Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Shasta's Agility Class

Jeff and Shasta are about to finish up their second agility training course. They are doing really well. The jumps aren't competition height yet because in these early classes, the point is to first learn the behavior and commands.

I was able to join them for class today and took several videos. This is the best one.
Shasta actually did quite well in all but one of her exercises, when she got distracted by smells on the course. The other videos were not good because of camera operator failure. =(

Monday, July 30, 2012

Garage Finished

Tim finished the garage today. Yeah! He worked very late tonight finishing the last of the small details and cleaning up.
Jeff and I still have to install gutters before we can close the permit, but Tim finished his gig.

Our electrician came out today as well, so the building has been wired up too.

Now we just need to manage to wait until after August 10 to move in, as we would like to seal the concrete floor while it's nice and clean and new but we are supposed to wait 28 days to allow it to fully dry.

Jeff and I are now planning to turn our attention to figuring out the drainage in the backyard. Jeff is planning to run underground pipes from the gutters to the rain gardens. There's going to be lots of digging in his future...

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Pergola Plan

I'm really excited today because Jeff and I finally agreed on the major components of the backyard plan. Finally. Until last evening, we had very different ideas about where the table and BBQ should go. And it seemed this disagreement held up other big decisions...

Well, we finally have a plan. This is unlikely to get built this year, but other stuff can go in around it now.
I think it was actually the total destruction of the planter next to the garage during the garage rebuilding that helped us to see it as a possible site for a patio. I guess it was hard for us to mentally erase planters and see blank ground.

Today I threw together a quick design for a pergola. There will be changes, because I didn't allow for anything like hardware, etc. It was really the look I was trying to figure out as I wanted to incorporate a number of details from our house's architecture, especially the brackets.

As for the garage, here is where it is at. It looks done, but the back side of the roof still needs shingles and the guys assembled the garage door panels in the wrong order, so they'll have to fix that too. Poor Tim.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Plaster Finished

The newly resurfaced walls and ceiling in the guest bedroom look bea-oo-tiful. John did a real nice job in this room.
The plasterer recommended we wait a week before continuing work in this room in order to give the ceiling time to dry.

I am very much looking forward to getting back to work on the guest bedroom. I think it's going to look wonderful when it's done.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Master Bedroom Doors

It happened! I woke up in the mood to stain doors.

There are so many projects I'm hoping to get done this summer that I figured while the guest bedroom is being worked on by the plasterer I'd better get back to work on the master bedroom.

I'm not real pleased the doors took the stain so darkly, especially the clear vertical grain portions....but it's too late to change it now. I probably need to work on smaller sections next time and wipe the stain off more often.

This room is now ready for shellacking. Hopefully next week we'll get started. I'm beyond ready to move out of the basement and into the bedroom. =)

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Almost a Garage

The contractor made a lot of progress on the garage since I last reported. (Has it really been since Friday?) I almost held out until the end of the week—when it is likely to be done—but my mother wanted an update. =)
This afternoon they started installing the stained shingles in the gable, but I think it got too hot up there in the direct sun to finish. Tomorrow morning....
The roofing shingles were delayed and will probably be installed on Friday. We shall see.

Beautiful RePlastered Walls

The plasterer, John, has been hard at work repairing the walls in the guest bedroom. He spent the last couple of days patching the holes then putting up a base coat and a finish coat. He also did a great job with minimal masking to keep the wood nice and clean. The room looks so much better!

It was interesting the way he covered over that big hole from the stove pipe. He cleared away the loose plaster and enlarged the hole a bit and coated it with a bonding agent—Weld-Crete. Then he cut a wire mesh down to the same size as the hole. He held the mesh in place and drove screws into the lathe so it would stay put. Then he applied a plaster base coat.
Mesh screwed in place over lathe
Plaster applied over mesh
Tomorrow he'll be back to put a finish coat on the ceiling.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Upstairs Stain Ready

Jeff and I finished sanding the woodwork upstairs this morning. Now both the guest bedroom and the upper hallway are stain ready. The woodwork is smooth and has beautiful grain patterns and I think it's going to look wonderful stained.

We also started cleaning up the sanding dust everywhere. What a mess we made throughout the house. We're going to have to vacuum/dust all the downstairs too.

Today we had Mike, our favorite electrician (B&H Electric, 503-970-5730), move the one outlet in the plaster down into the woodwork—before the plaster repair tomorrow. I believe every other outlet in the upstairs and downstairs is in the baseboard, so I decided this one would look better if it was moved.
I'm actually very pleased with our progress on this project—we started on Jun 1 and we're already ready for stain (even including the upper hallway).

Our master bedroom took us like six months to finish the paint stripping—which admittedly did include long gaps in our labor. Back then we didn't quite know what to expect at the time, so we weren't prepared for the long days of dull labor needed for the project. Audio books were the key.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Garage Siding Started

The contractor made great progress on the garage this week. Yesterday they put up the roof brackets  and other details and then today they started the siding. They wrapped up the roof in tarps because we've had rain this week.

Today, Jeff and I spent a long day sanding the woodwork in the guest bedroom. We made three passes with three different grits and now the wood is nice and smooth and ready to stain!

The plasterer comes on Tuesday.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Garage Raising!

There was a crew of four guys today and they got the shell of the garage finished. Even the window is installed.
Truss roof structure
Tomorrow, they're ready to start putting up siding. The wrong roofing was delivered again (sigh), so the roof won't go on until next week.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

We Have Walls!

The workers have been busy today and got the garage walls assembled and up. The building looks so big. =)
Too bad we couldn't change the size without meeting the current city outbuilding rules; we probably would have made it longer and narrower. All we were allowed to do was make it a bit taller. Oh well.

Trusses go up tomorrow!

Period Bedrooms

I guess I'll do a few posts over the next couple of weeks where I share some of the best pictures I've collected over the years showing room interiors from the early 1900's.

Since I'm getting ready to finish a bedroom, I thought I would share some bedrooms today. (Unfortunately, in the early days of collecting pictures, I wasn't always good about noting the original source.)
Craftsman Magazine, Jun 1904
Craftsman Magazine, Jul 1903
Craftsman Magazine, Jun 1905
Craftsman Magazine, Feb 1906
Craftsman Magazine, Sep 1906
Craftsman Magazine, Oct 1910
Museum of the City of New York, 1907

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Period Living Rooms

I've been collecting images of early 1900's living rooms for a couple years now. I have literally dozens of them, but I thought it would be nice if I posted some of my favorites here for folks who would like to recreate a period look for their bungalow living room. Most of the images are from The Craftsman Magazine, but I don't have the source for every single picture.
Eberson Paint Catalog, ?1912
Craftsman Magazine, Dec 1904
Craftsman Magazine, Oct 1904
Craftsman Magazine, May 1905
Sherwin Williams catalog, 1910
Specifications for above picture:  Ceiling - S-W Flat-tone Cream 832. Wall - S-W Flat-tone Aurora Yellow 825, followed with S-W Flat-tone Glaze Colors. Burnt Sienna,...........1 part. Olive Lake,............2/3 part. Greatly reduced with Flat-tone Glazing Liquid. Woodwork - Birch - S-W Handcraft Stain, Mahogany, Light, followed with S-W Mission-lac and S-W Durable Wood Finish Interior. Specification No. 15 or No. 16. Floors - Oak - Natural, S-W Transparent Filler and S-W Mar-not Varnish. Specification No. 21. Curtains - White Net. Over-curtains - Plain Venetian Silk. Upholstery - Wool Tapestry. Rug - Velvet Wilton. Furniture - Same as woodwork. Fireplace - Cinder Flecked Brick.
From Houses and Gardens, by M.H. Baillie Scott, 1906.
Craftsman Magazine, Dec 1906
Home Building & Decoration, 1912

Ready for Sanding

Thanks to today's cool weather, I have finally finished stripping the paint in the guest bedroom. There are still little bits of paint at some of the edges, but really this is about as clean as I can get the wood for staining without actually damaging it too much. Though, based on our experience staining the master bedroom, the stain should cover these small white lines without any problem. And, if not, we have touch-up paint.
Stripped window crown moulding
It was good to have a deadline. Since we've got an appointment with the plasterer to come out on July 24 to resurface the plaster in this room, I've been working steadily to get this room ready in time.

Our plan for the rest of the week is to fill the holes in the woodwork with stainable wood filler and then get started on sanding.  Though, really, the woodwork doesn't need much sanding; the steel scrubbies have worked quite well at smoothing the wood as I've worked on the chemical stripping.
In addition to cleaning up the woodwork, we've also been slowly scraping off the thick, rubbery layer of paint layers on top of the plaster.


Saturday, July 14, 2012

Dining Room Curtains Hung

I decided I needed a day off paint stripping. So, instead, I spent a leisurely day hand sewing while listening to my current audio book.

By this evening, I finished sewing the rings along the top edge of the dining room curtains and now they're hung up. I still don't feel comfortable starting the embroidery on the design—the embroidery hoop may smear paint if it isn't thoroughly dry.
I'm not 100% happy with the way the panels turned out, but they're probably not so bad for my first effort making my own stencils.

I guess now I should probably start thinking about what I should make for the guest bedroom. Maybe I'll try some appliqué...

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

New Garage Foundation

The new garage foundation is in! This gets to dry through the weekend and on Monday work will begin on the garage framing.

We had quite the crowd working on this slab this morning.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Paint Stripping Progress

One of the funny things about paint stripping is it always takes so much longer than you think it should. More than a week ago I thought I was almost done, but here it is—eleven days later—and I'm still only almost done. Sigh.

I spent something like four hours a day over the last several days and I do feel like I made good progress. I have mostly cleaned up all the crowns, which is the most difficult task, and I have cleaned up the woodwork around the linen cabinet.

I'm still working on cleaning up the baseboards, which isn't particularly difficult to do, but it's unpleasant because I end up sitting on the floor, which has by now gotten pretty gross.

Yesterday afternoon, I finished the second dining room curtain—the last curtain I plan to make for the main floor. I'm pretty excited to get this project finished!
Once the oil paint dries in several days, I'll start embroidering the panels.