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.

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. =)

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.

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.

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.

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.