Guest Room - Day 3

Yesterday I removed the carpet from the large closet and began stripping the entry door. Kind of a slow day. It's interesting to look around upstairs it looks like much of the trim and doors were salvaged from other properties. For example the bedroom door and one of the other doors upstairs have a double bevel edge on the panels.

While most of the others have a single bevel.
It also appears that the bedroom door once had a rim style lock instead of the current mortise variety. There is a hole about an inch from the edge of the door that was patched with a dowel at some point.

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.

The Verdict

Here is the window panes after removing the first round of Peel Away 6. In the "Ass Kicking Power" category of the triad Peel Away 6 falls flat.
There were some things I really liked about the product. First of all it was a different consistency than the other paint strippers I have used thus far it was a bit more pasty and made a little less of a mess during the removal. Second of all I liked the cleanup, that it used denatured alcohol rather than mineral spirits. Then there was the smell... seemed to be a bit milder than most. It did do a good job on my test spots on the back stairs but that isn't really enough for me to purchase this product again. The back stairs are shellacked if I was patient enough I could sit there with my denatured alcohol and scrub that finish off.

I did decide to try the peel away on the door to the stairs. Here is a side by side comparison
This is after using the heat gun and two rounds of stripper. Citristrip on the left and Peel Away 6 on the right. I think the citristrip results are far better, the thinner texture allowed Citristrip' to better permeate into the grain and into the cracks and crevices.

Next door frame, I will try Jasco Green strip. I used it on the doors that I have taken down into the basement and I am interested to see how it does on a vertical surface.

Kitchen Door - 8 Hours Later

Here is what the door looked like at 7:30 this morning. I am cautiously optimistic.

Kitchen / Stair Remodel - Week 6

Wow, it's week 6 already... yikes!!

We made some progress on the stairs this past weekend but with the holiday not quite as much as I'd hoped. The walls in the stairway are all cleaned off and Chris was able to get a good start on the ceiling. As for me I've been stripping trim in the kitchen. Previously I was focusing on finishing up the baseboards but I decided to switch gears for awhile and get a whole doorway completed. I have the dining room door sitting in the basment on sawhorses as I write this... it's been down there for about umm 6 weeks now. I haven't had the time or motivation to finish up the sanding on it.

Anyways on to the progress.

Saturday:

Monday - 1 hour:
Wednesday - 1 hour:

While I was spending all that time up close and personal with the door I discovered that the decorative trim piece on this door isn't one piece it is actually 4 separate pieces glued together so the top molding on this door is going to be taken down and repaired before it is stripped.
I had a little different task to take care of on Friday. Our upstairs bathroom shower has a curved ceiling so it is a bit challenging to fit a shower curtain properly. Prior to this we just cut off the bottom of the curtain to shorten it and then doubled up a couple of the loops which worked out okay, but half of the curtain dragged on the floor while the other half fit beautifully. So I decided to cut one to fit the curve and this is what we came up with.


It's a bit hard to appreciate with just the liner but I'm hoping to get a new outer curtain this weekend on which I can demonstrate my technique.