La Folie de Ma Vie

I should have made this post over three weeks ago.  Never mind, I'm making it now as the year dies down, before the thoughts and sensations that gave rise to it fade away.

Early in the morning of the 3rd of this month my living room renovation was to the point where I could refill the bookcases flanking my fireplace.  And it didn't give me pleasure to get it done, it made me disgusted with myself and sad.

The books had been stored in boxes in the guest bedroom since August of 2008, and in all that time I'd forgotten much of what I had.  Or at least, I'd forgotten the implications of all the books I had.  For once I got them all shelved, I felt empty, disquieted, disturbed. I hardly knew what to do with myself.

For looking at those bookcases was like peering into a window to the past.  There are books on music criticism and music history.  Musical scores I've carried to symphony concerts and scores I've sung.  There are plays and essays and poetry.  Books on art history, church history, secular history.  On art and architecture, ancient, medieval, and modern; on icons and stained glass and Gothic cathedrals.  All the subjects and pursuits that make for a civilized life, sidelined, ignored, for years. The works of so many great, entertaining, and wise authors and composers sat again on my shelves: Tasso and Browning, Shakespeare and Chaucer, Lamb and Emerson.  Beethoven, Schubert, and Berlioz (always Berlioz!).  Eusebius, Schaff, and Chadwick; Ruskin, Conant, and Arnheim. Coulton and Tuchman.  Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright.  Where had they been these past years?  Where had I?

There was a time when I sat down and read those books.  When I sang and played that music.  Back when I had a full time architecture career and felt like I was contributing to the beauty and order of the world.  I was a better person then, before I began to dissipate my energies on computer card games and checking my Facebook Notifications tab every fifteen minutes . . .

 Well.  I kept at the work of putting my living room back together.  By the following Tuesday I had all the tools and debris and the dog kennel cleared out and could see and clean the floor.  By early on Thursday the 5th I had the two-seat sofa moved back in from the front room and the chest of drawers pulled in from the dining room to carry my 1970s-vintage stereo system and the lamp I got two or three years ago and had never used (getting the linen chest out of the dining room clears the way to finish stripping the wallpaper in there).

By Sunday the 8th I was in a fair way of looking at it all and emulating God on the sixth day of creation, standing in the middle of the room admiring my work and thinking it was Very Good.  And since then I've cleaned off the sill of the portal to the 1st floor hall and even decorated for Christmas.

But still.  But still.  I can't shake the feeling that I've screwed up seriously.   It's not that I'm spending time on house renovation instead of reading The Stones of Venice.  Redoing the house is an artistic pursuit in itself.  Rather, I feel I've betrayed the whole way of life my books and music represent. I've made several bad career moves these past few years and I don't think I'll ever get back to my life the way I hoped it would be.

And if I spend too damn much time fooling around on the Innerwebz, I'll about guarantee that outcome.

O Gosh, Such Excitement!

The tall bookcase, the tall-black-used-to-be-natural-teak-Scandinavian-Modern-1978-vintage bookcase, is finally up and loaded.

It only took some drilled pilot holes (through the plastic sleeves), two sets of new black metal shelf supports, a couple ounces of wood glue, a couple-three more coats of shellac, and quite a few whacks with the rubber mallet to convince it to come together.

And even after all that, it was still wanting to gap at the top once I stood it in its corner again.



"Take that!"  

Whack!  

"And that!!"

Whack-whack!!

"And that!!"

Whack-whack-whack-whack!!

Another coat of shellac to cover up the evidence, let it dry a day or so, and by Friday it was ready to receive back all the LPs and books that have been sitting in boxes in my front room the past, oh dear, five years or so.

Of course I managed somehow to put the new shelf supports at the wrong height.

Never mind.  I was not enlarging any more holes so I could change it.  No law said I had to put all the books back the way they used to be (even if I did print out an old picture as a guide). Maybe this time I'd do it more logically and better.

So they're in.  And the walnut veneer bookcase (which used to belong to my grandmother) is in the process of getting levellers on its right end to accommodate my sloping floor (had to paint the white plastic part black.  Looked glaring otherwise).  And last night I stayed up till 4:00 AM cleaning out my workshop so I can go back to cutting trim for the stairhall and new stops for the windows.  Not that I didn't start that task two or three months ago.

My excuse for the slowness is that I'm substitute teaching during the day most days and within a hour or two of leaving school I'm working every weekday evening at the Big Blue Box Store.

If I were truly dedicated to renovating my house, I'd avoid the computer and the Internet and work-work-work on the house until I fell into bed.

I am not that virtuous or disciplined.  But millimeter by millimeter, inch by inch, I'm getting things done.

By Christmas 2014, I may even have the wallpaper in the dining room stripped.  Now that would be excitement.

Wheel-Spinning

Sitting in its corner, pretending to be done

It will probably shock you to learn that the tall living room bookcase I started to redo in black last Christmas still isn't done.

No, I guess it wouldn't shock you to learn that the tall living room bookcase I started to redo in black last Christmas still isn't done.

Oh, it's refinished, finally.  Took forever to strip off the crummy oil-based black paint job over white primer, but sometime this summer I finally got that done.  And about a week ago I finally got the black shellac to the point where I like it.

Give it a couple-three days to harden up and cure, and it should be all ready to reinsert the shelves and put the books back in. Right?

But what do you do when you can't remember where you put the shelf hardware or how you even held up the shelves in the first place?

This bookcase has had many shelf-support solutions in its long career.  It came with these bent heavy-gauge wires whose ends fit into little holes in the sides of the bookcase.  Grooves were routed into the side edges of the particle-board shelves to receive the bent part of the support wires.  Trouble is, that method didn't keep the bookcase sides from pushing out from the pressure of all the books and records I keep in it.

The round piece is brown under the shellac, of course

So back in the '80s a woodworker friend of mine retrofitted the shelves each with four plastic disks that receive a screw which fits into a plastic sleeve sunk into the carcase sides.  This did a good job of keeping the whole thing together, but didn't allow for any adjustments to the shelf spacing. From photos I took before I unloaded this bookcase I know the shelves didn't all correspond with the sleeve locations.  And I definitely remember there being some brass shelf spoons I took off.  But I couldn't remember where the aitch I put them last December.

By Thursday or Friday of this week I found them, in the tray of my toolbox.  But only four of them, enough for one shelf only.  And I can't find but three of the twelve black screws I should have for the other three shelves.

And maybe it doesn't matter whether I can find any of this or not.  Because . . .  because . . .  even with some replacement screws I found (intending to paint the heads black, no problem), with the black finish I can't see to get the screws into the sleeves in the sides of the carcase!!

I've been trying the last three days, and it doesn't matter:  Night, day, with a worklight, without a worklight-- with my lousy eyesight I simply cannot see where anything is.  And yes, I shellacked the white plastic sleeves black as well.

Dig the scratches.  And the plastic sleeves I can't seem to hit.

I've already made a mess of my new shellac finish, since the plastic cams or whatever they are that are routed into the shelves have a little protrusion that fits into the sleeve on the bookcase sides.  That didn't matter when it was finished natural teak, but now that it's shellac, I've got scratch marks all over.

Actually, the only reason why I'm not throwing tools across the room and screaming at the top of my lungs is because it is shellac, and therefore repairable.

But I still can't get those screws lined up.

So what should I do?  Get my friend Hannah* to come hold the worklight so maybe I can get at least two of those screw-in shelves in, and thereby return the favor for all the weekends I helped her with some computer work she had to figure out?

Maybe I should invest in some more packs of black metal shelf supports and put all the shelves on those. Oh, and Dremel off the protrusions so they slide in smoothly.

But then the bookcase might go back to falling apart on me once it's reloaded.

Or maybe I could solve that problem by working out something with wires and turnbuckles that'll go behind the books and keep the sides together.

It's too damned complicated having to do all this for a 35 year old Scandinavian Modern particle-board bookcase.  After all, isn't my time worth something?  Better I should have just chucked it and bought a new one.

But I've been online again looking at the price of new ones, and my time isn't worth what they would cost me.  $300 and up for things that aren't built as well as the one I've got.

Maybe I will look into turnbuckles.  It'll give it a high-tech industrial feel.  Just right for my Victorian/Arts and Crafts living room.  Right.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling very, very stupid.  And spending a lot of time I don't have just spinning my wheels.

Lack of Resolution

Maybe one of my New Year's resolutions for 2013 should be to post more to my houseblog.

Why haven't I, this past autumn?

A lot of it has been because I've been so heads-down busy working on the house that, outside of work, I don't have time for much else.  I've gotta a great deal done, and the work goes on and on.

Part of it has been because Explorer.exe has gone wonky on my eight-year-old computer, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to sort my photos so they can be conveniently found.

A great deal of it is that the digital camera I bought last March has never worked properly; it gets stuck on 100 or 200 ISO no matter where I set it and takes fuzzy, badly-colored, under- or over (with the flash)-exposed pictures with very poor resolution.  And even though I've been painfully aware of this since I bought it last March, I haven't pushed past the hurdles I need to surmount to have anything done about it.

And maybe my biggest reason for not posting these past few months has been lack of resolution in myself.  For all the above reasons and from a childish sense of "I'm s'posed ta do this and I don' wanna!" I've let the rebellious feeling in my stomach prevail and when I do get to my computer I do ten other things rather than post to my houseblog.

Well, maybe I need to grow up and overcome that.

And maybe doing something about that crappy camera should also be on my resolution list.  I'm too house-poor to buy a new one, but at least I can take advantage of the one-year warranty I purchased on it, can't I?

Meanwhile, here's a bone, a picture of my living room fireplace with the wallpaper up and the oil painting rehung above it for the first time in probably three years.  This was taken about a week and a half ago.  Happy new year!

Living Room Wallpaper Pictures

 As promised . . .

 

Though it looks like I took pictures from only one angle.  So I'll make do with a shot of my back door with a couple coats of new red paint on it.

 

And here's the back door lintel spray-painted Rustoleum "Hammered Bronze" . . .

. . . With a little "Before" action to bid a proper farewell to yet more beige:

And here's the vent cover for the 2nd floor hall wall duct spray-painted bronze . . .

. . . because I can't afford the Arts & Crafts style register I really want and this will have to do.

And oh, yes, here's a the new middle mortise for the new-old screen door:

Once I sanded the paint off the doorposts I found traces of the original surface-mounted hinges, which later were supplanted by the mortised ones, and later still with the aluminum screen/storm assembly.  But barring the latter, always before there were only two screen door hinges, top and bottom.  My door, however, came with three, and all three are going in.

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.

Living Room Wall Progress

The wood of the flat moulding has weathered gray--it is stripped

Wednesday morning I used up the last of the Western Wood Doctor on the plain side of the screen door insert.  I ordered more Monday night, but it has to come by truck all the way from Oregon and the ETA is Tuesday the 17th.  That's given me the excuse to come back upstairs and work on the south wall of my living room.

Old filler plaster

Haven't touched it since just before my English friend Janet* visited in April.  Mental block.  See, on either side of the cased opening to the front room is a two to three inch strip of scratch coat plaster.  At least, that's what I have on the righthand side.  On the left there's broken blocks of scratch coat plaster, miscellaneous broken bricks set up on end, and other flotsam and jetsam filling in the space between the 2x6 support member and the proper mortared-in brick of the wall.  I know because some of those rectangular chunks of plaster were loose and protruding, and I pulled them out and laid them aside when I first got around to that wall.  Question was, what was I going to do with them?  More to the point, what was I going to do about the 1½" deep by 2½" wide by 18" tall cavity left once the plaster blocks were out?  Would the face trim be enough to hide it?  What if it showed?  I had some idea of using Liquid Nails to glue them back in, but how could I hold them tight to the back of the cavity while it was drying?  And how could I shave enough off the backs of the blocks so they'd go in flush, without breaking them to pieces?

Styrofoam blocking

Needed to be doing something on the house Wednesday morning, and all of a sudden it hit me that I was going too far with the authenticity.  The point is to fill the cavity, right?  So who cares what it's filled with, as long as it's a legitimate building material (e.g., not Kleenex) and it doesn't show?  So with a mingled sense of cleverness and shame, I cut the Gordian knot and trimmed down some old packing Styrofoam.  I mean, it's like insulation, even if it is on an interior wall, right?  Shoved the foam to try it and the pieces fit perfectly.  Glued it in with construction adhesive on Thursday (once I'd scrubbed the wall above it), and there it reposes and dares anyone to make something out of it.  (The old plaster went out with the trash Thursday night).

Gardz is shiny

Two coats mud &/or patching plaster

With that settled, I could go on to scrub down the south wall and the part of the west wall around the corner (the idea being to remove any loose or soft size from the previous owners' wallpaper job) and coat it with Gardz primer (to seal in all the remaining size).  Had that done by Wednesday evening, and the mornings up to today saw me patching the cracks and old nail holes in the plaster and wet-sanding them down.  One bad area above the lefthand corner of the opening needed taped and mudded; I've controlled myself and kept it to two coats of joint compound (24 hours drying time after each).  Typically I have a hard time trowelling it on; I keep leaving ridges.  I've found the more coats I apply and the more sanding I do the worse it gets.  The crack's not at eye level; get the paper tape well covered, wipe it down a little, and let it alone!

Finish plaster at bottom

Being in an intimate relation, as it were, with this wall the past few days has given me a good-enough answer to a house history question that's been tugging for years at the skirts of my curiosity.  My front room used to be an open porch, of course.  And that cased doorway from the living room used to be a window, probably a three-gang from the width.  But why all that filler on either side of the "new" supports?  Did the window used to be wider than the doorway is now?  The finish plaster above the lintel seemed to say No, but all those loose bricks and crap bothered me.  But when I was down on the righthand side cleaning the wall just above the baseboard line, I noticed that the original gold-tinted finish plaster went all the way to the inside line of the support on that side.  Of course, when the front room was a porch, that finish plaster went all the way under the window.  Maybe this doesn't make total sense, but something about it tells me that the window rough opening was built as wide as I see it now, and the width of the doorway is the width of the former window.    I think they stopped the coursed brick well short of the window jamb supports to allow installation room and to account for variations in the width of the windows they might get.  Most of the filler that's in now would have been put in with the doorway, but it was meant to be there, I think.

Seems odd that I would chew this over so much, but I guess it bothered me to think that structural brick had been knocked out when the doorway was put in.  And the face trim was installed out of plumb which made me wonder what else had been done carelessly.  Not that the structure has been compromised-- I've found evidence that the work may have been done in the 1930s and it's been fine since then.

Well.  Next on the agenda is to continue the fake natural wood shellac job on the painted cornice moulding, which is too narrow and cheap-looking but is not coming down at this juncture.

The Best I Can Do

Oh dear o dear o dear, I am so far from having accomplished what I wanted to accomplish by the time my friend from England arrives tomorrow evening.  Shocking how much needs to be done on a house before you get to the fun stuff, even when it's only finishes being worked on.

Well.  Frieda* came over around noon this past Saturday to help me remount hallway trim.  But I was up the ladder priming the north wall of the living room, and didn't want to stop before I'd finished it.  And the east wall, since I still had primer in the tray.  So she went in the kitchen and dynamited grease and pet hair off the stove and surrounding cabinets until I was done.

By the time we got upstairs to work on trim, we had time only to nail some replacement blocking into the rough opening for my bedroom door, put up the trim on the inside of the bedroom and find out that the lintel was cockeyed per the wallpaper and the level, put the bedroom door frame back together, attach the stop moulding at the guest bedroom door (successfully), and discover that something's weird about the relationship between the bedroom frame and the lintel on the hallway side.  Then Frieda had to leave and I had to change to go to Dick and Harry's Tax Service to finish doing my taxes.

Before Janet* comes I have got to get that door rehung, not just for my privacy but to get the bedroom door out of her way.  And rehang the closet door.  And reattach the stops to the bathroom door.

And if I can, finish shellacking the doorway and portal down on the first floor of the stair hall, so we maybe can put up wallpaper together, seeing that she's offered to help and is bringing her grubby old overalls.

But the cleaning still needs done, like the cat barf stains removed from the guest bedroom rug, and the mess in the living room needs to be cleared out. and I still have to wash the comforter and so on for the guest bed.  And here I am sub teaching at a local grade school, or rather, not teaching because the school's at sixes and sevens due to meetings and new-student assessments and I've turned out to be redundant.  So I have opportunity to work on the blog, but not on the house.

This is a situation where I need to do my best to do what I can to make things comfortable for my old friend, then depend on her friendship to overlook what I can't.

Some time I'll post some photos of what's gotten done.  But not now.  No access to the files, and it's 3:00 o'clock.  Time to go.

Immer Zu

I'm still here.  Actually, I haven't really been any place much other than here.  Not working on the houseblog, no.  But working on the house.  Workingworkingworkingworkingworking ....

Tired, crabby, frustrated; no way I'll get done what I'd hoped to get done by the time my friend from England arrives on the 18th, but still at it, obsessed, devoted, immolated.

I'm only up at my computer now because I was seized suddenly by the fear that I'd forgotten in the throes of house idolatry to pay one of my credit card bills.  So I left the trim I was working on in the basement to run up to the 3rd floor study to make sure.

Yes, it was already paid.  And I'm paying this debt to houseblogdom, putting down a minuscule installment payment on what I owe to my two or three readers, to give you some indication on what's been going on at the Sow's Ear the past month.

Heaven help us, what hasn't?  The spray foam people finally came (no, that was February, but never mind, they did).  The roof repair contractor and his son showed up three or so weeks ago (he was originally scheduled for early December) and took care of everything on the list, and a couple-three other things beside.  What they couldn't rectify was the wet on the face of the chimney breast in the living room, which issue they diagnosed as being due to my having no liner for the hot water heater in my chimney-- the warm water vapor condenses on the cold brick et voilà! failing skim coat and sticky old wallpaper paste on the living room side.  So I've had plumbing contractors marching through sizing up the height of the chimney, and I've accepted a bid from one who's supposed to come install me a metal liner early next week, hopefully before Janet* arrives.  And things have gotten to the point with my own work that I had to get the electrical contractors in to bid out installing properly-grounded circuits for the outlets that go in the baseboards that I hope soon to be reaffixing.  One bid was so astronomical I thought I should suck it up and rewire them myself after all; the other, from the guy who seemed to know more what he was talking about, was low enough to make me feel it wouldn't be worth the time and tribulation for me to try to do it myself.  And unlike the other guy, he can work with the trim installed.  I plan to have him come in May, if I've got the place reassembled by then.

But me?  Damn.  A short list, in no particular order: 
1)  Shellacking woodwork, starting with the stairhall's pieces and going on to the ones for the living room.
2)  Buying select white pine 1x boards and having my friend Steve* rip them to size to replace missing or hopelessly damaged yellow pine originals.
3)  Shellacking white pine replacement pieces to try to get them to match the yellow pine originals (semi-successful, if you don't mind a little streakiness). 
4)  Finishing up the Big Wally's plaster repair I started last month.
5)  Finding out that even Big Wally's won't get rid of a wall bulge caused by settling from the floor above.
6)  Doing an obsessive amount of research on how properly to hang my William Morris wallpaper, and finding out about blankstock liner paper and mix-it-yourself wheat paste and happening on a good source for both.
7)  In the course of said researches, learning about a homemade device that should make it easier for me to remove the old paper from the sheetrocked walls in the dining room and front room, and pulling together the pieces and parts and beginning to make my own.
8)  Trying repeatedly to get the old wallpaper paste removed from the living room walls and failing miserably, unless my goal is to take off all the previous owners' repairs.
9)  Carrying on an extensive email correspondence with the proprietor of the concern referred to in No. 6 and learning from him a) that I can use a Zinsser product called Gardz to encapsulate the old paste and size, and b) what "size" is and how to make it.
10)  Doing the Big Wally's routine on the east wall of the living room, especially down at the bottom along the line of the baseboard, where the plaster seemed to be flapping in the breeze.
11)  Ordering Gardz over the Internet (Lowe's and HD don't carry it around here) and applying a first coat on the north and east LR walls.
12)  Cutting to fit and screwing in pieces of drywall to replace the plaster that fell to pieces when I removed the baseboard along the east living room wall.
13)  Taping cracks in my living room walls with drywall tape and mudding, sanding, and mudding again.  (Which I hate-hate-hate!).
14)  Locating the most workable location for the outlet I've wanted for years in the 1st floor hall, and cutting the hole for it (happily, it falls right in the drywall under what I call the portal between the hall and the living room, where my POs-1 partially closed in what used to be a large doorway.
15)  Taking up the ridiculous sheet vinyl from the hallway floor, and discovering that the plywood underneath seems to be glued as well as nailed down.
16)  Doing the long-postponed measured drawing of the existing structure under the 1st floor hall, and submitting it to the John Bridge Tile Forum to find out if it can support ceramic tile.
17)  Getting an answer from one of the tile pros there that my structure might do, but unless I tear out both the plywood and the original tongue-and-groove subfloor and sink new plywood between the joists, I'll be way out of Code due to the odd riser height at the bottom stair.
18)  Saying O crap! and checking into linoleum tile and other, thinner alternatives, and deciding probably I'll clean up and smooth down the plywood that's there and paint a faux tile pattern instead.
19)  Using some medium red-brown paint left behind by my POs on the existing LR cornice moulding to even out the place where they or somebody got ceiling paint on it, then going over that with two coats of warm-walnut tinted shellac (north wall cornice is done; east wall in progress).
20)  Stripping, repairing, and sanding the trim that goes on the kitchen side of the doorway from the 1st floor hall-- nasty job, since it doesn't seem ever to have been shellacked, so the paint wouldn't just chip.
21)  Removing the rest of the wallpaper from the east and most of the south living room walls (yes, this should have come a lot sooner, but I just remembered).
22)  With the help of my friend Frieda*, remeasuring for the new chair rail for both storeys in the stairhall, sizing the lower part of the walls there, and hanging blankstock on them, but not before going back and filling and patching ten dozen dips and holes I never noticed till the work light was shining on them.
23)  Except for an occasional mowing and covering the roses when a frost warning's on, letting the garden take its own course this spring.

Did I say this was supposed to be a short list?  Gaw.  And I need to go back down the basement and prime that kitchen side trim and the trim for the doorway to my bedroom, because oh, yeah, I got the loan of a nail gun today, and if all goes well I can start rehanging trim this weekend and that needs to go up before-- well, never mind, it'd take too long.


Immer zu!  Immer zu!  Ohne Rast und Ruh'!

Off Hours

Remind me that I need to reset my body clock to normal human hours.  Nothing to do with Daylight Saving Time coming on last night, just a reflection on the cockeyed hours I've been keeping this weekend.  Up till 3:00 or 4:00 Friday night/Saturday morning, not out of bed till Saturday noon.  Up till 5:00 AM DST this morning, not up and getting dressed till nearly 2:30.

My excuse is that I was getting things done on the house these past two nights/early mornings, I felt awake enough to keep going, shouldn't I take advantage of the opportunity?  Whereas if I went to bed at a decent hour, there was no guarantee I'd lug myself out of bed the next day to correspond. 

But this is ridiculous.  Today by my mixed-up timing I missed the opportunity to make it to church anywhere, and I missed over half of a beautiful, bright, pleasant day.  Shameful.

I did as much with it as I could.  Got out and pruned all the roses (barring the groundcover ones) for the spring, as well as the crepe myrtles and the blueberry bush.  Tied up the tall stem of the Don Juan rose so it'll climb, and cut back a lot of the English ivy that's overwhelming the clematis and the Sympathie rose in the back.

Got the first application of joint compound into the holes and gouges in the living room north wall, and around the two corners a yard or so to the west and east.  That place I chiselled out at the upper right hand of the doorway casing is going to be really tricky to get right.  The joint compound is really too loose for the job, but it's what I have on hand.  The whole wall and the problem corner especially will need repeated applications before it's through.

After a late dinner, got the west dining room window lintel gooped up with wood filler where the big splinter came out Friday night.  How long did I say it was?  At least a foot in reality.

    Was planning to do something else on the living room tonight, but I guess not.  What it is, either my POs or the POs-1 (I think it was the former), when they repainted the ceilings, got ceiling paint on the cornice moulding.  The cornice is dinky enough as it is, but the white paint along the top of it reduces its effective height by about a quarter inch.  I don't have the time or money right now to replace it with the more robust moulding the living room and dining room, if not the front room, should have.  So for the time being I've planned to paint over that white with the same cooked mushroom brown color (the can is downstairs in the paint locker), then go over it with shellac so it'll more or less match the rest of the trim.

But as it turned out, the remaining quart or so of the mushroom brown is covered with mold.  OK, Plan B!  There's an unused quart of a warmer medium brown down there, and I think I'll repaint the cornice entirely with it, with the shellac over.  But it's been sitting so long it's badly separated.  No point in me trying to stir it up myself tonight.  After work tomorrow I'll take the can to Lowe's, where it's from, and get them to put it on the shaker.  And maybe I can remember to ask if they can order the kind of wallpaper paste I need while I'm there (Roman's "Golden Harvest" GH34.  Wheat paste. "For English wallpapers."  Well, there ya go.)

Thinking about the cornice again.  If I actually have some money for frivolities someday, I want to get cornice moulding of a more appropriate size and nail it up using the existing as blocking.  What's there is 2" high if it's lucky, so it shouldn't get in the way.

A Saturday Night's Entertainment

Making slow and desultory progress stripping the last of the paper and glue off the north living room wall and those parts of the west and east walls I can reach from the ladder.  The big question is, is the whitish goop that appears to have been rolled over the walls, thicker in some places and thinner in others, wallpaper paste or is it size?

If it's paste it has to come off.  If it's size it can stay, and I'll just paint a fresh coat of primer/size over it.

. . . Inclined to think it's size.  The glue that was on the stairhall walls came off really easily with the vinegar and water.  This is more like, well, paint.  It's true I'm picking up some kind of viscous white stuff with my wallpaper scraper, but they say that vinegar can dissolve finish plaster and spackle.  And there's plenty of the latter here.

And it's not like I'm painting these walls.  I don't think they've ever been painted, and anyone who tried now would be a fool.

Wait a minute, though.  Maybe they've never been painted, per se, but that doesn't mean they've always had paper.  Because I just discovered something.  I think the living room walls were colored at one point.  Not painted, but the top coat of the plaster seems to be tinted with an old-gold pigment.  You'd think I would have noticed that before, but with the size-goop over it it looked brown.  I thought it was the brown coat or something.  But no, this is streaky.  Nice color and effect, especially with my black marble fireplace-- which wasn't here in 1916.

No, I'm not going to try to clean the walls so well the gold shows all over.  The more I scrape, the more I destroy the old spackle patches.  It'll all be covered anyway.

. . . But hey, what's this I see?  Around the top of the living room, to about 11" down, there's a band of lighter yellow-gold!  And there's patched holes along the line between the two colors.  Hey, do you think this room had a frieze band?  And a picture rail?  Looks like it!  (I love domestic archaeology.)

A lot less fun is seeing all the little cracks in the plaster on the east and west walls.  And that doesn't include the ones some previous owners covered with paper tape.

My wallpaper scraper is playing merry hell with that paper tape.  And leaving random gouges in previous applications of levelling spackle.  I hate to think how much joint compound I'm going to have to use to get a decent surface.  And if I may be permitted to worrywart further, I hope the bulge in the upper part of the north wall won't disrupt the matching of my wallpaper.  The old beige moire-effect paper didn't betray any problems.  And I don't think the bulge is recent.  Trouble is, a survey of my photo collection has shown that apparently I didn't take any pictures of that wall when I took down the trim.  Guess I didn't think it was interesting enough.

I couldn't stand the way the plaster is so much thicker and protrudes so much up there on the righthand side at the corner where the doorway jamb and head casing meeting and where the trim has to be nailed up again.  I fetched the jamb trim piece up from the basement to gauge how much plaster I should knock off so it won't stick out so much.  Chiselled away at the finish coat, and I think I've got the gap down to an acceptable level.
 
The trim piece won't lie totally flat, however.  It has a bit of a warp to it.  I've noticed that in some other trim pieces, and I've worried that it might be my fault, for leaving the trim standing on end the past three or four years.  But how possibly would any of it have enough moisture left in it after more than ninety years to warp?  I certainly keep the humidity in the basement at a reasonable level.  Still, there it is.  Have I messed things up by working so slow?

But then I recall when the trim was still up, how in many places I observed that the jamb casing was sitting cockeyed to the lintels.  Much more likely it was installed a little green back in 1916 or whenever, and warped in place.  I know I've been knocking down a lot of dried filler where the trim edges used to be.  But clearly, this should put a damper on my dreams of reinstalling it all straight.

More Dust in the Wind

As piece by piece and bit by bit I stripped the wood trim the past few years, I comforted myself with the idea that due to the type of stripper I was using, I wouldn't have to sand any of it.  The Howard's product doesn't raise the grain and leaves the surface nice and smooth and ready to receive a new finish.

But a smooth surface requires more than smooth grain.  It also implies that holes and gouges and cracks and pits be brought level as well.  So, as stated previously, I've been doping in the wood filler.  Big campaign in January until I ran out, another spurt last month getting a second application onto the stair hall pieces so they could all get shellacked (as they now are), then the last of the job taken care of earlier this week.

All this means, yes, sanding.  Lots of it.  Which I've tackled these past two evenings.  I'm happy to say it's mostly accomplished, all except some pieces where I discovered splinters that needed to be glued down; I'll fill and sand those once the glue is good and dried.  It's been more gratifying work than my struggles with the living room plaster.

Back when I was thinking "Thank goodness I won't have to sand all these pieces!" I was visualizing having to do it by hand or maybe with my palm sander, with lots of expensive precut fabric-backed sheets from the big box store. Back then I didn't have my Bosch half-sheet orbital sander to help me.  Now I do, and the work went pretty quickly.

But!  but!! What also went quickly is the sanding dust, all over the basement.  Pooling on the sawhorses.  Coating the floor.  Changing the color of the nearby stacks of wood.  Floating in the air, and getting up my nose.  This shouldn't be.  The sander has a dust catcher, and the residue should be sucked into the holes in the sandpaper.  Obviously, it's not.  Not much of it, anyway.  When I go to empty the dust catcher, it's hardly half full, even after an hour or two of steady work.  I read stories about spontaneous combustion due to sawdust accumulations, and dust fires started by pilot lights-- so this isn't something I can ignore.

The sander is working fine.  Maybe it's the filter that needs changed.  Odd thing, when I go online and look up my model, it shows it with the dust catcher with filter for purchase new, but when I look up spare parts, it only has an ordinary dust bag.  Guess I'll have to call them and find out.

However.  Soon as I finish gluing the mitred returns onto the lintel mouldings, fill and sand down the last two or three mended spots, and vacuum up the residual dust, I can start shellacking the living room trim.  Hope it goes faster than the stair hall work did.

Oh, Fudge

I've been working on resecuring the plaster on the south wall of my living room since this time in February.  I'd been contemplating repairing that plaster since July of 2007 at least.  Now, a major cause of procrastination is the fear that a project won't come out the way you hope and visualize.  A major cause of depression is when you discover that your fears very likely were right.

The only problem with the plaster, as I originally perceived it, was up at the righthand corner of the cased opening between the living room and dining room, where the doorway jamb and head casings come together.  When I pulled off the trim to strip it, lo these many years ago, I found that the plaster protruded beyond the room face of the casing a good half inch.  Meaning that the face trim gapped more than a little.  Previous owners had fudged that over with spackle and paint, but I'm going back to natural wood. 

When I learned about Rory Brennan's Big Wally's PlasterMagic® system, I knew it was just the thing to take care of that protruding area and make the plaster nice and flat to receive the newly-shellacked trim. 

But things have not been that simple.  Back on the 9th of February when I started drilling the holes for the conditioner and adhesive, I noticed, for the first time in eight and a half years of living here, that the entire top fourth of the south living room wall bulges outward.  On the righthand side, especially, the protuberance was a half inch and more.  Clearly, I was going to need more Big Wally's adhesive than I had on hand.

Insert interval while I got around to ordering more tubes, while it shipped, and while it sat in the box in my dump of a living room waiting to be used.  All right.  So this past Sunday, I got to work.  And noticed two odd things:

First, that the plaster bulge on the righthand side, where I started my operations, went in a little with the washers and screws, but not as much as I expected.  Only a quarter inch at the most.  But the plaster wasn't flexible and it didn't give, and the wall developed no cracks as I drilled the washers in, though that's what you might expect if the keys where pressing against the lath.

Second, that up at the crucial corner the plaster wouldn't move in hardly at all.  At this point I did have cracking before and the washers caused more yet.  It wasn't salvageable.  So I pulled some goodish-sized chunks of it out, and saw-- And saw that up there the lath sits at the most an 1/8"back from the room face of the wood casing.  Seriously.  I poked the lath and it's in there solid.  It has no place to go.  Around that area the plaster thickness ranges from 3/8" to 1", and it's no wonder the door trim needed some fudging before!  It's going to need some fudging again when it's time to fill in the holes--but I'll describe that when I get to it.

But what did this mean?  That maybe the plaster at the top of the wall is thicker and the old wallpaper concealed the problem?  No idea.  The plaster I'd treated seemed well-secured enough, and I let it go because I was out of washers anyway.

Well, now.  Give it a few days for the adhesive to try and for me to take care of other business.  So Monday night I'm up there on the ladder snugging up the areas above the doorway and on the lefthand side.

And what's this?  In these places, where the bulge wasn't as bad, the plaster moved in a good 3/8" or more, with a soft, subdued, stomach-squeezing whhummphh!   What the dickens?  Why did that pull in but not the worse area to the right?  Was there something wrong with my drill bit, and did I not drill the holes deeply enough on the right-hand side?  Did the whole wall actually need    to be done?  After all this labor and material, was I still at risk of it failing and falling down?

Not to mention that where I power-screwed the anchors in too hard, the plaster just crumbled.  But the surface of the wall looks fine!  What's up with this?

Oh, fudge.  Aggrieved, aggravation, frustrated, crabby.  Last night I tried the conditioner and adhesive in a few more places on the upper righthand part of the wall, trying to pull that bulge in a little farther.  Drill penetrated more than an inch, inch and an eighth even, but the pull-in when I tightened the washers was a fraction of that.  Maybe the plaster is extra-thick at the top of the wall.  Or maybe the big hairy plaster/lath gap is there-- full of keys cushioned by all the Big Wally's I pumped in.  However it is, I can't do anything more to true it up-- and no, demolition and drywall is not an option.

This is not what I had in mind nearly five years ago.  I'm holding my breath that a lot of joint compound and the new wallpaper will disguise the mess.  I even have visions that the wallpaper will end up holding the wall together.  But I have no call to throw rocks-- or chunks of plaster-- at my fudging previous owners.  It's a pot we're all in together.

Study in White, Gray, and Copper. And a Little Beige.

Since I posted last, I've taken an obligatory break from house renovating.  Had a couple of big exams to study for.  Found out today that I passed the first one, but I'm still waiting for the results of the one I took a week after that. 

But now I've got that behind me,* I've made some progress. Not a lot of progress, but some. 

Which is to say that last Wednesday, I got the coat of gritted Sherwin-Williams "Pearl White" onto the basement stair wall.  It was probably a good thing to let the primer sit since the first week in July.  That way I could see if any water stains bled through.  None did.  Missed a few spots, which I touched up on Saturday.  And it's nice that with the normal basement lighting and the radon exhaust pipe in the corner, the new.y-painted outside wall and the (unmildewy part of the) unrepainted interior wall match up pretty well.  I think I'd have to call attention to it for anyone else to notice they weren't the same.

This past Saturday I laid on the first coat of floor paint at the foot of the stairs.  Turned out the previous owners' can of Sear's "Natural Slate Gray" was not only still good, it was unopened and yet never used.  No, the color doesn't match the rest of the floor in the central part of the basement.  But from what I discovered when I gave the target area a good scrubbing Friday evening, it would have, once.  I only repainted a piece about 3.5 ft. by 6.5 ft.  That's all the floor space down there that's bare!  And it's enough so it looks all right from the upper landing.

Got a second coat of the gray on this evening.  It needed it.  It also needed two or three days for the first coat to fully dry.  I keep the dehumidifier going down there, but even so, it's humid these summer days.  I'll give the second coat time to dry, too, then move the metal pantry shelf back against the wall.  And touch up where its legs were.

That gray floor paint is odd, though.  I guess I'm used to the variegated appearance of the old floor, with the old red paint showing through along with glimpses of bare concrete under that, and dirt and miscellaneous spills over all.  I can't capture the effect with my current camera, but believe me, I look down from the landing and it seems that my basement stairs go down into a gray pool, whose uniform surface hides strange life.  I'm almost glad I have to step over the side stringer of the stairs to keep from treading on it.  I almost feel I'd splash in or some scaly gray hand would break the surface, grasp my ankle, and pull me down.

As for the copper, I made my trip to the Home Depot on Saturday and got the tubing and fittings to install my new water filter and softener.  My friend Frieda's* son Mike* dropped by a week or two ago, and says he can do it, but isn't sure when-- it's a longer job than he'd expected.  And now I've got the materials for whenever he can make the time for me.

At least, I thought I did.  Talked to an older guy after church on Sunday, a man who's been doing general contracting of the residential sort all his life, and he tells me that Home Depot copper is all seconds, and I should return it and get it at a plumbing supply store instead.  Oh, joy.  Anybody else hear anything like that?  I'm not unwilling to take his advice, but it was such a pain getting that 10 ft. piece of tubing home in my PT Cruiser, and now I've got to rope it in again and take it back?  And how am I supposed to explain why I'm bringing it all back?  And then I'd have to price out the local plumbing supply stores.  Fun, fun, fun.  Maybe I should talk to Mike and see what he thinks.

And the little bit of beige?  Maybe that should be "a little less beige."  Studying eight to ten hours a day for three straight weeks can get a little intense.  I didn't dare take a break online.  So I'd vary the routine by wandering around my dining and living rooms peeling off whatever pieces of old beige wallpaper that were willing to come loose.  I was pleased to see it was coming off the drywalled-over portions almost as well as it did off the plaster.  Maybe I won't have to order any special remover solvent after all.
_____________________________
*Should say, "Now that I've got that behind me for now."   These tests are in two parts each, and while I did very well on the multiple choice part of the second one, I didn't finish the essay in part two, and I'm told that spells certain doom.  So I'm looking at applying for a retake and trying again.

Not on the Agenda

This evening as I was finishing up supper, the phone rang. I'm not very good at long phone calls; at least, I'm not very good at just sitting still and being on the phone. I also have to move around and do things. Load the dishwasher. Wipe down cabinets. Pet kittehs. This was a longish call, and while I was listening and talking, I started picking at the dining room wallpaper.

A few weeks ago I discovered that given a fairly humid day, whatever dining room wallpaper is hung over plaster will come off rather easily. Tonight, it wasn't that damp here in southwestern Pennsylvania, so I took the phone into the living room ("Yes, right . . . uh-uh, and what happened then? . . . . ") to see what luck I'd have there.

Oh, yeah, this was nice. Peel, peel, peel. Look how easily that boring beige printed moiré paper comes down! By the time the caller rang off I had it all off the lower part of northwest corner of the living room, both walls.

Stripping wallpaper wasn't on the agenda for this evening. I was going to do ironing. Lots of it. But as long as I was at it and things were going so well, why not bring in the step stool and finish these areas at the top? And around the north of the chimney breast? And hey, why not let 'er rip on the chimney breast itself?

So on I went, and the paper came off. But as I was working on the center of the chimney breast, I noticed something. The paper I was removing was damp. And so was the wall under it. At least, the paste under it was damp.

Then, what's this? Here's another dampish place a little lower, where the finish coat of the plaster seems loose.

What the-- ? This I do not understand. My POs-1 put this paper up at least twenty years ago. The paste should be dry. Moreover, this plaster is on brickwork that's on the inside of the chimney. There are no plumbing pipes on the second floor above this, and it hasn't rained around here for two or three weeks. The plaster itself isn't staring with wet, nor is it mouldy or yellowed. But it's unquestionably damp.

Where is it coming from? Is my chimney leaking from above, and is there some pocket in the chimney that's catching water and slowly letting it in? I know the west wall of the house needs repointed sometime. But please, God, do I have to have it done now?

I'll come back and feel it in the morning. Messing with masonry is not in the budget! Nor is it on the agenda. Dry, rot you, dry!!

It's Here!

Last night I dreamed my William Morris wallpaper had arrived, and some friends came over to help me hang it. And before I could direct procedings, they did-- badly. The joints didn't butt up; they had gaps as big as 1/8" wide. Other places, the strips overlapped a half inch or more. Or strips were cut and put up in weird narrow widths, for no reason at all. I found myself taking great long pieces back down and having to trash them. I worried whether I'd purchased enough extra to come out with a decent job after all.

And throughout the dream, the paper that was being hung was the same pattern I just got rid of in my 1st and 2nd floor halls and stairway!

That dream was a relief to awaken from.

It was better than a relief, then, when around 8:30 this morning my dog's frantic barking heralded someone at the door. It was the FedEx man, come to deliver my William Morris wallpaper for real!

The WallpaperDirect people surely did a bang-up job of packing it. I had a dickens of a time even trying to find where the lids to the boxes were! The second carton, I used my knife and bypassed finding the flap altogether.

And the wallpaper?

Ooohh, it's pretty! No, there was no miracle-- the "Savernake" for the dining room didn't magically turn out to be more tan and less green. But the pale green it is, is very, very nice.

But, echoes of my dream, I was alarmed to see that the "Blackthorn" for the 1st and 2nd floor halls and stairway is a half-drop and not a straight match. I wasn't able to use the calculator on the website to figure out how much I needed, given the diagonal going up the stairs. Instead, I drew up AutoCAD elevations and figured out how many repeats were required, adding some on for good measure.

Oh, oh, oh, I hope I figured it right and ordered enough! By the time I'm ready to hang this paper, this particular dye lot will be long gone.

But begone, dull care! My William Morris wallpaper has arrived, and it's simply luverly!

Wallpaper Update

I just now received a call from FedEx, to expedite the import of my William Morris wallpaper.

Agent wanted to know what it was made of (paper!), how big each roll was (.53m x 10m or 10.5m), and for me to verify how many rolls the order was for (21!). And whether I had imported anything before. Yes, the drapery fabric from last year, but nobody called me about that before it came. "But that was for my own use. So is this."

"The wallpaper is for personal use?"

"Yes."

Very good, and she gave me the tracking number.

I did not have the courage to ask whether there would be any US Customs charges. Hopefully not, since I'm not going to resell it.

The agent told me the shipment hasn't reached the States yet. But it's on it's way!

And oh, I hope the colors of the current batches are clear and good!

Into the Abyss!!

I finally bit the bullet and did it this afternoon. I went online and put in my William Morris wallpaper order.

5 rolls of "Blackthorn"/1 for the stairhall . . .


















. . . 8 rolls of "Owen Jones"/7 for the living room . . .


















. . . and 8 rolls of "Savernake"/5 for the dining room.



















My agony and temporizing has been over the "Savernake." When I first moved into the Sow's Ear in September '03 I ordered a sample and it was a nice pale sand color. I've had it propped up on my dining room dresser ever since. But the latest samples have a definite pale celery cast. Meaning, green. Wasn't sure I wanted a greenish dining room, even if it goes very well with the Morris "Strawberry Thief" drapery fabric I bought on eBay a year ago last June.

There was one more possible colorway of "Savernake" I hadn't yet seen, and I was hoping it would come up a nice cream color. (Hey, the computer images are never accurate, right?). It arrived today, and . . . No go. It was red brown. Too much with that red "Owen Jones" in the next room.

I'm still not 100% keen on the celery tone for the dining room. But I've faced the reality that I could wait the next five and a half years and that "Savernake"/5 will likely never, ever, ever revert to the pale sand color it was in September 2003. And with the economy the way it is, by that time the Morris Company may not still be in business or the prices will be totally out of reach.

So I'm sucking it up and going with the celery green. It had good reviews from random fellow-choristers at choir practice a few weeks ago, and as I said, it goes well with the curtain fabric. And I love, love, love the pattern.

I ended up ordering not from Sanderson's Fabrics in Yorkshire, but from Wallpaper Direct in Sussex (who sent me my first samples in 2003). Actually went on both sites and filled out order forms on both to compare current bottom lines. Spent an absurd amount of time juggling differences in prices, in volume discounts offered vs. none at all, in VAT (Value Added Tax) included in the named price or not, in freight charges, etc., etc. In the end, the totals were so close as to make no great difference. Actually, Sanderson's was the less expensive.

But Sanderson's Fabrics have annoyed me with their inability to send samples despite repeated phone calls, while you can practically set your watch by Wallpaper Direct's sample posting service.

So the order is now in. Before the utter ruin of all things, before I am overwhelmed by the scope of what I'm trying to accomplish in this house, it will be decked with William Morris wallpaper.

As Builts

According to my doctor, I've contracted The Bronchial Crud That's Going Around. Doesn't make me too fit to strip woodwork these past couple of weeks. But maybe that's just as well, since my student AutoCAD license expires on the 17th of this month, and after that I won't be able to open the program, let alone practice on it or play with it.

But as long as I've got it, I'm using it to document some features of the house, and maybe to work out some ideas I have for the upstairs bathroom.

The last couple or three days have been devoted to doing an as-built drawing of the living room fireplace. It certainly is a unique feature of the house; I'm thinking it wouldn't be a bad thing to have a measured drawing of it stored off-site in case anything happened.

Here's the results so far. So far and maybe no farther. I've left off the surface ornament, but I've got plenty of photos to show that.
But did I say this was an "as-built"? Not exactly. My fireplace exhibited the same phenomenon as did my staircase-- regardless of how many measurements I took, no matter how often I checked and double-checked them, I couldn't get all the dimensions to agree. In some places it's as much as an inch off, but I can't adjust that inch without throwing other dimensions into chaos. I tell myself it's because the mantelpiece has settled and it's out of true. But not that far out of true! Surely, I'd notice it if it were. It'd drive me crazy looking at it if it were!

But it doesn't. I don't know . . . one more instance of the house keeping its secrets . . .

Maybe, Maybe Knot

I've been turning over in my mind the past month or so what I'm going to do with the jambs and heads of the cased openings between my front room and the living room and stairhall. When at some stage the PO-2 (third back before me) converted the front porch to an enclosed room, she made these openings where the front door and the front windows had been. And to cover the face of the 2x jamb and head members, she applied 1/4" veneer plywood to finish the new openings off.

So what shall I do?

Strip and remount the plywood? Don't think so. I did one piece of it, and it had too much paint stuck in the ply edge. And I really dislike the fat reveal that it produces when added to the exposed part of the jamb.

The 2x members have a few knots in them, and at the old front door you can see where the strike and hinges used to be. Should I cover that up with a bit of trim that'd sit a ways into the opening? No, because there's some weird irregularities going on with the woodwork between the living room and front room, and I'd have to do some fancy notching to get an applied piece of trim to work. Besides, to look right it'd had to be custom made, and I don't want to get into that.

Or do I just clean up the 2x heads and jambs, notch in appropriate shims where the hardware used to be, and trust in the dark garnet shellac I'm planning on using to cover up the patches and knots?

I'm pretty well decided on that.

So today, I noticed in my basement the 1x jamb and head casings I took off the opening between the kitchen and the dining room, oh, at least four years ago. They covered the actual jambs and head of that doorway, having been added by my POs-1 when they redid the kitchen and added sheetrock to both sides of that wall.

These pieces of wood are a primary source of my lack of progress, for when I took my old heat gun to them, I found it took off the topmost layer of paint, then stopped. How futile and useless.

So much for that heatgun.

Besides, I could see from the back that they had a good many knots. Back then, I didn't want to mess with that. So I leaned them against the basement wall and intended to see if I could find some clear material to replace them with.

Anyhow, today. I was down there today, and I thought, Well, those jambs off the front room have knots and I'm accepting them. Why don't I strip these kitchen-dining room facings after all and save buying new wood?

So I did. One piece. With the belt and palm sanders, since the old heatgun had baked the lower layers of paint on so thoroughly not even the Western Wood Doctor refinisher could get it off.

It looks lovely-- if you like knots, knots, and more knots.

And now I'm thinking, Maybe not. If I'm going to obscure my lungs with sanding dust, I'd like to be rewarded with clear wood.

This time, I think I'm going to be less thrifty with the gasoline and the cash buying new wood, and more sparing of the electricity and the effort.