Modern Euphemisms: Recycling

Inspired by Elaine at Bless This DIY Mess, I decided to do a little dumpster diving-- ahem! I mean, recycling of my own first thing this morning.

Funny that I hadn't thought of it before. The elderly couple across the alley is moving out to a smaller home, with the intermittent help of various family members. For the past week they've had a full-sized dumpster out back of their house, being filled with all sorts of things. My eyes rolled over it every time I took the dog out to do his business, but I never bothered to investigate.

But this morning I went across to have a closer look-see.

Hmmm, what have we here? Two perfectly good picnic benches. I'd noticed them poking out before, but assumed they were both broken. But no. Just unwanted.

Me, I don't need two picnic benches. Not without a picnic table, anyway. At any rate, one of them was buried too deep for me to remove. But the other . . . it looked manageable, and it'd make a good low scaffold for taking down long pieces of doorway trim for stripping.

The bench was tilted up with one end above the rim of the dumpster and the other submerged in and under a lot of other stuff: Miscellaneous loose and outdated books on junior college subjects of no interest to me. A big black trash bag, torn, full of toiletries about to spill out. A funny oak chair missing a back slat. A small wooden outdoor table painted the same color as the picnic benches. A big piece of scabby plywood over on top of it all. I lifted the plywood, shifted the books, scootched the chair, managed to roll the bag of toiletries over without dumping it on the ground, and pulled out the little table and claimed it as my first prize. Then with an effort of shifting, pushing, and pulling, I finally got the picnic bench up and out and down on the ground.

I don't know what the rules are around here on dumpster-diving, but I felt a little sneaky as I picked up the bench and got it inside my fence and into the house.

However unsettled I felt, it didn't keep me from going back across the alley this afternoon and pulling out that funny oak chair, missing slat and all. The legs and seat are basically solid and I've decided it'll look cute on my back porch.

It's a church chair, as I realized when I saw the hymnbook rack on its back, and the dowel shelf underneath. Appropriate, since its now-former owner is a retired Methodist minister. Well, it's gone over to the Presbyterians now-- it must have been predestined!

At any rate, isn't recycling a modern virtue?

It's Progress, Ain't It?

Here I am again, come to announce (trumpets, please!) that I have Three More Pieces of Woodwork Stripped. Which brings me to 53 out of 330, or 16%.

Well, whoopty-do and wallop me with a cornpone, as some down-home philosopher I've just made up never said.

It doesn't sound impressive, does it? Or worth blogging about.

But I started this blog a year ago to document whatever progress I made fixing up the house, as an incentive to keep me making it. What's the point if I don't use the blog for its purpose?

Besides, these were three big, important pieces of wood trim. They're the inner jamb and header facings of the "archway" between the living room and dining room. They're the ones I didn't dare take down, because the plaster was so fragile I was afraid the whole house might collapse if I pried them free.

So they had to be stripped in place, with me sometimes working blind, with the floors protected the best I could with contractor paper, a plastic-backed drop cloth, and newspapers over it. I'm sure I've got some stripper spots on the fake Pergo, though. Rubbing that runny Western Wood Doctor refinisher on with steel wool can send the drips flying, whatever care I take.

I did the heat stripping part of the job Sunday evening. And managed to hold fire with the heat gun until I'd cleared out the excelsior and bits of Kleenex that various past owners had stuffed into the space above the header trim. I can sort of understand what the nose tissue was doing-- I suppose it makes a feasible backer material, if your mind runs that way-- but the excelsior I don't get at all. It didn't even pretend to be mixed with the plaster. It was just lying there.
Anyway, tonight (blast it, do I have to say "last night and early this morning"?) I got the pieces cleaned of their old finish, and that is progress. Even if I did run through three right-hand rubber gloves doing it. On one jamb I'm left with the mark where I removed the POs'-1 quasi-Victorian decorative bracket, and a piece of the trim came off with it. I'm hoping I can get the new finish dark enough to even that out.

That, however, is something I'll concern myself with down the road. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and all that sort of thing.

Help Wanted

Oh, gosh, is it 2:45 AM again already?

No joy today-- yesterday-- Saturday-- whatever--borrowing a neighbor's large pry bar and/or a neighbor to help me finish getting the first long baseboard piece off the north dining room wall. The likely candidates seemed all to be out frivoling.

Me, I did not frivol. I got busy doing something else.

Like pop the plastic window stops out of the casings in the dining room. As I was at it, I got confirmation (if any was needed) that the metal replacement windows were put in by the POs-1:

This wasn't a bad or difficult job. Removing that plastic trim from three windows today (yesterday!) took a lot less time than removing the first two pieces had from the first window one or two years ago.

And I figured out that if you hold your wide-blade spackle knife between the woodwork and the pry bar, the woodwork doesn't get quite so dented.

With the plastic trim off, I was able to see that on the double west window, at least, the jamb and header facings are of 1x material, not 2x as I'd thought. Maybe after all I can take all that down and strip it in the basement, too. It needs it, since you can see about 3/8" along their outer edges, all the way around, and it's simply caked with paint.

Removed one header facing piece. Cracked a bit; I'd have to glue it, and ultimately did.

Not sure now why I didn't pull down any more. Maybe because I was contemplating the jamb facing pieces and got to wondering if the one in the middle sat on the window stool, or ran down behind it. So it seemed good to find out if the stool could be easily removed. I mean, last winter I had the idea, somehow, that that piece extended way in, such that if I were even able to get it out, I'd see daylight under my windows. No idea why I'd think that, I just did.

But I was wrong, and happy to be wrong. Once the caulk bead between the back of the stool and the front of the window case was removed, the stool came away easily.

Well, mostly. I found it was nailed to a couple of pieces of . . . okay, don't tell me, I know what it's called, I've drawn enough wood window details in my day . . . Well, frankly, it looks like blocking to me, and it came away along with the stool, and not in too great a condition, either.

(This material I may replace with new when I put the trim back together. It's not visible or anything.)

Still, that wasn't too hard! I went to pry off the stools at the two dining room piano windows, too.

But they wouldn't budge. Tried taking a mallet to them and trying to knock them upward. No go.

And I looked at all those windows and really, I need to take them out to strip the jambs and headers, even if I can't replace them with double-glazed historically-appropriate wood sash just now; and if I am going to replace them, I have to take out the existing metal units, temporarily at least, to get an idea of the existing conditions so I can design the new windows properly. And even the little ones look heavy.

At this point a major case of frustration set in, hard and congested as old putty. After four straight days of working on this, I Just Didn't Want to Anymore. It wasn't the simple frustration of laziness, it was the sick frustration of realizing how much I've still got ahead of me on this job and how much of it will involve muscle I haven't got and, oh, damn, what's the use??

So I went outside and tied up tomatoes and pulled weeds and fiddled about with the lawn sprinkler and liquid fertilizer in the new pump sprayer till nearly 9:00 PM. After a bite of supper (featuring homegrown green beans), it was down the basement to strip the two pieces of trim removed today (aka yesterday).

Had the double window stool about 2/3 done when I 1) ran out of stripper in one gallon can and went to get another, and 2) noticed that my right index finger was feeling wet and funny.

Oh, bugger, the finger's worn out on the expensive rubber gloves I looked all over for and bought last spring! What could I do?

What any sensible DIYer would do at that hour-- mend the finger with duct tape.

And mended it again, when the stripper melted the glue on the first mend.

So there you go. Two more pieces stripped, to bring the tally to 50.

But I do, certainly do, have to figure out where I can get some help on this. Preferably someone I can bribe with free fresh vegetables.

Sometimes You Gotta Wait

Last night (meaning some time in the wee hours of this morning), I got the four pieces of dining room baseboard I removed yesterday stripped. Three shorts and one long. That makes, I believe, 48 pieces done in all, out of the 330 I tallied last January (not counting doors, floors, and stairs).

Doing them, I couldn't help but notice the charming pry bar marks I've left in the top edges. Couldn't help making them; that's what it took to get the trim off the walls; but oh, lord! What a joke it is on oneself to lambaste the clumsiness or outright butchery of previous owners, and realize that klutziness like this will rise up someday to accuse you, too!

And this afternoon I had enough to accuse previous owners of, and myself as well. This mid-afternoon, all virtue-bedecked, I set out to pry off the first of the twelve foot long baseboards in the dining room. I knew there'd be somewhat of a challenge, since yesterday I discovered that when the POs-1 (I think) resurfaced the east dining room wall with sheetrock, they'd notched it over the baseboard trim on the south and north walls. But with a modicum of work, the short piece on the south wall came free.

I anticipated the same event on the north.

Wrong!!

For one thing, between the original builder's great scribing job and the humidity of summer, the piece is wedged tight at its west (left) end. Oh, and it's also cracked there. For another, its east, righthand end, appears to run into the wall, oh, at least an inch, inch-and-a-half. For aught I can tell, it goes half-way round the world and terminates in some mystical kingdom of ancient plaster dust and horsehair.

So now it was I justifying wanton house butchery, and delicacy be damned. I chistled out big hunks of sheetrock. I pried out pieces of furring strip. I yanked out a couple of drywall nails. Good grief, by now it should only be plaster that thing's abutting now, but it feels like it's hung up on a piece of wood!

Of course I know the baseboard's hung up on the stupid fake Pergo at the toe. That's no mystery.

The mystery is now I'm finally going to get this piece off.

I've taken my hacksaw and cut through the nails towards the top of the board. There's maybe three more, about 3/4" from the bottom, where I can't get the hacksaw to them. And I'm not strong enough to take the wire cutters to them. By dint of the prybar ("SCREEEEE!! SCREEEE!! SCREEEE!!" till my ears where ringing) I've got the piece at maybe a 60 degree angle, plenty of room left to go where I got rid of the drywall and furring, but still stopped cold by something.

So around 3:30, I stopped cold, too. And had some ice cream. I shall have to borrow a bigger pry bar, or someone stronger than I to wield it, or both. And since my near neighbors all seem to be having parties or to be out this evening, that will have to wait.

Things I Need to Consider

Last night before last (meaning early this morning), while basking in the virtue of having gotten some woodwork stripping done, I lay in my bed wondering what pieces needed to be taken down and done next.

And the facts confronted me, stolid and grim: The long baseboard pieces in the dining room have to be done now, in the summer, while I can still strip them if need be on the back porch.

So this afternoon, I took up spear and cudgel-- I mean hammer, five-in-one, and pry bar-- and set to work.

But as I am a sensible being (mostly), I started with the shorter baseboard pieces, in the walls with the doorways. This was not a means of avoiding work. No. These pieces on the south wall are the ones with the electrical outlets in them. And for the baseboard to come off, the outlets had to be disconnected and pulled out.

Happily, by now I know which circuit they're on-- the same one that controls the basement lights and all the outlets in the house, except the ones in the kitchen and the third floor study. Turning it off decommissioned all the phones except for the one up in the heavenlies-- lovely when you're expecting a call back from a job search committee chairman and you run all the way up to find it was only a telemarketer. And so nice to have to reset all the clock radios once the power is back on. But we make these sacrifices for Art.

What was not at all artistic was how these two outlets are wired. It's not just that the wiring is only one notch up from knob-and-tube, it's also that on one of them, the clever improver back in the '40s or whenever neglected to put the bloody mess in a box.

Oh, golly, don't I feel safe?!

Five years ago when I was purchasing the Sow's Ear, the electrical inspector hired by my real estate agent said these outlets needed attention because they weren't grounded. But redoing them would only cost $250, he estimated, well under the $500 floor set by the sales contract that would've required my sellers to deal with it. I was 900 miles away in Kansas City when this inspection took place. So I do not know if this clever inspector was aware of the um, frugal job made of this particular recepticle.

But oh, damn, I'm aware of it now. And I shall have to get my electrician (not the same bloke) out to rectify matters.

But when? Before or after I get the trim stripped, replaced, and shellacked?

Or both?

Couldn't get him over today, that's for sure. So I pried the wires off the screws, pulled the recepticles free, wrenched off the baseboards, and then, using the photos I took along the way, replaced the old ivory outlets with brown ones that'll match the woodwork better. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing-- my dad was an electrician!

But I'll still feel happier if I can get Mr. Coffey out here soon to make a proper job of it.

But there's another thing I have to consider: When my previous owners put in the fake Pergo, they ran it up against the existing baseboard, then put quarterround over the crack. This made the baseboard pieces harder to remove.

But it also raises the question of how and whether I'm going to replace the laminate flooring with proper oak boards, and when. I'd really like to install the new floor under the baseboard, and dispense with the quarterround altogether. Seems it'd be a lot cleaner look. But I can't afford new flooring right now! And I don't want to wait to put the baseboards back until I can!

I shall have to figure this out. Meanwhile, I'm marking and saving the existing quarterround pieces, if I have to use it after all. I don't plan on stripping them, but they'll do for patterns for the new stain-grade material

Finely, Finely

I got some actual work on the house done.

As opposed to work in the garden.

Yeah, it's the same old project: Stripping the woodwork. Last night sometime after 9:00 PM, I said to myself, "What! You're wearing your nasty tan work jeans and an old ratty T-shirt, and yet again you're going to cash it in without taking up the trusty heat gun and the refinisher-dripping steel wool? Do you really want to live without trim for the next five years? Or turn down some dream job out of town because you're afraid you'd never be able to sell the house in the state it's in? Go below and work!"

So I did. Took the old paint and finish off nine more pieces of trim. All of them having been sitting in the basement since last March, I believe. True, some of those piece were pretty dinky (quarterround, anyone?), but they were in my count from last January, and so they, well, count.

Labored at it till nearly 3:30 AM. And cleaned up the floor so the kittehs won't get the dried paint goop in their pads and lick it off.

The clamps in the picture are me gluing a large sliver back on, where a nail wouldn't cooperate when I was removing it. Happily, it's on the back side. I'll worry about how the mend will look on the exposed edge, later.

But maybe I've got my woodwork stripping momentum back. Finally.

Oooh, Yummy!

. . . If you're an ant with a death wish.

Got a call about 8:40 this morning. It was Grover*, the pest control guy: "Hi, I know I'm supposed to come on Monday, but I've had a cancellation this morning, is it all right if I come now?"

Oh, sure, sure. Sooner the ants get out of my kitchen, my woodpile, and my life, the better.

So in about a half hour, Grover* appeared in his bright red truck wearing his bright red shirt, and, after duly saluting my dog, went to work in the back garden laying down some kind of super-pyrethrum ant bait.

While I proceeded to feed the animals and clean out the litter boxes and do my usual morning routine.

When all of a sudden it hit me: Oh my gosh, he's going to need to put ant bait in my pantry and the shelves are sticky dirty filthy!

All right, it's not supposed to be that way. But cooking oil and honey and Worcester-shire sauce have a way of, well, migrating. And leaving their marks on the shelves. And the idea is that the ants take the bait, not keep hanging out in their traditional local, Ye Olde Honey Staine.

So I frantically got to work unloading the shelves and wiping them down, hoping I could get it done before Grover* finished outside so I wouldn't hold up the show. And wiping down the counters and backsplashes so they could be treated, too.

He was kind of treading on my toes as I finished up, but I had the kitchen ready in time. This is what the bait looks like in the pantry:

It comes out of a little plunger tube, like clear toothpaste. And the ants, as you can see, find it deelicious.

Too bad for them, little buggers. It doesn't kill them immediately; they track it back to the nest and infect everybody else first. The bait put down outside works on the same principle. Grover* tells me it'll take ten days to two weeks to kill them all, but it's a lot more effective than a repellant or contact poison.

Here's what was put down in the woodpile, around both trees, and in the big stump:

I'm glad to get the process started, sooner than later. There is an irony about it, though. I had outpatient surgery yesterday, and I was told I wasn't supposed to do any work today. Cleaning out cabinets isn't quite work, is it? I mean, not when you really have to do it?

So why do I feel tireder than one of those perishing little ants?