice Grips are necessary for holding pieces without grinding your fingers off.

- Wear saftey glasses!

- Be very careful with things that have a chrome coating, it doesn't take much to go through it. It's best to use a grinder for solid metal fittings. The bathroom cabinet hinges are pretty well wrecked now, but the outside that shows turned out ok. Better than having to buy new ones for now.

- It's not really detail oriented enough for some things. The hinges are a funny shape with flats and bends and so it didn't get all the paint off. If I get around to doing the brass hinges from the kitchen this weekend, I'll post pictures. Use a Dremel for detail work.

The Post Lady Loves Our House

It was so sweet, the Post-woman stopped in our driveway to hand deliver our mail and to tell us that she's always loved our house. Also, that if our mail ever gets messed up, that it only happens when she's on vacation. Heh.

It does stand out a bit, but it's small, and modest, and so I was just tickled that other people see the charm in it that we did.

Then the Motivation Subsides

Progress is pretty much at a standstill. The cats are still trying to coerce me into knitting - no matter where I try putting the yarn, Lola finds it and carries it around the house. The last free weekend we had, we spent moving the last of our junk out of the old place, and cleaning.

Gigi has been moved into the house, which was a fun experiment in figuring out ramps on the stairs and whatnot, but she's in her final resting spot, which is part of the reason why we chose this house - a somewhat useless spot in the entryway/living room that is the perfect size for a motorbike.

My Cats Think I Should Knit More

Apparently, my cats are unimpressed with my efforts at home improving, and want me to go back to knitting.

I woke up Monday morning to this:





I'm pretty sure this one is the culprit.



After my husband pointed out the yarn farm to me, and left for work, I went back to sleep... until I noticed she'd also hidden one under the sheets. I still can't believe she carried every single one of them from the living room, up the stairs, and next to the bed.



I should have been mad, given that it was all nice, expensive one of a kind handspun yarn, but it was too funny... and she's just too sweet. (and none of it was damaged.)

Tales of an Amateur Stripper

So what better way to spend an early Sunday morning, waiting for my husband to get out of bed so that we could get more piles of Crap from the old place, than with my pals Citristrip and Hyde the hand scraper(s).



I've learned one of the cardinal rules of home improving... and that is don't start a small project unless you're willing to tackle a bigger one. It all started innocently enough, I need to put our toiletries and miscellaneous bathroom accessories away, but have been unwilling to use the medicine cabinet as-was, I wanted to strip repaint it first. It smelled a little funny and there were stains and... well ew.



There were at least three coats of paint on the inside and on the shelves, and I thought I could get away with just the inside, leaving the door on. That didn't work out so well, and so after one round of stripping, the door had to come off along with the hardware all pried out and next thing I know I'm doing the whole thing. I counted five layers of paint on the outside. Two shades of beige, blue, yellow, and white.



Some tips on using this particular chemical stripper:

1. Use the right tools. The first time I tried applying it to the kitchen cupboard shelves, I didn't have any brushes in the house yet, and tried all kinds of things - putty knife, foam paint pad (Don't use these for this ever! They melt from the chemical), and finally a wadded up piece of paper towel. Use a brush. Use a metal paint scraper.

2. Be patient. I wanted instant gratification and scraped as soon as I'd finished applying. It works a little better if you let it sit at least half an hour. I didn't see any great benefit to letting it sit all day. Also, when there are several layers of paint, expect to have to re-do it a second time. Make sure you cover everything thoroughly. I erred on the side of using to much just to be sure, but missing spot will mean for sure having to go back a second time.



3. It's messy. There's no way to avoid it. It's kind of gross to use, but I had a whole bottle of it, and felt the need to used it all up. When it's gone, I'm going to try the heat gun method that everyone else seems to favor.

Tinting Shellac

After putting a couple coats of straight amber shellac onto the shelves, it wasn't quite coming out the right color to match the rest of the woodwork. After a bit of research, it appears that TransTint is the best option.

Reddish Brown was selected as we're fond of reddish tinted woodwork over orangey-yellow. About half of a cleaned glass salsa jar was filled with shellac, and then about 3/4 of a tablespoon of dye was added and mixed up. What resulted was a very pretty reddish-brown. Be warned, the TransTint dyes are very potent stuff. I decided that the color was just a little too dark, and so further experimentation will have to happen.

So the shelves are reddish brown on one side, and lighter on the other. You can't see the tops really unless you're very tall, and even then I've covered them with grippy plastic mats.

Next up is refinishing the doors, and my husband needs to set up the bench grinder I got him over the weekend to polish all the old brass hinges. $65 for a tool that we'll have other uses for vs. $100 for new matching hinges. Unfortunately none of the knobs and pulls will match as they're newer and look like they're supposed to be fake old bronze with a heavy patina.

Kitchen - More Progress

The shelves are as done as they're going to get. To be honest, I'm not entirely happy with them. If you look closely, there's a lot of unevenness to the finish, and I really should have put a layer of SealCoat on. They look good from a distance though, and I learned a bit about the application of shellac.



...and this is both of them, and a good example of why I'm always shooting close-ups of the one cabinet. Our house is a sty, a clutter of plastic bags, painting implements, screws, hinges, and our actual living stuff.

Finding the Camera Again

It's been a long time since I've taken pictures of anything besides motorbikes, and chronicling the progress on the house has been good reason to look at things differently again.

The potted impulse purchase Gerberas that are hanging out on the back slab.



X burning the cuttings from our backyard mystery trees (one of which is overhanging in the foreground.



Phoenix very much enjoying the many windows in the house. The cats love the windows here.



I also impulse purchased some Clematis for the two little wire trellis(es?) on the side of the house and some ivy to add with the pink Geraniums in the window boxes to fill them out a little more. Hopefully my black thumb does not kill them. (Black thumb meaning I'm worse than someone with a brown thumb. I kill everything I try to plant and not sure why I even bother. So far nothing has died. Yet.)

Kitchen - Progress

The inside of the cabinets have been painted "Perennial Gold" and the shelves are on their second coat of (vegans, avert your eyes) shellac. Spent most of last weekend on them, and looking forward to finishing up this weekend.



The trim at the top of the cabinets and on the walls has also been taken down. The brown edge up there on the wall is possibly 80 years of grease collection. Gross.

I don't think I prepped the surface well enough and the paint, after drying for a week still feels "rubbery". I'm going to live in denial and just leave it. I'm more concerned about the surface of the shelves. I used the new no-VOC paint from the orange big box, and am pretty happy with it, it covered in two coats, the "welcome" stencils covered with three no problem. The walls will eventually be "Obstinate Orange". Had to go with a low-VOC from SW since it appears the readily available no-VOC paints are not available in bright colors. They're all more earthy. X wanted bright though.

Also going to play with color tints in the shellac. I've been using amber but its a little too light and too orange, so I'll be adding some reddish brown to see what happens.

After we get the kitchen stuff moved in, then I'll work on the doors and drawers. I'm running out of time before we have to have everything out of the old apartment. It's turning out to be more work and more time consuming than I thought, and the day job keeps butting in, but I want to do a good job and make sure it looks good for another 80 years.

Have to remember to look for new shelf pegs and door catches too, and figure out how to clean up the old hinges.

Kitchen - The Beginning

The day we moved in it was decided that even though we loved/liked/could live with most of the colors and decor the POs used, that something had to be done to make our "mark" - to make the house "ours". I decided on the kitchen would be first.

Based on the ages and brands of the paint cans left behind, (as I went through and tried to decide what should stay or could be useful and what should go) I surmised that the PPOs did not have as similar tastes in color or style, and were probably the culprits behind the "Welcome" stencils that adorn the cabinet doors outside, inside, and on the back wall. I'm not sure why you would want to decorate the inside of cabinets, where you couldn't see it and the shelves partially and completely blocked it anyway? I don't know, maybe it's like wearing naughty underwear under a business suit? Only you know it's there?



It was discussed with a coworker that I do not in fact actually wish to welcome anyone to my kitchen cupboards. You are welcome in my home, yes, but not to my cabinets or their contents without prior permission thank you.

Since it has been a while since someone put a layer of any kind of finish on the old upper cabinets and they're pretty well worn in spots, and the shelves inside had multiple layers of contact paper and paint, the first plan of action was to refinish the kitchen before moving our kitchen stuff from our old place. I have two weeks to get the insides to a reasonable state of completion because we have to be out of the old place by the end of July.

I'm not thorough enough to have gotten before photos, so I'll have to show the pictures from the house listing.

Before: Here you can see the quirky combination of old and new. Wont be touching the new for a while, and I like the weirdness, but I would like to eventually make a concrete counter and put in an undermount sink because I *hate* what's there now.



Taking the doors off and drawers out and showing off the floral contact paper that was everywhere.



So far this project is moving slowly. We're at our busiest time of year at work and my task sheet for this week scheduled me for 99 hours (on one project, 106 total) and tomorrow is a holiday.

Tales of Puffy Eyes

There were several co-workers gathered for coffee in the kitchen this morning. Everyone looked tired, and they were exchanging stories of hangovers and sleeping until 5PM the day after a bender. I high-fived one of them on my way out, as I've had many of those days as well.

When I got back to my desk, I had the realization that my eyes were puffy and I was tired (and had gotten to work a little late) not from being overserved, but in fact from spending a good portion of my evening after working late, hanging out in the basement with my good friends Citristrip, and Hyde hand scraper, stripping paint off of kitchen cupboard shelves.

Coming soon: My debut as an amateur stripper.

We have a house!

It's not the plain, somewhat ugly vinyl sided colonial in 'Tosa with the Five Car Garage (and thre car car-port) with a lovely interior that I'd first fallen in love with. It's not the folk victorian a block away from my dad that I remember seeing every day down the hill in the backyard. The house that inspired the research on restoring old homes that led me to houseblogs.net. It's also not the beautiful 2,500 sq. ft. brick colonial that was available via bank auction through a weird ebay-for-houses like bidding process that I will never go through (or put a realtor through) again. Finally, it's not the victorian up on the hill overlooking the lake that we never went to see, because we'd already settled on buying our Tiny Yellow Cottage.

While certainly not a vision of a "dream home" that'd I had always pictured in my imagination while growing up, it works, and I think we can be happy here for a while. It was the best combination of location, (low property taxes and close to work for both of us) price, (while not a stellar deal, we could afford it) space, (Even though there's not enough garage, there's enough yard to add on. Even though the house is small, it's enough for a child-free couple.) and the style (it's cute, and has lots of character with much of the original woodwork (unpainted!!)) is exactly what I wanted in a home.

There's really not a lot of work to be done, so starting a houseblog about it is a little pointless, but when we thought we *were* going to get into a house that needed a lot of work, I was so stoked by the idea of doing one of these, and so I will still chronicle the work we do to our tiny, mostly original, yellow, 1920's, cape cod.