Starting Over Is Not an Option

With one sealer coat only

So today I'm tackling the shellac job on the inside face of my front door.

I hoped to be able to do it with the door hanging and not risk scratching the new finish on the exterior as I heave it on and off the sawhorses.  But I couldn't keep the sealer coat from dripping as I brushed it on, no matter how careful I tried to be. About the fastest way to ruin a tinted shellac job is to let it get dripped on at any stage, and I had to give in and demount the door again.

And wasn't that the way I did the back door four years ago?  Of course, that meant I had to sit down for a half hour or more reading 2012 entries in this blog to see if that was so.  And if it was, how did I manage not to do any damage to the shellac job on the exterior?  I distinctly remember having the door laid out on the sawhorses on the back porch, sanding the first coat of wine-red paint off the interior face because it didn't flow out.  I'm pretty sure I had the outside done before that . . . or did I?  Never found a post that told me what I wanted to know.  But I sure managed to eat up a good chunk of time I could have been working on this project now.

Old towels and painter's tape

A little after 6:00 I faced the inevitable and gave the sawhorses some extra padding.  I think I managed to manoeuvre the door onto them without destroying my previous work; I'll have to check in the daylight.  But finally, I was getting something done.

. . . The nice thing about shellac is that for the first coats at least, you only have to wait fifteen minutes to a half hour for it to dry.  But here it is nearly midnight, and I'm nowhere near the six or seven coats I hoped to lay down today.  No, I'm sitting writing this entry while waiting for the fourth coat of shellac to harden up, and the cold night air (59̊ F) is wafting in through the open windows and the screen door and freezing me out.  It would have been really nice if I'd gotten this door face done for good and all, but I'm falling asleep over the laptop and I don't see it happening.

I should probably wait for daylight to continue, anyway.  I put way too much mahogany dye in too-thin a mixture of the Kusmi #1 button lac I dissolved yesterday, and this fresh batch of dye is stronger than what I used on the outside of the door.  So with only two coats of tinted shellac and two of clear, the inside of the door is already darker than I planned it to be.  (It took nine coats on the exterior to get the same tone.)

This is what happens when
your shellac is too dark
and too thin

And the topmost panel is all blotchy, and I can't depend on more coats of tinted shellac to even it out.  Carp, carp, carp.

Not sure what I'm going to do to solve it.  Starting over is not an option.

ADDENDUM:  Around 12:30 AM I gave in to reality and rehung the door and called it a night.  I'll look at it tomorrow after church and if that panel is still as ugly as I think it is now, I may have at it with the orbital sander and try again.  But that panel only.  I don't have the shellac on hand for a complete redo.

But I'm wondering what it would have looked like had I not tinted the shellac at all.  Too late now.

Eating the Elephant

Last January when I generated my "To Do in 2016" list I broke each project down by task, however small.  (What is it they say about eating the elephant bite by bite?)

But now that I'm in the throes of redoing my front room, I find I left some obvious steps out.  Other steps that I had rejected I've put back in, and there are tasks to complete that I had no idea about seven months ago.

Beginning with something that was always on the list:

• As much as it goes against my conscience, I'm going to paint the woodwork in the front room.  

Yes, even after I've stripped it. In that room the old dark woodwork is depressingly heavy, not elegant.  It's a sun room, really, with ten windows plus the glass in the door.  It should be fresh and full of light.  I'd thought of reshellacking the trim a paler shade, but it'd be too similar to the gold-toned wall paint I have in mind.  And now that I've worked at it for awhile, I know it'd take way more time and effort and wood refinisher to clean up that woodwork than I physically have.  So despite the inner voice whispering that it's immoral to paint over old woodwork, that's what I will do.

• I ended up stripping the paint off the exterior door frame.

Why on earth didn't I realize I was going to have to do that?  That's what happened four years ago when I redid the back entry door, only that time it was from the outdoors in.  I mean, just try aiming the heatgun at the inner woodwork only, and not have the outer trim paint start to bubble and swell.

The great thing is that it came off beautifully.  Seven or eight hours straight I put into that, totally on a roll.  

And joy of joys, while doing the exterior I found the possible answer to a question that's been nagging me for years.  In some future, dreamlike time when I have the money, I'd like to replace the 1980s-vintage aluminum windows.  But, I wondered, did the Previous Owners Minus One leave the original brickmould hiding under the metal trim, or did they pry it off and throw it away? Brickmould is scary expensive.  I found that out when I had to buy new to go around the renovated back door.

But there above my front door, until now overlooked, I discovered the original brickmould.  And it continues under the metal cladding on each side; they didn't cut it off.  If it still exists there, isn't that a good sign it's still there everywhere else?

• I told myself I wasn't going to demount any of the front room woodwork to strip it. 

I changed my mind on that when I saw how difficult it was going to be to clean up the lintel above the front door and sidelights.  And realized how much easier it will be to strip the muntin casings to the left and right of the door while they're down.

I may pull down the muntin casings on the front and west sides as well.  Since I'm painting the woodwork the cracks don't have to be as clean as if I were shellacking.  But if it's too gross in there, they'll likely come down, too.

I can't demount the side casings--- the POs-1 covered the plaster with 1/2" drywall and the wall surface is nearly flush with the trim.  Try getting those casings off without destroying the wall!

• As I noticed when I took down the door lintel, I've got a job ahead of me with drywall tape and spackle before I can paint.  

As in the kitchen, it looks like they used wallpaper in lieu of drywall tape. Fortunately I've got tape and joint compound.  Or I do, if the latter hasn't gone moldy.

• I'm also going to have to retape the joints in the ceiling, and paint over the repair.

I don't know what the ceiling was like after they converted the porch back in 1932 or so.  Beadboard, maybe?  But my POs-1 put up sheetrock, and the joints are a mess.  (Funny how for years you don't notice things . . . )  I have to take care of it before I paint.

I'll try to pull off a sample of the old ceiling paint and match it on our laser scanner at the store.  I'd rather get a quart to match instead of having to repaint the whole darn thing.

• I'm going to wait to prime until I have the wallpaper stripped and any holes in the drywall patched.

I mean, why not?  It'll be the same primer for everything, so why not do it all at once?

Getting into Gear

See this?

That's my pretty Christmas tree from last December.  That's also the ugly front room it's standing in.  That room's been ugly for years, and in a flurry of planning and resolution-making in January I determined that by this coming Yuletide it will be redone.

But with twelve or twenty other projects to pursue and with my limited spare time during the school year, nothing was going to get done on the front room until summer.

Summer came, and other projects still took priority.  Nagging, guilt-inducing-if-I-didn't-do-them projects.  Besides, I had three long, lazy, open months ahead of me.  There was plenty of time for the front room.

But early in the morning the 24th of June I got bored of doing accounts and sorting paperwork.  I rebelled.  I fetched the heatgun, the scrapers, and my leather gloves up from the basement and had at the stubborn, stuck paint on the sidelight to the left of the front door. The light was bad and I only scraped a little, but it was something.

The next afternoon I carried on with something even more rewarding--- stripping the paint off the outside of the front door.

I guess that puts me past the point of no return, since I can't have a bare door once the fall rains come.

The 4th of July, I had at it again, and made good progress before time to go to work that evening.

Lovely, the way the old paint came off in ribbons under the 1200 watt heat.

Still, I had a boatload of other, crucial, non-house projects to finish.  And I intend to self-publish my first novel by the end of this month, and had to get busy starting my little publishing company to do it properly.  Then the linkage on the gear shift on my car went out and I had to replace the bushings (yeah, did it myself, with a neighbor's help).  And the garden needed worked on.  And the yard kept needing mowed, which takes forever with a corded mower.  And I lost a day reporting for jury duty.  Then came the scare with the refrigerator freezer. And now one or more of my cats has decided they'd rather pee on plastic bags, shoes, rags, or even the bare floor more than in the litter box, meaning I'm playing constant catch-up trying to get rid of the stink.  And so forth and so on.

As I said in my last point, the end of July I got fed up with not being able to get the refrigerator cabinet down and marched in and stripped the rest of the outside of the front door.  Got a little more done on the inside trim the next day.

And there the project sat . . . until I dropped by the Walmart one night after my shift at the Big Blue Box Store.  I ran into a gaggle of my students--- that is, some kids I sub teach for--- and they greeted me enthusiastically.

I didn't recall any of their names (Sadly, I never can.  There are too many of them).  To get past the awkwardness I asked:

"So, when does school start?"

"In three weeks."

Three weeks!!!??? Where did the summer go!?  Panic!  Hurry!  Run and get myself in gear!  Quick, get things done!

Which I have.  It's a "good" time to do it, as my hours at the store have been cut to three nights a week.  I truly took advantage of that last Wednesday, and I plan to tell you All About It.  But if I spend any more time today working on this blog I won't get any house renovation done.