Starting the Big Paint Job

Over the past few months, I've spent most of my free time stripping, sanding and painting and I finally have something to show for it. We agonized over paint colors and ended up choosing a series of colors in Sherwin Williams' "Arts & Crafts" series.

A big part of the painting process is scraping old paint. We decided not to remove all of the paint but instead are only removing the loose paint, sanding to feather the edges, priming and painting.

We spent a lot of time determining the technique we would use to paint trim and sills. I'll devote and entirely new blog post to that in the coming weeks.

Here are some progress photos of the front porch so that you can get an idea of what the finished product will look like. 

Back to work, if I can get up to it.

I have been trying very hard to motivate myself. Usually, I am prone to procrastination for a short time and can be preoccupied with nice weather, playing with my daughter, or any number of other things but this is different. A funk has settled over the Tiny Bungalow and it is unlike any funk I’ve been in before. I know the cause: it’s the economy, stupid. I don't think I'm alone here. Is anyone onyone else experiencing DIY paralysis in the wake of the recession?

Last fall, we were all excited to start a series of jobs: get some re-wiring done, set the groundwork for upstairs painting and wood refinishing. It was all very exciting, until the layoffs began. We’ve gone through three excruciating rounds. I, luckily, still have a job. For a whole myriad of reasons, I don’t feel so lucky. It is partly because they cut my pay, partly because I have to sit and look at empty desks all day but mostly because of the angst over the next round of firings.

I am shocked by how much this work stuff seems to have crept into my work at home. I used to find refuge in the house work but now, plagued by concerns that begin with the thought of not spending too much, it has become something that I sort of dread.

In the meantime, while I wait for the cloud to pass, I have tried to pinpoint projects around the house that I can do and not spend any money. The painting and sexy stuff in the main living spaces will have to wait and so will the dreams of any of the considerable work I was considering in terms of an addition. I’ve re-organized closets, cleaned and de-cluttered, and this weekend, I started stripping the door to the bedroom closet.

I thought this last project was a huge step to DIY recovery. Maybe if I accomplish something on the house, without expenditure, I’ll feel a bit better. I’ll let you know how it goes in another few weeks.

Music to strip by

I used to perform most of my household chores while listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”. I have been distraught over the past year because I somehow mis-placed it during out move to the Tinybungalow. This has become more depressing as time has moved on and my household chores have become a little more involved. I haven’t gotten the energy to go to a used record store to get a new copy of the album so I’ve been forced to listen to alternatives
I have fairly diverse musical tastes when I am working. I can listen to classical, country, rock, jazz, you name it. This eclecticism is not always appreciated by my co-workers but I think that it is better than listening to the same twelve pop songs 24-7. While working at home, I’ll throw in a couple of CDs – usually something from the mid to late 80’s or I’ll put on a random radio station.

When I started stripping the wood in the bedroom, back in March, I began searching out something that would both give me the drive to work and give me enough breaks to help train my patience. For the right kind of music and a much needed break every twenty minutes or so, there is nothing better than listening to a vinyl LP. If you don’t have vinyl, then you probably aren’t restoring an old home. An old home and a good vinyl collection pretty much go hand in hand, don't they?
I started the project listening to my jazz albums. I found the Ellington a bit too mellow and the Puente was a bit too, well, Puente. I sang along, much to my neighbor’s dismay, to Sinatra, Bennett, and countless others but I soon become distracted from the work at hand. Maybe I just needed some mood music, something that sat in the background and didn’t get me tapping my feet so much. In this search, the Hawaiian music got me a little too tired, the Polka music got me tapping again, and the Bavarian music just got me thirsty for a beer. After cycling through a slew of odds and ends, actually skipping over the Steve and Edie, I found myself in the middle of June, half-way through my collection but not half-way through the stripping work.
By July I was gravitating back to Springsteen and knowing that I needed something that was a little longer, I turned to “The River”. The mid-summer temperatures, lazy afternoons and Classic Rock were a pretty good mix and I was soon working through my array of Yes, Springsteen, Zeppelin and other 70’s albums.
There was one album in particular in this period that I repeated again and again and I now consider the greatest wood stripping album, if not the greatest rock album, of all time: “Physical Graffiti”. I am no music critic so for insight into the musical value of the album, you’ll have to go elsewhere. From the wood stripping perspective, it really has it all and it propelled me through the completion of the project.
The first thing about this album that gets you is the album cover – a depiction of a group of disheveled New York City apartments well before the Historic Preservation movement got into full swing. If this doesn’t inspire one to work on their home, I am not sure what kind of image will. Inside is even better: four album sides of excellent music. Each side is approximately twenty minutes long. This allows you twenty or so minutes of stripping, five to ten minutes changing the side and getting a drink, and so on until you reach the last song. This adds up to almost an hour and forty-five minutes of work; about the maximum amount of stripping I can do in one day without starting to feel light-headed.

Important to the process of stripping wood is that you don’t get bored (burning the wood because you fell asleep with your Speedheater in one place) but also don’t get overly excited (and gauge the wood while scraping away the loosened paint). “Physical Graffiti” has a good mix of both slow and fast songs. It sets the pace of your work in such a way that you don’t screw things up. It also has enough variety in musical influence, from blues to funk to pop rock and folk, to satisfy any mood you might be in.

The only criticism I would give the album, from a paint stripping perspective, is the placement of “Trampled Under Foot” so early in the album. It comes just before “Kashmir” on the second side of album one. After hearing the song so many times, I have come to think that this is one of the finest hard rock guitar songs ever recorded. The overt lyrics don’t hurt it either. The problem is that this hard rocking treat is served up a little too early; kind of like having your desert and then having to slouch in your seat through several more rounds of tea before leaving the dinner party. I guess I would prefer this crescendo to occur more than half-way through my day’s project, sort of getting me over the hump.

I guess this lapse in paint stripping consideration on behalf of the album’s producer is fine because “Trampled Under Foot” is quickly followed by the immensely long “Kashmir”. This comes at an a perfect point in the project. It is the longest stretch of work before the half-way mark.

The only difficult part about listening to this album while working is that it is better loud so working with others becomes a bit of a challenge. Or worse, if you have my case, it is challenging to listen to this and work while a 3 year old is napping or your wife is trying to relax catching up to the TV shows she Tivoed this week

There are probably a good number of you out there that are lost while reading this. In that case, I would guess that you have never stripped wood in an old house. If you have done so and still don’t know what I am talking about, and your religion doesn’t prevent you from doing so, I urge you to patronize your local used record store and get a copy of Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti” for your next project.

Why didn't I think of this before?

Paint removal has been a relatively easy process for most of the interior woodwork. The tricky part has been getting the paint out of the nooks and crannies of all of the crown molding at the window and door heads. I have been using the Speedheater and though it easily removes paint from flat work, these areas are another matter. After scraping away with an Exacto blade for countless hours, an idea finally came to me: if only I had a tool that could get into these areas - kind of like a mini-sander. Wait, I do have such a tool!!! I quickly ran to the basement and found my Dremel. It took a lot of patience and care but I think that using the Dremel was a success. I used a very small pointed carving bit for the tight corners and then a round drum sanding bit for the rest. This saved a lot of time and frustration. I also did very little damage to the actual wood (unlike the occasion gouge I would get when using the blade and sandpaper) but it still took quite a bit of time due to the nature of the tool. Perhaps if I had better eyesight and hand control it would have been easier. I also wish my Dremel had a lower speed - that too would have helped with the control.
The only unfortunate thing is that I didn't think of this until I was on the last bit of paint stripping in the bedroom. The window trim is about 75% sanded. I decided to not strip the window stops and will likely cut new ones instead (when I do the window restoration next...). The existing stops are cracked and several areas have completely fallen apart - likely from when people have removed them in the past. I am still on schedule for painting by this weekend.