Labor Day Labor

This long weekend's work on the wood stripping front:

If you make the weekend really long, as of last Thursday and Friday morning I have the broken wedges off the 11.5' dining room baseboard glued back on, clamped, dried, and cleaned. Yes, I used the squiggly metal joint fasteners on top of the Elmer's wood glue.

They'll do. I wish the joins were perfectly flush on the front side. But given that I had to work from the back to keep the pieces flat on the sawhorses, they came out slightly uneven. I don't dare sand them-- it'd take the color out of the wood. Better to mortify my perfectionism and let the renewed dark finish take care of it, along with the fact that these mends will be in the back bottom corners of the dining room.

The second long dining room baseboard, the 12 footer, I got off the wall Saturday evening-- without breaking it-- and stripped it yesterday evening. I've laid both the long bases aside along the wall in the front hall to wait to be remounted. Only place inside the house they'll fit out of the way at the moment. I'll have to think of somewhere else to put them when it comes time to do the hall.

Last night, I decided, phooey, I didn't need to wait for a second pair of hands to help me take down the long lintel trim and cornice over the cased opening between the living room and front room. And as one would totally not expect, I managed it without dropping the combined piece and destroying either them nor the fake Pergo floor. Those pieces, lintel and cornice, I got stripped today. Ridiculous how long the cornice takes with the heat gun* . . . as I labored, I was encouraging myself with the thought that that's the longest complicated piece I have to do. But no: There's all that cornice trim in the front room. Org.

There's also all the ogival (S-profile) trim around the cased openings on the front room side. My goal for this year is to strip and refinish everything on the first floor except the front room, and those pieces make a nice stopping point. There was a little matter of the front room baseboard that turned into and butted up against those pieces, but, I thought, they would be easily removed and not, I believed, much missed until I can get to the front room itself.

But look what happened, both sides:

Oh, golly, whoever put this "new" trim up, they glued it! I'll wager they glued all the front room baseboard trim!

It's off and out of the way, anyway. Put it on the shopping list. The ogival trim should come off easily now.

So I tried hammering the five-in-one into the joint between the jamb and the ogival trim, but somehow, the tool wouldn't go in the crack and the trim wouldn't budge. In the process, somehow the tool slipped to the right and lifted the facing lining the jamb (and head) of the opening. It's about 5/16" thick, I knew it was there, and I'd debated whether to pull it off and strip it down separately or leave it up and strip it in place along with the exposed parts of the actual head and jambs. But this accident make the decision for me: It's all coming down.

So those three flat pieces are off, and waiting on the back porch to be tackled, God willing, tomorrow. I did not get the ogival trim off tonight. Amazing what a great job was done matching up the edge of that trim to the face of the jamb 2xs. Nice and flush and tight. The five-in-one isn't giving me enough leverage and space to get the small pry bar in the crack.

I'll try again tomorrow in the daylight. Job needs more than the measly single light bulb fixture in the front room to see it by.

Oh, yeah, and why I made no progress removing that trim at first? Because the edge of the tool wasn't in the joint crack. That was covered by the jamb facing. I'd rammed the tool into the face of the trim itself.

Ouch.

(I think my stripping count is up to 66 out of 330 [20% done] . . . but if I'm doing the cased opening facings separately, that takes the total count up to 336 . . .

Ouch again.

Please tell me I counted every one of the stair balusters as a separate piece!)

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*On the other hand, that was one of the pieces I started with the green stripper in what? Summer of 2007? That hardened goop didn't help the process at all.