A Melluva Hess

Yesterday I pried seven more pieces of wood trim off the walls, but had time to get only one of them stripped.

It was a piece of door casing from my first floor stairhall, a piece I'd actually started to work on four years ago. The lip of the seat of my hallway bench overlaps this by a good inch and a half, so I couldn't just pry it forward off the wall. I'd gone after it in place with regular paste paint remover, and then I'd tried the Howard's refinishing liquid. With limited luck in both cases, since I was trying to keep the remover off the bench, which didn't need stripped.

So this casing piece has been gapping crazily off the wall since February of 2004.

Yesterday evening I worked out that if I could get behind it and cut the lowest nail, I could pull the trim piece out sideways, perpendicular from the bench.

Success! Though admittedly, it did pull a couple splinters off the lip of the bench seat. I'll have to glue them back on.

Started actually stripping a little before 10:00 last night, figuring I'd get that one piece done pretty quickly and maybe two or three others beside, before time to pack it in and go to bed.

Ha! That trim piece was and is a mess! There was ingrained dirt that consumed an hour of scrubbing, several ounces of refinisher, a lot of steel wool, and a new pair of rubber gloves-- and still refused to come out. Pieces of wood the size of a man's thumbnail missing all along the bottom where the piece sits on its plinth. More chips and splinters missing up top where it meets the lintel. Half to three-quarter inch long spackle-filled ditches where some bright soul (not I!) once pulled the nails out frontways. And on the narrow edge towards the doorway, at about bench level, a handsome row of hammer head dents, apparently from someone's having forced the casing back into place between the wall and the end of the bench.

I had to think hard about it. Did I perpetrate that? No way! Even if I'd knocked the casing back in when I couldn't get it off the time I tried before, I certainly would have used my rubber-headed mallet, not a claw hammer.

I went ahead and stripped it, but I may, just may substitute a different piece when I put things back together. Because yesterday I also discovered that the casing on the portal between my living room and my front room is 3/4" narrower than that between the living room and dining room. It looks spindly and weak and leaves too wide a reveal at the jamb. It's not original-- it appears to be what was put up when the porch was closed in and the old front window made into a six foot wide doorway. I'm going to see if I can find some wider casing for that doorway-- which means I can move a piece from there into the hall.

Might be a better plan than filling all those chips and holes and hoping the new dark finish covers it all . . .

Worrywarting

Well, let's see: Four more pieces of wood trim stripped today. That's thirty-four in all, out of 330 to be done. A bit over 10% of the job completed.

Of course, that doesn't include gluing down the big splinters, or filling dents and old nail holes, or sanding down the exposed ends where the grain has raised over the years and won't let the paint go.

But it's a decent amount of progress, especially considering the three or so weeks that I did nothing while waiting for the electrical upgrade so I could use the heat gun.

So I should keep buzzing along, right?

Yes, but . . . one of these days I have to tackle the baseboards in the dining room. And my reluctance seems to have nothing to do with the fact that some of them are really long. Or that removing them for stripping will mean moving furniture and disconnecting outlets.

It's more the prospect of having a room in my house with all the trim gone. Creeping upon me is the atavistic fear that the trim is the only thing holding my house together. And that if I take it all down in any one room, the house will collapse with it.

Don't laugh. Tonight I pried off the lintel and cornice on the living room side of the cased opening to the dining room, and great chunks of plaster crashed down in clouds of dust onto the fake Pergo floor. I have no idea what's holding up the intrados section; above it you can see straight through into the dining room. Maybe the jamb pieces on either side. It's very inexplicable and mysterious.

This is how it looked in January from the dining room side. No pictures of the damage tonight-- my digital camera's off being repaired (I hope) and I'm not on a plan with my cell phone that allows me to get the photos off of it. But it's even nastier looking now. You would not believe the amount of white caulk, spackle, and paper towels some previous owner used to put all everything together.

And here I am taking things apart, and what if it all comes down in a hail of plaster, lath, and bricks?

A Tale of Vise

Now that my workshop electrical outlets are installed, the refinisher shipment has arrived, and the piano is delivered, I can get back to stripping the window trim on the first floor.

Yesterday I removed the varnish from the last two long pieces from the dining room windows. And last night I pried off all the trim (barring the stool) from the first of the dining room piano windows. I had visions of getting all those pieces stripped today, before I had to dress and go sing in a choir concert this evening.

Didn't work out like that.

In the first place, I had to spend an hour or so this morning packaging up my digital camera I dropped on the floor yesterday, and taking it to the post office to send to the FujiFilm factory service center in Joisey. Maybe it can be fixed and I won't have to buy a new camera.

Or maybe not. Got it posted, anyway.

Something after 11:00 AM I got down the basement and started stripping the paint from the window trim I took down last night.

Uh, no. Ever try holding a two-foot piece of wood, aiming a heat gun at it, and stripping off the old paint, all at once? Definitely a three-handed job.

Which means a vise to supply the third hand. In my case, the clamp-on vise my dad gave me years ago, with the 1/4" plywood on each face to keep from marring the workpiece.

But I couldn't use my heirloom vise with my present set up. My workbench has no lip to clamp it to and my collapsible steel sawhorses had no wood beams on them. I'd been intending to put some on ever since I bought them nine or ten years ago, but somehow I never . . .

Until today. There comes a time when the time has come. When a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. When the annoyance of not doing an annoying job is more annoying than doing it.

I had to get those beams on my sawhorses if I wanted to make any progress with the woodwork stripping.

And I was well-fixed to take care of it. Some previous owner had left me a couple of likely-looking 2x4s to choose between, and I have a whole hardware cabinet of miscellaneous fasteners.

But I couldn't take care of it, not right away. The brick foundation wall of my workshop is the happy home to a few dozen colonies of sidewalk ants. Harmless, the exterminator tells me, but they attract spiders which festoon the wall with their webs, which catch all the frass that the ants dump out of their nests. The 2x4s were covered with it, and so was a lot of everything else.

Naaaaassssty.

So before my work on the sawhorses could proceed, I had to take the shop vac and clear out all the spiderwebs and their loads of eggs and ant poop.

Not what I was planning to do today.

But I did it. And got the chosen 2x4 cut to the right lengths, five inches longer than the sawhorse tops.

And considered how I'd attach them to the steel sawhorses.

Now, you'll laugh at this. This is the biggest reason why I hadn't put the wood beams on the sawhorses years ago. I had the silly, over-wrought idea that I had to attach them with bolts and nuts, with the bolt heads countersunk into the top surface of the wood.

And I don't have any countersinking drill bits.

Well, I thought, I can improvise.

So I turned over the sawhorses, the better to see and feel how big a bolt I needed for the predrilled holes.

And it hit me: "You silly idiot! All you need is four washers and screws driven up from the underside of the sawhorses into the bottom surface of the 2x4s! That'll hold just fine!

So that's what I did. Though being me, I had to make heavy weather of using the portable drill to drive the screws in. I'm not too proficient at keeping the driver head straight on with the screw, and I end up with metal shavings all over.

Still, they went in well enough to hold.

And now I have a nice wooden overhang at each end of my sawhorses, and I can clamp on my vise!

And my vise can hold my short pieces of window trim while I heat-strip them!

I got three pieces done this afternoon. Probably won't be able to do any more with it till Friday-- tomorrow, I've got other things I have to do.

i can has piyanoh?

With a nod to all you lolcat fanciers in Housebloggerdom, that is my cat-got-the-pigeon way of announcing that as of 6:00 o'clock last evening I got my 1911-vintage piano moved safely into the front room of the Sow's Ear.

And that is despite snow and sleet and reports of accidents and weather-related mayhem all round the area; despite slushy hilly winding roads for me, and a long traffic jam that had my piano movers stuck on the Parkway West for nearly a half hour; despite a tight doorway and slick sloping conditions at the church; despite a truck diesel gauge that was riding on Empty and a white-knuckled (on the part of the movers) detour to the nearest station that sells diesel fuel; despite needing to bring the piano up my neighbors' walk due to the tight turn at the foot of my front steps; and despite the severe slope of the floor of my front-porch-turned-front-room, that initially caused the top back edge of the piano to lean a good 3" away from the wall.

Despite all that, it's in.

The piano movers' getting stuck in traffic on the way to the church actually worked out well for me: It gave me more time to vacuum the drywall sanding dust and the cobwebs off the piano and bench. As soon as they arrived, everything was ready to go.

It's really amazing what only two not tremendously big guys can do with just a dolly, a piece of plywood, a metal ramp, and a lot of technique. Despite, I say again, the slope and a lot of ice and snow.

I video'd about the whole process; all but the very end at the house, when I was busy lending a hand shepherding the piano into position and pulling the dolly out from under when that was done. I intend to put the clips all together and make a little movie out of it, but I'd like some music to go with it, and the piece I'm thinking of I only have on cassette.

So the video will have to wait. In the meantime, here are a few stills:

[Photos coming!!!!]


It was really silly of me not to consider the slope of my front room and have something ready to put under the front casters. The movers shoved folded-up cardboard under there for me, but the piano's still leaning out an inch too much.

So there's something else for the project list: Make some decent-looking blocks that'll raise the front casters up a good inch and half. And then figure out how to raise the bench enough to compensate.

Today I cleaned off the rest of the dust and dirt, and moved the bookcase and books that used to be on that wall into the living room.

And sat down and played awhile, as well as I am able.

Now that the piano is in, my ideas for the front room are coalescing. Maybe variations on the theme of light green painted walls with a gold and white stencilled frieze around the top. Something with musical motifs in an Arts and Crafts style, maybe. I'd toy with the idea of doing the trim in a creamy-white marbleized effect-- but I've got the woodwork too far stripped to natural to go back to paint. And the dark wood tone goes well with the dark mahogany of the piano!

Commitment

Looks like I've decided to adopt Lester, the 97-year-old piano.

I had a long phone conversation with the local piano tuner last Tuesday evening. Having read the negative opinion of the tech from Jersey and listened to the video of the piano being played that I posted here on my blog, his revised opinion is that the Jersey boy just wants to sell his own used pianos.

And that assuming that I'm not looking to play pounding Lizst all day and all night or make commercial recordings or prepare myself to play in major concerts halls, he gives it that the instrument in question will suit me just fine. Cracked bridge in the bass? No, it'd be making awful noises if so. Slipping pins and imminent failure in the pinblock? It'd be excruciatingly out of intonation if that were the case. No, silly thing just needs tuned.

So, I've arranged with a piano mover to meet me at the church late this coming Wednesday afternoon. They'll bring it up and move it in to the Sow's Ear.

And the piano will probably sound like a squealing pig for a fortnight or more, because it has to settle into the climate here at the house before it can be tuned.

Before it comes, I still have to remove the baseboard from the wall it's going against. No point in pushing that behemoth out of the way more than once. And take down my concert posters, which will now have to be hung higher.

Oh, yes, and sweet talk my neighbors (the ones with the awful aluminum siding) into letting the piano movers cross their yard if that's the only way they can get a straight shot at my front steps.

(I do hope the plywood bedboard in the guest room is big enough to cover next door's grass . . . I'd hate to have to go to Lowe's and buy a new sheet just for this!)

Electrified

Through snow and slop and slick conditions, the electrician, Harrison Coffey of Coffey Electric (I told him I'd give him a plug-- so to speak) appeared right on time this noon to install the new circuit and outlets in my basement and workshop.

First order of business, get rid of the culprit that'd left my workshop in the dark-- a faulty screw-in recepticle from the workshop pullchain light. It went into the recycling.

Then, install a new 20-amp circuit in the breaker box and run the wire.

Then comes a new recepticle in the workshop.

And two new ones in the main basement.

And a fourth one (on a different circuit) mounted on the furnace, so the condensation pump can be plugged directly into it, and no longer into yet another pullchain light.

Two and a half hours later, all done! I went down to experiment with the new outlets.

I started with my worklight, trying to plug it into the new recepticle on the south basement wall. But it wouldn't go! Maybe the prongs needed to be spread?

"Just give it a shove and push it in," Mr. Coffey said. "Those 20 amp recepticles have tighter slots."

But my fingers were still on the plug prongs as I pushed.

"Hey!" said the electrician.

"Oh! right!" I took them away, just before the plug went in. Whew!

"You make contact with that, you'd know it. It'd throw you across the room!"

Right. Not an experiment I care to make.

After Mr. Coffey went on his way, I did not run downstairs and start stripping woodwork. Took care of some other things this afternoon and evening-- of which more anon.

But I've got me some proper outlets in the basement! I can plug the heatgun in without shorting out the house! Electifying!

See Sharp or Be Flat?

Here's the next installment of the continuing saga of the 1911 Lester piano I'm contemplating giving a good home to (I keep this up, Jeannie and Aaron might question whether this is truly a house blog anymore!):

Last night, I sent a link to my last post, along with a filled-in worksheet, to a piano tech in New Jersey. I made the virtual acquaintance of this person through purchasing a used piano buying guide from him on eBay Thursday night ($2.99 Buy It Now). The price included follow-up advice, so I took advantage of it.

Early this morning, his reply came in. He strongly recommended I not take this piano on, even as a giveaway. The buzz in the one key, he wrote, is a hard damper felt. The lost motion in some others would be missing felts or loose jacks coming unglued. The bottoming out in the bass notes is likely a cracked bass bridge. The same, he said, was likely true for the treble bridge. The fact that the pinblock had been doped (chemically treated to make the wood swell to keep the tuning pins in snugly) was a bad sign that the pins are probably still loose.

It would, he said, cost around $6,600 to regulate and repair the piano to playable condition (including replacing the pinblock to the tune of $4,700). And even then, I'd have a 97 year old piano with mostly 97 year old parts. And that doesn't include moving and tuning.

"Lester pianos," the Jersey tech wrote, "are quite good – but the age and condition is working against this one." I could, he said, buy something much younger and better for a lot cheaper.

With this advice in mind, I've done some objective thinking on the subject.

I'm not dead set on acquiring this particular piano. It just happens to be available. If it doesn't work well enough, it'd be taking up the space of another that'd suit me better.

Late this afternoon, then, I called back the local tech/piano tuner to see about getting a second opinion. I've forwarded him all the info I sent the tech in New Jersey, including the NJ tech's reply, and asked him to quote me a fee to meet me at the church to look at it himself.

But the local guy is a lot more optimistic. He feels the tech in New Jersey has to be painstakingly conservative on the advice he gives me, in order to cover his rear. That is, any one symptom can have any number of causes, more or less critical. Someone giving advice via email has to assume the worst. The local tuner, being able to see the instrument in person, can afford to be more optimistic.

So we'll see. If the local tuner/tech tells me it'd cost me too much to fix, forget it. Hey, if I want to sink thousands of dollars into a handsome piece of woodwork, I'd rather go broke buying the 1698 Jacobean tridarn dresser an antique dealer up the Beaver River has for sale.

And of course if the piano's an outright junker, then it's for the dump. In that case, I'd like to get with the church to see about their allowing me to salvage the wooden casework for reuse in a new project. And try to convince them to recycle the harp and wires and other metal parts. There's a metal scrap yard just up the Ohio River from me I could refer them to.

But all this is contingency thinking. I'll wait to hear what the local tuner/tech says.