Scraping Along

What was the name of that instrument the Romans used to use to scrape the sweat and dirt off their bodies?

Oh, yeah, a strigil.  Pretty effective tool, a strigil.  If you didn't have soap and water, or if soap and water wouldn't do the job, a strigil was the tool for you.

But what's that got to do with preparing my dining room for repapering?

A lot.

Remember I said Monday that removing the old paste was a long, wet, messy, tedious job?  Well, it is.  And using only spray cleaner, a scrub brush, and an abrasive coated sponge, apparently an ineffective job, too.

I started on the east wall on Tuesday evening.  That's the wall that's clad in drywall.  Now, it's not like I've been working on this steadily since Sunday night.  I have other things to take care of, like work and gearing up a new used laptop computer.  I do what I can on the walls, and leave what I must for later.

Anyway, either I was deceiving myself on how well the old paste came off the plastered north wall, or it was thicker on the drywall or the drywall holds it more.  I know I was scrubbing and scrubbing and it was still sticky and gooey.  The Simple Green was not working.  The brush and sponge just spread the goop around.

So, back to first principles.  What is the time-honored way to loosen and dissolve old wallpaper paste?  A 50-50 mix of vinegar and warm water, of course.  And if the sponge is leaving the wet residue on the wall, well, time to start scraping.

Like with a strigil.  Or in this case, a plastic wallpaper smoother.

Spray, spray, spray.  Scrub, scrub, scrub.  Scrape, scrape, scrape.  Rinse, rinse, rinse.  Wipe, wipe, wipe.

Oh, my.  It's scary how much pasty glop accumulates on the edge of that scraper.  Once, twice, three times I have to repeat the procedure on each yard-square area of the wall, before I can even begin to fool myself into thinking it's no longer sticky and the paste is gone.

I'm still working on that one east wall with the drywall.  I'm barely half done with the room, if that.  And if I have to go back and redo (scrape) the walls I already have done, I'll wish I had a few of those sweaty Romans around to help me out, strigils and all.

Well, That's Done

By which I mean the dining room wallpaper stripping, as of around 11:30 last night.

Went on and scrubbed the mill dirt off the plaster around some of the windows, too.  That and general cleaning to remove the old paste and any remaining bits of wallpaper backing will go on for a bit, as it's a long, wet, filthy, tedious job.  If one could enchant a broom into bringing endless buckets of clean water (à la The Sorcerer's Apprentice), it'd be tempting to consider making it happen.

Before cleaning

There's probably lead dust in that bucket, considering the plant a little way up the river.

Clean.  Relatively-speaking.

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.

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.

Amendments to the List

I'm making progress on the preliminary work for getting the water filter and softener in.  But there's a couple of steps I needed to add to the list.

Like washing down the walls and floor with TSP then rinsing it off. (Yeah, duh, simply spraying on the mildewcide over the dead mildew would not get me a good paint job.)

That's done, not without a lot of slop and mess.  Slop happens.  Slop gets mopped.

Then I failed to account for this rough place in the floor next to the west wall.  By the time I got it good and scrubbed, I saw that the concrete had spalled there, as much as an inch or more deep.  Was it like that when I moved in seven years ago?  I don't remember.  But considering that there's no loose material in the depression, and observing the lay of the red, gray, and green floor paints in the bottom of the "crater," I'd say it's been there for a long time.  (You see me convincing myself I have no current water infiltration problem.).

Regardless of its history, the spalled place was there.  "Was" being the operative term, because I patched it.  Mixed up too much Sak-Crete; not sure how I miscalculated so badly, and too bad it was after dark and I couldn't use the leftovers for the holes in the sidewalk outside.

The patch is level and smooth enough for basement floor work.  I`ll let it dry for a day or two, until it turns white.  So there's another task added to the list, and ticked off.

Add this item, too:  Rooting around in the paint cupboard in the workshop.  If I'm lucky, my previous owners will have left me a can of the basement wall white paint.  If I'm even luckier, it'll be usable.

On the other hand, I'm deleting the items about cleaning up and repainting the whole laundry room floor at this juncture.  Yes, it needs it.  But it's not directly relevant to getting the new water treatment system installed.  I'll just paint the bit of the floor where the new equipment will sit.  That'll do for now.

But First . . .

My new water treatment equipment has arrived.  It was unloaded around 12:20 PM last Thursday the 2nd by a nice Pitt-Ohio delivery man who took all three humongous cartons down the basement and set them in the laundry room for me.  From the previous post on the subject, you'd think it should have got here by the 21st or so of May.  But no, I spent a good two weeks cogitating on how I was going to pay for it, and didn't finalize the order (online) till late on Memorial Day evening.  (Two and a half day order processing and delivery turnaround.  Chalk up points for the Ohio Pure Water Company.)

Yesterday, I borrowed a blowtorch, some solder, and some flux from my friend Steve*.  Immediately, now, you'd think I'd be running up to Lowe's and purchasing the right tubing, elbows, T-joints, and any other needed supplies.


Wish I could.  But first, I need to

• Scrape the walls in the corner where the old softener was, to remove the hard bubbled paint off the bricks where the high humidity got in and lifted it.
• Scrape any loose paint off the floor where the old WS was (the floor was wet when I pulled it away).
• Use the shop vac to clean up the debris.
• Use an anti-mildew agent to kill the mold in the remaining paint, then let it dry.
• Slap a coat of Kilz or B.I.N.s over any bare bricks.
• Give the floor in the WS corner a good washing.  Let it dry.
• Give the floor in the corner a coat of Kilz or B.I.N.s.
• Realize, O carp, there's no point in repainting just that corner when other parts of the laundry room floor need redoing, too.
• Figure out how to take the old water softener apart so I can get at the resin tank and empty it.
• Take the old water softener apart so I can get at the resin tank and empty it.
• Use the shop vac to suck the resin and water out of the old resin tank.  Drain off water and dispose of resin in the trash (it's just plastic and nontoxic).
• Once it's light enough for me to carry it, get the old WS out of the basement.
• Make sure all the piles of laundry, jugs of laundry aids, buckets, cat litter pans, boxes, etc., are out of the way.
• Wash all the laundry room floor.  Let it dry.
• Give the floor, especially the corner that still flaunts the previous owners' old red and gray paint jobs, a nice coat of pale green floor paint.  Put up a gate so the cats don't track in it.  Wait 24 hours. 
• Give the floor a second coat of green paint.  Wait another 24 hours.

Then I can move the new backwash filter and the new water softener into place and start measuring for copper pipe.  (I think that while I've got the primer out I'm going to label the system as it exists so I don't end up softening the water that goes to the basement toilet and sending all the untreated junk to the water heater.)  By the time I finish the list above and can head to Lowe's, maybe I'll get lucky and Steve will find his big pipe cutter gadget.  One less thing to buy.

Hoping to get the scraping, mildrew-removal, and priming done before I go to bed tonight.

But first, I have to plan worship for the church I'm supplying this Sunday.  But first!

Welcoming the Guest

A big incentive for me to get a lot of work done on the house this summer is the impending arrival of a guest on the 2nd of September. She's an old friend from Kansas City who'll be staying with me for nearly a week, while we both attend the North American Festival of Wales in downtown Pittsburgh.

My dream was to get at least the 1st and second floor halls and their stairs done, with the upper walls painted and the lower walls papered and the refinished trim around and in between. And, if things had gone well, to have both sets of stairs and the 2nd floor hall wood floor refinished. And maybe the new ceramic tile on the 1st floor installed as well.

Alas, alas! It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen. What with plaster disasters in June and locating ingredients for the shellac and my pathological perfectionism with the faux finish, I am Nowhere Near That. Not at all.

So I'm taking myself in hand and concentrating on what absolutely has to be done to assure that Ruth* has clean, comfortable places to eat, sleep, and bathe, and that the obstacle course that usually encumbers the Sow's Ear is cleared away well enough so she won't break her leg manuevering between them.

The place to sleep, first. Earlier this month I finally finished repairing the guest bedroom closet back wall where the plumber attempted to get at the bathroom sink piping last February. Repainted it using the base and glaze colors I got for my kitchen five years ago. Yep, another faux finish, but combed this time, so it looks like faded denim. I think it came out rather well.

With that accomplished, I was able to reinstall the shelving and rods and put away all the closet contents that'd been lying for months on the guest bed. So once I've done a little more cleaning, the guest bedroom should be fine.

What about the bathroom? About a week and a half ago, I completed the process of repairing and repainting the plaster ceiling in the main bathroom. I'd hoped the cracks I'd been semi-ignoring over the bathtub were just in the paint or the finish layer, but nope, the whole piece of plaster was coming unkeyed and had to be dealt with. Got out the Big Wally's and secured the plaster back on . . . but for nearly a week I put off sanding the joint compound I used to fill the holes. Oh, gosh, I hate sanding! I actually preferred to live with the plastic drop cloth over the linen cabinet and the bathtub! The red metal step stool living in the bathtub! The toiletries moved into the guest bedroom against the time the sanding would actually get done!

But as I said, I screwed my courage to the sticking point and got the repaired bathroom ceiling sanded, primed, and painted by a week ago Saturday, and as soon as I figure out how to remove the newspaper I stuck to the top of the linen cabinet with the slops of the Big Wally's conditioner, the upstairs bathroom will be nearly in a condition to receive a guest.

However, I have no shower in my upstairs bath. The only one in the house is in the basement, and Ruth may want to use it. But it's been two years since I renewed the paint over the concrete shower pan, and it was worn and mildewed. Not nice for her, not nice for me, not nice for anyone. Yesterday's project, then, was to begin to rectify that. Shower pan and bathroom floor scrubbed with mildewcide, Simple Green, and then TSP; let it dry, then a coat of primer. Earlier this evening, the shower got a first coat of porch floor paint; second one goes on tomorrow, but it looks more civilized already.

While I was at it, I mounted a shelf unit given me by a neighbor who moved to Florida in July. It'll do fine.

That left another massive task for the basement. It needed cleaned. Badly. I was starting to run into things trying to get to the downstairs shower.

Besides, it had to be straightened and vacuumed before I can start shellacking my wood trim down there. So Monday evening and into the wee hours of Tuesday, that was dealt with.

Looks a little better, eh?

Now if I can only keep from obsessing about the least little wisp of cat hair I find on the stairs between now and next Wednesday . . .

Running Ahead

The appraiser who's supposed to tell the bank if my house qualifies me for the new and improved home equity line of credit was due sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 this afternoon.

At 2:15, I'm down in the basement bathroom, trying to figure out how to work the tension shower curtain rod my POs left me--I've been using it the past four years, but every time I take it down, I can't get it back up without it and the curtain falling onto the floor at least twice.

Which it was doing now. I could hear my dog barking upstairs, but he sometimes does that, at whatever or whomever passes on the street. So I ignored him, because the appraiser was due at 3:00.

But Llewellyn kept up the racket, and at last, I thought I'd better go look.

It was the appraiser, at the door. "Hi, I'm Ernie*, from XYZ Realty!"

"I wasn't expecting you till 3:00," I replied in my adrenalin-fueled, sleep-deprived, stretched-to-the-limit ungraciousness.

"I know," admitted Ernie cheerfully. "I'm running ahead today!"

He certainly was. He went out front to take his pictures and measurements, while I did a quick sweep through the house picking up dust cloths and stashing the vacuum cleaner. And I swear it was no more than four or five minutes before he appeared back in the house. He got started in the front room, and I dashed down the basement to quickly get the shower curtain up and stayed up, and to move the more egregious obstacles out of the way. Thinking to return and answer questions upstairs.

But in a minute or two, I heard his footsteps on the basement stairs. "I see you're renovating the woodwork upstairs," he commented. (Is this bad because of the current mess, or good in prospect?) Barely glanced in the door at my lovely shower floor painting job. Said, "Nice dry basement." Which I suppose is true if by that he means the floor's not creeping with rivulets and puddles. (Never mind the mold I scrubbed night before last off the brick.)

Escorted him up to the second and third floors. A quick glance here; a floppy-tape measurement there. There were spaces he seemed about to skip till I advanced and opened their doors. Is he such a pro he can take everything in at a glance? Or is basic structure and dimensions all he (and the bank) cares about? Or was he scamping the job? (Oh, surely not!)

At nearly the last minute, Ernie asked me what improvements I've made to the house since I bought it four years ago. And in all the hurry, damned if I could remember everything I should have!

This was not the detailed process I was led to expect. I won't venture to say exactly how many minutes the inspection took, but it wasn't that many and he was out the door. After the past week of cleaning and painting and grouting and hauling, it was very anticlimactic! Did this past week's effort make no difference one way or the other-- or will, for instance, the stair carpet the cat spilled paint on back in 2003, that I didn't have time to rip up, come back to haunt me?

I'll find out in a few days.

Meanwhile, congratulate me: I did not collapse immediately after Ernie the appraiser left. I went back down cellar and finished the job I was doing when he so inconveniently interrupted.

No, I collapsed after an early supper and spent this evening reading other people's houseblogs. I'll get back to the battle tomorrow. Tonight, as my grandmother used to say, I'm too pooped to pop.

_________________________________________

*Made-up name

Don't Let Me Cuss!!

In his office, my Architecture school dean kept a drawing done by one of his small children. It was a passable portrait of himself, and in the speech balloon was written the plea, "Don't let me cuss!" Seems he tended to let it rip in front of the kids, and his son had drawn the picture to remind him not to.

Me, I don't have any kids to shelter from my bad language. But I don't want to cuss in front of myself, because that'd put me in a cussed state of mind and things are cussed enough as it is.

Though, under the circumstances--!!!

Here I have this appraiser coming. And the basement bathroom didn't look so good, especially not the shower. I don't know about you, this appraiser, or anyone else, but when I'm looking at a house, a dirty, scabby basement bathroom is a prime turn-off.

Here's the basement bathroom shower pan just before I moved in:*

Here's how nice it looked after I painted the concrete floor:*

But alas, here's how the shower looked four years later. I did my best in 2003 to prepare the surface, but under ongoing wet conditions the floor paint hasn't adhered 100%.

And then there were the rust stains on the grout. Disgusting.

So this evening I tackled the job. I intended only to clean off the iron stains and mold and touch up the bare spots after. I used a rust-removing cleaner on the grout joints. And I sprayed the tile down with a high-powered hose nozzle I bought this afternoon.

The tile now looks pretty good.

But the painted floor is a disaster. The reactive cleaner and the high-powered spray between them lifted most of the rest of the paint off, in some places down to the bare concrete.

Damn! Looks like something died on it, doesn't it?

Wouldn't be so awful if the paint were all gone, or if it were all stable. But it's not. A lot of what remains is loose underneath but I can't get it up with the wire brush or the scraper. Only spray, spray, and more spray does it, and I was already soaking wet and the bathroom and basement floor was getting flooded and my dear POs (whichever set of them it was that built this bathroom enclosure) didn't bring the wall tile all the way down to the concrete floor in the bathroom proper, and the standing water was already wicking up that half inch of exposed drywall and right up the wall. So I gave up for the night.

I hate it, but I think this calls for a half-assed, stop-gap job. Once the shower floor's dry, run over it one more time with the wire brush and the shop vac, then slam down a coat of primer and a couple coats of floor paint, just so it looks good. And hope the appraiser doesn't go stand in the shower, since this floor paint can't be walked on with shoes for seven days after.

Stop-gap is really what's called for. My plan is to put in unglazed ceramic mosaic. But I can't do that until something's done about the moisture that's seeping through the outside walls. I have an appointment with a waterproofing company rep on the 9th. The ironic thing is, if I can get the house appraised higher, I can get a bigger line of credit and I could swing getting the waterproofing done right away. But if the house looks in too much need of work, the line will be lower and I won't be able to do it!

(Did I cuss a couple of times up there? Yeah, guess I did. Damn.)________________________________________

*I forgot. I took those photos with the 35mm. I'll have to remember where I put the prints and scan them in.

Playing Queen Dragonfly in My Own Little Realm

This is going to be one of those self-indulgent posts that's more about keeping a record of what I have (or haven't accomplished) than about supplying edifying content for the Houseblogs community at large.

When we last saw our heroine early on the morning of the 19th, she was whingeing about the failure of a certain paint stripper to deliver on its promises-- or about her own inability to take advantage of its glorious potential.

Well. Later that day, I called a friend who took down and refinished all the wood trim in his house. How easy is that, I wondered, vs. doing it in situ?

Oh, much easier. And if you crack it, you can just kind of nail or glue it back together. If it isn't too badly cracked, that is.

Oh. Right.

So I made one little experiment into taking the trim down, the first since I tried it a year or two ago and ended up with a grievous crack in one piece. I think you'll agree that this casing, at least, needs to be taken down and reerected anyway. It's crooked, and there's a gap between the trim and the wall that's as wide as an quarter inch in some places. All filled with spackle or some other rock-hard goop.

It's got something to do with the front room and its conversion from a front porch. I'm not sure when or how this was done, but it wasn't the neatest job in the world.

So I took down one piece. One. And hammered out the nails. Then a friend came by and that was that.

Until later that evening, like, after midnight, when I finished removing the stinky old beige carpet from the first floor-second floor stairs. In time for Friday morning trash pickup, again.

I rather like this little detail on the bottom tread; so simple and elegant, the way it curves into the newell post.But alas, the edge of the curve is a butchered mess. I wish I'd counted how many staples it had in it. Little copper staples from the green plush carpet laid by the POs-1. Big steel staples from the beige berber carpet the POs put down. Staples, staples; staples on top of staples. It was a staple convention, a staple infestation! I was using a hooked dental pick to pull them out, and constantly rammed my knuckles on the hallway floor every time another vicious bit of pointed wire came away. You know how people simper about not cussing around the clergy? I must have tramatized my sanctified ears sadly, with all the cussing I was doing around my reverend self--Lord help me!

And Lord help this stair tread. I know I'll have plenty of use for wood filler here and there as I de-beige this house, but this piece will call for genuine wood filler artistry.

Friday proper was devoted to the lawn and garden. Nothing exciting, just mowing, mulching, weed-pulling, herbicide-painting on the spurge in the cobblestone path of the vegetable garden; that sort of thing.

Saturday, ah, yes, Saturday, I tackled the back porch. My POs used it as a lovely social space, with a glass-topped table and cushioned chairs and all the rest of it. Me, I've let it degenerate into a dumping ground:

It took all day and into the night to bring it to this:

No, that is not my idea of a great furniture arrange-ment. What you see there with the Adirondack furniture is another Project. Those pieces all need scraped, primed, and painted. I even have the paint. Now I have the room to do it. Let the games begin.

The hilarious thing is that now that the porch looks halfway nice (for the first time in almost three years), I keep going out there with the vacuum cleaner to keep it that way.

Don't worry. I'll get over it.

Tomorrow I'm off to Athens, New York, for the three-day lime plaster restoration workshop at Howard Hall Farm. I'll try to report on it when I get back.

(I'm not averse to doing it while the seminar's in progress, but out of the three laptops I own, not one is capable of a reliable hookup to the Internet. At least, I don't think so . . . )