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. . . .

Just Shoot Me

Basically, my house is in pretty good shape.  Really and truly.  But for some reason, this past year, when I could least afford it, I've had to throw big chunks of money at all sorts of things that had nothing to do with tile or a new kitchen floor or a new bathroom or anything fun and sexy and visible like that.

No.  First the water softener ruptured and after living with scary hard water for several months I admitted I needed a new one, and a water filter as well if the job were to be done properly.  Then the attic insulation went bad and the only feasible way to replace it was with spray foam.  At the same time, I found out I had all sorts of things wrong with my roof and flashing, and that had to be taken care of.  As it was being taken care of, I was informed that the wet place on my chimney breast is due to my having no liner in the flue for my hot water heater.  OK, I got a decent bid from some plumbing and heating guys to come put one in.  But up the ladders they go, and down they come-- they couldn't get the liner in, due to the bend in the chimney, they said.  Call a chimney sweep/technician, they recommend.

I've been calling chimney firms on and off the past month, but only two have actually come by to take a look at things.  And only one has actually gotten up on a ladder and looked down the chimney.  That was today, and just shoot me, it doesn't look good, it looks expensive, and it looks like the kind of thing that can't really be put off.

I want to get the water heater flue lined so I can get the chimney breast dried out and hang the wallpaper in the living room.  But the chimney repairman who was out this evening tells me the real problem is birds' or squirrels' nest material that's practically blocking the flue and sending not only condensation, but also carbon monoxide, back down into the house.  Worse carbon monoxide, since the HVAC guys knocked out the cement that used to seal the WH pipe into the wall of the flue in the basement in their futile attempt to install the liner last month.  I'd wondered why I seemed to get a whiff of gas down there, even when the furnace was off.  And maybe I should wonder why I've been feeling stupider than usual these days.

So it won't be enough just to shove an aluminum liner in there, I'm told.  The chimney must be cleared, then I really should get a stainless steel liner, because aluminum will pit and corrode out in three years or so.  If I was to be really, really pessimistic about my employment chances, I'd say who cares, I'll be selling the house before then anyway.  But what if I don't?  Then I've got the same problem again.

And, says the chimney tech, it won't be enough for me to run the liner in then slam the existing cap with the cute fins back on.  Those cute fins have way big gaps, 2" or so, that let all those birds and/or squirrels in, and nothing to stop them building their nests in the new liner.  So I would have to get new caps for my flues, and no, it wouldn't work just to stretch some wire mesh over the top of the flues under the existing cap.  That would just mean the birds would build their nests at the top and block it up there.

I know this is no hypothetical situation.  I dug around three 13-gallon trash bags worth of birds' nest material out of my eaves last October.  And their handiwork is in my WH flue right now.

Crap.  He's given me a ballpark estimate, and I thought if I ever would spend that much on the chimney, it'd be going well towards covering the cost of a pretty new gas fireplace insert.  He's willing to work out financial terms, but crap, crap, crappity crap, why does all this have to come up now?

Hey, Lord, don't You realize how broke I am?  Or maybe I should just let the house moulder and go to ruin, in the good old-fashioned style?

Meanwhile, I've cracked open a window in the basement.  And a CO detector is on my shopping list when I go to Home Depot after work tomorrow.

Working on the 2nd Floor Hall Trim

Oh, gosh, I need to make a blog post like nobody's business, and if I wait around trying to think up a clever title, I never will.

I'm busy reattaching reshellacked trim to the walls of my 2nd floor hallway.  Really.  Been at it for the past, I don't know, do I really have to check the pictures and find out exactly? For the past week at least.

You'd think with a nail gun the work would go quickly, even though I'm doing it on my own.  But in a world-- I mean, a house where nothing is plumb, it's not exactly a matter of slamming up the pieces and firing them in.  Things have to be done to them.

Like with the baseboard that sits to the right of the bathroom door.  Anybody remember this post from July 2007?  It was past fiddling with the shoe mouldings and just lowering the baseboard was out of the question.  No, I had to take a piece of old yellow pine floorboard (removed for the foam insulation job in the attic) and cut a piece the length of the baseboard that sloped from ¼" high at the outside wall to nearly 1½" at the righthand bathroom door trim plinth (all that in less than three feet), shellac it to match, then glue it to the existing baseboard.  Here's what it looks like installed

(and please pardon the picture quality; I'm not having good luck with my new camera AT ALL), with no shoe moulding yet.  In person it looks even more like it's running uphill to the left, despite the wallpaper pattern being straight, but what can you do?  Run it cockeyed across the wallpaper?  Don't align it to the adjacent base?  Leave horrible gaps, as before?  It is what it is.  If the floor has settled, it has settled.

Then there's the  makeshift white pine plinth the POs-1 made to go under the righthand trim at the opening to the 3rd floor stairs, the piece that fits around and under the curved bottom step.  There was no use stripping it and I've always meant to make a new piece to replace it.  That's been the big project for today.

Yeah,  a pieca wood 9" high by 2½" wide with a 1" by 7/8" notch cut out of it at the top left.  Most of the day.  This is what I get for forgetting how to adjust the blade tilt on my table saw.  Because unlike the piece the previous owners made, mine was going to be coped back all along the left side edges to fit the curve of the stair riser and tread.  And that's what I did.  But not after spending more time online this afternoon than it really took to remind me how to set that blade . . .

OK, ok, no sympathy there.  Happily, I got the piece cut and it's not too bad, if you overlook a little messiness in the notch.  Never mind, it'll sit under the step nosing anyway.  And it'll fit to the riser better than the old piece did.

And I got the new stop mouldings for the window at the top of the steps cut to size (the old plastic ones that came with the replacement windows I threw out when I demounted the trim) and ready to sand and shellac.  The big pain in the rear this evening has been the plinth on the lefthand side of the bathroom door, next to the new piece I made today.  No matter what I do, even after spending a good hour or so chipping away at the plaster behind it, I can't get the piece of wood to sit flat to the wall.  Either it sticks out over ¼" too much at the top left, where the trim sits on it, or there's a ¼" gap behind it at the bottom right, where it's supposed to be snug to the face of the door frame.  I've checked the old photos, and yes, it was cockeyed before.  But that was when the trim was still painted.  Back then I was willing to put up with silliness on the assumption that it would all be straightened out Someday.

Maybe it would be, if I hadn't used Big Wally's to stabilize that plaster.  Rory B claims it changes and strengthens the composition of the plaster, and blasted it he isn't right.  It now holds together like plastic, even against the onslaught of my mason's bolster.  I still don't know exactly where the high point is.

But oh, well, I can report that after three tries, as of this past Sunday, my bedroom door frame is finally back up in such a way that the door closes-- without ridiculous gaps.  And as of last night most of the face trim is remounted in the 2nd floor hallway, barring some pieces that have to be recut or augmented.  So actual progress is being made.

I only wish I had decent pictures to show it.

And that I wasn't having very expensive and therefore futile second thoughts about hanging another William Morris wallpaper on the top part of the stairhall walls, instead of covering them with the faux finish paint . .  .

Look! Look!

Look what we have as of tonight!  William Morris "Blackthorn" wall paper on my very own front hall!  True, it took a friend coming all the way from the 'burbs of London to get it there, but there it is!  Look!  Look!

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'!