Before and after banister February 5, 2010

I missed this photo when I was uploading the last batch. This shows before (on the left) with the brown paint and after (on the right, ‘natch) with the natural wood. And the inspector on the stairs

banister before and after

Banister paint stripping February 5, 2010

I decided to re-do my hallways and bathroom this year as economically as I could, rather than wait to get a full time job and take out a big home equity loan. My hope is to get these two big projects and lots of other little projects in the house done by the end of the summer and start a new life and new career in the fall. Vediamo.

I decided to start with the halls. I wanted to strip the poo-brown paint from the banisters and newel posts. I have a four storey house, so there are three flights of stairs, four landings, and two newel posts. One strip of banister had already been stripped, stained, and was lovely.

I used Peel Away 7, which did quick work with the banisters. The newel posts have been a bit more recalcitrant, and will require vigorous sanding. They have more nooks and crannies, and have some old varnish or something in spots that is just not coming off.

I got a huge bucket of Peel Away 7 (it was on sale at Home Depot for $47.00), as I plan to use it on several other projects. I bought a new pair of heavy duty rubber gloves and a disposable brush. I had a plastic scraper already, so I feel that my outlay for this project was about $20.00 and it took around 20 hours.

I’m going to sand, stain, and polyurethane the wood next week. Ta da!

Lovely wood grain revealed on banister bend

Top floor banister showing test strip area and brown paint.

Newel post with gothicky carving. Semi-stripped.

Long view of the stairs in all their chippy glory. Newel post in mid-strip.

Downstairs newel post that had been painted black.

Marble sink clean up January 31, 2010

I’ve decided that I can no longer stand my bathroom’s condition. My plan was to somehow come into about $20,000 and re-do my own bathroom plus add a guest bathroom on the top floor of the house sometime in the next two years. I’ve decided to revise that plan, and am going to shelve the guest bath plan for now and focus on re-doing my own bathroom as cheaply as possible.

So here’s today’s step towards re-doing the bathroom: cleaning up the marble sink top that was in the basement as much as I could. I had some marble and granite cleaner from Home Depot and some liquid marble polish. This was the best I could do with the tools at hand. It will need some professional help (and the basin will need a whole re-porcelain job), but I thought seeing it everyday would inspire me.

Basin. Needs help!

Before (during): I started cleaning some of the ick of the right side

Current sink

After: cleaned-up-ish

After: close-up

Fireplace backing January 31, 2010

I’d been wanting to do something with the interior of this non-functioning fireplace in my kitchen for some time now. I thought of tiling it and was looking at some nice Green Man tiles, but then I saw this period-appropriate fireplace backing at my local recycled construction supply place, Re-Store. It came with a cracked mantle that I didn’t want (and am hoping to sell on ebay). Originally cost $300, but it was marked down to $150 due to the cracked mantle. I had a store credit, so it cost me around $120. The tiles (plus having someone do the work) would have cost a lot more. And if I sell the mantle for $50, it will be another little saving.

It looks soooooo much better! What a difference. I need to re-align it a bit, but it’s so much better than what it was. I think I can live with the exposed brick now, too.

* My digital camera died recently, but luckily I have a camera on my phone. The phone photo quality is pretty good, considering it’s a phone!

Before: with no insert

Before: with no insert

After: insert

After: insert

What me worry? January 26, 2010

I continue to be unemployed and bored, so am trying to do no-cost projects. I got this rather fabulous (and surprisingly heavy) papier-mache balloon at Savers a while ago, and got the red and gold braid specifically for it. I tried installing it with a variety of cup-hooks, but the balloon kept crashing to the ground. So I borrowed a much more substantial toggle-bolt ceiling plant hook from a friend and put it up with Jerome’s supervision (he’s just completed some OSHA training).

The braid looks hideous, so I’m going to root around in my wrapping paper collection for some nice fabric ribbon that I could use instead (and the braid is also clearly too short. I do love the look (except for the braid). I’m imagining the brick wall covered up with real wall and papered in this fabulous wallpaper I’ve seen that is a matte black with vibrant monkeys, hot-air balloons, and other circus-folk.

If/when I get a job, the wall will be a top priority.

So Jerome probably weighs around 15lbs, the balloon weighs about 2lbs, and the hook is supposed to hold 40 pounds. So even if he takes a flying leap and the balloon, I think it will hold and NOT bring down the entire ceiling. But I guess we’ll just wait and see.

Jerome and balloon

Library January 22, 2010

This is one of the two rooms where I spend most of my time. It’s on the sunny side of the house, and from the windows, I have a great view of the Springfield Museums and St. Michael’s Cathedral — beautiful architecture all around.

My house had been a rooming house (men only, I learned from the grandkids of a previous owner, because they were “less trouble”) for at least 80 years before I bought it. Each man had a gas stove and a sink in his room, hence the lack of a kitchen in the house. This was the last occupied room in the house, and the man who’d been in it had lived there for 20+ years, moving in as an adult to the same rooming house where his dad lived. The younger man still lives in the neighborhood.

I don’t think much had been done to the room in the 20+ years he’d been there. There was grease all over the wall behind the stove (where the bookcase to the left of the fp now stands), the walls had very stained and aged wallpaper, the floor had been painted brown and then linoleum and indoor-outdoor carpet were laid over it.

This is a room that cries out for before pictures. They were among the lost photos when the last computer crashed. Sigh. But I can, at least, narrate what was done. I gave everything a good cleaning and had the gas turned off (yup, I still had active gas lines running throughout the house when I moved in). Then I stripped the wallpaper. It came off quite easily, as did much of two walls. The roof collapsed sometime around 2000 (before I bought the place) and there is water damage throughout the house, but especially on the fourth and third floors. This room is on the third floor. So I hired a handyman and he put in two new walls and took out the sink that was in the niche area.

Then, I got in touch with the New England School of Architectural Woodworking to see if they took on projects. They do, sometimes. They took on mine, which entailed us working together to design the bookcases. They installed the large single unit one year, then the two on either side of the FP the following year, as well as doors to the bottom of the niche. Before the bookcases went in, I removed the ick on the floor and had the floor sanded.

Then, I chose my paint colors, and took a stab at peeling some of the caked-on paint from the rosette (this alone took weeks). I got it off and discovered the design was acorns and leaves — very pretty! It had just been blobs before. So I painted away (had to do a bit of ceiling repair, which has held so far, despite a subsequent roof leak…), and found furniture here and there, found rugs there and here, and found a great fabric to sew the drapes at Joanne’s fabric on deep discount. Most of the artwork is by my late grandfather F.L. King, and some are pieces I picked up at auctions and flea markets (where most of the stuff in the house comes from).

A few summers ago, I transformed the closet into a little storage area for files and archives. Both the doors in the room (the closet and the entry door) feature a local specialty — the saw down the middle effect. The doors are so big that they take up a lot of floor space when they’re open normally, so several of us have sawed them down the middle so they fold up when open and take up less room.

Library

Entry to library, half a niche

Large bookcase unit, desk

Bookcase to right of FP

Guard dog ensuring safety of pillows

View of windows, chairs, Jerome investigating the world

Bookcase to left of FP with home-made bi-fold door to filing area

Bookcase to left of FP with closet door closed

Ceiling with rosette

Rosette close up

I love this room, as do Skunkie and Jerome, and we spend a lot of family time here — me and Skunkie on the couch and Jerome sitting on the back of one of the chairs. It’s so lovely with the sun coming in, and so cozy at night with the drapes closed. It took about three and a half years to be done, and I’m thrilled with the way the room came out!

Future projects January 22, 2010

A few years ago, I stripped the entry doors to the living room and dining room. I ran out of steam when it came to the pocket doors and still haven’t gotten around to doing them. I hope that the summer of 2010 will be when it happens. I have plenty of time and steam right now, but can’t open the windows (due to below-freezing temps, snow, assorted other winter-related conditions).

But this side-by-side shot shows what the dining room door had looked like, and what the pocket door will look like when I get around to doing it. It’s such a big messy project, but the payoff is huge.

Dining room door (left); pocket door (right)

The other thing I’m considering in the dining room is painting the bottom part of the walls a darker color (the color of the little chair rail — a dark brown). It’s extremely light in that room in the mornings (town house, windows on two walls only, this side of the house gets sun until early afternoon), and very pleasant for breakfasts and brunches, but I do like a dark dining room at night and think it might look more “me” with the darker bottom paint. I’d welcome any input!

Dining room door (left); pocket door (right)

One wall, with flash on, showing light wall paint and chair rail

Same wall, with flash off, showing light wall paint and chair rail

Opposite wall (flash on) showing light paint color

Little project — wallpaper in cabinets January 22, 2010

I really like wallpaper. And I really like cabinets. So what could be better than wallpapering a cabinet?!? (Please see “stripey hallway” for evidence of this claim).

So anyway, I have lots of leftover wallpaper from my dining room and thought it would make a lot of sense to install it on the back of the two matching dining room cabinets/sideboards/buffets (call them what you will) that hold dishes and glasses. And I was right — it did make a lot of sense.

I’m broke (and clearly quite bored), so I just used glue rather than wallpaper paste. I thought scotch tape would work, but it didn’t. And I also tried staples — nope. Thumbtacks would have been good, but none at hand, so I used some wood glue.

Here are the photos:

Dish cupboard before

Glass cupboard before

Wide shot of both cupboards before

Dish cupboard after, open

Dish cupboard after, open

Dish cupboard after, closed

The hardest working cat in showbiz

Glass cupboard empty

Glass cupboard after

Glass cupboard after

The inspector testing the structural soundness of shelf.

Bored? Out of work? Poor? Decorate your cat! January 6, 2010

The Jerome is surprisingly willing to be adorned. Here he models a sparkling diamond pendant on an elegant silk ribbon and a hand-tatted lace collar.

If one happens to be un- or under-employed, snow-bound, or restless in some other way and temporarily impecuniary, one can re-create this look for one’s own darling feline companion with a few inexpensive items.

If one doesn’t have the Hope (or other named) diamond around, one can use a costume glass pendant. If one doesn’t have silk or velvet ribbon at hand, one can use recycled Christmas (or other gift-laden holiday) ribbon. If one doesn’t have the skill to tat up a collar, one can find an old doily and carefully remove the middle so it fits over one’s cat’s slender head.

The Jerome

The Jerome is looking rather like The Falstaff, but it is surely due to an unflattering camera angle.

New Year’s Resolutions January 6, 2010

I have a big list of things I’d like to get down in my house in 2010 (funding permitting), but the two things that bug me every day are the exposed brick walls in the Monkey Room (my home office) and the Kitchen. I think of exposed brick as rustic and not refined at all. It just doesn’t fit in my very elegant office room. So I’m going to hire someone to install firring strips and dry wall and I’m going to paper over that one wall. I’ve seen a very elegant wallpaper that has a black field and monkeys in hot air balloons (really, it’s elegant) that I hope to find and install on that one wall.

The brick in the kitchen isn’t such a mis-match, but I just don’t like it. So I’m going to paint over it, and either tile the inside of the un-usable fireplace or install a period-appropriate fireback that I saw at Re-Store recently.

Both projects will probably happen in the summer.

Non-working FP in kitchen

Exposed brick wall in kitchen

Exposed brick wall in Monkey Room (Home Office)