Projects to blog about

It's time for an update, since it's been another long absence and I like keeping track of our slow progress! Will use this post to inspire further project updates as well as keep a list of accomplishments...

• Den/Back room
• Entry
• Floor refinishing
• Replacement windows
• Kitchen walls

Stay tuned...

Walls!

In a 100 year old house, painting projects are not just painting projects. In our case, painting involves stripping, washing, patching gaping holes and floor to ceiling cracks, priming, patching again and then finally painting. Good quality paint seems to make a huge difference, too. It provides better coverage and fills in some of the imperfections as opposed to highlighting them.



This past weekend was devoted to getting the walls ready for painting process. This is the former strange brown pre- wall board wall (you can see it to the left). There is some sort of plaster powder between the paper. Maybe this is early dry wall? Maybe this was some sort of crazy creation of past owners? It has certainly complicated the process.




I troweled on compound to create a smooth and paintable surface (you can see it to the left). Mr. Ham House sanded it smooth before the troweling because it was covered with textured brown paper. The visual improvement to the stairway is amazing. The dark brown paper made you feel like you were entering a cave. I'm thinking it should take one or two more sandings and coats and we should be ready to prime and paint. Wow!



The other big project was washing walls and finishing off the never ending wallpaper stripping. Washing paste is thankless, but so important. I wanted to avoid the mess paint makes when it softens wallpaper paste that I thought was fossilized on the wall in other rooms....


A few walls unearthed between seven and eight layers of wallpaper! It was like tracking the history of the house! Ham House Mom was unfortunate and lucky enough to have this messy job. She was the resident archaeologist for the weekend, which meant strange mess of disintegrating wallpaper and the amazing patterns below. We were able to catch a glimpse of what the bottom layer looked like.

Wood Work Stripping Update

Way to go Mr. Ham House! Progress on the wood work! I don't have a photo from today, but this newel post is actually ready for sanding. Hoping to sand, prime, and paint the hand rail and newel posts before installing the beautifully dipped (by a pro) and painted (by the heroic Ham House Father) spindles. I can almost begin to imagine life with a working staircase...

Progress is Progress

After another hiatus we were back to the entry way project. What better way to celebrate our independence then by stripping paint and wallpaper from every inch conceivable in our modestly sized foyer.


Here's an idea of the magnitude of the wallpaper situation...A photo taken during our inspection before purchase.... The perspective is from the floor looking up. It's all covered in a sad shade of mauve with stripes of pale beige. I'm sure it was lovely in the 70s but is now sad and dirty.

Now I'll make an admission...

We started this projects MONTHS ago and have been living with the remnants of Victorian paper, wallpaper glue, shades of green paint, and huge cracks in the plaster. This weekend the goal was to get the remaining wallpaper down and begin to fill some of the cracks. Maybe primer? How about just living with something less scary...

Here's where we are today...

Pieces of backing paper stuck to the ceilings...beginning to patch plaster....and more stripping to go. Sigh. Notice in the photo that tall Mr. Ham House is able to strip the terrible inclined ceiling over the stairs without a ladder. What luck! And what pain he'll have in his arms in the morning....

I have to say one of the biggest challenges is certainly getting through all the layers. The bottom layer, which is a disintegrating brown paper has two coats of paint, one in a fun turquoise that might work in a bedroom, but not an entry. Over this, lies a coat of paintable (I am guessing) wallpaper that seems water impermeable and the lovely paper you see above. I know it could be worse, but it sure isn't fun...

Did I mention it's messy, too? Thank you Ham House Mother-in-law for once again coming over and demanding we live in a civilized home. The nagging is actually appreciated.

Carpet No More!

The big news is after years of living in what I've affectionately dubbed "The Pink Palace", our primary source of pink is outside waiting for big trash pick up by the city!

We always said we'd wait until little kids are bigger kids to get rid of the carpet; meaning no worries about playdoh, spilled juice, muddy shoes, or any other floor attack. Maybe it was the brutal winter that kept us inside far too much, but this was the year we said no more to the carpet. Darling Ham House Mother took the kids for an unbelievably long weekend (The words Thank You aren't nearly enough!) and we spent our kid free time ripping up carpet.

The process involved removing the carpet, which Mr. Ham House cut into sections for easier removal. The carpet pad underneath was nearly disintegrated, making for a dusty mess. Ripping out the carpet was a pleasure compared to ripping out the staples...We pulled staples for four to five hours. We used a combination of screw drivers, pry bars, and pliers to wiggle, twist, and yank what appeared to be thousands of staples from atleast two carpets.

Aftewards I washed the floors with Murphy's Oil Soap, which included doing some major scrubbing in spots. We had to go back through and counter sink some nails, pull out broken staples, and do lots more vaccuuming, but it was certainly a successful project.

We expected the worst going into the project, and thankfully, got more than we expected! The floors are in great shape considering their age and wear. The best part is the look and feel of the house is much improved. Now back to paint stripping...

Two years later, back at it...

After a hiatus...we're back to update a few projects. Needless to say, it's been busy with an additional member of the Ham House. We finally decided we could no longer live with the wallpapered ceiling pink carpeted glory of our entryway so started ripping ripping ripping...and we all know what that leads to...more projects.

To give the project its proper credit here's the story -

Mr. Ham House thought we should tackle a quick project to make some more progress after some neglect so we thought, why not strip wallpaper in the upstairs hallway? Quick and easy, slap some paint up and one more project down... Of course the paper came off so easily we thought, why not start stripping the stairway too? If we are doing the stairs, why don't we do the entry? The rest, as they say, is a major project...

The two biggest projects so far are paint stripping and carpet ripping. I'll tell the story of the paint stripping in this post. The trim work is nothing special or unique, which is a bit disappointing for our 100 year old house. It' s just yellow pine which is intended to be painted. Ours is very painted. We've made it through about 4-5 layers of paint (in strange shades of tan) in addition to a layer of varnish. You might wonder why on earth we would strip wood only to paint it again. Unfortunately after years and years of living, there is too much chipping to be safe with little ones in the house. Plus there are huge chips that have been painted over, making for very sloppy looking trim.

We've been using Safety Strip, which is a no VOC soy based stripper that alleges to go through 10 or so coats of paint. Unfortunately ours seems to strip the top (I'm guessing) latex layer and only soften the next few oil based layers. The bottom coat and the varnish simply stay put and if lucky, turn to a semi liquid gunk that doesn't budge. Only Ham House father-in-law seems to have the skill to remove this stubborn layer.

We are fortunately nearing the end of the entry. The stair spindles are at a professional "dipper" to save us the grief and struggle of hand stripping and at $4 per post, this is quite a deal. Most of the trim has been sanded in preparation to be primed. Mr. Ham House bought new tools, so the project has some renewed joy for him.

Huge thanks to Ham House Brother-in-Law who was suckered into helping the first weekend of the project. Even "huger" thanks to Ham House Father-in-Law who has devoted the last few Sundays of his life to scraping and sanding. What a saint.

Grace Marie

The beautiful wallpaper in our front bedroom.....
that's almost gone! We spent half most of the day last Sunday stripping this lovely lovely print from the walls....










And we found this! Once completely stripped the
lovely caption reads, "Elephants in Love"...pretty
funny...

neat!

http://fixbuffalo.blogspot.com/2006/03/just-in-from-george.html