First Pass Finished

Yesterday, we took most of the day off this project and enjoyed The Hobbit trilogy, but we were back to work today. We still have to strip the closet, but we finished the first pass with the heat gun on all of the woodwork inside of the bedroom. Once I am finished with the closet, I'll go ahead and mask the floors and start in on the chemicals.

We removed the door so we could remove the paint around and behind the hinges. We're going to rehang it because of the sanding process. We have enough dust problems without adding to it.

For folks who are just joining us for this process for the first time, the heat gun stripping is the fast part. We are maybe 20% done (probably less) in terms of hours needed for bringing the wood to a stain ready state. Cleaning up moulding details with chemical strippers, dental tools and sanders is a slow, tedious process.

Update seven hours later: Closet is done too!

That painted block of wood on the wall will have to be replaced because it is not douglas fir.

Day 3 Progress

I guess sometimes insomnia is not so bad, as last night I went back to work on the paint stripping. I got started at 1AM. :D

Four hours later and I finished the first pass on all of the baseboard, but for a small section in the corner where we need to uninstall the electrical connections.

Jeff is hard at work on the picture rail

Yes, I plan to strip paint in the closet too. I sort of have to since I removed the closet door and don't plan to put it back. Once I finish more of the details around the room, I will go to work on the closet. (Ugh, I hate working in cramped spaces.)

The closet has been disassembled and I've heat stripped the bottom side of the shelf and it's ready for the chemical stripping. The topside won't strip with heat (maybe milk paint?). It's going to require chemicals and/or sanding to get off the finish.

My current goal is to finish this room by the end of June; I think we can do it.

Day 2 Progress

The wear and tear on my hands made it hard to do a lot of work today, but thankfully Jeff stepped up and helped out. Generally, Jeff and I divide up paint stripping. He strips paint in the high areas and I do the low areas. I typically do most of the chemical stripping. Jeff sands the weird profiles (usually the picture rail and crowns) and then I sand the flat trim.

The paint started peeling off the wall like wallpaper; it was hard to resist giving it a good tug. :D

Day 1 Progress

Because it was supposed to be hot today, I started stripping the paint last night at 11PM. I only worked on it a couple hours before Jeff shuffled me off to bed because I was making too much noise with the windows open. LOL

Luckily the temperature was not as high as forecast today and we were able to put in another few hours (between us). Unfortunately, my hands have gone soft during my nearly 3-year break from paint stripping and I have massive blisters on my thumb. Oh well. I'll keep at it though, because this is what I'm obsessed with at the moment. I am so determined to finish this project as soon as I can (before I get distracted by some other damn video game).

The pictures are mostly for our own benefit, because paint stripping is one of those awful projects where when you look at it all you see is what you have left to do. It's so hard to feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of a day's work. Usually you don't feel good about the project until it is done.

Furniture Moved

I'm so pleased we managed the motivation to get all the furniture moved today. It was a bit of a challenge by the end because we were tired, but we finished! :D

There is a little bit of mop up left to do (like removing the racks off the wall) and then we can remove the shoe moulding and mask the floors. Oh, and I have to dig around the cluttered garage to find the heat gun and other paint stripping supplies.

The guest room is not open for business right now. LOL

Sewing Room Packed

Finally, I am almost there; just a few more tubs to schlep out. Tomorrow we are going to break down the bed in the guest room and start moving the sewing room furniture in there.

It is likely we'll be able to start paint stripping again in a few days. Not one of my favorite jobs, but it is definitely improved by the fact that this will be our LAST bedroom. Once we are done with this, we can pack away those paint stripping tools for a very long time. :D

Quite a lot of the packed boxes from the room fit in my huge closet, so our master bedroom barely feels cluttered. I didn't even bother to pack up the bolts of fabric; I just stacked them up on top of my dresser. Of course, now my closet is pretty crammed, but I don't go in there much anyway. And it is temporary.

Sewing Room Progress Finally

I have finally mostly escaped the self-destructive habit of playing the ArcheAge game all day and I'm working on my sewing room again. I've packed up all of the hanging and stacked fabrics and most of the stuff in the bookshelf. I didn't really want to declare any progress on the blog again until I had made a lot of progress packing, lest it get derailed like it did last time. :)

I'm hoping to get the room packed up entirely in the next week and get started right away on paint stripping before our weather gets too hot. I'd really like to finish staining the wood and repainting the walls by the end of summer. I'll also plan on having the floors refinished before I move back into the room.

Right now all the packed boxes are being stuffed into the other bedrooms on the second floor, so it's going to be pretty cluttered and unphotogenic for the near future. It's probably going to be pretty crazy when we have to move all the furniture out of the room for the floor refinishing. (I predict the bed in the guest bedroom will get unassembled.)

It was a little painful to start packing up the stacked fabric as I spent so long making those piles just as I liked them. Ultimately, I ended up buying boxes that were just the right size to fit two piles side-by-side without having to reshift the piles. It should be fairly straightforward to put the fabric right back on the shelves mostly the way they were before.

(P.S. about ArcheAge. Don't even think about playing it. The game is being managed extremely poorly by its North American publisher, Trion. I regret some of the money I put into the game, though I must admit I did enjoy it for many months. We hung out with some really nice players and I do not regret the time I spent with them. The game itself is really beautiful, but it unfortunately does not reward hard work, but luck and swiping your credit card. Additionally, many players in the game are really toxic and ridicule players who don't view PvP as their primary desire in the game. Save your time and money. Don't bother.)