We spent most of the day Sunday sanding and cleaning up the powdered mess that was spackle. Again my husband worked on the ceiling. That sure saves my neck and back.

My husband sanding the ceiling. Note the ceiling fixture What is that?

We took down the light fixtures and cleaned them up and filled any cracks. I have always wondered about the ceiling light fixture. There is a matching one in the kitchen entrance (only smaller.) They looked Eames era to me but what do I know. After taking them down and cleaning them we saw the label on the fixture. (See photos below) The patent number was a little confusing. I looked it up on the date charts and it is between 1941 and 1942. That seems to early for this design. The D in front of the number may indicate it is a design patent. But the numbers don’t go that high on the design charts. That makes me think it must be from 1941-42. Whatever they are, they do not fit in this house. When other necessities get done, we’ll replace them with something more appropriate. For now, they are a conversation piece,

Little matching light.

No, we aren’t done with the kitchen and we spent all weekend and Monday evening working on it.

My last post I told how I had used the non-sandable spackling in error. That product is nothing more than white caulking. I managed to fix it by using a fairly new (and thus sharp) hand plane and shaved the high spots off and put the sandable caulking over it and feather it out. Those hand planes weigh a ton when you hold them and reach over your head to the ceiling.

Last week my husband said he was going to help me on the weekend. I was a bit skeptical. This is sweaty, dirty, and just plain boring work to fill in the cracks and sand it smooth.

My husband came through with flying colors, though, as he spackled most of the cracks in the ceiling and I helped on the walls. We accomplished a lot but things slowed our progress. We came across the vent grate and should we or should we not remove it from the wall? He unscrewed the two screws holding the vent cover to the wall. Four more screws held the louvers to the vent cover and we were lucky we took the correct screws out or the louver would have fallen down the vent chute to no-man’s land (actually to the basement.)  We bet this is the first time it was off the wall since it was built. They needed a good soak in ammonia.

The chute’s purpose is not really known to us. We were told it was a laundry chute when we bought the house. Its too small for that, your clothes would get stuck and why would there be vent louvers in the kitchen? It wasn’t a heat register, though, because the house always had a boiler with radiator heat. The chute ends in the attic where the chute suddenly tapers to a small opening and stops. I did come across something when searching on the internet about Ventilators. I’ll look further into our mystery at a later date. But when additional baseboard radiator heating and rewiring upstairs was done they ran that stuff through the chute as you can see in the second photo.  I also use it to run our ethernet cord and cables from the second story computer to the basement computer. It has really come in handy.

It was fun (though it took a lot of time) to take the grate off and determine the different colors it had been painted over the years. I first put Peel Away 6 on it for a short time and scraped away the top layer to reveal a yellow color. Then a darker green and then a gold or copper color. We decided we will paint it the original color before we put it back up. The louvers had a patent date of 1907, though our house was built in 1917. The same product can be made for years under the same patent.

Saturday ended and we hadn’t even finished repairing all the cracks, let alone paint.

My husband called me into the living room to show me something last evening when I was fixing dinner.  We have a beanbag footstool that was taken over by the cats years ago.  The one cat loves it.  The other was afraid of the noise it made but lately has taken to it also.  I’m not sure which one did it, but one of them ripped a hole in it and there were little white beads on the floor.  I’d get to it after dinner.

I forgot about it until I came downstairs this morning.  I was greeted by our 2 cats begging for their treats.  They were covered with little white static-laden beads.  I looked into the dining room.  Thousands of little white beads on the floor and stuck to the sides of the furniture.  Same in the living room.  I tried to wipe the little styrofoam beads off the cats but they flew back to their hair like magnets.  I spent the morning vacuuming up those tiny white balls. You can tell everywhere the cats were last night  because they left a trail.

That done, I got out the drywall sander to sand off the repairs I had made to the kitchen walls and ceiling yesterday and feather it out with another wider coat.  I sanded and sanded and thought, what the heck….why isn’t it sanding?  Maybe it still wasn’t dry?  That didn’t make sense, it had been hours.  I got out my electric palm sander and tried sanding it and it didn’t do anything.  I scraped at it and the stuff was like rubber.  I wasn’t very careful spackling because you can always sand it off and feather it out on the next coat…..or can you?  Here is just one section around a light switch that I did yesterday.

Not a very good job but it was just the first coat and I’ve done it before in other rooms and you sand it down smooth and feather another coat and repeat until it is nice and smooth.  When it didn’t sand I took out the tub of stuff and looked at the label.  It didn’t say it was non-sandable on the front label.

It like talks about how SMOOTH it is (it wasn’t smooth and didn’t go on smooth, either) and how it won’t flash paint.  Sounds great.  I turned over to the directions and scanned them.  I didn’t see anything at first.  Then I carefully read the buried sentence that I highlighted but you wouldn’t see unless you read slowly and carefully. Who does that when buying spackle?  Well, I will now. I’ve used different kinds of spackle lots of times and even used the latex stuff and it always sanded.  I believe this sentence was intentionally buried in the instructions (or you’d never buy it) and I felt like throwing it across the room.  So what that little sentence says is that you have one shot to make that smooth as a baby’s bottom or you are screwed.

I worked at trying to get it to dissolve and smooth out.  I used denatured alcohol and that started to make it gummy but didn’t work.  I tried to get it off with Peel Away 6.  Balled up and made a mess.  I haven’t tried the Goof Off yet and maybe that will work to at least smooth the big bumps so I can feather normal spackling over the top of it to hide the patchwork. If it still shows, I’ll try the strong chemical stripper to try and get it off.  As a last resort I’ll try a razor blade (are you kidding me, scraping that stuff off with a razor blade?!) But it is all over my ceiling and walls. CEILING!  Where everything you do is 10 times harder up there!   Luckily, I only got part of the ceiling patched yesterday (or you could say destroyed using this crap.) So I thought washing the ceiling was hard.  That is nothing compared to what I’m going to have to do to fix this mess.

I’m prepping the kitchen ceiling to paint. My husband will do the painting. I climbed the ladder and to my horror (not really) there was caked on dirt on the top of the door moldings “crowns.”  I knew they would be dirty because it was more than a year since I took a ladder up to clean them off.  I have used the swiffers to dust them, of course,  but that doesn’t do much of anything for the kitchen ones. The kitchen is especially bad because the dirt doesn’t wipe off, it is grimy.  I took my usual Clorox cloths only to find the dirt turns to little sticky balls.  I took vinegar.  That didn’t do anything.  I tried the tsp substitute (full strength) and it didn’t do much either.  After 4 times climbing up and down that ladder, I found that straight ammonia took it right off. Ammonia will also take off shellac so you have to be really careful.  In high school, my home-ec teacher swore by ammonia. I used to get a rash on my hands from it but we had to use it. (Now days someone would sue the school but in those days we just took everything in stride and I went and bought some tar cream for rashes. ) When I saw the ammonia work so good,  I read the directions on the ammonia bottle for cleaning walls.  1 cup ammonia, 1/2 cup vinegar and some baking soda.   I made a little mixture (didn’t measure but guessed at it) and dipped my rag in it and it worked really good. I decided to use that for my ceilings.

I’m writing this as I take a break.  My neck hurts and I’m getting a headache.  I didn’t use gloves because it just drips back onto your arms when you are reaching above your head so now my fingers are all wrinkly.   I got a whole 4 x 6 ft section done and I’m wondering just how important it is to have to clean that ceiling before painting.  I can see doing it over the stove where it would be a little bit more grimy, but the whole ceiling?  Isn’t paint today suppose to stick regardless?  I’m thinking if ever there was a time to take shortcuts, this would be it.

I’m currently involved with 3 projects at once.  Multitasking.  When my back hurts from one, I move to the other. The weather turned wonderful.  Low 70s is my kind of temperature and makes me want to work.  I put on my earphones and turn on the audio book and I’m in my own little world.

I finally got around to putting the Waterlox on the dining-room floor (I did the living-room floor back in Dec/Jan.)  I am using the same method I used with the living room.  I put painters tape along the boards to divide the room in half and moved all the furniture to one side.  When the finished side is cured, I’ll move the furniture back to the other side and finish the remaining floor.  It looks good so far.  It will have to cure for 7-10 days before I can start on the other side. (photos to come soon.)

In the meantime I am stripping the back stairs that leads from the kitchen to the upstairs landing.  I haven’t decided what finish to use yet.  The oak front stairs was just completed in the garnet shellac but the pine back stairs borders the kitchen with the natural heart pine woodwork so I may leave those stairs a natural color, too.  I’ll just use Waterlox if I do.  I’m only halfway done with the stripping of the back stairs. I tried both the strong chemical stripper and the Peel Away 6.  Both are so messy. The chemical is so much faster but requires thick gloves and being really careful. Even a little splatter will burn your skin.  Of the parts I have already stripped, the chemical cleaned it best. The downside to the chemical stripper is I can’t leave for a moment in case one of the cats happens down the stairs. Another question I have to answer is if I want to sand out all the marks and dents on the treads.  It’s part of the allure of “antique.”  Some of the treads are worn down in the middle from a century of use.  It would be nice to have the stairs look spanking new but I love the history in the old look. I think the sanding will be minimal. It is what it is, old stairs.  People often try to make their new wood look old like this.

My husband and I bought the paint for our kitchen.  It has been on our list since we bought the house but we just never got to it.  It’s not all that big of a project so why live with ugly dirty, green walls and a green ceiling?  Yesterday we said, “Let’s just do it.”  The worst part will be cleaning those old high ceilings and repairing the cracks.  My neck hates that stuff. It’s the pits to be short and everything seems harder when you are short.   My husband volunteered to do the ceiling. I say, “Have at it!”  We picked a light pale yellow.  It looked pretty light at the store but I knew through past experience how yellow yellow can be when it is up on the wall.  I have the paint sample card up on the wall this morning and I think we picked the perfect color.  We haven’t found a lighting fixture yet that we like for the kitchen.  I’ll keep my eyes open on eBay to try to find a restored vintage lighting fixture that will look right in our kitchen and doesn’t cost a fortune. There is also a foot-square grate near the ceiling.  We want to take that down and see what the original color was.  It is painted green like the walls  now.  I think it would look really nice black and I have a feeling that is the original color.

I think any of the colored shellacs are the hardest finish I’ve ever applied, especially on open-grained woods like oak.  The alcohol dries so fast on the outside of the coat that it pulls the finish up around the pores leaving ridges and also lap marks from the edges where the brush ended.  Any edge always gets darker and reflects the light to make it even more noticeable.  I have bought products that were suppose to increase the open time for shellac before it dries but they didn’t help much.  The only thing was to fill the pores and sand the ridges.  But sanding a colored shellac can leave light and dark areas unless you are perfect.

I came across some antique literature that used ammonia in some recipes for shellac.  The ammonia is suppose to stop the ridging. Just add a few drops in your shellac/denatured alcohol mixture to help prevent the ridging. I carried it a bit further and did a little experimenting myself.

I did some experiments and some were failures.  I think the failures (which was that the shellac bubbled off or flaked off) were caused by the mix being stored too long, like 2 to 3 days old.  I had no trouble with the mix when it was fresh, meaning using it the same day. Even the literature said to only use fresh mixtures.  It is also possible there was some left over wax on the wood from a stripper that wasn’t cleaned off good enough or my mix had too much ammonia in it.

To be sure that my shellac  mix (below) had good bonding, I put some on my counter top.  Actually, I spilled it but left it to see how hard it was to remove.  With the regular shellac, when dry I can chip it off with a razor blade or just use ammonia on a sponge to wipe it off.  When this mixture dried, it was just as hard to remove as regular shellac is on my counter top.  So I’m pretty confident there won’t be a problem. *I should note that I used dewaxed garnet shellac.  If the shellac is not dewaxed, I can’t say it would work.

What I did:  (disclaimer: it worked for me but you do your own experiments as the results may not hold true under different circumstances.)

• Shellac mixed with denatured alcohol – 3 pound cut  (you can find garnet shellac flakes on the internet and add denatured alcohol to make your own mix or buy it premixed on the internet.)

• A small bowl of water

• Household Ammonia (not diluted)

I took just enough of the shellac/alcohol mixture that I would be using that day and put it in another container.

I dribbled a very small amount of ammonia into the shellac and stirred.

I took the spoon out and let some of the shellac drip from the spoon into the bowl of water to see if it coagulated or dissolved in the water. (You shouldn’t add so much it dissolves the first time or you may have added too much.)

If it coagulated, I dribbled a little bit more ammonia in the shellac mixture and stirred.  I repeated this until the drops dispersed/dissolved in the bowl of water. (afterward you can clean your bowl with ammonia if you need to) You want the least amount of  ammonia in the mix that it takes to get it to dissolve in water.  Too much ammonia  in the mix can bring up the shellac from previous coats when you brush it on. After all, ammonia will strip shellac off of wood when used full strength.

When the mixture has enough ammonia to dissolve in water, the mixture can be thinned with a little water.  Too much water will make the finish blush white when you apply it (but it does evaporate out.)  The water made the application smoother but also made it dry a  lot slower and would cause drips on the vertical surfaces.

It takes longer to dry and will take more coats to build up color but I think it gave a better, more even finish. Your brush will also clean up with water unless it has started to dry in which you’d need ammonia to clean it. I haven’t tried it yet but I imagine this mix would mix well with water-based dyes.

Have fun experimenting and test small amounts so you don’t waste your shellac!  See my results on my front stairs here.

Wow, this has been a long project.  It involved a lot of experimenting with shellac, shellac on-shellac off and also dealing with humidity.  I had a few-day window of lower humidity this past week and finally was able to finish them.  I’m really happy with how they turned out.  I tried different sheens by adding a shellac flattening agent.  I ended up with a moderate amount of sheen.  The flatter it is, the less mistakes show but I love the sheen.  In the photo you can see on the step’s riser second from the highest step shown, on the left-hand side, there is a small section that is still dull which I have now fixed.  I didn’t even see it until I took the photo but thought I’d let you see what a difference in sheen a little Shellac Flatt makes. I previously coated the whole stairs in the flatter sheen but didn’t like it and put a coat over it and had missed that spot.

Today, in a separate post,  I’ll tell you the shellac recipe (using some ammonia) I used for the stairs. There was no stain used on these white oak stairs.  The color comes from many coats of garnet shellac. Some of what you see on the stairs are reflections from a stained-glass window on the left. Also, half way up you can  see the grain pattern and rays of  a quarter-sawn riser. A few of the risers are quarter-sawn with the rays and some are not.  I’m not sure why they wouldn’t make them  uniform when they built it but the patterns are so pretty I embrace the ones we do have.

Updates:

• I’ll admit I’m a pansy when it comes to humidity or cold. This year it seems really extra humid. I’m fine sitting in front of a fan but try to do much of anything and sweat rolls into my eyes and I get a bit dizzy. Paint doesn’t dry nor does my shellac. I wish there were more days like today. So I’ll return to my projects and to my posting. There just wasn’t much to post about when I didn’t do anything.

• As far as the post about my water-based shellac that I was testing, I can state a few things now but will do a more in-depth report later. First, my water-based shellac really isn’t water-based. But it does clean up with water. I had a problem with it back when I shellacked our stairway to the second floor. For some reason it crusted up and peeled off on one of the steps. Because of that I took down the post about the shellac until I could figure it out. I think I have. The rest of the stairs, except for the one problem step, turned out beautifully. We’ve not been gentle with it and it is holding up like any other shellac. And the best part is the water clean-up using the “water-based shellac.” Which makes me think spraying it should work really well. How I hate cleaning all the parts to the sprayer after spraying regular shellac. It gets all gummed up. I can’t wait to try it using the sprayer.

Knob and Tube Wiring.

One thing about old houses I want to comment on is the old knob and tube wiring. I’ve heard several times from different people that they have been told that knob and tube in good condition works just fine. But it should be pointed out that a good many people used blow-in insulation over the years that is not fireproof and when it settles on the knob and tube wiring, the wires can heat up and it could start a fire. When knob and tube was put in “in the olden days” it only ran small amounts of current for simple appliances and light bulbs. It wasn’t meant to carry current to air conditioners, TVs, refrigerators, treadmills, hair dryers and computers. We overload our circuits today.  Many people have several of these items running all on the same circuit. That isn’t safe! The old wires heat up with all that current going through them. Each year that passes the insulation on the wires gets more brittle. While it may be safe for now for people that don’t overload them, I couldn’t sleep at night if I had all knob and tube. Luckily when we bought our house, we had the owners rewire it as part of the sale.

Growing up in my turn-of-the- century old  house in the west, I actually remember my parents putting in larger fuses so they wouldn’t blow so easily. That ancient wiring was all that was running our washer and dryer and it always kept blowing the fuse when you had them going at the same time. Yikes! They blow for a reason, to keep too much current for the wire size from heating up and causing a fire.

When I was still a kid, my dad knew a guy who said he’d come over and fix it so the fuses wouldn’t blow so often. My dad, as smart as he is, didn’t know anything about electricity. The guy installed, on the cheap, an electrical panel and circuit breakers. After that, when they blew, you just flip the switch back on and you didn’t have to replace a fuse. We thought we had entered modern times. The circuits rarely blew anymore. We were pleased and felt, oh so safe. It was the same old wiring! It was still before computers and so many major appliances. I was horrified at how unsafe our old house had been when I learned in my electronics class about electrical currents and safety. But the house stood until recently when my brother had it torn down to build a new, beautiful house.

No moral to this story, really. Just a warning about the wiring. These old houses are always in the news. Some wonderful old houses are gone from fires caused by the old wiring. I think updating your wiring should be number one on your restoration list.

My old Creative Zen V Plus mp3 player died a while ago and I found out you can’t change out the battery (so I thought, see video below.)  They made it that way.  Its a great way to make you buy their newer product.  I put it in the drawer thinking I should just throw it but it takes up so little space what harm would it do to hold onto it just in case I plug it in and it was to work again. Didn’t happen.  I loved that mp3 player.  It was easy to use and it had the bookmark feature which is really good for audiobooks.  I used to listen to free audiobooks from Librivox.org and it made my housework and “working on the house” more enjoyable.

I finally replaced my Zen with a Zune HD.  I love it.  I got a free pass to the Zune Marketplace for 14 days of free music listening.  I used it about 2 times. I had to give credit card information, email, address, the whole works just to get the free pass. They said the reason you had to give the credit card is because of verification of age or something like that.  If I wanted to try the free pass for 14 days, I had to give that info. One week into it, I knew I wanted to cancel because I’m just not going to buy any music.  I have plenty of CDs at home that I transferred onto my Zune HD.  I also get free audio books from Overdrive through our Blasco Library. The library is great because I download them and it will load right into my Zune HD.  Easy as pie once I figured it all out.

But opting out of the Zune Marketplace was a nightmare.  Let me tell you they have you running in circles.  I followed the instructions for canceling but there was no option for it where the instructions said.  I finally, after an hour of clicking and searching, called the support line to find an endless circle of options.  I finally happened to get a real operator.  I told her about the instructions weren’t right for canceling.  She said, “you can’t do it on your end.”  Really?  They want to to get so frustrated that you just give up?  How nice and your credit card is on the account so anyone that ever gets your Zune HD can buy music because mine logged into the “marketplace” automatically (and I’m sure I didn’t set it up that way.)  Wait, it gets worse, even if you cancel on the Zune site, there is another site that your info went to.  Xbox.com

To finish getting my credit card off of the account, she also had me sign in to Xbox.com and I found out I had an account on that website and they had my credit card info, too!  I had to go through a bunch of steps to get my credit card off of that site.  I’m under the impression I’ll always be signed up with those two websites but at least there just won’t be a credit card associated with it.  The Zune HD, I love, the people behind it, not so much.

• During a YouTube search for mp3 players to learn more about how to use my Zune HD, I came across a video about replacing the battery on the Creative Zen V Plus.  What?!!  Previously I only came across articles saying you couldn’t replace them, that’s why I bought the Zune HD.  But this video shows you how to do it.  The Creative Zen is glued shut and you have to break the glue seal (which is kind of hard but what do you have to lose?) and take out the circuit boards and of course, the battery is glued onto the bottom (just to make it harder, I’m sure.) I followed the instructions on that video and I got mine apart without breaking it.  I got the battery out and then searched online for a replacement.  Radio Shack (online only) has a replacement for something like $24.  I found eBay had some from over seas but it would take a long time to get it and I’m not sure about that seller.  I ordered mine and it should be here in a day or two. I’m not sure if taking the battery out will do away with the software on the Zen V Plus or what.  But it will be worth a try.  My husband can use it for his music.  The problem with the Creative Zen V Plus is that it will only play mp3 and wma files I found out AFTER ripping about 30 of his favorite CDs into a m4a format that my Zune HD can play but the Zen won’t. Oh, well, I’ll just start converting once I found out if the Zen will really work when I replace the battery.

Here is the YouTube video I found that helped me with replacing the battery, just in case you have one that the battery no longer recharges. I’ll know in a few days if it all worked for me.

I haven’t posted for so long I had to look up what my last post was about.  I have been busy working on my garden, geocaching, trying to get some spring cleaning done and spending a lot of time shopping in town and on the internet. I have all my drip lines on timers hooked up to my potted plants now.

• I’ve been lazy with the hot humid weather (that brought us the tornado at Presque Isle) and I’ve been soaking up the new cooler weather that is so awesome I’m giddy.  I hate hot and humid with a passion.  My body shuts down. I’ve taken to reading books lately, no, not the trashy novels. I got hooked on some young adult novels.  They are an easy read and fun.  I haven’t read novels of any kind since the Black Stallion series when I was a kid.  I’ve always been an avid reader of “how-to” books and magazines but that doesn’t take you into a fantasy world (it just makes you buy a house and try to restore it.)

• The skychair-like swing on the sleeping porch is just the best thing for relaxing.  I bought a book reading light at Barnes and Nobles for night reading.  I leave the lights out on the porch and turn on my reading light that is attached to my book and read away while the cool night breeze refreshes me. It is so wonderful.  I know it won’t last all that long because winter’s ice will put an end to it soon enough.

• The Neverkink hose I bought a while back that I found out (after buying it) didn’t have good reviews….it works great for me.  See post here. So far it hasn’t kinked but the best thing is how it coils back up into the large planter we keep it in.  That shows reviews aren’t always 100% accurate.  I suppose it depends on your particular application.

• The begonias I bought for the front porch are gorgeous!  They love the shade and the watering system.  I used to try to hang the wave petunias (purple ones) but even though they smelled so good, they got blight and died off.  There wasn’t enough air flow on the north side of the house for them to do well in the humidity.  The begonias are loving it.  I had a problem with the red flowers falling onto the white porch railings but it turns out, a few days later, the colored stain goes away on it’s own. The next rain washes away all signs of it.  The very large Boston ferns I bought for the sides of my porch love the drip system and the mister I have come on for a short time twice a day.  They are thriving, too.

• I stopped in at Mason Farms to buy some of the petunias for the deck in the back that gets more air flow.  They had a “buy one and get one free” sale.  I bought and bought.  I now have flowers in every nook and cranny.  I’m going to try some of the Bayer All in One.  I bought the product for the roses I planted on the side because they got powdery mildew and black spot and we saw a few of the Japanese Beetles around.  My roses have new healthy growth so I guess that stuff works, at least so far.  Will it work on petunias?  I’m not sure.  But I believe a fungicide in the product would take care of the blight.  The product mixes with water and you water the plants (it is systemic) and it lasts 6 weeks.

• My kitchen swinging door isn’t finished yet.  I was padding on layers of garnet shellac when the weather got so humid I stopped.  After the long, fun-filled weekend I’ll finish it.

• I noticed some gaps on the second story landing baseboard trim getting bigger the last couple of years.  I evaluated it and came to the conclusion the framed-out area around the basement stairs was starting to sag (after almost 100 years) because there are no supports there.  That was causing the floor to drop on the stair landing by about 3/8 inches on the one side.  We bought 2 jack posts and placed them under the floor supports in that general area and are giving the jacks a 1/2 turn a week.  Hopefully that will take care of the gap.  I can’t tell yet if the gap is closing.  It is a slow process.