and yet more trim . . .

Hopefully the snow the other day is the last we'll get for the year, but I'll say that the 8 inches combined with no wind made for a beautiful morning before it all started to melt.

 

We finished up the window trim in the laundry yesterday and it came out quite well, almost stain quality carpentry. We wanted to maximize the depth of the sill because I anticipate miscellaneous stuff accumulating there. So the window framing was taken into account when we built the wall, but we didn't take into account that we'd need to pack out the trim. We only needed to build it out 1/2 inch, which we didn't think would be difficult (our dining room uses this same technique so the trim stands proud of the paneling), but we forgot that 1/2 inch lumber isn't widely available. After much hand-wringing I got lucky and remembered we had a small amount that I kept after demoing some of the 1920's additions, it worked out brilliantly, and highlights just how badly the stained glass needed to be restored.

As for today, I wasn't feeling well, but my trained monkey seems to have sanded and installed the baseboards and caps. I knew I kept one around for something . . . It cracks me up that every house we've salvaged from, as well as our own house has the same sea green molding in at least one room (our nicest fireplace is still that color). We find the color inside our walls too - all the additions made when they split the house use "scrap" for framing, and nearly all of it is sea green beadboard or trim. I much prefer that color to the white paint of today . . .

It's actually feeling like it's close to done in there, but I know that the filling, sanding, priming and painting will eat up a chunk of time, not to mention finishing the built-in and figuring out the door situation. I still need to decide whether or not I'm wallpapering behind the built-in, and if we want to add shoe molding. All that just so we can re-install the washer - then we'll enlist the professionals for the gas line.

So, should I use my 25 cent wallpaper
in the built in, yay or nay?

biological warfare

Yesterday was spent ogling the acrobatics of the tree trimmers.  They came back to take down two more of the back maples after the apartment owner changed his mind (and refused to pay them) about just trimming them back.  Mind you, these were shared trees as they straddled the lot line, but being that this is the jerk that cut down our fence in the middle of the night over a property dispute, it really didn't seem worth the fight.

In a way he did us a favor, now that we have all that light we'll plant a row of female ginkos and watch as his tenants flee in horror covering their noses (they smell like vomit and make a huge mess).  Well, either that or we'll plant a Canadian hemlock so we can pretend he's not there . . . As it turns out, the trimmer has a connection to a local nursery  so come warmer weather we'll pick out a tree and he'll deliver and plant it for us.  It's been a long time coming - the first year we bought the house my evergreen loving mom told us to buy a pine instead of her birthday present.  He also managed to take down our sassafras, and will come back for the sick little elm this week.  The best part of losing the sassafras?  It means we've officially started the great porch rebuilding!  Too bad we won't be doing anything else till late fall at the earliest . . .

They got the sassafras down without touching the house, but we can now see where it had damaged three slates on the tower.  Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, as our favorite British mason was coming in the spring to rebuild the last of our five chimneys and would fix it for us then, but while at the hospital after suffering a heart attack a few weeks ago the social worker decided he was trying to commit insurance fraud and reported him to homeland security, who decided they were going to deport him. Mind you, he's been in the country for 20 years, is married to a college professor, owns a business and pays taxes.  I have no words for how screwed up this is, but have shed quite a few tears.  It's pretty bad when a friend calls to tell you they had a heart attack, and that's not even the worst part of the phone call.



We've been plodding along on the trim in the laundry and painting more cabinetry but this post has gotten a bit wordy, so I'll update you on those things tomorrow . . .

white rabbit white rabbit

Well, more progress has been made on the laundry room.  It's not overly exciting, so I'll spare you the photos that look the same as all the others I've recently posted.

We also had tree trimmers show up at the apartment behind us to trim OUR trees.  These trees and our fence have been part of an ongoing saga with the a-hole behind us (a story for another time when I know you all better perhaps), so we were ready for a fight.  After speaking to the trimmer, who was understanding and totally professional we let him trim the trees.  We may have a tad less privacy this summer, but it wasn't worth the fuss - especially since he'll return to remove a sassafras in the way of our future rebuilt wrap around porch for an unheard of price.  It also made me happy that he immediately recognized it was a sassafras despite it's lack of leaves, and lamented the fact that it had to go because of how unusual they are around here.  We did save a seedling from it though which is happily growing in another spot in the yard.  He also promised not to break a single branch of the original foundation plantings (they were one of the initial clues that something was missing) - a tall order . . .

Perhaps more exciting, our last patient is on the operating table . . .

This is the last of our 1930 salvaged kitchen cabinets that are being cleaned and repainted. My dining room will be thrilled when this is over and done with.

And many thanks to the poor individual in Macedonia who googled "Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck" and found my site.  You made my day.  Thank you.

climbing up the walls

I thought the next few days would be a bust, as work was supposed to take us out of town, but that was canceled, and we found a few hours today to work.

What, not everyone uses their sleeping porch
as a wood shop at night in the sleet and rain?

The floor is done other than a final cleaning and sealing, and it's time to turn our attention back to the walls.  Filling the corner blocks is a slow process because of how much material we need to add to make them square again, but we got a fair amount of the wainscot up. Although we couldn't use any of our salvage (our thin stuff is being hoarded for a third floor room), we bought some new stuff (gasp!) to protect the walls from errant laundry baskets.  We were planning on using the beaded plywood, but when we did the math it was actually cheaper to use the pine panels.  Very unexpected, and we're very happy about it - even though these will be painted I sleep better at night knowing they could conceivably be refinished in the future.  They're surprisingly well milled (they're just the packs from the blue store) and we haven't had trouble with the tongues or grooves on any of them.  We didn't buy the common beadboard pattern they carry because every pack they had was beat to hell, but this pattern is nice and somewhat different.

I swear I don't buy Hitachi tools
just because they're pretty.

hey look, my nail gun matches
matches my floor and my walls! 

We don't own a router, and none of the local stores carry a rabbited chair rail type molding we like, so we're using a simple piece of lattice that the cap molding will sit on top of while overlapping the top of the paneling. I haven't done it this way before - but hopefully it will solve some problems.

holy aesthetic movement batman!

Dinner smells incredible, and tonight's about the only night there's anything good on tv, so I'll make this short.

First off, grouting's done. Yay.

Second though requires a back story. The first condemned house we had permission to plunder was an incredible Italianate duplex. It was in better condition than our house, and had the most incredible porch which would have provided us with all the columns we needed for our own restoration.

The porch was so rotted it disintegrated on impact, but in the 18 hours we had in the house we were able to save a smorgasbord of goodies. Among these were all the newels and spindles from both staircases. These were used when we rebuilt our back porches. We never thought much about them as they were slathered in paint, but when we had to trim a couple of spindles down to size we realized they were solid mahogany. I literally cried at the thought that we had used them on our porches where they'd be painted and unappreciated - at least mahogany does well outside.

rebuilding in progress

From that point on one of my rules is that anything I plan on painting doesn't get stripped. Sanded and cleaned, not stripped. Needless to say, I almost broke my rule today.
>

you can see some of the gilding

on the lower right of the white

The corner blocks we're using on the window came out of a brownstone style mansion that would have been at home on any of the best streets in NYC. It was going to be knocked down, but the contractor changed his mind. Although he gutted it, he was saving the best to reuse, but anything damaged he was throwing out. He let us have all the blocks we could pull out of the 2 story trash pile in the backyard, as well as some drawers and beadboard we took out of the kitchen. In cleaning up those corner blocks I stripped the outer layers of paint so the detail reappeared. All the blocks turned out to be more mahogany (figures). Not only that, they were ebonized and gilded

Visions of Whistler's Peacock room are dancing in my head. I mean, we already have the peacock blue washer and dryer right? RIGHT?