Kitchen cupboards in progress

Well its been about 6 months since our last post. We've been working on the kitchen since May, pulled out all the plaster (it wasn't salvageable). Replaced the windows and doors, refinished the floors, and many other thing we'll leave for another post. We're building the faceframes and doors using salvaged wood from other parts of the house, 80 year old douglas fir. The boxes are made with good one side fir plywood, so they should be plenty strong. All the faceframes for the bottom cabinets are done, so we're moving on to doors and drawers. Once they're done we can order the counters and start on the uppers. We are still figuring out the colour, we were thinking bay berry green milk paint on the bottom, and Waterlox varnish on the uppers. We need to experiment with the milk paint.

Bedroom floor

Here's what some of the bad parts looked like after sanding. I sanded the floor with an edger, using 60 and 80 grit paper. It didn't seem to take much off, so I used the belt sander with 50, 80 and 100 grit. It took off a lot more, but I gouged the floor a little when I wasn't being careful. Next time I'm going to look in to different floor sanders. The room is only 12' long, so a drum sander would only do the centre section. Next time I want to try the U-sand sander.

There were quite a few dents in the floor, and you could see where someone had a bed for a long time. The floor didn't seem in great shape, considering it's a bedroom, so it should be in better shape.

I used some stainable putty on the worst parts. I probably should have added some stain to try and match the surrounding wood. It matches the sap wood pretty good, not the darker parts.

Here it is after 4 coats of Waterlox, 2 original and 2 glossy. I sanded the floor by hand after the 3 coat, with 220 sandpaper. I used steel wool last time, but found it gets caught on parts of the floor. It had quite a bit of dust, and the sanding made the last coat come out better. It could probably use another coat to even out the gloss. The colour is a lot darker than the last room I did, using the same process. This room faces south, so maybe it's just the extra exposure to sun. Next we do the wallpaper, and we can move back in. We're going to wait until after the built-ins are done to do the trim.

New Bedroom Windows

Here we are this morning, with the old aluminum window taken out. Someone took out the centre of the frame to put in the aluminum one. So the first thing I had to do was remake some of the pieces. You can't see it in the picture, but it was really windy this morning. The door kept slamming...



Here's the frame primed with the new pieces I added back in. The sill is 9 degrees, so I had to match the angle, and rabbet it out. For some reason I measured the window wrong, it ends up that the old ones were 30 1/4" wide, instead of 30. I had to cut the stool a bit, and rabbet out 1/4" on the top, and 1/2" on the bottom. I used an old baseboard I had for the pieces.



Here are the windows in. They didn't take too long to put in, after everything was prepped. The jambs are vinyl, and there are clips that hold them in. The sashes pop in after you get the jambs in.




Here they are from the outside. I still have to do the trim for the middle. The original was 5/4" fir, the piece needs to be 7 1/2" wide. I was going to use cedar to get the full thickness, I may have to biscuit join 2 pieces to get the width. I still have to fix the sill, it has some rot, so it'll need epoxy.


Hopefully we'll get the living room side done next week, I'll be twice as many frame pieces to rebuild, since it has 3 windows. The windows are Marvin sash replacements, in douglas fir. We have to stain the outside with Sikkens, and the inside with Waterlox. Oh and I still haven't built those window planters...

Living Room Painted

I finished painting the living room yesterday. We used the Benjamin Moore Ecospec paint, a cheaper low voc paint. It's a custom colour that will match the wallpaper that's going on one wall. The wallpaper is from Graham and Brown and it's called Sophia-Pebble. We should probably order it now, before it's discontinued. We still have to pull the ceiling down and do the box beam ceiling before we wallpaper, which won't be for at least a year. The paint seems just as good as regular Benjamin Moore. I think they gave us a discount at the store, since we buy a lot of paint off of them, it was cheaper than Behr paint. Since we spend so much time in this room though, we thought we should give it some TLC. I've taken the 2 remaining baseboards off, for some reason one of the P.O. took off the nice trim, and put in crappy smaller trim on a couple walls, including trim made out of plywood around one door. The one baseboard is about 15' long, the other just over 12', and they're both 8" high.

It took around 3 hours to heat gun most of the paint off. There's a really strange undercoat that's really sticky and thick. It dissolves with methyl hydrate, so it's shellac based. There's the trim around the front window to strip, and the stool of the piano window. Someone cut the stool smaller on that window, so I'm going to have to make the trim a little smaller, so it doesn't look weird. I need to redo the trim on 2 of the doorways as well, I bought most of the wood for that already. The top piece of trim is 6/4 fir, so I need to go to a different place to get that. We need quite a bit of the 6/4 in other rooms too, because someone cut them all shorter, to make it easier to wallpaper, geniuses. We ordered some more Waterlox to varnish the trim. We got enough to do the floors upstairs, we'll see if the gloss is too much for downstairs. We're going to try and re-shellac the living room floor, since it's going to be a while until we have time to sand them down. I 'm going to clean the floor with de-natured alcohol, and then add a coat of shellac. The floors still have the original shellac, but they aren't in the best condition, there are a couple stained areas that might have to be replaced.

Armoire Finished

I finished putting it back together upstairs last week. It took about 10 minutes to take apart, 10 minutes to bring upstairs, and 10 minutes to put it back together.



I putted the shelves together upstairs. They're just rails screwed to the sides, the the rest is brad nailed together. Today I did the rod for the other side. It's an old rod that I cut down, it must have belonged to one of the bedrooms at one time. I didn't bother sanding the rod down, it's got a couple coat of paint on it. I didn't have a 1 1/4" drill bit, so I used a 1" drill bit, and then cut it larger with the jigsaw. It's not perfect, but it's not too bad. Deb is going to paint a macintosh rose on the doors, then we're going to do a few coats of shellac.



There was a gap between the floors from the hallway to the bathroom. We were tired of everything falling in to the gap. I looked through my scrap wood, and found a piece that was almost the right length, it's maybe a 1/4" too short. We're going to have to do a new one anyways, when we tile the floor anyways. I did a 20 degree bevel with the tablesaw, the sanded it all down, and countersunk the screws. I'll do a couple of coats of waterlox, once the kids are in bed. I've been working 6 day weeks for the past 5 weeks, so we haven't been doing as much around the house. Next will be finishing the powder room downstairs.

Hallway Redux

We started this project last January, and finally got around to finishing all the small details. It seems like the small details always prevent us from finishing any projects. We painted first, then finished stripping and sanding the trim, so we had to fix the plaster walls again, since sanding and stripping did some damage. I think we had green painters tape on the wall for a year. It ended up taking some of the paint off with it. A few trim pieces were either missing, broken, or the wrong type of wood. I had to make a new one for the return air grate. I found a nice piece of fir that matches the old nicely. We still need to do the floors, it's very inconvenient to do them since the hallway accesses upstairs, the bathroom, the basement and our bedroom. Maybe we can camp out in the basement in the summer, and do all the floors at once. We want to use waterlox, and it's about 6 hours between coats, and 4 coats is about minimum. Unlike polyurethane, it can be repaired, without sanding the whole floor.




We added more Waterlox to the doors and trim too, it looks a lot better, it's not glossy, but it's not flat either. Well it's back to work tomorrow, we got quite a bit done between holidays though.

Basement Bathroom done

I finished the tile and mounting the counter, as well as the painting, and the piece of trim below the window. I still have to seal the grout on the tile that I just finished, other than that and 2 pieces of quarter round it's done. I'm working on the basement powder room as well, I put the latch on the pocket door, sanded the door and put three coats of Waterlox on it. The door is some kind of Chilean Pine, very strange grain on it. At least it's FSC certified. I'm doing the drywalling as well, I have one more coat to go. We need to pick tile for the bathroom, and figure out what we're doing for a sink and countertop. It's only 3x6', so it's really small.

A month since our last post

I think that's the longest we've gone without posting. We have been doing a few things, I haven't put the pictures on the computer though. I'm working on the powder room in the basement, I put in a pocket door last weekend, so most of the framing is done. I bought a pre-build door frame, I had to take it apart, and reconfigure it for our low basement though. I bought a solid-core pine door, it's only 24" wide. The kit for the pocket door costs more than the door. Oh well, easier than building it all from scratch. I ended up cutting 5" off the door to get it to fit, the door said not to cut more than an inch off each side. I think it'll be okay though, since it's a pocket door, it doesn't get the abuse that a normal door does. So the next step on the powder room is plumbing and electrical. We'll probably get a new toilet for upstairs, and use the current Simpson Sears one for downstairs. Hopefully I'll start on that this weekend.
As well we've been plugging away at the trim in the hallway. Deb bought me a beautiful 6" Bosch orbital sander for my birthday. We've almost got all of the entry ready for varnish. The pieces that I took off around the front door are done, and I put them back on this weekend. We took off the register to strip as well (now the whole house smells like stripper), it seems like it has a brass finish, it comes off with the stripper, so we'll probably just paint them a semi-gloss black. We're going to give the floor a little tlc as well, we're not ready to do the floors yet, since we still have to do the living room, dinning room and bedroom, so we're just going to sand down the bare spots, and apply shellac (the floors are originally shellacked). When we're ready, we'll rent a sander, sand all the floors (oh yeah and the kitchen too), and cover them in Waterlox.

Home Renos at Ent Speed

Not too much new happening lately, due to all the 60+ hour weeks I've been putting in at work. And we have the yard to take care of now, so that takes away from the renovation time as well. I've been slowly stripping the paint off the trim in the hallway, we've been working on this for over 2 years off and on. I've almost got the foyer stripped enough, that I can sand, and start putting varnish on. It has this one strange layer, I think it's some kind of shellac based undercoat. It comes off all gooey with the heat gun, then you have to scrub it a lot with denatured alcohol. My arms are still sore, I think I spent 6 hours scrubbing off this goo on Sunday. I looked at it again this morning, and it looks better than I remember. Maybe another couple hours, and we're ready to start with the Waterlox.
I started going over plans for a deck with my neighbour on the weekend. He's a carpenter, so we're going to hire him to help us build the deck. Hope fully we can start that by early summer, if we can at least wrap up a couple straggler projects (there are a lot of them). Hopefully we'll have something picture worthy soon.

Yardwork Weekend

I put 3 coats of Waterlox on this bookcase , in the basement. We have another exchange student staying with us, starting Friday, so we're trying to spruce up the place. We started working on the yard as well, we mowed the lawn, did the edging, and I went at the lawn with a pitch fork and rake. It's in pretty bad shape, with 2 kids, and it's a small yard, it takes a lot of abuse. We've cordoned off a few sections, and seeded and fertilized the whole thing. Hopefully it'll spring back soon. We actually used the Seth's wagon to go to the closest hardware store, to get seed, fertilizer and some plants. It was a nice day, and we're trying to drive less. It's time to get my bike out too, and start riding to work. We're still in post vacation mode, so not too much got done on the house. I need to keep going on the drywalling downstairs, there's still a lot to do. I have to move stuff I've had stored in the room in the basement too, I have the maple top for my new workbench in there. Well, hopefully we'll get more done, between family obligations, we may get something done on Friday, we hope.

Upstairs door finished, and energuide progress

Here's some pics of the door I just refinished. It turned out pretty good, there's still some paint residue, that I'd like to get rid of eventually. The painters tape ripped the paint right off the wall as well. I knew painting first was the wrong order, we were just so sick of the wallpaper glue walls.



















The hardware turned out really nice. This the second door finished in the hall, I think the other one was finished almost 2 years ago. Only 2 more to go, the bathroom and the bedroom. We can't really leave those ones off, so they'll be more difficult to finish.













I've been working on sealing up the attic hatches as well. The doors were done, they needed frames though. So I built 3 frames and installed those, using my new brad nailer. I measured the frames for the one with the thicker walls, it has a layer of 3/4" wood, then 3/8" drywall, and the door was mounted behind. So the other hatches, the frame is sticking out. I'm going to have to get creative with the trim. At least it's just in the kid play room. I would have bought 4" wood for those frames, and then ripped them down. I guess I should have measured them all. Now we just have to spray foam around the gaps, and add weather stripping to all the attic hatches.

I took the 1/4" plywood of the last wall in the workshop as well. I took the insulation out as well, even though it didn't look that old. I prefer the roxul insulation, since it's partially and air barrier, it's fire resistant, and has a higher R value. It looks like they had some rot on this wall, it's all been replaced, it looks like maybe 10 years ago. There is a mystery pipe coming out of the wall too. I think there may have been an oil tank in this room at one point. There was an underground tank in the backyard as well, that's been removed. I thought I could smell a little bit of residual fuel oil. And when I moved the shelf away from the wall, I noticed some condensation. It doesn't look like there was a major leak. I've already fixed the draintile on 2 sides, looks like the front is next. I think it has draintile, I don't think they damproofed the wall though. So we'll have to dig it out, parge it with mortar, and cover it with tar. We have to dig in the front anyways, so it's not that much extra digging. We still have the galvanized supply pipe, that needs to be replaced. I have to call the city, and see what's involved in that. I can't even see where it turns off, since it's been buried at some point. So I guess we've had a busy weekend here, still a long ways to go. I need to book an energuide appointment, I'll book 2 or 3 weeks from now, so we can get it all done.

Hallway Stripping coming along

Well it's a hard place to strip since it's so narrow, we finished stripping/sanding one of the doorways last night. We start with the heat gun and get all the paint off. There's this goo underneath, it's like filler, but it's everywhere. I do a coat of chemical stripper, to get the thick parts of that off. Then you need to scrub it hard with denatured alchohol. I use the 3m stripping pads instead of steel wool. You soak it in alcohol, then scrub like crazy. I think I spent 2 hours scrubbing the one doorway. When it's 99% cleaned off, I switch to sandpaper. I use a coarse 100 grit, then 180 grit. Anyways, we got the first coat of waterlox on, and it looks mostly good. Might have to steal Gary's trick of painting the parts that still show paint. I've been finding that 4 coats of waterlox does a good job. So 3 more coats, and then strip the hardware, and we're ready to put the door to the upstairs back up. There's still a long way to go, that'll be 2 doors out of the 7 doors in the hallway. Only the bedroom and the bathroom are still there, so we're half done. We're planning on getting new ones for the dining room, and the living room. Probably french doors, with a prairie pattern, to match the windows (the original ones) and the front door.

We're also trying to find good replacement windows. I'd like to avoid vinyl windows. We may use them in the kids rooms upstairs, we'd rather not though. I've been looking at Marvin windows, they're one of the only ones that has vertical grain fir as an option, and they're the only ones that have the fir, and inserts as an option. Loewen has fir windows, put they dont' do the insert type. The Marvin french doors are really nice too, they have the european style locking frames, so they're really secure, since we'd be using them as exterior doors, to the new deck we're planning. I'm sure they're really pricey too, so I'm sure we'll be saving our pennies for a long time. For the interior, we're thinking the simpson doors look nice. We've looked for salvage doors, and haven't really found anything good, so we'll probably end up with new. It seems like salvage french doors, in the pattern we're looking for are hard to find.