Closet Cheat

Yesterday, in a comment, Debbie asked if I was going to strip the paint in the closet, and I have to admit I was tempted, but ultimately I decided I would rather apply my efforts to more visible areas.

Instead, I'm cheating and painting the woodwork with stain-colored paint. I put on one coat this evening and I'll apply another coat tomorrow. Then I'll probably shellac over the paint so it has the same sheen as the wood in the rest of the room.

There was one area on the inside of the door casing where Jeff had removed most of the paint, so I sanded and shellacked that area first before applying paint just in case I change my mind someday and need to strip the woodwork. =)

I did strip and stain the shelf board. I'll shellac that tomorrow along with the closet.

Working on Closets

I continued shellacking today. I finished up the master bedroom windows.

And then I finished shallacking the master bedroom closet.

Yay, we can finally put the hardware back on all these windows!

It also finally occurred to me I ought to do something with the guest bedroom closet before we have the floors refinished. I was thinking I should paint it so it matches the rest of the room.

But then I found this...

Really? How is this possible? I can't possibly paint bare wood...

...it's just not in my programming. So now I have to try to carefully remove this shelf and strip the paint. Sigh.

This and That

Jeff and I spent the entire weekend goofing off. Last Saturday, we went off to an SCA educational event where I had recruited the volunteer teachers. Jeff taught fingerloop braiding—a late-medieval technique for braiding cords and flat trims. We enjoyed ourselves and now that the bulk of our house restoration is complete, we'll probably spend a bit more time goofing off with SCA on the weekends during the next few years.

Then, on Sunday, Jeff volunteered at a dog agility event. He spent the day resetting jump heights and building the course between runs. He had a good time, and it helped him realize Shasta is probably good enough to try beginner category runs. So when he found an event fairly close by on September 9—Shasta's birthday—Jeff signed her up. He's going to try running her in the Tunnelers and Jumpers categories. I definitely have to go so I can get some video. =)

Otherwise, I've been terribly unproductive the last couple of days. I was lacking in motivation.

But today, I finally resumed work on the house. I've been trying to finish up the shellacking in the bedrooms. When I rushed through shellacking a couple weeks ago, I got lazy and didn't shellac the interior edges and the sashes of the windows because I needed to take the windows apart to get to all the edges. Today I finally did it in the guest bedroom. Tomorrow, I hope to finish up the master bedroom windows as well.

Once I'm done with the windows, I'll turn my shellacking efforts to the newly stained wood in Jeff's closet.

New House Bling

I obviously have a hard time saying "No" to pretty new house bling. I've actually been on a bit of a binge recently buying new brass hardware. This week, some mission style brass register covers. Ooooh, shiny!

Here is the before. Pretty filthy with some drips of paint, which I'm pretty sure pre-dated our remodel of the house. I tried to clean one of these up, but it didn't really look much better.

I would have preferred to refinish these and continue to use them, but apparently brass plating is stupid expensive. My earlier comparison shopping with the door hardware found buying new solid brass was cheaper than replating, so I just continued the trend.

I've had to spend my time this week doing a bunch of tasks for an SCA event this weekend, so I haven't had time to get back to working on Jeff's closet. Hopefully we'll be back on-project next week.

Staining Again

Now that we're getting close to being able to finish the upstairs bedrooms, I figured we may as well keep our forward momentum going and try to work on the closets. (At least the easy parts, anyway.)

On Sunday, Jeff cut the support boards for the shelf side of his closet. He used the salvaged boards (removed during the remodel) that I stripped in spring.

I've spent the last couple of days sanding and staining the woodwork in Jeff's closet and the wood for the shelves.

Now that I have the stain up, I'm planning to prime and paint when it's all dry. I figure it's easier to paint before there's a bunch more stained wood installed on the walls.

We're going to wait to install the actual plywood shelves and the double-hang side until after the floors are refinished. There's no sense making it that much harder for the floor refinisher to reach all the corners.

I also sanded and stained enough shoe molding to install in the master and guest bedrooms.

And I started sanding the linen cabinet doors, but those are not my highest priority right now. I'm much more anxious to get the bedrooms finished so I can hire out the floor refinishing...so we can finally finish these rooms and move in.

Unfortunately—you can't work on everything first.

New Linen Cabinet Doors

I'm excited to finally be able to show pictures of this week's project. My brother Jeffrey has experience with woodworking and was able to help my husband Jeff get our new tools properly set up and get to work on our newest project: new inset linen cabinet doors.

Upstairs linen cabinet

Bathtub access door in master bedroom

We built these doors because while paint stripping we found evidence the linen cabinet originally had inset doors. There was an outline of butterfly hinges in the paint as well as evidence inside the cabinet where hardware had once been installed. So, we thought we would go ahead and just replace the doors now rather than strip the later-period painted doors. We don't know what the original doors looked like, so we just duplicated the rail and stile doors in the dining room built-in.

Right now, the doors are just taped together and sitting in the openings for the trial fit. They still need to be glued—and stained and shellacked, of course.

I'm glad to be able to finally finish this woodwork in the upstairs hallway.

Thank you Jeffrey

We Have a Garage!!

OK, this is not news—but I'm so excited to finally have space to work on dusty and smelly projects.

The two Jeffs are hard at work on a new project and I'm so looking forward to to showing pictures . . . but I'm waiting for assembly of the pieces and test fitting.  I'm not a patient person.  =)

I've been entertaining my brother's kids, so he is free to work in the garage. I'm spending lots of time coloring and playing games. Good times.