Back To The Hard Stuff

Well, you can't say I didn't try. I'm an environmentalist at heart. I want to do the right thing, but sometimes it is just too hard to be right. I tried the “green” environmentally friendly paint strippers and it just is not working.

I wrote about my tests with two such products the other day. It seemed like it was going to work, but in the end it was just too difficult to get the timing down. I planned to really start the paint stripping this weekend, so on Friday I applied the Safe Strip to a four foot section of base board. Four feet is short, but this was to be my real world test. The plan was to leave it on over night and then strip it off Saturday. During testing I found that it required two applications, so I would then do the second application, let it sit for 3 or 4 hours an then strip that off. I would then apply the first coat to a second area and finish that up on Sunday. There was supposed to be a system and the timing was a crucial part of the system.

Well, on Saturday it wasn't really ready. After testing a few times I finally removed the stripper. That was supposed to remove all of the latex and the second application would remove the old oil paint. The first application ended up needing two applications just to get the latex off. Since the second “first” application had to sit for a few hours before I could remove it, I didn't get the second application on until almost 3:00. That now had to sit 3 or 4 hours, so it basically took about 30 hours to strip 4 feet of base board. There is just no way that is going to work.

Tonight I tried the tried and true methyl chloride and was able to do two applications to a 2 foot long test section in less than a half hour and ended up with the same results as the “green” stripper. The first application took about 10 minutes to lift the latex paint and 5 minutes to scrape it off. The second application for the oil paint was about the same.

I use Jasco Premium Semi-Paste. It is caustic. It is highly flammable. It burns bare skin. It causes cancer in lab rats. It also happens to work as if by magic. Especially on the detailed areas and that is the only reason I'm using paint strippers this time instead of a heat gun.

What a Waste

At some point in the last 30 years or so someone put sheetrock over the plaster in the 2 parlors. So they wouldn't have to fit it around the head blocks, which extended 2.5 inches over the top of the casing, they sawed off the tops of the blocks. Today I finally took the last of them off.

Where should we put the drapes? Here? No, how about over here? No, I like them here better. How about here...

Not everyone should be allowed to use a drill with a Philips screw driver bit.

Goop factor eight! This gives you some idea of how bad the paint is in this room. That is the profile of the casing.

Replacements are standing by

On Stripping Coatings From Surfaces

In case you're just tuning in, I'm in paint stripping mode in the parlors. The woodwork is redwood and was originally painted, so the goal is not to get back to bare wood where I can do a clear finish, but rather to get rid of the layers and layers of paint to regain definition in the high Victorian millwork and to get rid of the many drips and runs from past, poorly applied paint jobs.

I have stripped coatings off wood in seven wood intensive rooms in the house. By “wood intensive” I mean all of the rooms either had a wood dado of some type going three to four feet up the walls or, in the case of the stair hall, a highly ornate banister. All of these rooms also had high Victorian fluted casing, plinth blocks, and head blocks. Using flat, unadorned wood was not something Victorian era architects normally did. It looks great, but it is a bitch to strip. The one thing I can say with certainty is there is no one, single, best way to strip coatings off surfaces. Anyone who tells you otherwise simply has not done enough of it. You really need to start by asking five basic questions.

1) What are you stripping the coating off of?
2) What is the coating you are stripping?
3) What was the original surface coated with?
4) What is your goal?
5) What can you devote to the project?

Hopefully question one is an easy answer for you. If you're not sure then there is a good chance you should not be doing the job in the first place. Metal, stone, glass, tile, wood, and brick are all going to be treated differently. In this case, I am dealing with wood. Question two may seem simple, but it is the most tricky, really. If there are multiple layers of coatings, then what is on top may be different than what is on the bottom.

Question three is where the answers really become important and sometimes difficult to determine at first. In the case of stripping off wood, which is what I'm doing now, how I go about the job really depends on whether the original surface was shellac or paint, which were really the two main choices for this area at the time this house was built in 1895. If you are working with more modern construction you could have polyurethanes to deal with.

The answer to question four makes a big difference, too. Do I want to get back to bare wood so I can apply a new clear finish or do I just want to get off layers of old coatings to regain definition. With high Victorian millwork, the beautiful detail often becomes muddied with layers and layers of poorly applied paint jobs.

Question five can refer to both money and time. If you have wads of cash to throw at the project then hire a professional and let them worry about the answers to questions one through four. If you are doing it yourself then time, money and to some extent, comfort come in to play. By comfort I mean that I'm not willing to spend hours and hours for weeks on end in a respirator and gloves in an unheated room on my knees stripping paint.

Money is really determined by what method you chose. A heat gun can be a relatively small investment and can last for years. Even the infrared heat gun can be a good investment when compared to chemical paint strippers. Personally, I don't think the investment in an infrared heat gun is worth it unless you are stripping the siding on your house.

Depending on what the answer is to question three though, the heat gun can be a slow and exhausting process. If the original surface was shellac the coatings come off as if by magic. I have had several layers of paint come off of highly detailed woodwork is sheets when it is hit with a heat gun if the original coating was shellac.

If the original coating was paint then it is a completely different story, in my experience. If it is a flat surface I will still go with the heat gun in most cases. The paint does not come off easily, but it is really just a two step process. Strip with the heat gun in one pass and then sand smooth. Because the surface is flat I can use an electric sander. Sanding is a must when stripping paint off wood because the heat gun can cook any remaining paint and leave a crunchy, uneven surface. Latex, lead, and calcimine paints all react differently to heat, and the level of heat can give you different results. Regardless of all of those factors, the whole process, all be it strenuous at times, goes pretty quickly on flat surfaces.

At least that can be the case when your answer to question four is going to be that you are going to repaint. Even still, that is not a blanket statement that applies to all situations. The answer to question one now comes in to play. In the case of wood, the outcome can depend on whether you are stripping off hardwood or softwood. This can also depend on the answer to question five. If you have a lifetime to spend on the project I'm sure you could strip lead paint off balsa wood and get back to a clean bare surface at some point. Let's face it, art restorers spend dozens and dozens of hours stripping grunge and shellac off paintings. They also use tiny instruments while working under magnification and get paid a few hundred dollars an hour to do the work.

When answering those five questions, at some point you get in to an area that can not be answered with a question on a punch list. That has to do with what is acceptable to you. Even when the original surface was shellac it is sometimes hard to get all of the paint off. With fluted millwork you also run the risk of accidentally rounding off corners when sanding. This gets in to the larger discussion of restoration itself. How far back do you go? When is it good enough? Everybody has their own idea of perfect.

So back to the parlors I'm working on now and the five questions. Here's where I end up.

1) High Victorian redwood millwork. The 2 rooms are roughly 28 X 15 with 5 large windows, one small window, and a 2 part 12-inch high fluted baseboard. The 2 stained glass windows have wood muntins, with the larger window having 41 pieces of glass. There is also fluted casing and detailed window stools. All of the plinth blocks and head blocks must be replaced.
2) I am stripping multiple layers of lead and latex paint. It is really hard to say how many layers there are. I can see 6 or 7 distinct colors, but that could represent twice that many layers, or more.
3) I'm going to say lead paint, but I haven't tested it, and I probably won't. More on lead paint below. I suspect there was a primer layer and then a pigmented layer put down in 1895, and then the rooms were painted 3 to 5 more times with lead paint before several layers of latex paint were applied. The last time the rooms were painted was in 1999 by the previous owners.
4) Getting back to a clean surface where the definition of the millwork is presentable. Some of the latex paint was applied so poorly, the painters really had no respect for their workmanship at all. On top of that, the latex paint chips off the old lead paint very easily, so in areas there are large chips missing from the top coats. The original lead paint is a permanent part of the wood now. As you will see below, even after multiple applications of paint strippers there is no bare wood revealed. I had a similar experience in the butler's pantry, where I used a heat gun.
5) Not as much as I would like is always going to be the answer, but with each passing year of working on the house this becomes even more the case. Simply put, I don't have the time or the stamina to devote to the projects anymore. Eight to ten years ago I probably still would have gone at these rooms with a heat gun because I had more time than money back then. Now, money is still tight, but time is even tighter. It is not even the time that would need to be spent with the heat gun that is the issue. It is the sanding that takes so long. I stripped a lot of the kitchen with a heat gun and I spent more time with sandpaper in my hands that I did with a heat gun. Of course, some could argue I'm overly detail oriented.

I'm going with chemical strippers this time and in the past I would have used a methyl chloride based product. They work quickly because they work through evaporation, but because of this there is a narrow window of time where they must be removed. With methyl chloride based products you also must wear a respirator, chemical gloves, and the vapors are flammable. That is not to say they can't be used safely, and I have many times.

This time I'm trying the high-end stuff. Mainly because I want a longer dwell time. You can think of dwell time as the time it takes the product to do its thing. I don't want to have to rush to take it off, so I want a longer dwell time. With some products you can cover them and let them sit for hours or even days before you take them off. One such product comes with it's own paper to cover it.

In the past I used a product called Peel Away. There are at least two types of Peel Away, and to be honest I don't recall which I used. It worked, but it was not worth the cost. Peel away comes with Peel Away paper that you cover the stripper with to increase the dwell time. I had more stripper than I did paper, so I had to buy more paper. I used this in the kitchen and what ever the original finish was, it liquified and oozed out from under the paper and on to the floor. It was a huge mess, but that may have just been because of the type of paint that was used in the kitchen originally. I have no idea.

Another product in the same category, which I tried once about 8 years ago was Ready-Strip. I had disastrous results with it. It's claim to fame is that it changes color when it is ready to be removed. I didn't keep a close eye on it and by the time I checked back in it had changed color and dried on the surface. It was a nightmare to get off. That was when I purchased my first heat gun.

This time I'm testing two products, Smart Strip and Safest Stripper. The first is made by Dumond, the same company that makes Peel Away, and the second is made by 3M. Both are surprisingly similar. Both are odorless, non-toxic, and non-flammable. They both have the color and consistency of hand cream. The 3M product says you don't even need to wear gloves when using it.

I've tried Safest Stripper with 3 hour, 24 hour, 72 hour, and 1 week dwell times and got about the same results with all four times. For periods longer than 3 hours I covered it with plastic or wax paper. The wax paper worked best. With the Smart Strip I've tried it so far with 3 hours and 24 hour dwell times. With both products I needed two applications, one for the latex and another for the older oil paint. Neither product would take me back to bare wood, but that's not really the goal.

The costs were similar, about $18 a quart, but I got a contractor's discount when I bought the Smart Strip, so all things being equal, if I chose one of these products I would go with the Smart Strip. It is cheaper by the gallon. I think around $55 a gallon. A ballpark guess would be 3 gallons for all of the woodwork in both rooms. There is a professional strength version of the Smart Strip, which I didn't try.

The biggest selling point with these products is the safety when removing lead paint. With a heat gun you are releasing vapors in to the air and with sanding you are releasing lead in to the air. Personally, I think the whole notion of lead paint being a danger is over-stated. As an adult my body can deal with a certain amount of lead. The real danger is to children who are still developing, but again, I think the danger is greatly over-stated. If you have children in the home you can still use a heat gun and do some sanding and if you take the proper precautions I think there is little danger.

So here's where I'm at.


This is the 3M Safest Stripper. This first shot shows two stages of stripping under plastic. On the left is the latex paint. It really bubbles up under the stripper. The old oil paint never really does that, even with the second application.


Here it is after two applications on the right, one application in the middle, and at the far end there has been nothing stripped. At the far end you can see how the latex paint chips off the old oil paint in large chips. There is just no way I can paint over that again and make it look nice.

On the right side of the second photo you can see 3 colors. There is an almost white color (primer or first coat?) in some areas, and very pale yellow and then a darker yellow. These are definitely 3 coats, but they are so thin that I really won't need to sand. This is moments after the stripper was removed and there has been no cleaning or sanding. This is the goal.

On the middle area where you see the green is what is between the yellow layers and the newer latex layers. This looks to be 3 layers of older oil based paint. If I stopped here I would need a lot of sanding to make it smooth. It is hard to tell in the picture, but this is a very uneven surface. Again, not good enough for a new coat of paint.

Petchhouse Forum

I'm looking for your torrid, sexy stories about stripping. I want stories with lurid details and climactic endings.

I'm talking about paint stripping, of course. When I strip the paint in the parlors I'm going to try a different approach to stripping than I normally do. Kelly made a comment on my last post about methyl chloride paint strippers, which is what I normally use. Actually, what I normally use is a heat gun. Here was my response to Kelly.

If the original finish was shellac, then it is a no-brainer for me: heat gun.

If it was originally painted and a flat surface then I will also use a heat gun. I go this route in this case mainly because it quick. I don't have to apply stripper, wait for it to work, test it, wait some more, etc, etc.

If the piece of wood is flat and has no detail then a heat gun and sharp edged scrapper goes pretty fast.

In the parlors I have wood that was originally painted and has a lot of detail. The heat gun a scrapper routine would be very tedious and time consuming.

In this situation I normally use the methyl chloride based strippers because they do work reasonably fast, compared to some of the "green" strippers. I like the semi-paste variety (think slime) because they cling to vertical surfaces.

The downside to methyl chloride based strippers is the caustic odors and potentially flammable fumes. It is not a big downside in my opinion, but it is something to consider.

In the parlors, since I'm only working on the weekends I may try one of the "green" strippers. These usually work much slower and can stay on for days. The idea is that I will apply the stripper Wednesday evening and then spend the weekend taking it off. Methyl chloride based stripper generally dry out quickly and don't like to be left in place after they have done their job.

I would be interested to hear about "green" strippers from others.

So let me hear it, people. I want to hear your "green" stripping stories. I want your stories with product names, devices, and methods used.

(Go Niners!)

The Horror

It's never too early to begin to stress about design choices like paint colors, window treatments, and woodwork finishes. This is really the part of the process I dread. Over the next few months I can look forward to countless sleepless nights and hours spent looking at paint chips. And if history repeats itself I will spend $75 on paint only to decide I don't like it after it is on the wall.

Oh, what joy.

One of the things I have thought about doing with several rooms, and then later chickened out, is to paint the frieze and ceiling sky blue and then sponge on big, fluffy white clouds. Then hire a local artist to come in a paint on a few blue birds streaking across the sky. I'm thinking about it again with the parlors, but it probably won't happen.


If I don't go that over-the-top route I do need to start thinking of a more realistic pallet. The parlors can be considered 2 rooms, but from design standpoint I will treat them as one room. While not huge, together they create a room that measures 14X28 feet. I'm not sure that I can get away with really bold colors in a room this size. Or maybe I could, but they would definitely need to be the right colors. Also, unlike the other major rooms on the first floor there will be no dado in the parlors, so it will basically be 3 colors: Field, frieze/ceiling, and woodwork.

The woodwork is really the starting point. I need to strip off the layers and layers of poorly applied paint before I do anything. If the woodwork in these rooms was originally shellacked, like it was in the foyer, stair hall, and dining room, it would be a no-brainer. I would strip back to bare wood and re-shellack. For years now I have had a very strong suspicion that the woodwork in these rooms was originally painted.

During the 1920s, when the home was converted in to apartments, the two parlors became a living room and bedroom for one of the first floor apartments. To separate the space more they added more framing to make the opening between the 2 rooms smaller and added a pair of French doors. They reused the original casing, plinth blocks and head blocks to trim out the new French doors.

They did a nice job, and you really couldn't tell at first, except that the French door hardware was definitely 1920s and not 1895. It became even more apparent when I started to strip off wallpaper and found that the area around the French doors was sheetrock while the rest of the room is plaster. Then of course, once the sheetrock was removed, it was obvious the framing was not original.

Later, when I was working in the kitchen I reused some of the casing from around the French doors for the dumb waiter style door and when I stripped back the paint I found that the original color was a creamy pale yellow. One thing I have found repeatedly when working with redwood is that if the original finish was paint, getting back to bare wood clean enough for a new shellack finish is almost impossible. I'm not saying it is completely impossible and unheard of, but it is so much work on high Victorian woodwork with all of its detail, and the results are so poor, that it is simply not worth the effort.

On the other hand, if the woodwork was originally shellacked stripping back to bare wood becomes very doable and in fact I did it with great success in the dining room. I mean, it took me 3 months and was a hell of a lot of work, but the results speak for themselves. If I tried that same thing on redwood that was originally painted I would not have nearly the same results.

So the question I've been asking myself all of this time is, was the casing I used in the kitchen really original to the parlors from 1895. There was a possibility that when they framed in the opening and added the French doors they milled a few short runs of new casing and the creamy, pale yellow paint was originally applied in the 1920s. If that were the case then the rest of the woodwork could have a nice, protective layer of shellack underneath all of the thick, goopy layers of paint that look as if they were applied by Jackson Pollock.


So yesterday I got out the trusty heat gun and did a little exploratory surgery. Sure enough, just as I expected, I found that same creamy, pale yellow pant. That means that the woodwork in the parlors was originally painted in 1895. That also means that I will be repainting.

I will most likely go with chemical strippers, as opposed to the heat gun. Not sure which product I will use at this point. To be honest, I'm a little relieved. Stripping all of the woodwork in these 2 rooms back to bare wood good enough for a shellack finish would be a lot work, even if it was originally shellacked. There are 6 windows that would take forever, especially that large front stained glass window. After nearly 10 years of restoration I just don't have that kind of stamina anymore.

Plaster Pop

POP!


POP!


POP!


As you can see I am making progress in the dining room. As impressive as those pictures are, they are strategically framed so as not to show the scaffolding, tools, paint pails, and general filth that still covers a lot of the floor.

I still have three big jobs left.

1) Big: Strip the windows. When I stripped all of the paint off the woodwork several years ago I never stripped the windows and window jambs because I wasn’t sure of the best way to do it without breaking the glass. I prefer a heat gun and I was afraid the high heat would break the glass. I still prefer a heat gun, but I feel more confident with it now. When I stripped this room it was the first time I had ever stripped paint before.

2) Bigger: Finish the floor. I need to replace a few floorboards and then even out the current surface. The plan is to finish the original redwood floor as it was originally done in 1895 with tinted shellac. What I need to do is fill some minor nail holes and some larger holes from electrical conduit. I also need to smooth out the current finish. This is the original tinted shellac finish, which was hidden for decades. I had to use a heat gun to get up some tar paper that was put down under some particle board in the 70s. Once I get it smooth, I’ll use aniline die to tint the shellac a deep, dark maroon and then slather on a half dozen coats, or so. Most of the floor will be covered with carpets.

3) Biggest: Repair the fireplace. I want to be able to burn coal. To do that safely I need to line the chimney. The big problem here is that the chimney no longer extends up through the roof. I need someone to line the chimney with a double-walled, stainless steel liner, repair the fire box, and rebuild the chimney so it extends high enough above the eves to meet code. It is not going to be cheap, but what is even worse than the cost is the fact that I can’t do it myself. In eight years the only time I’ve ever hired someone to work on my house was when a friend faux-grained my upstairs bathroom door. I don’t like other people working on my house. I’m sure there are therapist out there reading this and salivating at the thought of getting me in for sessions to deal with that, but that is just the way it is.


I’m very happy with the paint and the medallion, which I painted semi-gloss white. This rest of the paint scheme is a little more bold that I usually do. Every room I’ve painted so far has had color on the walls. To date, I have no white or beige walls. Bold, contrasting colors is something I have not tried, and red walls can go horribly wrong very fast.

I must have gone to every paint store in Eureka, Arcata, and McKinleyville looking at reds. In the end though, picking the gold color was the real challenge. I found a red called “Bolero” at Sherwin Williams almost immediately, but continued to look at reds over the next few weeks to see if there was something else I liked better. There wasn’t.

The gold took a lot longer. I actually bought samples and tried a few on the walls before I made the decision. That is something I’ve never done before. I ended up going with Benjamin Moore’s “Bryant Gold”. This was the first time I’ve used Benjamin Moore and I really liked the paint. It was pretty much one coat, with some touch-up afterwards. Not so with the Sherwin Williams.

Sherwin Williams can be frustrating because you never know what you’re going to get. Some of their interior dark bases are very watery. I just don’t understand it. The exterior paints are great no matter whether it is a dark or a light base. I went in and ordered the Bolero in flat, interior latex, Super Paint and the guy told that color does not come in that paint.

Uh?!?

I could only get Bolero in Super Paint if I went with semi-gloss. That would probably end up looking like I painted the walls in red Jell-O. I had to get it in Duration, which doesn’t come in flat. In Duration the lowest luster you can get is matte. Some paints come in matte, low-luster, and gloss, while others come in flat, satin, and semi-gloss. I mean, what the hell?

So I ended up with Bolero in Duration, matte. My blood is thicker than this paint. It took 4 coats to cover the walls. It is not that it took more paint – I didn’t even go through the gallon. It just goes on so thin that you must apply many coats to get good coverage. Very frustrating.

In the end I’m happy with it, so I guess that is what is really important.



I also made and installed picture rail to go at the confluence of the two colors. I went back to Almquist Lumber {why does that name sound familiar} to get more salvage, old-growth redwood and whipped up a batch of picture rail on the router.

I also Fine-a-Lee trimmed out the little dumb waiter style door I made oh so many years ago. I didn’t think I would ever get to that. But with that, the trim is this room is done-didly-un. My dining room woodworking days are behind me. Well, except for the windows, but that is just paint stripping, and I ask you, who doesn’t love to strip paint? No one – that’s who!

I also FINE-A-LEE finished the electrical in the whole entire house. Back in the 1970s they snaked half-inch metal conduit through the house to supply electrical outlets. It was beyond hideous but at least people had outlets and were not trying to plug everything in to the 4 outlets in the house. That’s right, I said 4. Prior to 1972 this 3500 square foot house had a total of 4 outlets in it, with most being tied in to the original 1895 wiring. Another fire waiting to happen.

I removed it all years ago when I rewired, but I never removed it from the dining room because of the paneled dado that extends 3 feet up the walls. In other rooms I cut holes in the plaster and installed modern boxes and outlets and brought everything up to code. I couldn’t bring myself to cut in to the dado. In the end, I installed the outlets in the baseboard. I had to cut in to the old redwood, but it looks so much better than the crappy conduit boxes.

Bob Was Right

Entertainers, is there anything they don't know? I should wear a WWBDD bracelet: What Would Bob Dylan Do. I bought a gallon of Queen Anne’s Lace paint today and that will be the color of the trim in the bathroom. I spent zero amount of time thinking about it after my initial thoughts on paint colors for the bathroom. I dislike choosing colors so much I think it’s better for me to just to act on impulse. As the old saying goes, if it feels good, do it!

The really weird thing is, I may actually start some finish work in the bathroom today or tomorrow. I’m hoping I can finish sanding the ceiling today, and if so I will primer today and maybe paint tomorrow. I want to get as much painting done before I lay tile in the room. It’s just less to worry about.

I will paint the beadboard ceiling, the two built-in cabinets, and the medicine cabinet. The only thing left to paint after that will be the window and door trim, which won’t be installed until after the walls are finished. Still, it’s a start. Actual finish work.

The Artist Delivered

The woman who did the water color portrait of my house stopped by yesterday and delivered the final product. As you may recall I was given a gift certificate for a 5X7 pen & ink water colored portrait of my house for Christmas.

First The Artist came by and took some photos of the outside and then we met and picked out the best shot for the rendering. At the time I asked here to add a picket fence to the front and later I was going to call her and ask her to add the two cats to the front walk instead of the fence. A few days passed though, and I didn’t want to call after she had already started working on it.



I am generally pleased with it, but there is one thing that bothers me. The Artist seems to have gotten the angle wrong at the bottom of the square bump-out on the right side of the house. Every time I look at it my eye is drawn to it. It looks like it’s going in at the bottom and out at the top.

She called yesterday and said she was sick and going out of town on Thursday and wanted to swing by to drop it off. She didn’t sound good on the phone and she was at my place for all of about 3 seconds to drop it off. I’m not sure if I should say something. It was a gift, so it’s not like I paid her for it. Is it noticeable to you? Do you think I should say something?

Bathroom Paint Colors

I stripped the paint off the old medicine cabinet yesterday and now I’m thinking I might go a head and paint it while it’s all taken apart. It could be months before I paint the rest of the bathroom and I don’t want to loose any of the screws or catches.

With that in mind I swung by Sherwin Williams yesterday and started to look at paint chips. Oy! There are just so many choices to chose from. I need to think of colors for two rooms. There is the little mud room that sits between the kitchen and the bathroom, and then the bathroom itself. The mud room will be all beadboard walls and ceiling and then some window and door trim. The bathroom will be a lot of tile with plaster above and then some wood trim and cabinets.

There is only an opening with no door that separates the kitchen from the mud room. When you’re in the kitchen you will be able to see the painted wood in the mud room at all times so I want the colors in the kitchen and the colors in the mudroom to compliment each other. I don’t want any garish contrast between the two rooms. I think there should also be a similar transition between the mud room and the bathroom. Because of the design of the house these three rooms make up their own separate space from the rest of the house.

So the kitchen has Majolica Green walls and Honied White wainscoting, trim, and cabinets. My first thought is that I wanted to avoid green in the mud room & bathroom because I just painted the house green and I don’t want it to appear I have some sort of green fetish although I may secretly harbor one. Only years of intense psychoanalysis will tell me whether I do or not. Although, the only other room in the house I’ve painted is the upstairs bathroom and that was painted blue, so maybe I only have a mild green fetish.

All of the tile work in the bathroom will be white, so I need some color in there. The only window is a stained glass window and I won’t be doing any window treatment on it. That leaves the walls above the tile, and the trim around the door, window, small cabinets, and medicine cabinet. Both the mud room and bathroom are relatively small spaces and can easily be over-powered by too much color. Also, I don’t want them to seem dark and cavernous so I want light colors.

I’m leaning towards a neutral color for the plaster walls in the bathroom. Without giving it too much thought I came up with Crisp Linen or Muslin. These are SW colors. The bead board in the mudroom I could do in the same Honied White I did all the woodwork in the kitchen. This would visually tie these to rooms together. I could then do both the trim in the mudroom and the trim in the bathroom in the same color. At first I was leaning towards something from the blue pallet. I know, I already painted to upstairs bathroom blue. Maybe I’m afraid of color. After I get the green fetish thing worked out I’ll start to work on my fear of colors.

I have a paint chip card with Topsail and Tradewind on it. These are nice shades but after I looked at them for a while they start to look like something that should be on the set of Miami Vice. Maybe not, I don’t know, it’s a first look. The other color I really like is Queen Anne’s Lace. It is a very pale green and I like it for a few reasons. First it’s a shade of green and we all know about my well documented green fetish. Second, I really like the name – Queen Anne’s Lace. It has a very pleasant sound to it, doesn't it. Also, I do live in a Queen Anne Victorian home. Third, there is the line from a great Bob Dylan song that goes"

Purple clover, Queen Anne lace, 
Crimson hair across your face, 
You could make me cry if you don't know. 
Can't remember what I was thinkin' of. 
You might be spoilin' me too much, love, 
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.

That alone is enough to make me want to paint my whole house in Queen Anne’s Lace, but when you consider that the song, You're gonna make me lonesome when you go, is on what may be one of the best musical releases of all time I can’t see that I have any choice. I mean, it’s Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks! This is a top five deserted island music pick for me! It has such masterpieces as Tangled Up In Blue and Shelter From The Storm. How can I not go with Queen Anne’s Lace. I think the logic is rock solid on this one people.

Of course, I could also see if there is a Purple Clover offered by Sherwin Williams. Quick! To the paint store!

The Grate Roundup

I soaked the two antique heater grates in a stiff solution of water and TSP for about a week. When I took them out most of the paint had already fallen off. What little remained was then blasted off by the house. A little residue remained in some of the tight corners, but it wasn’t too big of a deal to scrape out by hand.

Last night I spray painted them with the same green paint I used on my stools. They really came out great. Today I put them on the house as my new foundation vents. I don’t have any shots of them on the house, but here is a before and after stripping.

Also, I switched to Blogger Beta, or is it the New Blogger. I’m not sure, but I do know that I can’t seem to access many of the comments that were posted the past few days, but thanks to all for the kind words.