Checking In

No business being up this late, but wanted to check in and say work is getting done around here.  The screen door still isn't installed on the back, but I've got a lot done with sanding off the old paint on the doorframe (so it'll fit!), cutting and sanding stock for to make stops for both the inner and outer doors, painting the steel lintel, and so on.

Frieda* came over this evening for a couple hours and we got some more of the red Owen Jones wallpaper up in the living room.

Pictures?  Yes, I should post pictures.  But my computer is slow and maybe, just maybe I might get called in to work in the morning.  Which could be in three hours.

Yikes.

Beige Again

No, not really.  For a little while, only.

Frieda* came over Saturday afternoon and helped me hang manila-paper blankstock in the living room.  Top strips only, the 12' ones that needed two ladders and four hands, because she had to leave by 7:00.  I worked till after 2:00 in the morning and finished blankstocking the three walls we started, and it really does look better already.

Even if the stuff is beige.

I'd hoped to get the fourth wall, the one with the fireplace, done this evening, but my feet hurt so badly when I got home from teaching that I lay down and um, rested a little.  Actually, I fell asleep.  For two hours, until Frieda* woke me up calling to find out how much more I'd gotten done on Saturday.

When I did get to the blankstocking this evening, I discovered the paperhanger guy is right-- if you're not going to finish up your mixed wheat paste all at once, splash some Clorox into it.  I didn't, and it was starting to smell.

Didn't feel like mixing up a new batch, so I've left it for later.  I've cut and labelled all the blankstock pieces for the fireplace wall.  That's enough for this evening.

Meanwhile, yesterday was nice out so I demounted the back door (again!), took it out to the sawhorses on the porch, and this time I got the old shellac finish off it.  It wasn't as difficult as I'd expected to dig the white filler out of the gouges (dog claws?) at the bottom of the stile on the lock side.  It was just spackle, and scrubbed out with a toothbrush and liquid remover.  Filled those and other major flaws with wood filler, and laid on a second coat of it this evening where the depressions were still apparent.

So what shall I do tomorrow?  Sand down the back door or hang blankstock?  Something to contemplate when I need to distract myself from the trials of teaching 7th grade algebra in the morning.

Back Door Project Addition

Look upon it and lament; ye shall soon see it no more.

My friend Frieda* came over tonight and in short order she and I together removed the falling-off aluminum back screen/storm door and its frame.  It marked the End of an Era, an era that would have ended three or four years ago if I'd gotten around to it.

R.I.P. aluminum screen/storm door

(Moment of silence for the aluminum door.)

Now that the screen door is down and I've pried off one piece of trim from the hinge side of the door,  I've been able to make some observations about the back door and its surround, historical, structural, and other-al:

Hooray for friends wielding power tools

• The wood trim on the outside is not original.  Bless me, I'd been thinking for years it was, and had been working out in my mind how to repair the ogee that was cut out when they installed the aluminum door.  It was Frieda who said, "I don't think that's what was on the house.  I think it's modern."  You know, she's right.  In fact, I have a couple lengths of the very material down the basement.  The POs-1 also used it for trim under the portal sill between the living room and front hall.
 

• The original brickmould was probably like what still surrounds the openings from the front hall and the living room in the front room, which used to be the front porch.  I've spent some time tonight online (no, really!?) researching and I think I can get a reasonable facsimile of it from a lumber and millwork dealer down in Pittsburgh.  If they aren't to the trade only.

• The original house trim finish was a dark brownish-black stain or dye.  No paint, no shellac.  Just stain.  This fits with what I encountered in the front room when I was stripping the openings there.
• The door frame itself is a big ole 3x6.  It's not in the best of shape-- plenty of nicks and dings-- but it will do.  Maybe by itself until I can get some new trim.

Gap needing filled

• There's a gap maybe ¼" to 3/8" wide between the 2X6 doorframe and the brick.  I intend to clean it out and fill it with backer bead and caulk, whether I get new brickmould in there or not.

• Frieda and I brought the new-old screen door up from the basement and set it in the opening, just to see how it fits.  It does, basically, but there are some absurd gaps between the door and the frame here and there where the frame has gotten out of square.

Funny and inadequate screen door stop

• The funny little blocks nailed against the stop mouldng halfway up the door height look to be the only stops the original screen door, whatever that was like, ever had.  The stop moulding I've been working so hard this week to sand clean measures ½" by 1¾", and is eased on the vertical edge towards the exterior of the house.  It comes 1¼" short of the inside face of the replacement wooden screen door.  No sign of any other stop moulding a screen would have closed against, just those little blocks.  As much as it pains me to remove any original element like the stop moulding (especially after I've worked so hard to strip it), I may well do it and replace it with ½" by 3" material that my screen door can close against.  Those gaps I saw between door and frame pain me even more.

So this is more work added to the back screen door project, which was only supposed to involve stripping and repainting a salvaged door and hanging it on its hinges.  And here I have to get up at the crack of dawn to finish stripping the wooden back door, another thing added to the fun . . .

Gerroff!

So I've been struggling to strip this salvaged screen door the past week and it's been an ordeal.  Not having fun not having fun not having fun!

I guess I was spoiled with the trim in the house.  Most of it you could flake the layers of paints off the old shellac surface, raise whatever was left over with the heat gun, then wipe it all down with Howard's Refinisher.  That's because nobody bothered to prime it first.

But somebody did prime this door, and the paint wasn't letting go.  It certainly wasn't yielding to chipping, heating, or the refinisher on a steel wool pad.  So I'm trying Citrus Strip for the initial removal.  I might have better luck with Kleen-Strip or Strip-Eeze or something like that, but I'm working in the basement and the ventilation could be better.

The Citrus Strip is supposed to raise all the layers between an half hour and twenty-four hours of the time you brush it on.  Ha.  It bubbles up the first layer of paint beautifully, but for the two or three under that, repeated applications only seems to make the wood soft so it feathers up whether you're using the metal stripping tool or the plastic scraper.

I guess I am making progress. Yesterday I figured the Citrus Strip had done all it could and I came back at the biggest piece of the door (one stile, plus the bottom panel with its rails) with the Howard's.  And it seems to be working.

I'm not enjoying myself, regardless.  Though I find I didn't need to dread tackling the screen insert, which I spread Citrus Strip on last night, as much as I had.  It did seem to have had a natural finish underneath, so the paint came up more easily.

For that matter, I observed that one side of the door (the side it's been hardest to strip), had orbital sander marks in it.  Which tells me that it's been stripped before.

I also noticed-- and this makes me laugh-- marks that tell me that once upon a time the hinges were properly surface-mounted-- on the opposite side from where they were when I found the door at the curb-- and the latchset was mounted on the opposite side, too.  The filler marks don't lie.  This is funny, for I've been debating with myself for weeks which face of the door is supposed to face outwards onto the back porch, and which side I want to face outwards.  I'm leaning towards having the more ornamental moulding be towards the exterior, even though that's not how my front screen hangs.  And judging by the black water stains on that side of the new-old door, I'd say it'd been done like that before.

I'm thinking that the biggest reason I couldn't get those screw cams to budge was all the paint in the slots.  It's out now, mostly.

Can't do anything more with it tonight.  The chimney tech's coming tomorrow and I had to clear out the sawhorses and door parts down the basement so he can get to the water heater flue to put the new liner in.  Excitement.

Side Trip

My find, as of September 2009

Haven't done a lot on the house this past month or so.  Life's realities have intruded and needed attention.  But what little I have done has had nothing to do with shellacking trim or prepping the living room for paper or cleaning up the 1st floor hallway floor for paint.

No.  I've been off on a side trip, seeing what I can make out of my new-old back screen door.

The existing door is a bog-standard aluminum convertible number that some previous owner forced into the opening.  For the past three, maybe four years it's been hanging by one hinge on the bottom and the door closer at the top.  The screw holes in the top and middle hinges are stripped, and try as I might I couldn't get the screws to stay in or hold.

So it was nice three years ago on the eve of the Borough's semi-annual large-item trash pickup that I spotted the perfect screen door dumped at the curb the next street over.  It fit the style of the Sow's Ear perfectly, had all its original hardware, and it was in one piece when I rescued it.  Well, two.  The screen insert was separate.  But though the stiles and rails and panel were all sound, by the time I got it off the porch and down the basement the dowels gave way in several places and the door fell apart.

Never mind.  I could replace the dowels and put it back together.

But with that and it's needing stripped and, oh, look, the hinges and latchset are on the opposite sides from what I need, oh, yeah-- dealing with the salvaged door has taken a back seat.

But this spring I got tired of hearing the aluminum door bang.  I figured the neighbors were tired of it, too.  It won't be long before the last hinge gives out and then were will I be?  I don't run the AC in the summer if I can help it, my kitchen door would be standing open, and the flies would be in and the dog would be out-- out eating dropped rose of Sharon blooms and getting the runs.

So before this summer is out, I'm determined to fix up and install that salvaged screen door.

Mortised into the door edge!!

Front screen door

Slow process.  First thing, I needed to remove the hardware.  Rotten difficult, as the screws were rusted in or painted in in most cases.  After three or four weeks of coming back and coming back and working at it, I finally got the hinges and latchset off, but I'm not home free.  The hinges are the half-surface kind, where one leaf is supposed to mortise into the jamb and the other, which is broader, is screwed to the surface of the door.  My front screen door is hung just that way.  But the previous owners of the new door had to get creative.  They mortised the narrower leaf into the edge of the door (patching work to do there), and the wider leaf they must have attached to the jamb in some way.  I'm not sure how, because all three have two 1/8" thick aluminum shims attached to them.

Aluminum shims.  I wonder why.

And that's where the difficulty lies.  A lot of the Philips head screws that replaced the originals in those leaves are stuck, broken off, and plain won't cooperate.  I've tried everything with sprays and oils and clamps and pliers, but there's still four of them I can't get out.  Grrrrrr!!

On top of that there's the jolly screw-cams that hold the screen insert in.  Oh, those were nasty.  Worked at them literally for weeks.  But I finally realized that it was doing no good to pump loosening solvent over the heads of the screws on the face of the door, the thing to do was to squirt it into the grooves in the sides to get to the rotating tongue part.

Washed

That, and get the pieces outside into the light where I could actually see what I was working with.  Had to do that anyway this afternoon, to wash the dirt off the surfaces.  Finally, finally, I was able to work the screws around so I could get hold of the tongues with my Vise-Grips.

The cam rotates!

So now they're free, and all I have to worry about is the fact that the tongues look a little bent.  And about stripping the pieces, redowelling them, getting those stupid shims off the hinges, getting the insert rescreened, etc., etc., etc. . . .

When It Rains, It Pours. Over.

I'm not too quick on the uptake sometimes.

It's been relatively dry here in southwestern Pennyslvania these past few days. Cloudy and cool, but no rain.

So I'm not sure why it made no impression that for several days I've had a steady drip, drip, drip, from the downspout that feeds my rain barrel. It's been so persistent it's left a greenish algae slick on the wooden barrel's top.

And why did I not think it alarming or unusual when, the last time it rained hard, the gutter on the west side of my back porch was overflowing? It was raining hard, that's what I figured. When there's more water than the system can take, overflows happen.

Anyway, I had plenty of water in the rain barrel-- until I used most of it the past few days watering the crucifers, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables I've just planted.

So when it started to rain about an hour and a half ago, leaving aside the fact that I'd never gotten out to mulch up the rest of last year's leaves for the pepper and cucumber bed, I was very glad. Hurray! drinks all round for the grass and the plants and a refill for my rain barrel!

Or not. Kept waiting for the water to come gushing down the spout, and nothing was happening. The deluge got harder. Still nothing much into the barrel.

But oh! off that west porch gutter! Floods! waterfalls! inundations! tidal waves!

Uh, Kate? Ever occur to you that something up there might be-- is-- blocked?

Whatever's gotten stuck, it's underneath the wire gutter guard. A view out the third floor window tells me the guard is intact.

And by knocking as far as I can up the downspout, I've determined that it's clear, towards the bottom, at least.

Oh, fun. This means a trip out on the roof. Adventures! I've never done that before. I've got a handy window for it, but it'll need to wait till things dry out again. And until I can draft a spotter. Life's interesting enough without me breaking my neck falling off the top of the back porch.

Home Show, Part I: A Lotta Stuff!

Yesterday I spent six or more hours wandering around the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show.

Funny how that worked. I'd intended to check the guide and visit only the vendors' booths I was really interested in, then get myself out of there. Ha! Wandered up and down every aisle on both floors, then came round and did it again, just in case I'd missed something.

This home show is really great if you want vinyl fencing, cast concrete patio wall and paver systems, hot tubs, and any kind of replacement window. Me, not so much. Did take some window literature, but I still favor using the local custom wood window people, who did not have a rep there.

What I was looking for especially was local lumber and millwork suppliers, in case I decide to replace any of my interior trim. I established diplomatic relations with three of these. But before I go visit their yards, I believe I'll first check out Construction Junction, the Pittsburgh area building materials reuse and recycling place. There's enough foursquare houses being remodelled around the region--maybe some of the original disused yellow pine trim ends up there.

I also talked to a few patio room suppliers, to see if they could make me some demountable storm/screen infills for my too-breezy, snow-permeable, closed-in back deck. Maybe, maybe not. I picked up that it's an idea I'll have to wait to develop until I have the means and intention to do it right away. These dealers typically weren't interested in making site visits and giving me estimates on a job I might get to in 2009.

Understandable. But by then, I may figure out a way to build them myself!

I renewed my CostCo membership, sampled a lot of dip mixes, bought some dried mango slices to munch on, purchased a cute and inexpensive garden hose holder called "Gecko Toes," resisted snapping up a really beautiful but unnecessary queen-sized handmade bed quilt at $150, and determined that no one, but no one was exhibiting the kind of art ceramic floor tile I've decided is exactly what I need for my first floor stair hall. Too bad.

Even though I wore out a lot more shoe leather than I'd intended, wandering around all the exhibits and around again, I have an excuse-- I had to go back: I'd resolved not to buy anything the first time through.

And six hours and not much to eat later, how am I supposed to remember where the products I was interested in were?

Poor Dog, Poor Door, Poor Me!

I've got a very smart dog, I do. But he's not enough of a canine genius to remember over night which side of the back screen door he's supposed to come in by, now that the dog door is installed.

He's also very strong. And when he came barrelling back in this morning, this was the result:

(Maybe I shouldn't have hooked the door?)
I've put the screen back the best I can. And I stuck warning tape on the Wrong side. Though since then, it's fallen off.
But by this evening, my mutt seems to have caught on. "Aw rawt, rawt, yuppins, dis is da side Aw paws at an' it moves an' Aw ken go throo! Yuppins, here Aw go!"

But as they used to say, don't the screen look Dogpatch? It's no longer a matter of redoing the mesh, the whole frame has literally gone to rack and ruin.

I'll worry about it later. I have a sermon to finish for a pulpit supply assignment. It's for a service tomorrow night at a Lutheran church down the river, with a repeat on Sunday. Sung Communion. Should be interesting.

Bits and Pieces

Or should that be, "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back"?

Bit 1: Sunday evening, my 1998 vintage Black & Decker cordless lawn mower that I repaired so lovingly last month up and refused to work at all.

Well, I'd unplugged it the night before. We were having severe thunderstorms here in the Valleys and I didn't want it to surge out. Maybe the battery had lost its charge, even though it's brand new.

Plugged it back in; the indicator light turned red, and later green. Tried mowing the lawn again yesterday evening. Dead silence. Dead mower.

Nothing for it but to take the machine all the way into Town to the B&D/DeWalt repair shop this afternoon, to see if the pros can resurrect it. They think it might be the starter. God forbid it's the control module (the part the charger plugs into)-- B&D doesn't make it any more.

If they can't fix it, I'm definitely getting another cordless, of some brand. Or maybe I'll invest in a reel mower like I saw at Lowe's this evening. The box says it cuts 2" high, which is tolerable. (I've looked at some that only go to 1"-- a mowing height that's fine for golf courses in rainy Scotland, but not for here.)

Bit 2: It so happens that the millwork shop I sent my dining room window info to the other day is just up the block from the Black & Decker place. I walked over, made the acquaintance of the workshop dogs and one of their cats, and heard some good news: For them (the millworkers, not the animals) to build me insulated wood windows the sizes I need will cost me far, far less than I've been quoted by any of the big boys. They'd make me the muntin bar pattern I want and the units should look better, too.

However--a) They don't install (I knew that already); and b) they can't give me a firm price till they know if my jambs still have their weight pockets, or if we have to go with tracks; which c) means I have to get a carpenter to come look at my house; but d) I haven't gotten acquainted with any good carpenters in my neck of the woods.
The millwork boss recommended a guy who loves nothing better than messing about with sash weights and so on. But he lives all the way to hell and gone the other side of Pixburgh. Will he come to the Valleys? And if he will, how much extra will he want for mileage?

I've left a message on his answering machine. I can but try.

Bit 3: I bought plaster of Paris at Lowe's late this afternoon to patch the plaster next to my bathroom medicine cabinet. Gotta have a good substrate for the infill tile.

Got it home, turns out I grossly overestimated how much patching is needed. Probably could've gone with elastomeric spackle after all. I mean, do I really need 8 lbs. of poP powder? Do I go ahead and mix it up and glop it in there like a (wo)man? Or is it back to the store for a trade-in?
And which is better for the cracks in the plaster over my third floor stairs? They're looking ominous . . .

Though if I ever take up sculpture again, plaster of Paris is ace!







And finally, Bit 4: Hooray, I finished getting the dog door installed in the back porch screen door!

No time now to recount the saga that has been in the past year. But last night I went down to my workshop and thought, "I am sick of that screen lying there taking up all the space on my workbench. I'm going to put that dog door into it and that's that."

Got it done. Yes, I know the dog door is crooked. Joke on me. It's two plastic pieces that, like a royal proxy bedding his master's bride,* mate with the screen between them. I aligned it with the bottom of the screen and didn't notice it (the screen) was out of true until I'd poked too many holes in the mesh (consider the Tristan and Isolde followup comment made) to mend the situation.

Finished too late last night to fit the screen into the door itself. Yes, the screen came with those little compression-wire clips. But those frail wires are no match for my energetic hound. Had to install those traditional twirly clips, which means drill work. I had compassion on my neighbors and left it for this evening.

And now it's in. And I think I've got my dog trained to use it, though a few more doggie treats may have to lose their lives before the lesson is indelibly ingrained.

In the process, however, he just logically kept trying for the side that looked clear and unimpeded; that is, the side without the dog door. So much for the nice, tight aluminum screening job they did for me at the local hardware emporium.

The twirly clips held, though. So that's working.

So far.

*Line courtesy of Dorothy L. Sayers