Busy Day

Today was one of those amazing days where I got more done in the morning before 11AM than I usually get done in the entire day. I wish I had more of these days.

I spent another 30 or so minutes stripping paint in the dining room. Then, this afternoon I spent a few minutes stripping paint in the living room, because little chips in the paint made it look like the woodwork in there may be darker.

Unfortunately, it is. Bummer. Now we'll either need to use a dark stain in the dining room to make it match, or spend extra effort in the living room trying to lighten up the woodwork. My preference would be to have lighter woodwork, so we’ll probably go with the latter option.

We also spent another hour or so cleaning up the leaves in the front yard. I’m hoping this will be the last of the raking, as the trees are finally starting to look pretty bare.

Then we came in the house and got to work cleaning up the kitchen and then turned around and made it a mess again cooking! =) We made a new cookie recipe—Chocolate-Peppermint Snaps and Jeff put together a soup from turkey broth he made last week. And this evening, as I write this, Jeff is working on a batch of his favorite cookies—Snickerdoodles.

I’m still struggling with motivation to work on school. Most of my final projects are done and now I need to study. I must be broken, because I’d rather do nearly anything else than sit around and study. But I’ve been like this for years; at least I get a lot done during the couple weeks before finals! =)

I did, luckily, manage at least a couple of hours of studying this afternoon when my computer (incorrectly) thought the internet was down. But then Jeff told me his connection was working and a restart of my computer did the trick.

Update at 7PM. This task goes much faster with two people working at it. One person holds the infrared stripper, while the other scrapes the softened paint.

Scraped Into the Paint

I know today probably wasn't the best time to start this project, with finals being in a week and all, but the color of the underlying wood has simply been nagging at me. Our countertop choice really depends on how dark this wood is under the paint. If the wood was very dark, I didn't want to also go with a dark countertop, like soapstone. So, I'm encouraged by what we found.

This started out as a solo project, but then Jeff got caught up in my enthusiasm too and starting helping out. This was maybe a half-hour of work.

We had a skinny linen dresser in this spot, and I figured we could just put it back to hide the spot, but now that we've seen the paint will partially scrape off with the Silent Paint Remover, we'll probably keep going. We're obviously going to need another pass with chemicals, but it's too cold to open up the house for ventilation, so we'll have to content ourselves with this result for another couple of months. In spring we can bring in some of the evil, but effective, chemical removers.

Today, though, we have to do schoolwork. Jeff has two large projects he needs to finish by next Friday.

Exterior Colors Inspiration

I guess I like yellow paint, because this will be the third house I've painted yellow! I found a couple of pictures that I think I want to use as our exterior inspiration.

This wonderful picture is from the Old House Colors website. This house appears to be "The Sunshine" kit house made by Aladdin Homes.


This photo dates from 1911 and is copied from Robert Schweitzer's Bungalow Colors book.

We're expecting to have to reroof the house because the existing roof wasn't put on very well and is leaking. I'm hoping we'll be able to find a green roofing material.

Master Bathroom Planning

I'm really struggling with planning the new master bathroom in our 1912 Craftsman. I should just put in a bathroom like this, but I don't really like vast expanses of white or a lot of grout. (This 1912 photo was liberated from Paul Duchschere's Inside the Bungalow. An awesome book, BTW.)

So, I find myself in a dilemma. How historically accurate am I going to be? I have literally been combing through my pile of Bungalow books and the internet for weeks trying to find acceptable alternatives.


The best option I've found so far is this bathroom which I've pulled from the Bungalow Bathrooms book by Jane Powell.











Though, we still have the problem with how to finish the shower. We cannot use wood beadboard in the shower, and that leaves some sort of solid surface or tile. (Or maybe we'll just go with a more budgetary fiberglass shower.) I still don't have an answer to this one. I hope our contractor can help us figure it out.

I'm also trying to decide what to do about the floor as well. I found this basketweave tile at a pretty inexpensive source in Portland. I'm hoping this will work for the bathroom, and won't be too small, because it's a period pattern and a good color scheme for our plans.

I'm also considering a more period option: ceramic hex tile. My main hesitation is the expense. This tile is more than twice as expensive than the locally-available tile and we're already spending way more than we should on this project.











I believe I have at least chosen fixtures for the bathroom: St. Thomas Creations, the Barrymore line. They look historic to my eye and come in a variety of sizes. Unless they're ridiculously expensive, we'll probably just go with them because I'm tired of looking.

Though, I'd really like a pillbox toilet like the photo above, but the company that used to make it, Sunrise Specialty, doesn't seem to be making it anymore. (It's still on their website--but not in the latest catalog.) That's too bad, because that's where we got the pull-chain toilet last time and we really liked it. But a pull-chain toilet won't work in this house, because there's going to be a window above the toilet.

Schoolwork All the Day Long

While I am thrilled most of my teachers cancelled class this week, I am far less thrilled they also seemed to assign extra work over the break, because I guess we have so much free time.

Today I spent literally all day (9AM until now) working on my Legal Software class. I've been working on the final project which is to learn how to use the SmartDraw program. It's actually a pretty neat program, but too expensive to buy without more of a reason to use it.

These are the documents I made this week with this program. At least I'm having fun with this project.

Our First Snow of the Season

Shasta saw snow for the first time last night. She was really cute, jumping all about trying to catch the snow flakes.
We don't have much accumulation, but it is quite cold out there. Luckily neither one of us has to go anywhere. Though, I'm hoping to make it out for at least a couple of hours to go shopping for flooring material for new kitchen and bathroom.

Bring on the HazMat Team

I crawled into the attic with my Dad this morning and took a good look around. Long term, there is definitely not much room to do anything but store some boxes up there. We have a pretty crazy roof line and we've got all these perpendicular angles and support beams in the way. Though, when we get there, we'll welcome the mostly dry storage space for our paper records.

Anyway, I took a look around and found unopened bags of the insulation up there. There isn't a lot of "insulation" but there's enough that we have to deal with it in order to rewire the knob and tube electrical and add plumbing for the new bathroom (and replace the old plumbing as needed).

The unopened bag identified the stuff as "Wards Expanded Mineral Fill Insulation." A google search on that led me to a number of class action lawsuits and Vermiculite and a bummer conclusion: More than likely it's going to have to be professionally removed by a HazMat team. (Sigh, there goes the budget.)

It also looks like they started hauling sawdust up there to insulate. Nice.