House Week 38: Researching for the Right Planks for the Front Porch

Yep, it’s a real house all weather tight and i have officially moved in!!!  YEA!!!!!!!  Weather tight is actually more important then you may think here right now with our sideways rain and shooter marble sized hail.  Another thing that is tremendously important is solid ground, and well it’s about time i move on from the ever so trendy plywood porch to something a bit more traditional, like wood planks maybe?  So off to the wood planks place (Ashby Lumber) i went to find some wood…

The weekend consisted of researching the ever burdening question “What kind of material should i buy?”  While this sounds easy, it’s actually tricky since there are tons of products out right now that are really only made to last a few years.  Crazy huh!  Who’d want to spend all of the time laying boards down for their porch to only do it a few years again?  Well the answer is no one.  Most of these products are marketed to people who want to do something cheap and don’t care for one reason or another, usually they either are already selling the place and just want to spruce it up or they are planning to soon and would like to get a ouple of extra dollars.  I narrowed it down to a couple of different products.

First was Trex, which is made of “recycled materials”.  I hate it when things refuse to tell you what they are made of…it’s just lame!  So that was one ding, and they were eliminated as a choice when i found out that it is not recommended to place the boards in direct sunlight.  Ummm, that is silly!  From speaking with others who have it installed it seems to hold heat a bit too well so the surface becomes ridiculously hot to the touch which would so not work with my need to be barefoot all year.

Second was Merbau, which is a super hard wood which for this product is grown sustainably in the tropical Asia-Pacific region and was promised to not burn my feet, yea!  The wood has a soft brown grain with streaks of yellow highlights giving it a fantastic depth.  The product has a 50 year lifespan, which then you can turn it over and use the other side so 100 years in total.  Another bonus, something i only have to do once not matter how long i live.  It wasn’t cheap, but it did not break the bank either, decision made, time to go pick it up.

House Week 37: Back to Stripping … Paint

There is a never ending amount of items original to the house that i have been stripping 90 years of paint off of since last year, and unfortunately the pile has not visibly shrunk.  With the trim going up around the windows in the front of the house it is imminent that the actual windows themselves will need to be ready for installation.  With the world thinking all of the rain needs to fall now and in Berkeley i took advantage of a break in the storms to attempt to strip the two fixed windows that will be set in the living room as i will not have time to finish all of them before they go up, and well it seems to make sense to focus on the ones that will be nailed in place…right?

Stripping paint is definitely not a strenuous job (like laying a porch), but where it lacks in strength it makes up for in time.  Lots of time!  Most of stripping is waiting, testing, waiting some more, and then waiting just a bit longer still, and THEN going at the object scraping and swirling with steel wool trying to loosen as much as possible before you start the whole thing over again.  I have found a relatively earth friendly brand of paint stripper i like, Citristrip, which has a super pleasant odor of oranges and lemons so it’s not so bad during all of the waiting while i read.  Also it works…watch!

So here are the 90 year old windows i focused on in all of their 7+ layers of paint glory…

    

So here’s the steps…

1. After i got the windows out and setup in a shady spot i gave them a damp dusting, not too wet, just enough to break through the dirt/dust (and cobwebs) that has been accumulating on them since they came out of the house a year ago.
2. Once they were clean i used a dry cloth to make sure to remove any remaining water or dust.  They have to be *dry* for the stripper to work.
3. Time to glob on the stripping gel.  I just open the jug and pour in over the surfaces sparsely and then go back over it with a paint brush to distribute evenly.  I think the directions say to put it in a can and brush in on from there… (but we all know i hate directions!)  The trick seems to be a good even layer nearly a 1/16'” thick over the entire surface to ensure good coverage.  This is one of those times that more is totally better.  Also note that if you have metal hardware on whatever you are stripping, like the casement hinges on the windows, you can remove or leave on and the stripper will help clean them up too, no damage
4. Time to wait!  I give them about two hours before i even poke at them…
5. You will need to test an area to see if they are ready yet, but i wait a minimum of two hours AND look for the tell tale sign of the paint curling together.  No curls or bubble, it’s not done.  If it’s dry and there are none, add another coat to help restore the moisture levels so the stripper can get back to work.
6. Once you have the ripples test a corner using a plastic scraper (metal at you own risk, i totally learned this the hard way with an ugly scratch on the glass).  You should get a good couple of layers off at a time.
7. While it would be nice, this is not a single coat type thing.  For my crazy hundred layers it took two passes, which is nothing!  So from here depending up how much paint you got off repeat steps 3 through 6 at least once more and and many times as necessary to get close to the wood.  Don’t be surprised if it doesn’t all come through, we have something else for that. 
8. Once you have *most* of the paint off time to move over to the Mineral Spirits and Steel Wool.  Unfortunately this is something that stinks to the high heavens.  There are “Green” and “Odorless” ones, which i used, but they are definitely not odorless!  Be sure this is done outside or somewhere you and nothing else will be for at least a day.  Pour a sparing amount of mineral spirits directly onto the wood and scrub at the remaining paint.  I started with “00” pads and they worked great without scratching up the glass and metal.
9. Keep working with adding more mineral spirits and changing out your steel wool pads once they are full of paint (remember they have two sides!).  I used an old rag to help clean off the areas as i finished them.

And here are the windows after a full day…

    

Aren’t they fantastic!  I am super impressed and can’t wait to see them up in the house!!!  Which will mean i can move in :)

House Week 35 & 36: Trimming the Windows and Entry Doors

Now that there is a bit of paint over the interior walls and ceiling in the east side of the house it is starting to feel more and more like a real house.  One addition i decided it was time to get moving on was some trimmings around the windows to help finish off their look and really bring the house back to the 20’s.  I found a fantastic Wood Worker, John Kraft (who does not have a website, so message me for his contact info if you are looking for an amazing carpenter).  We were put in touch though Belmont Hardware when i decided that chiseling out the front door to enlarge the mortise area was a bit beyond my skill-set, a realization that occurred in the form of dreams where i put a giant hole in the front door and spent the next two months looking for one that was the same size.

After getting through getting locks onto the doors we discussed a couple of options for casements around the doors and windows and decided to go with a relatively flat look that has a small bead of wood along the header intersection to help break up the to portion of openings and give them a bit of grace.  Aren’t they fantastic?!?!?!?!

  

    

Most of the windows are complete along with all of the exterior doors.  The interior doors will follow in a few months once the floor is in place to ensure the casings are flush with the floor with the exception of the bathroom door which has been hung to give everyone a bit of privacy within my still totally a construction zone home.

My very first Housewarming gift!

This is totally my kind of neighborhood. There is a bbq down the way with bicycles locked up to every pole on the street and I was just given an amazingly tasty loaf of Banana bread...my favorite!!! It is super nice to feel this house thing really is all worth it.

House Week 34: It’s a dusty job, but someone’s gotta do it … Dusting the walls to prep for paint

Now that the drywall is up, mudded, and sanded it’s time for me to get to work clearing out all of this drywall dust from the walls and ceiling so i can get the drywall sealed with primer and move onto the fun real decorating portion of the home owning.  You would think that this would be a super fast thing to do, but drywall dust is a tricky little buggar.  The dust is super fine and it seems to evade all types of cleaning cloths.  The project was begun using plain old terry cloths rags and a ladder which drained not just my patience but also all of my energy.  It is super annoying to rub in circles on the ceiling removing drywall dust at the speed for a square foot every 20 minutes.  So i turned to the all shortcut knowing internet to assist me in speeding things up…there had to be a better way.

The better way was found deeply rooted in a message board post about cleaning up drywall to prep for paint where someone mentioned Swiffer dusting cloths.  Normally i would have shied away from such and un-eco friendly method, but the terry cloth rags were so full of dust i wasn’t going to be able to wash them either so it seemed like a worth while trade to give the Swiffer cloths a try so out came a box i have had for many years to give it a try.  The results were an entire ceiling in 20 minutes.  It was a very nice change!!!  After depleting the box i ventured out in search of more of these magical drywall dust removers to finish the work and returned endowed with 15 boxes (running out would have been annoying).

The rest of the house went smoothly and i have decided sticks with rags on the end rock!  All of the walls and ceilings are dust free and in only four evenings after work, not bad.  Unfortunately the “tower of towels” was thrown away before the documentation ceremony could occur so i leave you to imagine what a nearly two foot tall stack of dust laden Swiffer cloths stacked in a slightly leaning tower looks like.

Helping out in the NeverNever

Sometimes the ads in the BART stations have an instantaneous giggle producing effect on me...enter the fairy assistance ad. Getting a couple dollars off for checking in somewhere or status on a scoreboard is cool, but assisting fairies in modding their bodies is much more intriguing. I wonder if there is a chart to track the fairy morphing progress? Or if I could pick the fairies to assist or meet them and determine the wing type and shape. I think I may need new wings myself ; )