Giving Props to the Garage

If you read my last post you might have asked yourself "Where did all that crap come from?". Well, about 1/3 of it came from the garage. The other 2/3 came from the basement demo that I started 2 years ago. Here's a shot of the garage interior. Notice the different colored ceiling joists? If you look closely you can see the white ones are sistered with the other ones, but none of them run the full width of the garage. It was always a mystery to me until one day I was looking down at the floor, which was only visible because most of the crap was now in the dumpster! It turns out my garage has had 2 additions. I always knew it was expanded in depth, but I finally put 2 & 2 together and figured out it was also widened at one point. They didn't bother to put in new full-width joists, instead opting to cut the original joists in half, spreading them apart and using a few nails to sister the white boards to the old ones. Needless to day, after time they started to sag.

Solution: Jack up the sagging joists, drill holes all the way through, and bolt them together. It's not as elegant as actually having full-width boards, but it will have to do.

If I Ever Write a Book...

...It will be titled "How to Remodel Your House 10 Minutes at a Time". It's been a long, slow, steady process but I finally got all the trim up on the second corner of the dining room. I literally didn't spend more than 30 minutes in any one day on this. Now all that's left is some priming, the finish coats, and touch-up. Oh yeah, and then the other two corners of the dining room, and restoring all of the windows in the dining room. Now that we've hit 90 degrees I'll be highly motivated to get those windows un-stuck.

Plate Rail Installed

Most of the wood is up in the first corner. The only thing left is the beading on the right panel and then finish priming and painting.

A little more detail.

I love it when the pieces line up with the layout marks!

No Heat = Motivation

I decided to start putting up the new moulding in the corner of the dining room that has the thermostat. Since the thermostat will be mounted on the new board, I had to unhook it in order to mount the trim. That was last night. Laziness got the better of me and I left the thermostat unhooked because I didn't want to go through the hassle of connecting all the wires only to unhook them again the next day. When I got home from work today it was 61 degrees in the house! I quickly set to work to get the trim mounted in that part of the room so I could get the heat going again. I learned the hard way that you should cut the power to your furnace when you unhook the thermostat. Some of the bare wires shorted and blew the fuse on my furnace control board. Luckily the auto parts store 2 blocks away had the replacement 3A fuse.

Anyway, here's what the trim looks like so far. I still need to mount the plate rail on top and the beading around each "panel".

I couldn't really get a good picture of this, but I wanted to show how I handled the junction of the new moulding with the old. The door casing is the same thickness as the new board, but the casing has rounded edges so the two do not meet flush. Filling the gap with wood filler would probably crack fairly soon, so I decided to go the opposite route and accentuate the joint instead of trying to hide it. I simply put a 45 degree chamfer on the end of the new board. Once everything is caulked and painted it will look nice.

Message to the Future

I left a note for the future.

I have the Devine "Blush" on the walls. I like the color, but I love the Devine paint. With a properly primed wall it gives complete coverage in one coat. I need to touch-up the picture rail around the top of the room because the painter's tape pulled off some of the paint. Then it's on to getting the moulding primed and installed.

Click on the pictures below to see the bigger ones.

Bistro Train Rack Installed

I was going to finish taping the dining room tonight so I could start painting tomorrow, but I had our beautiful new train rack from Restoration Hardware sitting in the way so I had to move it. Instead of moving it from one place to another and risk dropping something on it while working in the dining room, I decided to go ahead and install it!! What a concept!

I fell in love with this thing the very instant I first saw it two years ago. I'm glad to finally have it on my wall. Now if I could just get rid of that ugly wallpaper...

Dining Room Progress

I did my best to keep the dust contained in the dining room while we sanded the topcoat. Let me just say... sanding joint compound in a living area is NOT a good idea. Unfortunately we didn't have much choice.

Done sanding and ready to be thoroughly cleaned and primed.

The dried joint compound is amazingly close in color to the beige on two of the already finished dining room walls.

Getting the Hang of Skimcoating

As I posted earlier, the first coat to go on top of the rough plaster was hot setting mud which was mainly to level things out as much as possible. The next coat is the topcoat, which is a thin layer of regular lite all-purpose joint compound. I get the 3.5 gal box of Beadex from the HD and dump it into a clean bucket. Then I add some water and mix thoroughly with my drill mixer until it is an even, light mixture, about the consistency of cake frosting. You'll have to experiment with this process, but when you get it right it really feels like you're frosting a cake when it goes on the wall.

Since I typically work in small increments, I save the extra joint compound by cleaning the walls of the bucket with a wet sponge and then adding about 1/2" of water to the top of the surface. That will keep it from drying out. The next time you're ready to use it, either scoop out the water with a dixie cup, or just mix it into the mud with your drill mixer again.

This time around I spend a lot of time prepping the walls before I broke out the mud. I paid special attention to all of the corners where little bits of paint and wallpaper hide out just waiting for you to come along and snag them with a knife full of mud, which leads to streaks in the finished surface. I also decided to do a small portion of the wall and really take my time. I think it paid off.

There's not much to see in this picture, which is exactly what I was after. A light sanding should be all that's needed before it's ready for primer.

Skimcoat Dining Room Walls

Before I put on the first coat of drywall compound, I used some fiberglass mesh tape to cover any cracks in the plaster. The tape combined with the strong setting-type drywall compound will help prevent the cracks from reappearing in the future.

After taping the cracks I put up the first thin coat of "hot mud". It's a plaster-of-paris based mixture that sets chemically into a relatively hard layer. Tomorrow I will do the first topcoat using a regular light topping compound, to be followed by one last topcoat later this week. If all goes well I'll be putting up moulding within a week or two.

Lesson Learned: Clean the walls first!!! I usually go over the walls with the edge of a 6" drywall knife to knock off any cling-ons leftover from the wallpaper. I obviously forgot. Don't make the same mistake! It's very frustrating to be putting on a beautifully flat, thin coat of mud, only to have a gouge running down the middle. Argh!

Turning the Corner in the Dining Room

I'm done taking things off the walls and ready to start putting stuff on the walls of the dining room. The plaster is in very good condition overall but I do have to patch just a few holes and hairline cracks. As in the rest of this house, the builder never put a topcoat of plaster on the walls so they all have the rough texture of the brown coat. I'll go over the walls with a thin layer of hot-setting drywall mud and then a topcoat or two of topping compound. This will give me the smooth texture I'm after.

Making Good Progress

I managed to spend a few hours this weekend scraping 3 decades worth of old wallpaper off the dining room walls. You can clearly see where the original moulding used to be. The more I uncover, the more motivated I get to put new moulding back up.

Now I need to decide if I should paint the walls below the plate rail the same color (red) as will be on the upper part of the wall, or if I should put in paneling and paint it the same color as the trim (white). What do you think?

Happy Feet

I'm not the kind of guy who normally gets excited about textiles, but we just got our new bath mat from Restoration Hardware, and I've gotta say.... I LOVE IT! It's so nice having a mat that runs the whole length of the tub on those cold winter mornings. Not only is it big, but it's fabulously thick and soft. In case you're wondering, it's the 30"x50" Tonal rug in "Maize".

That's all for now. I have to go reaffirm my masculinity after a post like that. ;-) Where's that hammer....

Dining Room Light

I thought I'd do a little "retro-blogging" and post a picture of the dining room light we bought a couple years ago. It's made by Robert Abbey, and we got it on clearance from Restoration Hardware (or was it Pottery Barn??). I don't think they make it anymore, but I sure do love it. In fact, I think it's my favorite lighting fixture in the whole house.

Lesson Learned: Crown Moulding

I found out the hard way that priming the crown moulding after it is installed is waaay more difficult than priming before it is installed. Luckily, I only got around to installing 2 pieces before the cabinets went up, so I got all of the other pieces primed and painted last weekend while I enjoyed yet another beautiful weekend. (Am I still in Portland?)

Now I'm off to fill nail holes, sand, and prime again. All over my head. Ugh.

Finishing Back Door

I started by sanding the back door and taping each pane of glass.

It's amazing how much time you'll spend taping if you know you're going to put your work up on the internet for the world to see!

Finished! I figure I've got about 14 hours of work into this door. Ugh! But the finished product looks pretty good, so it was worth it. (Notice my new crystal doorknob from Rejuvenation.)

Look What I Found

We started stripping the 3 layers of wallpaper off the dining room walls this weekend and were given a happy surprise. We had long been considering putting up plate moulding and wainscotting, but I wasn't sure how "original" it would be in this house. Plus I didn't know how it would match with the archway between the dining and living room. Apparently, this house had those mouldings when it was new. The white parts in the picture are bare plaster that has never been painted, presumably because there used to be moulding there!

Door and Base Trim Get Started

Today I started working on the door casings and the few spots in the kitchen that will need base trim.

This is the corner between the door opening and the cabinets that needs about 12" of base trim. You can see that I've left the required 3/8" gap between the Marmoleum tiles and the wall. Here's a tip: when you're doing the drywall, don't think to yourself "Oh, the bottom few inches don't need to be perfect, it'll get covered by the base trim anyway." It needs to be perfect, otherwise your trim won't sit right and you'll have ugly gaps. I spent a few minutes with a rasp getting the bottom 6" perfect.

Here is the trim mocked-up. I'm using 8" douglas fir base moulding and a simple profile on the cap moulding that matches the door and window lentils and goes well with the cabinet crown moulding. I applied 2 coats of primer before making any cuts to the raw lumber. Now that the cutting is done, I'll apply the first finish coat, install, fill gaps and nail holes, and the apply the final finish coat. Notice how I rounded the end of the white shoe moulding to give it a nice finished end. I also beveled the ends of the 8" boards where they meet the cabinets and the door casing because they stuck out about 1/16". I think the bevels will look OK once they're painted.

Here's a look at how I assembled the doorway head casing before installing. I cut the head casing to be 1/4" wider than the installed side casings, and the parting bead to be 1" wider. When installed the bead will overhang the side casings by 1/2" on each side and the head casing will be 1/8" wider on each side. This assembly will get its first finish coat prior to being installed.

Kitchen Window Progress

I need to keep reminding myself that just because I haven't finished a project doesn't mean I can't post an update. So here's an update on my almost completed kitchen windows.

I have all of the trim in place and it even has the first topcoat of paint. Nail holes are filled and gaps are caulked. All that's left is to sand the wood filler and apply the final topcoat.

I ran into one small snag while installing the head casing. Unfortunately, the windows weren't quite centered on the wall. They are offset by about 1" to the left of center. This meant the lentil for the windows needed to be trimmed asymmetrically. The pictures show how each side mates with the cabinet crown moulding.

To trim the left end of the lentil I made a paper template by tracing the pre-assembled head casing onto regular typing paper. I then put the template in place and cut the paper to an exact fit. Then I put the paper back on the head casing assembly and marked where to cut. I was hoping for a nice snug fit, but my hand-sawing skills are a bit lacking, so I had to fill the gap with caulking. (Please don't tell anyone!)

Spring Bronze Weatherstripping

I decided to go old-school and install "spring bronze" weatherstripping. If you've never heard of it you're not alone. The only place in town I could find it was Wink's Hardware (which, bye the way, you must check out if you live in Portland). It's basically a thin strip of bronze that you nail every 1-1/2" into the sash channels on the sides, top, and bottom.



After a little trial and error I found the best way to install it is to cut a piece to length, mark every 1-1/2" with a Sharpie, and then tack it in place using only the two end nails. Don't nail them in all the way at this point.

Decide at which end you're going to start and nail that one in all the way. Then start adding nails one at a time moving down the line. Since you only tacked the last nail in place, you can pull it out and re-position it if you start getting extra length in the strip as you add nails.

Before I installed the spring bronze my windows were sloppy and drafty. With the weatherstripping in place not only will it eliminate the draftiness, but the windows don't rattle when opened and they have a more finished feel to them.