Painting Outside

Well, the old bathroom is officially off the radar screen for now. I just need the marble for the corner cabinet, but that’s going to wait. I’m now moving back out side to finish up the house painting that I didn’t finish last year.

Last year I worked on painting the house for almost 7 months, with a few side jobs thrown in (Pimp My Fridge!). I scrapped everything to bare wood and then painted with 5 colors, doing one coat of primer and 2 top coats. I ran out of weather though, and never painted the skirting. So it’s past time to do that.

I’m not scraping to bare wood this time. It’s just the skirting. Today I spent about an hour scraping off loose spots and pulling old nails and hooks that were used for various cables and wire. When I bought the place, the outside was streaming with phone and cable TV wires. It was an absolute rats nest of wires encompassing the house.

I’ll work my way around the house scraping and pulling. Once that is done I’ll sand a section at a time. I think I’ll probably end up doing the skirting in 6 or 8 sections. I’ll sand and clean with 100 psi compressed air. Then prime and paint. I’m not a big fan of the power washer. Wood, water, and paint just don’t mix in my book. True, I could wait to let the wood dry out first, but what’s the point. Why use a power washer and then have to wait. The compressed air cleans the wood very nicely after sanding.

Anyway, sand, blow, primer, paint. There will be some puttying in there some place. I think I can get it done in 3 to 4 weeks, which means 6 to 8 in reality.

Raising The Bar

No, I haven’t died, and I have been getting some stuff done, just not that much. The bathroom is so close to being finished it’s not even funny. Well, I guess it is a little funny.



I got the door stripped, painted, and hung and it came out really nice. It looks really good, but it also opens and closes really well. The latter is not always a given when I hang a door. This one closes effortlessly. The catch works smoothly and the little deadbolt thingy works smoothly as well. Not too bad for a bunch of 100 year old stuff that was ready for the trash heap.







I had some left over parts for the bathroom and I was able to trade a beautiful matching set of period sink and tub faucets for the items seen above. There is a 1-inch diameter glass towel rod, a robe hook, and a tub mounted soap holder. It was a fair trade and gave me the last remaining little things I needed to make the bathroom more complete.

There are only 2 things left to do and the bathroom will be absolutely finished. I need to put the shelves in the medicine and the get the marble for the corner cabinet.

I stripped the paint off the shelves and sanded them down but now I can’t find them. Over the past few weeks I’ve searched a few times for them and I just can’t find them any where. I’m willing to bet they are in a pile of scrap lumber some place. I’m sure they will turn up in a year or two, but I can’t really wait that long. Tomorrow I’m going to get a few glass shelves made. I was going to make wood ones, but I think with the new glass towel bar, the glass shelves will look nice.



That just leaves the marble for the corner cabinet. I need two pieces, one for the bathroom cabinet and the other for the small cabinet that I still need to build for the little mud room just outside the bathroom. For some reason I’ve gotten it in my head that it’s best to get both pieces of marble cut at the same time. I still need to make the other cabinet though, so it could be a few weeks or months until I can stick a fork in the bathroom and call it done. It’s very close though - Tee-Hee.