Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Exterior Painting Complete

The exterior painting has mostly wrapped up. There is some touch up, and some clean up, and then it will be done. Here are the most recent pictures:
These are the before photos:
These are the inspiration photos:
This wonderful picture is from the Old House Colors website. We used Colonial Yellow stain for the body, which is mentioned by name in the 1910 Sherwin Williams Catalog.

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

We hope we did well.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Today's Activities

What are we doing today?


Yes...SO HAPPY to be moving in!

It's like a puzzle as we figure out what goes where in our new cabinets. We keep juggling items around as we continue to open boxes. We've run the dishwasher like 5 times since yesterday evening because we are putting most of the dishes through before we put them away in the cupboards. The dishwasher is very quiet—but oh, so slow.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Quick Staining Project

We've been trying to work out the exterior finish on the front door. Had Sharon realized it was purple to begin with—she would have left it alone! But, alas, Sharon didn't notice until too late. She doesn't regret stripping the door since it is really nice to have the interior side stained rather than painted white.

Sharon asked the painters if they could restain the door purple and they did yesterday. But it was too light; the purple-tint was hardly noticeable.
Sharon was preparing herself to just have them paint it with purple paint, like the screen door. But then she remembered she had eggplant stain she could try. So, this morning, she did. That's more like it!
Jeff and Sharon have gotten back to work stripping the paint in the master bedroom. Now that the contractor is wrapping up the main floor remodel, we're getting eager to move back upstairs. Though, with the heat this week, we have only been working for brief periods, but we are getting close. Most of the paint is off and now we're mostly working on sanding in preparation for staining.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Front Screen Door Painted

Sharon is delighted with her purple screen door!
The light blue on the ceiling is being auditioned for the job. Not sure that's the color we'll use, but it's a blue our painter said is traditionally used for porch ceilings.

Unfortunately, this is the closest thing we have to a before picture. We obviously never got around to taking a picture of the front door.The rest of the doors are being painted the dark green. This is the side door that Sharon and Jeff stripped the weekend before last. The details look much better.

Main Floor Bathroom Remodel

Unfortunately, we don't have good before photos of the main floor half-bath. It used to be really small; you could wash your hands in the sink while seated on the toilet. It had a 24" door and you practically had to sit down on the toilet to close the door.


Needless to say, we enlarged the room a little bit. We took around 17" from the kitchen to make this bathroom a bit more usable. The window used to be centered on the wall and we didn't change the size of the window during the remodel.

All of the woodwork in this bathroom is new flat-sawn fir. The fixtures are from the St. Thomas Creations Arlington line. The faucet is a Newport Brass, Fairfield. The light was from Rejuvenation. The turn latches were from House of Antique Hardware.

This medicine cabinet was custom made by the same woodworker who made the kitchen cabinets.Jeff and Sharon were quite delighted when they realized they could steal space out of the dead corner in the kitchen for a small linen cabinet. It still needs shelves inside. Though, Sharon is not too thrilled about the turn latch being installed incorrectly; it was supposed to be centered. Sigh. Probably can't fix it now.Here it is after the mirror was installed and we swapped out the toilet seat.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Exterior Painting

Exterior painting is clearly a plastic-intensive process. The paint crew spent literally days masking and more masking, then they would spend an hour or two painting. It has been really interesting to watch the process.

To start, the painters went through and primed all the new wood. Then they pressure washed and scraped the old paint.


Next, they went through and masked the glass on the old windows. They also masked the yellow-stained shingles. They sprayed the wood mullions with the dark green paint. Then they went through and masked the entire window with a second layer of plastic, leaving the trim around the window exposed.



Next, they went through and sprayed the trim-work with the white paint we chose.












By this point, it was getting pretty eerie inside the house.Then, as expected, they wrapped up the white trim with MORE plastic.








They then went through and painted the yellow body paint. Here were the two paint samples they put up for us. The right hand sample is the yellow that matches the stained shingles; the left hand sample is 50% darker. We chose the darker yellow.



By this evening, the crew had started removing the layers of plastic and the house colors were starting to emerge.


Kitchen is Done!!

Except for one vent cover in the toe kick and swapping out a couple of chrome hinges, the kitchen is done!! Well, OK, we still have to make the leaded glass panels for this one cabinet. We have a plan, we have the glass, we're just waiting for the leaded glass class in September.We LOVE the soapstone counters!
For those who don't recall, here is how it looked before the remodel.

If you want to know about products/materials we used, there is a post about them here.