I stripped the wallpaper off our plaster walls in the living room and dining room a few years ago and fixed the ceilings in both rooms.  What was left was a nice light surface but had some darker areas.  I primed them before painting just to be sure it covered the dark areas and because I was afraid I didn’t get all the glue off from the wallpaper.  I had no problems painting those rooms.

Fast forward to last week.

This kitchen is like the devil.  It’s evil.  It’s HOT! It is very small and has 4 doors with a bunch of decorative crowns on top, a full wall of hoosier-like cupboards with the crowns on them and 2 large windows with crowns. I decided against taping the woodwork because it would take days (exaggeration) going around all that molding. Old plaster ceilings don’t have perfectly straight edges and previous taping was a waste of time and it always bled under or stuck and took the finish off the woodwork. And even when it didn’t, the lines didn’t look straight. Now I know why the old houses have crown moldings, to hide the uneven seams between plaster ceilings and walls. Our kitchen doesn’t have them. Crowns on everything else in the kitchen, though. And I can’t even reach the ceiling where the counters are because the ladder doesn’t get my short arms close enough. Good thing for husbands with long arms.

We are on day, what is it now? Day 5 ? and we still aren’t done. Our tiny little kitchen doesn’t have room to walk with the refrigerator and stove  moved out so a ladder could fit near the wall.  We are so tired of scooting sideways to get by anything.  We can’t find anything.  We put plastic down on the floor and I trip on it, we drip paint and I step in it.  There is no room to work.  Elbow to elbow, “excuse me”, “excuse me!”  There is no air conditioning downstairs and the temperature near the ceiling has to be close to 90 or higher.  It’s easy to get cranky when it’s so hot and you can’t move.   I’ve been working on the dining room floor and the kitchen stairs during the day and when my husband comes home we work painting until we can’t do it anymore. The other rooms were a pleasure, this certainly is not.

Yellow must be a color that doesn’t cover other colors very well.  We paint and paint and the green still shows through.  The paint can says one-coat coverage.  LIAR!!  We bought extra to give it 2 coats just in case.  Two coats still doesn’t completely cover the green underneath.  I always thought the kitchen’s old green was a very light shade but against the light yellow it looks like a darker dull olive.

I went to the store today to get some kind of edger (and another gallon of paint)  because we were having such a time up against the woodwork. I was looking for miracles.  I saw one that looked like it really would work, I was sure of it.  I bought two so if it worked, we could both be cutting in at the same time. We tried one of the edgers to see how it worked before we opened the other one, that way we could return the unused one if it was junk.  It was junk.  My husband told me before he doesn’t like “gimmicks” and it certainly turned out to be just another gimmick and just made a mess and dripped paint on everything. So besides paint, I had egg on my face because I wasted $15 but I can return the other one. He did not rub it in and he could have.  I also bought a rather expensive cut-in brush as a back up.  I figured I could return it  if the edgers worked good, if they didn’t I would use the brush.  I ended up using the brush and it worked much better than anything else. I guess you can’t beat the old standards.

Soooo…what we should have done in hindsight is buy and apply tinted primer and then paint.  It would not have helped the temperature and sweating and it would not have helped doing miles of cutting in around the wood work but it probably would have made a more even color which we’ll get, eventually.  At least we got the one wall done (woohoo!!) and were able to put the appliances back against the wall tonight.  Now there will be room for two ladders.

I must have used a full  tank of hot water each night washing out all the trays and rollers and brushes.  It also take about 1/2 hour to clean everything.  No more. Tomorrow I’m lining the roller pan with one of my recycle bags.  When we are done, we’ll pour the extra back in the can and just throw the plastic away instead of washing the pan and having  paint going down the sink into the water supply.  I’m throwing the roller away, too.  I’ll scrape off the excess paint, let it dry and stick it in a plastic grocery bag.  They should be dried by garbage night. Good riddance. They aren’t that expensive.

It blows my mind that this one room is so hard.

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.

It’s been 7 years since I stripped the beadboard on the front porch of its 8+ decades of built-up paint.  I finished it with dewaxed garnet shellac because, when stripping the paint, I found that a thick coat of shellac was the first coat on the beadboard and it kept a good bond all those years.  Shellac isn’t suppose to be good for areas around water.  Our covered, but not enclosed, porch does get water from rain and snow when the wind blows but the beadboard is vertical so it doesn’t cause a problem. Though my porch does get piled-up snow on it sometimes in the winter,  it is facing north so it doesn’t get the abuse a southern exposure would.    I’ve read that dewaxed shellac holds up a bit better than the natural shellac as far as protecting against water. Neither is recommended for use around water or outdoor use but that is what was used on it all those decades ago so I decided to use it back 7 years ago when I refinished the beadboard.

This summer I noticed areas that were starting to lighten near the bottom.  Well, 7 years was a respectable time for a finish to last outside, even the painted columns and top railings didn’t last that long without another coat.  About a week ago I went over the beadboard again in some lower spots with the dewaxed garnet shellac.  Yesterday I sat out on a footstool and took Waterlox and applied it over the shellac.   Waterlox is much better at protecting against water than shellac is.  It is used on kitchen counters and in bathrooms.  It is so easy to work with.  I applied it to the beadboard just as if I was rubbing a liquid wax on it.  It doesn’t dry nearly as quickly as shellac but that is a good thing, too.  It has time to level out.  Another reason I wanted to use Waterlox is I can apply repeated coats over the next several years and not have to sand in between.  It will melt into itself (much like shellac melts into itself) when applied over another coat of Waterlox.  I hate polyurethane because you have to scratch it up with sandpaper for the next layer to bond to it. Too much work.  On things I have had to use urethane (spar) on, I find I have to repair the finish just as often as I do with the shellac and Waterlox.

So why not use something that will give the look of fine furniture.  There is a beautiful depth to the wood when you use shellac or Waterlox.  I don’t care for the look of polyurethanes. They look plastic to me (and peel like it, too, when they fail.)  I can just wipe on Waterlox every so often (so easy to do) and keep the finish nice. Waterlox looks just as pretty as shellac to get that depth-look (I think,) though it has only a slight amber color to it.  You can add special dyes to it to color it. Waterlox is much easier to work with than shellac in my opinion.

In this photo below you will see the beadboard which is now 92 years old.  It is coated with 3 coats of dewaxed garnet shellac that was applied after I stripped it 7 years ago and the touch-up done last week and then one coat of Waterlox done yesterday. I may add additional coats before winter if the weather holds.  I have many other projects to do before winter.

Waterlox and shellac will not last long on wood that gets sunlight, though.  The UV rays break down the wood fibers through the finish and there goes the bond.  They do make Waterlox for outdoor purposes with a UV block in it.  It’s made for marine applications.  But in my case I’m using the same stuff that I’m going to use on my indoor wood floors when I finally get to refinishing them because the porch gets very little sunlight.

The cons of Waterlox would be the smell until it cures.  I had to mail order mine because I couldn’t find any locally.  Also, once the container is opened and oxygen gets to it, it will start to gel.  I have gone back to apply a second application of Waterlox on something a couple of weeks later only to find it had gelled up and was no longer any good.  It is maddening because it is expensive. They make a product of some kind of gas you squirt into the container to keep the oxygen out but I’ve read it still goes bad on you. I try to do several projects at once to use it up before it gels.

Always make sure with whatever finish you chose, that you dont’ let sun hit it until it is fully cured and that you let each coat cure fully dry before you add another because any solvent unevaporated in  a coat below will blister the finish especially when it warms up when hit by sunshine.

Wallpaper should come right off using the special products (like DIF) out there today.  I used them, I serrated the wallpaper with that round gizmo.  I sprayed it, soaked it and when that didn’t work, I made my own product from recipes I found on the internet , some including fabric softener.  There was no getting around it.  I had to chip it away, layer by layer.  What in the world did they use for wallpaper paste?  I think maybe it was real glue, like hide glue, or maybe even the glue you make using flour.  It wasn’t affected by the products meant to remove the wallpaper of today.  I ended up gouging a lot of my real plaster walls.  But I did get it off eventually. I saved the layers I could just for posterity’s sake. I didn’t  know about the wallpaper steamers, perhaps that would have helped to rent one of those. If you have every had to remove wallpaper you will know what it is like and then times it by 5 or 6 times with the different layers.

I scanned the remnants of the wallpaper on my flatbed scanner as you can see below.  The color isn’t really right.  I’m missing two of the layers but they are somewhere in this house hiding in a save-forever box… somewhere.  The Greek key pattern is more blue.  I didn’t like the look of the Greek key at all.  I wonder how anyone could live with such a busy pattern.  I don’t care for the last one either as the pattern was so BIG.  I have done a little bit of research on the different patterns of wallpaper and tried to date the ones I had on the wall.  See photos by clicking “read the rest of this entry.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a photo of the damage the winter and the snow shovel did to my front stairs.

See more photos by clicking “read the rest of this entry”

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See part 1 by clicking HERE.

I painted my mural using stencils and some free-handed painting. The patio bricks were free-handed as well as the lattice and the tree. The flowers and ends of the tree branches with flowers, the birds were all stencils. The cat is our little Russian Blue. Read the rest of this entry »

The gray, cracked and in some places crumbling wall in our kitchen stairwell was an eyesore. I didn’t do anything about it for a few years because, really, no one saw it but us. I even thought when we first moved in that we could wall up the back stairwell so we would have more room for appliances in our kitchen. The stairs in the kitchen meet the front stairs on a landing half way up to the second story. I didn’t think I would even use the kitchen stairs. Read the rest of this entry »

As I showed you in the previous post, I was left with quite a mess.  The excitement of having the new door was gone. I wished I hadn’t told the contractor I would finish the inside. Read the rest of this entry »