I'm calling it done.

I'm trying not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, so I'm calling the closet floors done.

The striped effect is from the different ways the floor was formerly finished. From the left, previously unfinished, paint on bare wood (you can barely tell the difference in the first two), and paint on primer. I doubt any amount of sanding would have evened out 80 years of different absorption rates, but wood conditioner may have made the difference less noticeable. I used three coats of Zinsser SealCoat to finish them. It is a de-waxed shellac. There are plenty of websites that outline the pros and cons of shellac, so I won't go into that here. I'll just say that it's often a better fit for old homes than polyurethane. I sanded lightly between coats 2 and 3, then buffed with 0000 steel wool after the third. The result is a lustrous, smooth finish. Not smooth enough for a Risky Business reenactment, but smooth enough.

Unintended consequence: I can now make good on any promises to give somebody a good shellacking. Or a mediocre shellacking at the very least.

Item #87

The back guest bedroom has a pull-down telescoping ladder for access to our attic storage. Ours didn't come with a door to cover the hole in the ceiling, so I had to make my own. Wooden folding ladders are attached to the door and require complicated tension spring systems. Fortunately, we just needed a hinged door to stay out of the way when open and flush to the ceiling when closed. I built a frame with 1x3s using my pocket screw jig and stapled a piece of 1/4" plywood to the back side. I had to experiment with a couple of different catches to find a combination strong enough to hold the door up. I ended up with six magnetic catches. Four probably would have been sufficient, but I really don't want this thing to fall open accidentally. The "handle" is a PVC strap. I still need to finish the 1x2 trim, but that has to wait until the crown moulding is installed - it will end up very close and if I have to shave something off to make it fit, I'd rather take it from the hatch trim rather than the crown. For now, I'm just glad we don't have a huge hole in the ceiling in the bedroom (we have plenty more of those elsewhere, thankyouverymuch).

The big surprise

I hinted to my family in an email that I would have something fantastic to show on the blog by the end of the week. Of course, that was on Monday when everything was going according to plan and it seemed like I'd have the entire thing wrapped up by the weekend.

I really should know better.

The big project was sanding and refinishing the floor in the laundry room/closet. Here it was before I started doing anything:

The area on the left had never been finished at all. I think that there was probably a rug there (that wall wasn't there originally - we added it - so the unfinished area was centered in the old room), and the previous owners had just painted around the rug's perimeter. The brown area on the right was painted. The unfinished area was a snap to sand. The entire thing took a couple of hours with a handheld belt sander. The first 8-10 inches of the painted part wasn't much more difficult; it was painted directly on the floor. But the last two feet on the right hand side have been a battle hard fought. Somebody actually did their prep work 80+ years ago with some kind of indestructible oil-based primer. Here it is now:

I've used CitriStrip, mineral spirits, rubbing alcohol, pure acetone, and a heck of a lot of elbow grease to get it to this point. After all those chemicals I was afraid to use the heat gun for fear of setting the house ablaze. But the good news is that the paint is gone (in areas that will be visible - I haven't been able to get really close to the wall, but baseboard will cover that), so it should just be a matter of doing a light sanding.

This picture does not do justice to how gorgeous this wood is now that it has been sanded. To quote Wayne White, it's so beautiful it hurts my feelings.

What a difference some paint can make

Here's what I've done since I last checked in.

1. Nail-set, caulked, and painted closet crown moulding. It was pre-primed moulding, but it was looking dingy from sitting around before getting hung. It definitely looks crisper and neater with a coat of paint. Crown moulding in there is officially DONE. 

2. Caulked, wood-filled, sanded, primed, and painted the bathroom windows. I did this for the two master bathroom windows as well as the one window in the hall bath. Both rooms looked instantly brighter. I can't imagine how dark it would have looked if I'd stained instead of painted. You can still see wood grain underneath the wood in some places, but I'm OK with that. If I wanted a totally smooth look, I could have used plywood or MDF. It's wood trim. You can tell it's wood. So what?


Alas, it is not much and nothing further got checked off the master to-do list, but it still feels like progress.

Sort-of Resolutions

I'd love to make sweeping resolutions for our house projects, but that's just not the way things ever go around here. Instead I resolve to tidy up loose ends, to finish projects that have sat at varying levels of completion for one reason or another. Here's what I've done so far:

1. Put together the coffee table I bought a month ago. I'm using it as a bench at the end of the bed until we have a living room to put it in. It only took about 15 minutes to assemble. The girls have been using it as a play table, too, keeping the floor a little cleaner.












2. Installed a glass shelf in the bathroom. It's been sitting on the floor beside the sink for months. I got two of these, but one was missing the mounting hardware. I still haven't been able to get replacement hardware for the second one, but at least one of them is off the floor and in use. (The flowers look a little sad here, but I bought them in the floral department discount bucket over a month ago - best $2 I've spent in a long time!)







3. Finished the trim on the bathroom transom. I installed the glass with stop moulding on one side and glazing points and putty on the other. The putty side looked pretty crummy. Now both the inside and outside of the window have stop moulding.

4. Painted the tub's apron front. It had been primed for a long time but I just painted it this week. At this rate I might actually have a mostly-finished bathroom by 2014! Famous last words, right?

Item #42

I finally built a folding counter in the closet/laundry room. It's going to be a problem if I ever need to get to the valves in a hurry since the whole thing is nailed down, but I got tired of waiting and taxing my poor brain for a removable solution. I set a piece of 1/2" smooth-faced plywood set on top of a ledger board all along the edges. There is a 2x4 leg in the middle for additional support (to the right of the cabinet). If I had to do it over again, I would install the ledger boards about 3" higher. It would completely cover the valve box and would give me more room to slide out the appliances whenever necessary. I'd also work a little bit harder to figure out some way to get to the valves.

Obviously I still need to work on the face frame and the cabinet, but I like how it looks so far. I used Frog tape for the first time and love it. I've never been impressed with blue painter's tape and have been saving my roll of Frog tape for a project that needed really crisp lines. There are a couple of touch-ups I need to do, but those were all my fault - I accidentally dropped the tape in the still-wet paint as I was removing it.

Item #69

Getting the girls' room done is tricky since I work during naps. I've been doing a little bit in the mornings before Tom leaves for work. I made a countertop out of two pieces of 1x12 pine, pocket-screwed and glued together. I stained it (poorly) and attached it to a $15 cabinet I bought off Craigslist. I still need to build drawer fronts, but the cabinet is securely attached to the wall. Above I hung a shelf. Under the shelf is a closet rod (I used electrical conduit, which was way cheaper per foot than closet rods). Instead of running the full length of the closet, I installed it front-to-back. I know it seems weird, but with one on each side it ends up being about the same length as one longer one, plus I get the cabinet storage in between. Another bonus is that I can separate Evie's clothes from Clara's so getting dressed is easier.