Biohazard

Ok, so I panicked. I realize that now. Still, with everything in the news these days about The Swine Flu, you can’t be too cautious.

As I was walking through the dining room with my first cup of coffee of the morning I thought I spotted a Swine Flu virus on the floor. I quickly dumped out my coffee and slammed the cup down on top of it. I then preceded to isolate the room from the rest of the house.

After I sealed the room off and got plastic sheeting over everything, I donned my homemade biohazard suit and with a can of Lysol in hand I carefully lifted the coffee cup off of the “virus”.









Well, it turned out to be an ant. A very confused and angry ant at this point, but an ant none the less. No, there was no Swine Flu in my house and I was completely safe after all.

Boy, isn’t my face red.

It wasn’t a complete waste of time, though. Now that the dining room is sealed off from the rest of the house and all of the woodwork is covered in plastic, the stage is set for plaster wall repair. The plaster is largely intact and structurally sound. The first step will be to clean the walls and get rid of any remnants of wall paper. I stripped off the 7 or 8 layers of wallpaper years ago, so this should not be too difficult.

I will then patch the minor nail holes and small divots. Once that is done I will paint the entire surface with Weld-Crete. Weld-Crete is a masonry adhesive made by Larson Industries. Its purpose is to help the new skim coat adhere to the 100+ year old lime plaster. They also make a product called Plaster-Weld, which would be more appropriate for this application, but the local supplier only carries Weld-Crete. They are essentially the same thing, only Weld-Crete is designed for exterior, industrial applications.

After the Weld-Crete is applied and has had time to dry I will skim coat with Diamond Finish plaster. After that I will paint, which brings me to my most feared and hated job of all…

Picking Out Paint Colors

This hideous and disgusting process started today.

Because I already have the dado in the room I will be doing a traditional “tripartite” wall where the wall is divided horizontally in to three parts: The dado, field, and frieze. This is a style that was popular from about 1870 to about 1910 and was championed by critics of the time like Charles Eastlake and Clarence Cook. When selecting colors of paint or wallpaper it was suggested that the frieze should be light in color, with the field darker, and the dado the darkest. The ceiling will be the same color as the frieze.

I’m leaning towards a red field and a gold frieze with a picture rail where the two meet. The dado, of course, is the burl redwood raised paneled wainscoting that is original to the room. So far the first round of color selection includes Sherwin William’s Bolero (7600) for the field and Humble Gold (6380) for the frieze and ceiling. If history repeats itself I will decide I don’t like these colors only after I have painted the entire room.

Another hair-brained idea I have is to paint the ceiling sky-blue and sponge on large, fluffy white clouds. I think this would only work if I applied a heavy cornice where the frieze and ceiling meets and chose something else for the field and frieze. Given that I have 2 green rooms in the house and the exterior paint is a monochromatic green color scheme, any shade of green is out of the question.