New tools... Whoo hoo

Just got back from Menards where Chris and I bought each others Christmas Presents I bought him a laser level.
and he got me a detail sander
I'm about to head downstairs to test it out and hopefully get the kitchen door finished up. the manual sanding definitely put a damper on the speed of that project.

Snow is starting to fall here

So begins my ambitious task for the week. I figure if I write this up here there will more of a chance of completing it.

Hmm remember the kitchen door from oh May. With the impending doom aka cold weather it needs to be back in it's place ASAP

Monday - Finish applying poly to the edges of the pantry door. [edit: -- Done]
Tuesday - Reinstall hardware on the pantry door and bring upstairs. Apply shellac to the dining room door kitchen side. [edit: -- Done]
Wednesday - Apply 3 coats of poly to the dining room door kitchen side. [edit: -- Done *Only used 2 coats of Poly]
Thursday - Reinstall hardware on dining room door. Bring kitchen hallway door down to the basement. Remove glass and begin removing paint using the heat gun. Sand door frame to kitchen.
Friday - Finish removing paint from kitchen side of door by heat gun and chemical strippers.
Saturday - Remove varnish from hallway side of door. Begin sanding kitchen side of the door
Sunday - Shellac door frame. Finish sanding and clean up workshop.

Plumbing woes

For some inexplicable reason when we shower on the second floor the plumbing leaks in the basement. At this point in the game I've come to expect these things however this one has me nervous.

It's difficult to see in this picture but the plumbing from the upstairs shower comes into the basement by the blue arrow to the right side of the stack. The leak is occurring on the left side of the stack under the downstairs tub drain where we have rigged up the bucket. I'm thinking that no matter what it ends up being the remaining galvanized waste pipes will probably be getting the heave ho.

Ceiling and attic

After i get the bathroom ceiling done I'm going to go up to the attic to see what the electrical situation is. May need to rerun some while we have the kitchen ceiling open. If it looks ok then I will hold off until after the kitchen is done.

Yard work and Ceiling

I managed last weekend to get about half the ceiling up in the bathroom and i put mulch around the plants in the front.

I have mixed emotions about the mulch. I like the fact that weeding will be easier and less needed and that I will not have to water as much. I guess I'm just not used to the look of it.


I will post pictures when i get some taken so you can see what it looks like.

Window Installation

Saturday Morning Troy came out to install the window that we ordered back in May. It took him about 2.5 hours and he took care of rough finishing for the inside and the outside. He also repaired one of the boots on our waste stack.

Before:

After:
The smaller windows do make things a little darker in the kitchen but the benefits far outweigh the costs. We'll be gaining some much needed counter space and we got rid of one of the vinyl windows to boot. I just don't care for natural wood trim up against a stark white window I don't think it looks very attractive.

The Aftermath

Steadily through the course of this project we've cut off all the sources of light in the back hallway. First we lost the light in the back hall back in March, then we lost the outside light and the pantry light in June. And then finally we lost the light at the bottom of the basement 2 weeks ago when we started this project. Unfortunately, every step forward involves a couple steps back. As of last night the hall looks like this, but hey at least most of the lights work properly.

I made a small error with the 3 way switch that Chris corrected when I was at work Sunday afternoon I mixed up the common with one of the travelers.


Do you see the little yellow wire nuts in this picture? That cable will go to the light by the back door. Back when our house was built it wasn't necessary to have lights mounted to an electrical box now it is... I didn't forsee it but this has been one of the most problematic parts of the wiring project. I needed to find a 4" round old work box with tabs on the front to screw in to. All the old work boxes I was able to find locally were either too small or just had the wings attached to them. The wall is too thick for those wings to be a viable option. Fortunately I found one online but it has not arrived yet. I'm hoping it will arrive soon in time for installation next weekend.


There is also the matter of the light above the back door. The fixture that was up there was a porcelain bathroom sconce which still had all of it's original wiring and original socket. I removed the socket thinking that it would be simple enough to find a new one to complete the rewire. It's proving quite difficult as it is just a touch too narrow at the top to fit the modern sockets. So far I've gone to all of the major home improvement stores, an electrical contractors supply shop, a local hardware store, and a local antique dealer. I've also talked to an online vendor and so far nobody has anything that will fit it. If any one knows where I can find a socket that is slightly smaller than 1.2 inches in diameter please let me know. Here is what it looks like. I'd really like to make this work if it's at all possible.

Bathroom and Plumbing update

Surprisingly we've made a good amount of progress in the last month or two. Here is a picture of the kitchen ceiling after the plumbers got done with it they replaced all of the galvanized piping plus the drainpipe for the upstairs bathroom. The main drainpipe is in good condition so it will be staying in place.


We've also made some good strides in the bathroom . I got all of the woodwork shellacked and we got the paint on the night before we left for camping. The bathroom is pretty close to finished we need to finish up the ceiling, get the drawers and cabinet doors for the built in stripped and shellacked, paint touch ups, grouting of the replacment tile and faucet installation. The door also needs to be stripped and stained but that is most likely a ways off as I want to minimize the amount of time we have no bathroom door.


Here is a little closer up picture of the trim. The shellac was a bit hard to work with it dried almost too fast I was trying to apply using a cloth but I plan on doing some experimentation with various brushing techniques before I do it again. Fortunately when I applied the poly it evened out things a bit.


I'm really happy with the color we chose for the walls I think it complements the trim and tile well. Before everything in this room just kind of blended together now I really like it.

Here is the ceiling in progress


I realize that a drop ceiling isn't the most attractive thing in the world but we are planning on replacing the vanity with a pedestal and replacing the tub in the next couple years and will most likely need to get back to the electrical at that time so we didn't want to spend a lot of time with drywall.

Will post more tomorrow including pictures of the new windows and pictures of the back hall electrical aftermath.

Bathroom Update

We are progressing on the bathroom but slowly. I finished stripping the built in and door frame and finished patching the walls. Chris drilled a new hole for the bathroom fan vent and ran the ducting to the outside. We've also decided to have the plumber back to replace all of the galvanized plumbing in the kitchen ceiling with PEX. We were originally going to do the install our selves but with this project dragging on so long we felt it was best to hire out.


So Tuesday when the plumber is here I'm hoping to try out the shellac mix on the good trim and get the unimpressive trim painted aiming to get the walls painted next weekend. It should be close but I'm hoping for the best.

An ugly Victory but a Victory none the less

Today I completed the wiring for the bathroom. So far I'm pretty proud of myself but we haven't turned the power on yet so that my confidence may be premature. The outlet gave me the most trouble I was too impatient to wait for my fish stix to come in so I borrowed the fiberglass fishtape from work. I prefer the fiberglass it's so much lighter and it wraps into the spool a lot easier than the metal variety. Here is the damage


The three large holes were previous patches I pulled out. It looks pretty bad right now but as soon as we confirm that the electrical works ok we'll begin the patching. Here are a couple more shots of my handiwork.
I was also rather ambitious and bought some paint for the walls and for the cheap trim


The built in and the door frame is the same pine as the kitchen but the vanity is in pretty lousy shape and is made of a chinsey particle board so I had them match the paint to my trim sample.

Some paint and some new knobs and I think this vanity will look good enough to get us through the next couple of years. We'd eventually like to replace this vanity with a pedestal sink but it isn't in the budget or the schedule right now.

Fighting with fishtapes

I did not make todays goal but I did have some progress I mounted the box for the ceiling light and ran wire to it and ran wire across the room to the outlet. Didn't get the outlet wire down to the box the fishtape and I had a falling out.


As I was attempting to let out more tape the tape began forming a loop outside of it's plastic enclosure. I was pretty exhausted and hot at this point and was not thinking clearly so I decided the best way to get it back in was to open the plastic enclosure and take out all of the tape and I could put it back in there properly. Turns out not such a good plan. We are strongly leaning towards just tossing the current tape out... it's so long I don't know how we'll ever get it untangled and back into the enclosure.

In the meantime I ordered these

Actually I ordered the slightly longer glow in the dark version but close enough I'm thinking these will be easier for me to handle. The tape was so large and unruly.

Tomorrow I will be taking a vacation from wiring to catch up on laundry and regain my sanity

The best layed plans

Last year as we were trying to balance both the office and the bedroom project we made a promise to each other that from now on we would work on one room at a time finish that room and move onto the next. As my dad and I tore out the bathroom ceiling Friday I thought of this and laughed. Sometimes it seems the house has other plans for us.

Friday we got the drop ceiling down, the plaster ceiling down, and the plaster off of the wall containing the plumbing runs to the upstairs and then hauled 268 lbs of plaster to the dump. We also got the bathroom and kitchen cleaned up hoping that a clean work area will make Chris and I more productive in the future.

Today, with the ceiling down it was time to start on the electrical. Poor Chris has been on a call for work ongoing since Friday so I've been pretty much been a one woman show. I've never done any electrical before, ideally it would have been nice to start on a nice easy room like a bedroom but what would be the fun in that :)

Prior to embarking on my own wiring project I was a bit hard on poor Chris. I'm dirty, exhausted, and about 100 bucks poorer and all I have to show for it is a larger hole in the wall and a solitary run of romex from the basement to that hole. Tomorrow I'm hoping to pick up the pace a bit and wire up the new fan plus the vanity and ceiling lights. Much to my dismay I will be putting the old fixtures back up I was hoping to find reasonably priced replacement fixtures but alas everything was too expensive or too ugly.

Hopefully tomorrow night I'll have a fully wired up bathroom.

Fun with Knob and Tube

Well after we hadn't heard back from the electrician, I started removing all of the old knob and tube in the kitchen. Most of it is gone except for the wires that run into the dinning room. Once it gets to the dinning room it branches to the rest of the rooms.

I put a junction there so that we could use the rest of the lights down stairs. I figure once we remove the rest of the knob and tube on that circuit, i will just pull the junction box down. For now it's in the ceiling and will be covered by a white plate.

Now to where the fun begins. In tracing the circuit I discovered that it runs into the bathroom. The problem was the wire was in bad shape and part of it even snapped off where it was pinched under a knob. I was able to isolate that from the circuit and now the bathroom is with out power. Good thing we have two bathrooms.

The plan is to remove the bathroom ceiling and run basic electrical for the light, fan and the one outlet. There is a drop ceiling as well so we won't have to get the actual ceiling repaired right away.

It looks like our next project will be that bathroom. It will be a pain, because to get to it we will have to go through our nice finished kitchen. :(

We have a trim color

My Brown Mahogany TransTint Dye came on Thursday afternoon and Saturday afternoon I got a chance to try it out.

First I had to calculate the proper proportions of dye to shellac the bottle says 1 oz of dye to 1 quart of shellac. I scaled the recipe back to 1.56CCs of dye to 50CCs of shellac. For this step I used one of my measuring cups from Rockler and a syringe I bought from the farm section of my local Fleet Farm. I ordered some syringes and assorted measuring vessles from American Science and Surplus on Friday but alas they did not arrive on time.



Next I measured out the dye and shellac, I had to dump the dye out on a little plastic saucer in order to suck it up with the syringe the neck of the dye bottle was just a bit too small


After measuring out the proper proportions I mixed the dye into the shellac and then applied to my sample piece using a piece of an old t-shirt
I was so pleased with the way it came out I stripped my original test piece and refinished it with the shellac.

New (Here I'm comparing it with the trim that is yet to be stripped, I may darken this piece up a bit with another coat):

Old:By my calculations I should need two bottles of dye to slightly less than one gallon of shellac. I'm still thinking I should be able to do all the kitchen trim and doors with one gallon of shellac. Once I get the final mixed up I should be able to finish the door that has been sitting in my shop since January. Whoo hoo, Progress!

Mowing the Grass

It had been a couple weeks since i had mowed the back yard. I gotten to the front on Monday, but by today the grass was 8 inches long. So with my trust 1975 Simplicity lawn tractor i headed out to the backyard.

To my surprise the backyard was full of wild flowers, mostly the same type, but it was pretty cool to see. So I ran back to the house and got the camera before I cut the flowers down with the mower.

Here is a full picture of the backyard












Here is a closer picture of the Orange and Yellow flowers.There are more daisy like flowers like the one below, but at the time i didn't even see them.

You can just barely see the moss in this picture. I just wanted to get a picture of it because it grows all over the place in the very back of our yard. It has given me the idea to start a small bog garden. Maybe 10 feet in diameter.
So all of it is mowed down now, well not all. I couldn't mow all of it. So Erin and I went out and marked were we wanted to put the fire pit and seating area around it. Then i mowed the grass shorter around were i wanted to keep the wild flowers. The plan is to then add more flowers by seeding the area heavily. I will post pictures of the beds later this weekend when I get the pictures taken and some of the daisies moved over.

Hiring Out

Well we've passed a major milestone in our house remodeling for the first time we are hiring out to get work done... it's not that we can't do the work ourselves, we just don't have the time.

We had an electrician come by this afternoon to take a look at the kitchen and the breaker panel. He seemed a bit put off by the knob and tube in the kitchen so I'm worried it may be a bit more than we want to spend. However, on the plus side he seemed somewhat enthusiastic about changing out the electrical panel(s) so maybe we'll get a good deal on that. He'll give me a call with his estimate in the next couple days. Here is hoping it's something we'll be able to afford.

Stupid Pine!

Attempt 3 on the staining was little more successful than attempts one and two however it wasn't a total loss I did really like the gel stains. Next time I have a non-pine project I'll have to give them a try.

After the latest failed attempt I decided to try a new approach. Many of the finishing sites suggest using dyed shellac to deal with the pine problem. Prior to this I was shying away from any colors that were not premixed as precision is not my forte. But remodeling a house isn't for the faint of heart so last night I purchased the Dark Walnut and Brown Mahogany TransTint Dyes from Rockler http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=11448&filter=Dye along with set of mixing cups.



If this works out the way I planned (ha!) and I can get a color I like. I can then mix up a gallon of the trim color which I hope will be more than enough to get me through the kitchen and if the colors don't match exactly room to room I don't think it will be a huge deal.

Trim Attempts 1 and 2

Well five cans of finish and we're no closer to picking a trim stain.

Here was Attempt #1
From Left to right we have Antique Walnut, Royal Walnut, and Olde Maple. None of them seemed quite what I was looking for but I did think perhaps by mixing the bombay mahogany and the antique walnut I might achieve just the color I was looking for.

So then we have Attempt #2

At this point I was thinking... maybe the Polyshades isn't the way to go maybe I'll try the pre-stain wood conditioner on the pine and try to finish it that way. So samples one and two are regular Minwax stains Red Oak and Red Mahogany. Although the pre-stain wood conditoner helped I still thought it came out blotchy. Samples 3 and 4 are different mixes of the bombay mahogany and antique walnut. Neither of them was really what I was looking for it just ends up being a bit too red to complement the floor.

So then I did what I should have done before I started this little project I googled "finishing pine" so now I'm working on attempt #3 where I use thinned shellac as a sealer and a gel stain instead of a liquid stain. Here's hoping third time is the charm.

More Goodies

Sink: Kohler Brookfield Tile-in sink


Faucet: Kohler Fairfax

Kitchen Dreams

Here is the most updated kitchen plan.

Flooring: Zinsser Amber Shellac , This piece has about 6 coats on it that is what it took to get the color that I was looking for I'm hoping it doesn't take quite this many coats when we do it for real but we will have to see
Trim: Minwax PolyShades Bombay Mahogany I'm a bit on the fence with this one right now it's a bit darker and redder than I originally had pictured. On my Menard's run this afternoon I picked up a couple more colors to try Antique Walnut, Olde Maple, and Royal Walnut. Samples will be forthcoming.
Paint: Valspar "Blue Grass Mood", the yellow is the color for the stairs and back hall "Like Butter"

Cabinets: Shenandoah Breckenridge Cherry Spice http://www.shenandoahcabinetry.com/products.asp?id=24


Counter tops and Back splash: Tile American Olean , I was inspired by this room layout from Rejuvination, we were originally thinking a black laminate counter top but I don't think this will be very much more expensive and will look much better





Lighting: The Quimby from Rejuvination. One over the sink and two over the peninsula. These will most likely be the only light in the room other than under cabinet fixtures.

#1 old house repair rule

Don't assume that an quick and easy project will ever be quick or easy.

Case in point:
The drain in our old cast iron Kohler sink was getting really slow, so i figured it was time to clean it out. Pretty easy huh? Well that was my thought anyway.

As I was taking the drain pipe apart, the trap tore it's self apart. So i took the sink of the wall and completely cleaned out the drain and sink parts. Erin will be running to the store to get a new trap. I would but I'm on call and leaving the house would guarantee that I would receive a page.

More Paint stripping fun - Week 10

I tried the Jasco green strip on the bathroom door, on my scale it seemed to be fairly non-toxic I used it with out gloves a couple of times. One of the problems with the Jasco is that it tends to make things very slippery so a couple times I took the gloves off just so I could hold onto my scraper and picks. Now as for the smell it was not horrible... it's difficult to describe it smells kind of sweet, with an undertone of ick maybe... rotting fruit. For ask Kicking power it did pretty good on the door frame it removed the post heat gun residue in one application with a lot of scrubbing with the steel wool on the window where I didn't heat gun it took about 3 coats. Overall I was pretty happy with it, it seemed like I could put on a fairly thin layer and still get it to work. I'd been leaving on the stipper about 24 hours because of my work schedule but I think it would have been more effective if I could have gotten to it after 12 as it seemed to dry out a bit.

Here is the latest finished door frame the bathroom door. My plan is to knock out the last two doors next weekend that is if the family visit doesn't take up too much time. My parents and my grandma from New York are coming up on Friday to see my little sis's portfolio show over at the university. I wish that we had more progress to show by the time they show up I feel like we've gotten very little done since my parents were here last. It's just so hard to get stuff done if you work too much over the weekend it makes the week damn near unbearable but you have little progress to show with only one day of work. I know it'll all come together eventually. Here is the door to the back hall the bottom squares on the left and right I did with the Jasco green strip the top center square is a work in progress with SoyGel. The SoyGel is doing a good job I saw a fair amount of wood after the first round. However I hate that I have to order the SoyGel online so unless it's significantly better than the Jasco I'm going to stick with the Jasco.

Last weekend we picked up the new windows for the kitchen I'm very excited that soon we will be getting rid of this huge vinyl eyesore and putting in two smaller windows
Well I'm off to add some paper to the stairs and dig out some cracks.