Phil's living room

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phil
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Phil's living room

Post by phil »

I had a week off finally ! yeaaay..

my living room had all painted trim. I removed it and took all the paint off.
the ceiling had one foot square ceiling tiles. I was about to drywall over them but found they were mounted on metal tracks. I think they are asbestos. So I removed all the tiles and the metal tracks to expose the old plaster ceiling.

I had a friend help. he has lots of experience drywalling. I had 8 foot sheets but he convinced me we'd be better to use 12 foot sheets so we did. less ceiling joints to fill this way. it's 21 feet long so we did it in four sheets plus a foot or so along the wall on the right.
I moved most of the joints I need to have away from the windows so they won't show. this would have been hard except he had a really good lifting jig. so he helped me get the new ceiling up. some at the edge is blue , it's just bathroom drywall and won't matter once it's finished. there is also an alcove by the front door so I did the ceiling in there too.

the wall to the front of the house and the wall to the left of that are outside walls. i get lots of traffic and there was never any insulation so Im going to open those walls to insulate. You can see the sheets of closed cell foam Im using. it' sgood stuff and should help with the sound, especially after I get storms. I started taking down the lath around the windows. I removed the top edge of the lath on the extrerior walls so my ceiling drywall can run overtop the drywall on the walls. Since Ill laminate over the plaster for the interior walls I didn't need to worry about removing the top edge on that side.

The inside walls are all plaster and so Ill just laminate new drywall over the plaster on those walls. all the plaster has cracks and wallpaper overtop and the wallpaper is painted. I thought of restoring the plaster but in my opinion this is my best route. I did one room by restoring the plaster and it's fine but you really can't see a difference of you compoare that room so Im not getting caught in the fuss about restoring original plaster this time around. After I get insulation in and walls done then I can tape and fill and finish it as normal. after Im done all the walls and ceilings Ill sand the floors and get the old fir flooring back. after that Ill install all the casings and baseboards. Still a ton of work to do , and only so many holidays. but it's coming !! Just getting it empty took three days. I'm on my way now. ;-)

Phil
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phil
Has many leather bound books
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Re: Phil's living room

Post by phil »

I took off the drywall from below the bay windows yesterday. I've been looking all around and im finding old drywall along the bottom of the walls and lath and plaster along the top. Behind the drywall just below the bay windows the lath was never finished, it's just the scratch coat. I'll know when I get further along but it looks like my whole living room may have had wainscotting but at one point it was "modernized" and the wainscotting was taken out and replaced with drywall over the rough plaster.and blended with the plaster further up the wall. . It's making me want to do new wainscotting. I think ill try to just pull the drywall first so I can see. I have to separate the drywall out Finding more drywall isn't a good thing, it's going to cost a dollar a pound to dispose of.

replacing the wainscotting sounds fun,, but I'm a bit scared of the extra cost. I guess i could finish the walls and still put lath later if I wanted, or do painted MDF wainscotting. Maybe I could make my own from flooring which seems easier to get ahold of. I can check the used house parts places to see if maybe they have some old stuff from another house, that would be best.
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Mick_VT
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Re: Phil's living room

Post by Mick_VT »

Wainscoting is pretty easy to make from stock lumber and veneered plywood for the panels. I made some in red oak for my bathroom - very pleased with the finished result. Many hours of routing and joinery, but was great fun
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phil
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Re: Phil's living room

Post by phil »

Im wondering if I can just use "2x" lumber. If I took full dimension flat sawn lumber and cut it into thin strips, maybe 2": x 1/4" thick or so, then I could perhaps make narrow strips of vertical grain stock like that and glue them down to 1/4" plywood and then use a chair rail to hide the top edge. I know most wainscott is wider than 2 inches but lots has a V groove down the middle so maybe it could be half the width and still look ok? it's surprising how much wood it takes to make all the little strips, half of it turns to sawdust ;-) I'm fine with the wood being thin so long as what you see is real fir. 2 x 4 2x 8 or whatever I can find would make lots of thin strips pretty easily bu they might be too narrow for this.

I did similar when I needed window casings. I made some from nice fir that I cut to 1/4 inch thick and then thickness planed. Some of my casings are actually hollow boxes but no one notices, and at least they are real old growth fir. .
Last edited by phil on Tue Jul 05, 2016 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Phil's living room

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Personally I would not do that, partly because of the knots and patly because of the softness of the wood. I would at least go Poplar on it.
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phil
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Re: Phil's living room

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all my trim is fir so it wouldn't look out of place on my house. yes it would need to be knot free lumber, or at least not have any big knots. none of the flooring or other trim has knots in it. I'm ok with the hardness of fir but you are right the knot free grade A stuff is really expensive which is why I'd consider slicing it thin. .

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Re: Phil's living room

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If you use big tall field areas on the wainscotting (typical of the period of your house) you shoudl be able to keep the expensive part of the lumber down - assuming you do the field areas in faced ply
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phil
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Re: Phil's living room

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I envisioned the wainscotting as simply being a bunch of tongue and groove strips laid vertically with some sort of molding for a cap.

Maybe you were thinking more along the lines of making panels? I guess some wainscot is done that way..I often see entire walls made up of panels in British movies. Here I think the vertical strips were more common . Fir was cheap and abundant here in 1924. I think the idea of making walls up of a bunch of separate panels was mostly a way to deal with the wood stretching and shrinking and of course there was no plywood, and fir wasn't so abundant in other places like it was here.

now you have me curious about what kinds of wainscott I might have had here. Maybe I can visit my local molding maker and ask some questions.since he's delt with a lot of these questions. Maybe Im just wrong and using panels was more common in this area than I thought? I never considered it much but maybe the fir strips laid vertically is more of a local west coast thing. I do see it in old chinese restaraunts and places like that, but I seldom see walls made of panels.

If I do it's usually plywood with wood strips glued to it to mimic a wall of panels. Maybe that's not such a bad idea?

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Re: Phil's living room

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phil wrote:I envisioned the wainscotting as simply being a bunch of tongue and groove strips laid vertically with some sort of molding for a cap.

Maybe you were thinking more along the lines of making panels? I guess some wainscot is done that way..I often see entire walls made up of panels in British movies. Here I think the vertical strips were more common . Fir was cheap and abundant here in 1924. I think the idea of making walls up of a bunch of separate panels was mostly a way to deal with the wood stretching and shrinking and of course there was no plywood, and fir wasn't so abundant in other places like it was here.

now you have me curious about what kinds of wainscott I might have had here. Maybe I can visit my local molding maker and ask some questions.since he's delt with a lot of these questions. Maybe Im just wrong and using panels was more common in this area than I thought? I never considered it much but maybe the fir strips laid vertically is more of a local west coast thing. I do see it in old chinese restaraunts and places like that, but I seldom see walls made of panels.

If I do it's usually plywood with wood strips glued to it to mimic a wall of panels. Maybe that's not such a bad idea?


Yes panels for a dining room was very much part of the later turn of the century and craftsman look - often with a plate rail. I will take a pic from the Roberts catalog and post it for you
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Re: Phil's living room

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Here you go Phil! Its a little early but this style persisted. In 1903 it was very modern.
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