What I did at my house today...

[phil]

I spent most of the weekend stripping. I got all the casings for my triple window and my 3 bay windows cleaned except for the odd fleck that I willl color in or pick out or maybe use chemical stripper. my filler for the nail holes will cover some of the white flecks of paint or white mastic filler I couldn't get out with the alcohol. 18 boards so far. Im so lucky it had shellac under it and it proves to me that the wood wasn't painted originally.
a lot of it has milk paint or somethign ? the heat softens it a bit but it doesn't peel up like the oil paint with heat. The alcohol dissolves what I don't get by scraping.so I haven't needed to even use chemical stripper - nice!

My bay windows never opened because of the paint. I think they gooped it on to insulate noise and drafts. Maybe it was just sloppy work. they are all double hung. I think the weights and ropes are ok , do I need to change them? It looks like they just need all the paint removed. Im pulling all the nails right through the back of the casings with one of those old nail puller gizmos that will pull nails that are driven in flush.

Next Ill start pulling and stripping all the baseboards. I figure if I do all the stripping as I pull them off Ill feel better throughout the job in knowing they are almost ready to go back rather than doing the huge scraping chore at the end.

There is absolutely no insulation in the outside walls and I get so much traffic noise. 12000 cars per day.. Im going to open up and insulate the exterior walls and that will also look after the problem of painted wallpaper. lots of the sound comes through the windows so I might need interior storms too, they could come later. the interior walls have no windows so I think I can just sheet over the plaster. I could try stripping some of it to see what it looks like. The ceiling has these 1970's 1 foot square ceiling tiles. I considered pulling them down but if I just sheet over them I don't think Ill notice the difference in ceiling height. I just need to drill a zillion little tiny holes to locate each joist. They do add sound insulation as does the plaster above them. It might just make it louder to pull the ceiling all out. There is a crown molding but I think just square corners were original. I think Ill just pull the crown molding out and finish nicely to the corners. I can always put a new one if I decide to later.

eventually I'll get the walls and ceiling finished and Ill pull up the floors. I have carpet in the room and Ill just trash that until I'm ready. Under the carpet is cork flooring with hand painted flowers and things. Under that is the original fir floor and Im sure it's saveable but I don't know to what extent it was used,if at all, before the cork was laid.

I still have a lot of stuff in the living room. to empty it means to crowd the rest of the living space. It'll be a challenge to keep it liveable while I gut the living room. I might be able to do a lot by separating the room in half with plastic or rent a container for a while.. I have to be conscious of the mess and try not to drive my better half crazy by making her live in a reno zone too much.
I know this will drag on through the summer. Its a lot of work and I just have my spare time to do it.

[phil]

as i'm pulling off my living room casings, I was planning to open the outer plaster walls to insulate for sound. I found that it looks like about half the wall is drywalled from the floor about half way up. I did see a bit of dirty old pink insulation in one spot but there sure doesn't appear to be much..
they even went to the extent to remove the baseboards to put drywall up.. they put wallpaper on and it runs under all the casings so Im the second to remove them.
now I don't have to feel bad about breaking the plaster since it seems it's half drywall anyway. Im wondering if it could be old drywall with asbestos? how would I know?
Im wondering if maybe it had some wainscoting that was removed, or if maybe the drywall was just to repair the plaster.
Ill pull the walls open but I am waiting and stripping all the trim. One of the baseboards was extemely long , maybe 25 or 30 feet.. Im not sure how I can tell if there was ever wainscotting there. maybe more nail holes would be there?

[BungalowMo]

I had my chimney sweep come by for a cleaning & he also patched (we hope) the leak! It took some time finding someone with some guts to get on my roof. He showed me a pic he took of the patch & I forgot to have him send it to me. Just sent a text for the pic & I'll post when I get it. Now we just wait for the rain & hope it's all good. I need the roof power washed, scraped & painted. I had my porch roof flashing patched where they meet the house last year & had them prepped & painted along with my garage roof too. All that has held up nicely with no leaks anywhere. The main roof needs it bad, but I need that leak under control first!

I've been scraping my porch railings on the Southern side a bit every weekend. (porch faces West) Takes time when my shoulders are kind of jacked up. I can only scrape one day of my 3 off, so as to not overdo it. I hung my porch curtains & washed a bunch of my windows. Still have about half the windows to go, but Rome wasn't built in a day!

Here's a shot of the porch....it's SO relaxing out there in the evenings. I've added my curtains to the South end too. I have the stuff to hang them on the North, but haven't gotten that far yet. There's a neighbor 3 houses South of me that I'd rather not look at, so I can just shut him out when I want. Nice!!
That's the "work" end of the porch. The other end is cleaned up & relaxing! Should have taken a pic from that end!!

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Busy, but fruitful weekend!!

[BungalowMo]

Even tho it's not "house" related, took care of this issue as well! I can certainly think of other things to spend $500 on! Sheesh!

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Muffler was fine....nearly everything forward, not so fine.

[Texas_Ranger]

Yeah, I had already started restaining and shellacking the rail downstairs before I saw the original untouched wood. It's still period, just a little lighter than this one. I think they painted the wood because the original color was so oppressively dark. So gothic! Very Dark Shadows or Adams Family! lol!

It might have been a lot lighter originally - layers and layers of shellac mixed with dirt can darken wood a lot!

Phil, you might have linseed oil paint! If you heat that it bubbles a bit but only turns into something like chewing gum. Horrible if there's something like 10 layers of it! I still want to give it a try next time I paint something because I'm just sick and tired of the smell of modern oil paint. It's been 4 weeks and the smell is still strong enough I don't want to use the rooms!

[phil]

spent most of another sunny weekend stripping baseboards. I got 99 percent of it off. Almost all had shellac as the first coat, ( lucky for me) then it had some other primer or maybe linseed oil paint , then white paint. The white paint bubbles off and acetone seems to be working well on whitewater's left. I took them outside in batches and the washing goes fast. I found one or two short boards that had milk paint or something stripper or heat or acetone just laughed at. I could barely strip those and when I do they still look white. maybe it's filler or plaster , it[s on some edges of other boards. the sander will look after any remaining junk now I'm down to bare wood mostly.
I have one baseboard that is 17 feet long. it just had a piece about a foot long to make the length up, I ll cut it on a /45 and make two joints and take the pieces with the outlet box holes out and then add a bit longer piece to the end. I think it's easier and less visible than making "boats" (or patches in the boards) to hide the outlets holes. When I rewired I moved them all about to 11 inches above the floor so they aren't in the baseboards, they stick out more and interfere with furniture when the outlets are in the baseboards.

I didn't scrape into the wood too much but scrubbed a bit harder in some spots. I think Ill trim the very edges of it all on the tablesaw to reveal a fresh edge and sand the casings with a belt sander, or my little table sander. then run them all over my router table to re-cut the round-over.. That will lighten them a bit but I can darken them again in my finishing process. Some of the old filler or paint went into old nail holes so Ill either pick them out or dot them with a pen to cover the white spots after sanding. Part of the reason for sanding them is to make the color more even and it will also save dealing with any teeny bits of paint remaining in scratches etc.

Just a few more baseboards to go ! then Ill have the window sills and frames but that can happen when I get into drywalling as it'll be reno zone then. I still need to empty the room and kinda cram the rest of the house. I figured if I just get almost all the paint off then I can get into opening the walls. I'll put a temporary door into the living room to contain the mess as much as I can.

on the floor there is carpet that I will kill during the reno, after I drywall I will have the baseboards all out for sanding. Under the carpet is cork flooring. its kind of nice but I think I want the fir floor under that. I lifted a corner of the cork and pulled all the carpet strips. It seems like it will come up ok. It seems to have a paper backing or paper between the cork and the floor. and the original fir floor has shellac on it and looked good in one corner. Ill have to wait until I reveal the floor to see if it needs sanding.. It has 70's tile in the entrance way so Ill have some mastic there to deal with after I smash away the tile. What I see under the cork looks good and Ill have to wait to finish opening all the walls and drywalling. to really see it. the carpet will protect the floor during the reno.

I can't tell how much insulation is in the walls. from what I see around the baseboards it looks like there is some pink insulation but it seems empty in most places. pretty hit and miss.. They used 1/2 inch drywall and it looks like they just replaced the plaster half way up the wall and they put lath behind the 1/2' drywall to shim it out.. Ill pull it apart and start with good insulation and fresh 5/8ths on the outside walls. at least I won't be tangling with the painted wallpaper mess.

next Ill pull all the non original crown moldings and try to find each ceiling joist so I can screw drywall up. I could take down the ceiling tiles and the plaster above but I'm leaning towards leaving it and just drywalling it over since I dont' anyone can tell the ceiling height, it's high anyway. I can't decide if it would be better to gut the inside walls or maybe just sheet over them. I could go either way since I dont' need to get anal about how much insulation is in interior walls. the reason for most of the reno is to get insulation in the outside walls to quieten traffic noise as much as I can but it will be a total room reno once done.

oh and kitty cat has been running back and forth between helping with renos and the neighbors compost bin, she brought home two mice so far. The first one she brought in was just a live play toy but she killed the second one. Good kitty. My girlfriend has been supportive. she's been planing all sorts of flowers and making the yard all nice. we went and got more so she's happy and busy too. We have big lilac bushes and I had a little old lady knock at the door asking if she could cut some for her table
it's spring !

[WildGeeseLn]

I spent my first night in my house last night! I'm moved in almost 1 year to the day I purchased it. Certainly a lot of creaky noises in an old house, but an almost sound-proof stone house in the country with tree frogs and a stream makes for a great night's sleep Before/during/after photos coming soon...

[mkeller234]

I am working on preparing the babies room now. I repainted the trim, walls and THREE doors (stinking paneled doors... took 3 coats each). Since I had the hardware all removed, I took the opportunity to stick everything in a boiling pot of water to remove all of the paint. WHY do people paint solid brass hardware!? The boiling worked great. After removing the paint, I hit each piece with a rag and some brasso. I lubricated the moving parts and now all three doors look great. I still need to do the hinges.

13055307_1326288630731388_1523460310379415301_n by mkeller234, on Flickr

[Texas_Ranger]

Linseed oil paint really seeps into the wood so that'd explain the white residue. Actually that's the reason why I probably won't ever strip any of our doors to bare wood, they've always been painted and the original light grey is almost impossible to remove. Paint stripper does take it off but only after the bulk has been removed using a heatgun.

[phil]

Linseed oil paint really seeps into the wood so that'd explain the white residue. Actually that's the reason why I probably won't ever strip any of our doors to bare wood, they've always been painted and the original light grey is almost impossible to remove. Paint stripper does take it off but only after the bulk has been removed using a heatgun.

Thanks for that info.

I don't know what the white stuff is. at least there isn't a lot under the living room trim. I tried acetone which removes the shellac and whatever primer they used. I tried stripper on the white remnants and it didn't touch it. I think I'll get the best results from sanding and the sander/roundover bit will burn through whatever is left. Removing the paint and not damaging at least some of the patina is possible but requires a bit more picking in the nicks and crannies.

I found I could see that I'd made some areas lighter where I scrubbed more with the acetone and fine steel wool. at least I got almost every bit of paint off and the sander is quicker than going nuts trying to pick out every white speck and then mucking around trying to hide any lighter or darker areas. Yesterday I found a set of touch up pens at HD for about 8 bucks, they will cover the odd speck.

It would be interesting to learn more about linseed oil paint. My house has only two thin coats, yellow and orange. Both coats seem very thin. I just have some flaking on the north side. the flakes are very thin so maybe it's actually an opaque stain. I don't think I can really scrape it all off the shingles as they are quite contoured by the old circular saw marks and from shrinkage or weathering. At least I'm lucky it wasn't painted a lot. I think it was bare shingles for most of it's life.

I did pick up a pail of linseed oil from someone selling it on Craigslist. Ive been making blopentine with it but it might be possible to mix it into paint. Of course any paint supplier gives you that dazed look when you suggest adding things to their product.

I'd like to make a decision on the paint for the outside of the house and try some small areas to see how it fairs over a year or two so when I'm ready to paint the whole house I know what I'm using. My house is orange which has faded a bit so it's kind of a whitish orange. the trim is blood red. I like the combination and I think they are historic colors. My plan is to refresh the orange with a bit more of a "sunset" hue without making it too bright. - not like a pumpkin.

There are very few orange houses here so it's not a really popular color but I like it and I don't' like to change it too radically so that if I do loose paint there isn't a huge contrast.

My neighbor paid about 10,000 to have hers painted professionally and they used some sort of water based paint I think, It's bubbling all over already. Id' really like to avoid that as it would be so difficult to fix if I had an experience like that on my shingles.

I'd be really happy to hear any recommendations or warnings from others, especially anyone who has seen how their paint job fared after 5 years or so. Everyone likes the paint they just used but problems don't' always occur soon after. Id rather live in a house that needs painting than one than needs complete scraping