A Crowning Achievement

As is the case many times in life, things don’t always go as planned, but just as often then tend to work out anyway. Small town living reared its ugly head once again when I went to rent a radial arm compound miter saw. There wasn’t one to rent. So I had to switch to Plan B. Plan B meant I would make due with the tools I had and hope for the best. As it was, it turned out pretty good.

The 10-inch compound miter saw I have will make it about 90% of the way through the wood. Normally 90% is good enough, but when it is something like crown molding I would rather have a saw that is going to make the cut in one pass.

Here you can see that the saw just doesn’t make it all the way through.



I have to saw the rest by hand and it leaves an imperfect cut. If you want a tight seam it needs to be perfect. I have to sand down the rest, which still isn’t going to be perfect.



Here you can see the crown molding I put around The $19 Medicine Chest. The seam is pretty tight.



The seam I ended up with on The Frankenstein Hutch is not quite as tight. In this case its OK because I’m going to be painting, and as my neighbor Gary likes to say, “That’s what they make paint and putty for”



Here you can see the top part of the hutch with the crown molding on.



Actually, not having the rental saw worked out well for another reason. I decided to strip the paint off the crown molding before I installed it. This was salvaged from the 2-story addition I demolished last fall and it had a thick coat of latex paint on top of the one coat of wholesome lead paint put on in the ‘20s. I’m painting with an oil based enamel and so the latex had to go. Had I had the rental return time hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles I might not have opted to strip the crown molding before I nailed it to the hutch. It would have been much harder to strip after it was nailed up.

As it was, it took me a little over 4 hours to cut, strip, sand, nail, and putty the crown molding around the 2 hutches. I would not have made the 5:00 return time and would have had to pay for a full day rental. So, it worked out. What do you know?

In other news, I got a call from the mill and the flooring will be ready Thursday. That means somebody gets to drive to Placerville this weekend. Can anyone guess who? I’ll give you a hint: It ain’t my cat.

Getting Ready For Crown Molding

Nothing too major this weekend but I did achieve the goals that I set out to do, so it was a good weekend. The main objective was to get the 2 hutches ready for the crown molding. Putting on crown molding requires a compound miter. I’ve done zillion of them. The exterior window sills have crown molding underneath them. When I had to rebuild the window sills from the butchers that put up the asbestos siding I had to make more than 80 outside compound miter cuts. I became a compound miter machine.

For a compound miter cut you cut both a both a bevel and angle cut on both pieces and then fit them together. It is how a picture frame is put together. This can be done by hand but it is very difficult. Most people will use a compound miter saw to do these cuts. Notice in the picture below how the saw is tilted (bevel cut) and angled at the same time. This is a compound miter cut.



The problem I have run into is the standard 10" compound miter saw, like the one I have, won’t cut 1X6 crown molding. I will need to rent a radial arm compound miter saw. This will allow me to make longer cuts and maintain the bevel and angle all the way through the cut. Because it will be a rental I need to have all my ducks in a row. The plan is to pick up the saw around noon tomorrow and have it back by 5:00 so I only pay a half-day rental. Five hours should be plenty of time to do 4 outside corners, but I don’t want to be rushed. I only have a finite amount of this salvage 1X6 crown molding. There is room for error, but not much.

Also today I put the feet on my e-solution hutch. These were a liquidation item I got from Van Dykes Restorers. I got them at a great price but I couldn’t screw it up putting them on because I didn’t have extra and Van Dykes no longer stocks them. I had to cut a short piece off the ends so they would fit. This was a measure-4-times-cut-once kind of thing.

(Notice the use of the hand model. $150 and hour and it took 3 hours to get this shot! Professional my ass.)



The top part of the Frankenstein Hutch is stripped and ready for paint. I had to fill a lot of small nail holes and a big gash in one corner. It looks worse than it is, and most of it will be behind the crown molding. I use MinWax High Performance wood filler. It is a 2-part epoxy. Kind of like bondo for wood. I started to strip the e-solution hutch, but because the glue for the feet has not fully set I had to put it up on blocks while I stripped. I didn’t want to put any stress on the feet. This made the whole thing very unstable and I was only able to strip the area at the top where the crown molding will go.



I have no room to work. The pieces are too big to move around that much so I pretty much have to work on the where they are. In the picture below you can see the bottom part of the Frankenstein hutch in the foreground. It is painted and ready to go. To the left is the top part. Behind that (not in the picture) is the dishwasher and another salvage cabinet that I’m probably not going to use. To the right is the refrigerator, also not in picture. In the middle is the bottom half of a mahogany sideboard. The top part with the mirror is in the other room. The house came with 6 claw foot tubs. I traded two for that sideboard and it has been in the way ever since. Beyond that is the e-solution hutch, an over stuffed chair that I no longer like, a big cast iron sink w/ drain board, a claw foot tub, some flooring (grrr!) and some doors. The floor is a tangled mess of tools and extension cords. It is a wonder I haven’t broken anything yet.




Also today I went for a very loooong walk and went to a couple of open-houses. I like to get ideas about what to do with my house. One was a 1912 sort-of Victorian and the other was a 1901 Victorian. Oh brother, I won’t go into it now, but needless to say the only ideas I came away with were what not to do with my house.

Stripped Screw Hole Repair 101

The top half of the Frankenstein Hutch was originally part of a wall that was added to the kitchen to separate the kitchen from the newly added bath (ca. 1926). Actually, it is more correct to say that it was originally part of a built-in that was probably between a butler’s pantry and a dining room. There are doors on both sides and the drawers move all the way through so they can be opened on bath sides. It then ended up in the wall that separated the bathroom and kitchen. I then rescued it from the wall and am reusing it as part of the hutch. Got it? Good.

Over the years the screws became stripped out on the hutch side of the hinges and larger and larger screws where put in. Because the hutch was surrounded by framing at the time (see picture below) they could do this no-problem. Eventually some screws where replaced by nails.



This is a view of that same area today. The wall is gone.



Once the hutch was rescued from the wall I needed to repair these stripped screw holes. I’ve used this method for more than a half dozen hinges and it works very well.

First you get a 5/16-inch oak dowel. They come in 3-foot lengths and cost about a dollar. Cut short lengths anywhere from ½-inch to 1.5-inches depending on the size of the hinge screw you will be using.



Next use a 5/16-inch drill bit to drill out the stripped screw holes. The dowels will be a tight fit so be sure to sand off any burrs from both the dowels and the newly drilled hole.



Then cover the sides of the dowel in wood glue and push them into the holes. You want to make sure that the hole is slightly deeper than the length of the dowel. It should be a flush fit or the hinge won’t seat right.



For a large door hinge you will need to hammer the dowel in to the hole. Many gentle taps is better than 1 or 2 hard swings with the hammer. Above all, do no harm. For this hutch I used a pair of channel-lock pliers with a piece of scrap wood as a backer to force the dowels in to the hole.

Then just let the glue dry over night and the repair will be as good as new. Be sure to pre-drill all holes for the new screws, and hand-tighten all screws. You don’t want to risk re-stripping the hole with an over-powered drill with a screwdriver attachment.

Editorial
I would like to take this opportunity to renew my objection to chemical paint strippers. What has taken 3 hours with the chemical paint strippers would have taken me about 45 minutes with the heat gun. I could have saved $10.00 and had much less frustration with the heat gun. The heat gun is faster, the results are better, and the clean-up is effortless. Next time I will risk the glass and use the heat gun.

Chemical Greg

I’ve got to strip the two doors off the top part of the Frankenstein Hutch. They have 3 panes of original wavy glass that I don’t want to break. The first thought was to remove the panes and use the heat gun. The trouble is they are put in with putty instead of the wooden stays you sometimes see for indoor use. I don’t want to risk breaking the glass trying to chisel out the putty, so this means I’m going to resort to chemical strippers.

This is a tough choice because I love my heat gun. It has almost become an extension of my arm. I’m like some kind of heat gun enabled Borg from the old Star Trek TNG series. I don’t dare say it out loud, but I once thought about saying, “Resistance is futile” to the paint as I apply the heat gun and strip it off. I’m a bit of a pencil-necked geek, but I’m not ready to take that next step in my evolution in to Geekdom that I am willing to start quoting Star Trek out loud when no ones around. I will happily do it when others are around if I think the campyness of it will get a laugh, but not when I’m alone. That is just too weird.

So it’s time for an evening of chemical cocktails. I like the really caustic stuff. I am way too impatient to wait the several hours or days for the environmentally friendly stuff to do its job. Unless I end up with irritated skin from a few splashes I know I’m not using the right stuff. I may die of exposure at some point, but at least I’ll get the job done quickly.

Actually it shouldn’t take too long. The doors are 80% glass and I’m not going down to bare wood. I just need to get off the paint that looks like it was put on by Jackson Pollack. In fact, I once wondered if maybe my whole house was painted by Pollock. It would be worth a fortune. Perhaps I should contact the MOMA in San Francisco and have some of the woodwork appraised before I strip everything.

Problem Solved!!!

At last count there were three parts of the kitchen that have not been acquired. There is the window treatment, the kitchen faucet, and the counter tops. The window treatment has been decided on with the help of some of my trusty Blogger friends. I say “decided on”, but actually there could be a last second switch to the bamboo. Regardless, all that’s left to do is log-on and order.

The faucet was decided on months ago. I found an antique looking deck mount faucet on Ebay that I liked. This is new equipment. The supplier turned out to be a little flaky or didn’t like it when you asked too many questions, I’m not sure which. Either way, he stopped returning my emails and I became disillusioned. I happened to see the same faucet on a commercial for a plumbing supply house in the next town, so it’s just a matter of driving over there and getting it. I don’t drive a lot these days, and I don’t seem to leave my own town that much, so this is a bigger chore than it sounds. Again, though, it is pretty much a done-deal.

The last thing is the counter tops. This is a big deal. Anyone who’s been following my kitchen saga to this point knows that I like to think outside the Big Box. I don’t know where I got this streak in me, but if it’s been done-to-death I don’t want it. If it’s used or salvage I’m all over it. We’ll call it one of my charming and endearing qualities. The trouble is, this time I’m stumped. There is no question I would put in marble or soapstone if I could afford it. To be honest, you can always find a way to afford it if you really want it, but in this case it seems like an absurd extravagance. My dream would be to find a large slab of salvage marble. That off white stuff with the gray and black veins in it. Ooooh baby, that would just be too perfect.

Ok, so marble and soapstone are out. That leaves wood, granite, tile, Formica, and some of those new composite materials. Of those, wood, granite, and tile are the ones for me to chose from because I am going for a traditional 1895 Look & Feel to the kitchen. I put tile in my last kitchen, and while I loved the look the grout lines drove me nuts. Granite is nice, but I would have to do granite tiles and I’m just not sure about the seams. Plus, since I’m doing an under mount sink it would need to be a professional job, and I’ve sworn off contractors.

So that leaves wood. Very much a traditional counter top material for the 19th century. I do happen to have about 70 sq ft of old growth fir (flooring). It is only ¾-inch and I’m just not sure how it would look to have the counters and floor done in the same material. It seems odd, but fir was often used for counters. Mahogany is another option. I saw on the most recent series of This Old House they put in hand planed mahogany counters in the kitchen. They finished them with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and an oil based poly. They looked very cool. This remains an real option.

Another choice I’m considering is redwood. I know what you’re thinking. Redwood is a soft wood and would look like hell in no time at all. You’re also saying this a kitchen counter not a back yard deck or a fence. However, last fall I dismantled an old addition to my house that was made of old growth redwood. There were these 2X8 joists on part of the first floor that are as hard as a rock. After I removed the addition I had to make a small porch to satisfy the local beaurocrats (sp?) at the building department. I used a few of these joists and I HAD to pre-drill or I couldn’t get a nail through it. Even before you finish the wood it has a deep maroon color to it. I could plane this tuff down to 1.25-inches and have a mill put a T&G on it. Then glue it up and - BAM – there’s my counter top. Still just a thought. I’m not sure if I have enough clear stuff for a complete set of counters. Knots would out of the question.

But as the blog title implies the Problem Has Been Solved. So here’s the solution. First, I get all the cabinets made and assembled. I then get them installed and screwed in nice and tight. That night, after all the work is done, I go to bed and while I’m asleep fairies will come and install the perfect counter tops. When I wake up in the morning everything will be done and all the mess will be cleaned up. It’s the perfect solution. I’m so excited. I can’t wait to see what the fairies install. Come-on marble. Come-on marble.

A Management Decision

With much consideration, as managers always do, and with the wise and thoughtful advice from Heather, as managers always should, I have decided to wait until all the wood for the floor is here before I continue the installation. I don’t want to just sit and fidget for a week and a half, so I have decided to turn my attention back to the Frankenstein Hutch. I’ve started stripping the paint off the top part and as I expected it was originally shellacked and the paint is coming off quickly. It took about 20 minuets to get one side down to bare wood.

I made an interesting discovery after stripping the paint from the one side. The 4 outside pieces, (top, bottom, and the left and right side) that make up the carcass are each made out of a single piece of wood. The 2 sides are each 2-feet wide, 6-feet tall, and 1-inch thick and they are a single piece of clear heart redwood. Pretty damn cool, if you ask me. Could you imagine the look on the guy’s face if you walked in to a lumberyard today and said, “Yea, give me 20 feet of 1X24. Oh, and no knots please”

Good News - Bad News – Bad News - Good News

The good news is Mike, the mill owner, did not hesitate to say he would replace the stuff that was unusable. I’m a little pissed that he even bothered to try and put the T&G on the undersized pieces in the first place, or that he didn’t replace them when he saw that they didn’t come out good. It is a bit frustrating because if there had been a consistent quality I would have enough wood to finish the room. However, it doesn’t do me any good to tell him I’m pissed at this point so I didn’t bother saying anything. It won’t get me my wood any faster and it might sour the relationship. He knows he screwed up, and he is going to fix the problem at no charge, so that is good enough for me.

The bad news is I won’t get the new wood for a week and a half. So now I’m left with a decision. I have a little over half the wood laid. I have enough wood right now to do about 4/5 of the room. I could continue to lay wood all this week and then do no work on the floor for a week while I’m waiting for the new wood. Another option is to do no more work on the floor until I have all the wood here. The benefits of this is that I can then pick the best wood for the best spots.

I used a lot of the really good wood in the first third of the room because that is the most visible and the highest traffic area. I’m now in the center of the room where a table will go and a large rug. The other side of the table is also going to be a high traffic area. My concern is that if I keep laying flooring some of the better wood will end up under the rug. I haven’t decided what to do yet. It would be hard for me not to work on this floor for a week and a half.

Another odd thing is that it only took 8 sheets of the mahogany plywood to do the underlayment. That is 256 sq ft. I didn’t butt these tightly together because the floor wood can easily span a 6 inch gap that is only 1/8-inch high. I’m willing to bet the kitchen is about 275 sq ft. The 285 sq ft that I had written down for the tin ceiling was probably the main kitchen plus some added for waste. Once this is all said and done I’m going to re-measure.

The other bad news is that I had to pull up about a row and a half of boards today. There was an odd spot that had a little rise in it. I didn’t notice it as I was laying the floor, but two of the boards weren’t sitting right. I pulled them up and found a little piece of a knot had slipped under one board and caused it to ride up a bit. Like I need more work at this point.

And finally, the other good news is that I’m eating strawberry shortcake right now and it is really, really, good.

Happy Forth of July!

I’m sure many proud Americans will be out celebrating the birth of our nation today by blowing up a small portion of it, but I’m going to continue with the floor installation. If I can manage to keep my eyes open past 9:30, which is doubtful, I going to meet some friends to see the fireworks at 10:00. If I am too pooped, though, I will be able to see them from the second story windows on the north side of my house. That’s if the fog doesn’t roll back in. The last 2 years we’ve been lucky, but I don’t feel good about this one.

But enough about this relatively boring annual event, lets get back to the exciting once-in-a-lifetime event of installing a wood floor in the kitchen. For those of you that don’t keep up, I’m putting in a salvage, 1X6, old-growth fir floor in the kitchen. This guy takes ancient 3X12 floor joists from Alaska and re-mills them in to 1X6 T&G flooring. This stuff is hard as a rock. Take a look at how tight the grain is in the pictures below.




Besides the large splinter that has nestled itself under the nail of my left index finger and has now become infected, the installation has been somewhat painless up to this point. I’m nearing the half-way point and it is obvious I do not have enough wood. There are 2 reasons I’m going to run short.

First, I’m almost positive I used the wrong numbers to order the wood. I have a clipboard with floor plans of the house that I did on the computer. About 2 years ago I measured all 3 dimensions of every room in the house when I was doing a heat-loss calculation. In addition to this, I have a blow-up floor plan of just the kitchen. In one of the margins I have some notes about ordering a tin-ceiling for the kitchen. This idea was nudged out of the plan due to budget constraints and the vagaries of the every changing lifestyles of today’s busy modern family - I’m broke, and couldn’t afford it. Anyway, at the bottom of all the notes in the margin it says 285 sq. ft. in big numbers. However, there is a small alcove that is 20 sq. ft. that has a different ceiling than the main kitchen, and there were going to be floor to ceiling cabinets in the main kitchen that would not get the tin-ceiling. Altogether, this makes up about 35 sq. ft.. So the kitchen is really closer to 320 sq. ft. Doh!!

The second problem is because this is salvage there is a lot of waste. A lot more than if I were putting in a traditional wood floor. I ordered 315 sq. ft. of flooring to account for some waste, and the mill owner, who, believe it or not, delivered the wood himself due to a last minute snag with shipping, said he added some extra. It was a 600 mile round trip for him and his wife to deliver the wood. Talk about your old-world service!

As I said, I accounted for waste, but there is more than I anticipated. The last 8 to 12 inches of each board is useless. Below is a picture of what would be considered a good end. In some bad instances I start with a 12 foot board and maybe get 6 feet of usable wood out of it due to holes and gouges. Other times I’ll have a 16 foot board that is 95% usable. This I can deal with. What I am disappointed with are the boards that are not usable at all. I have close to 100 feet of boards that are completely useless because they were milled too thin or too narrow. I have boards that are only 1/2 inch thinck and have no full groove and others that have no tongue or only a partial groove.



When we were unloading the wood last week I mentioned to the mill owner that the condition of some of the boards was not what I expected. He looked me in the eye and said, “I will make this right. If you run short I’ll get you more”. I trust him. The plan today is, I’m going to install as much as I can and the cull the rest and find out how much I’m short. I’ll get on the phone with him tomorrow and see what we can work out. This will work, it is just going to take a little longer than I anticipated.

Too Much Of A Good Thing

Well, the floor is going in and man is it a lot of work. Almost every board has to be finessed (read: pried) in to place. I’ve only put in two wood floors in my life and they have both been 1X6 T&G boards. The first one was a pine floor and it was much easier. This fir (Yes, I know “Fir?!?!”. I’ve always gotta be different, don’t I) just does not want to budge that last ¼ inch. There is no such thing as a perfectly straight board so each one is going to be off a hair. The shorter the board the less noticeable it is. Some of these boards are 18 feet long.

Here is the progress so far. The old floor was 7/8-inch think and these boards are ¾-inch thick. I had to put down some 1/8-inch thick mahogany plywood so it would look right under the plinth blocks. Also, I think I may not have ordered enough. The room is very odd shaped and I measured 285 sq ft, but it looks like it is going to take close to 10 sheets of plywood for underlayment. Each sheet is 8X4, which is 32 sq ft. If it takes 10 sheets then the room is more like 320 sq ft. Oops!



To get it to go that last little bit I have to screw a block of wood to the floor and then pry it into place. This is not easy with one person. I have to sit on the floor and pry with my feet while I try and bang nails in. Not easy and it sucks when you miss with the hammer because then you get dings. Grrr!



Oh, speaking of doing things by myself, I mentioned to a friend that I’m always asking woman for advice of color selection and I feel kind like a pathetic bachelor when I do this. He said there are woman down on 3rd street that perform services for single men and charge a reasonable hourly rate. I told him I’m done with contractors because I’ve had nothing but bad luck with them. He said if I go do there on a Friday night he guaranteed me I would “get lucky”. I’m not sure what this is all about, but you can bet the next time I need help picking out paint colors I’m going go to check it out. Wish me luck!

The Summer Pattern

It’s July on The North Coast which means it’s time to get out the sweaters and scarves. Below is the 5 day forecast, but really it could be the 8 week forecast. We live in what is called a micro-climate. There is this thin strip that extends no more than a few miles inland, right on the coast that gets this weather. It starts south of San Francisco around Monterey and extends up in to Oregon, Washington, and I guess Canada. It is usually a question of a few blocks that determines how much, if any, sunshine you get. This also determines whether you get temps in 60s and 70s or temps in the 90s and 100s.



Here is how the day goes. When you wake up the fog is socked in and the temperature is in the low 50s. Some times it is the classic fog with clouds billowing down the street, and other times it is just a low ceiling. With a low ceiling the forth floor of a building will be shrouded in fog. On a good day the fog will burn off sometime between 11:00 and 1:00 and on a bad day it never burns off. When it does burn off the day becomes very pleasant. Brilliant sunshine and a cloudless sky and temperatures in the 70s. On a bad day the fog will roll back in around 3:00 and on a good day it may stay off shore until after 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening. When it does come back in the temperature drops quickly back down in to the 50s. Some years the 4th of July fireworks are nothing but muted colors in the clouds.

Fog is a year round “treat” but July and August are the worst months for fog. One year when I was living in Santa Cruz we went the entire month of August without seeing the sun. Some find it very depressing, but its not that bad. All you have to do is go 5 miles inland in to the local mountains and its in the 90s and summer is in full swing. If you ever plan a trip to this area come before July or after August, or pack your winter clothes.

Supposedly Mark Twain once said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco”. He could have been talking about Eureka as well.

Son of Frankenstein’s Hutch

If you’re like me you are thinking 2 or 3 projects ahead. The floor has been getting acclimated to the kitchen all week and the plan is to start putting it in tomorrow (more on the floor in a later blog entry). So this week I’ve been thinking about the 2 hutches. Yesterday I started painting the Frankenstein Hutch. Today I’ll tell you about the smaller Frankenstein Hutch. This one is going to be my kitchen’s e-solution hutch.

I’m going to have limited counter space and until the butler’s pantry comes on-line it may be awkward. Either way, I didn’t want the kitchen to really look like a modern kitchen, but I do want all the modern amenities. This hutch will be wired with a 20 amp circuit along with cable and telephone. It will be about 6.5-feet tall and 4.5-feet wide with a 2-part interior accessed by 2 big doors.

Here is the plan, we’ll see if it works out. One side will house a small microwave, coffee maker, coffee grinder, and plenty of storage for other things. The other side will have a 15-inch LCD TV, phone and answering machine, along with shelves for books and what-not.

The main part came out of the 1922 addition I dismantled last fall. It was originally a 9-foot tall, floor to ceiling built-in that I had to cut down to get out. It is made out of fir and redwood. The top doors were already missing and replaced with plywood but the bottom two doors were good. I have 7 shelves for it but may not need them all.



It will stand on these 4 ball and claw legs I picked these up at Van Dykes Restores. They were a discontinued item and I got them for $8.00 a piece.


On top it will have the same 1X6 Crown Molding as the larger hutch.


Along with the ultra-hip antique cabinet latches I got at Ed Donaldson’s Hardware (~Drool~).



Oh, and this one has no drawers.

The Frankenstein Hutch

As some of you may know, I'm really in to salvage and used materials. I think you get a better bang for you buck, and with my budget I can use all the bang I can get with every buck I spend. Anyway, here are some before shots of my latest creation. With any luck it will be finished and assembled in the kitchen in about a month.

This is the bottom half. My neighbor 2 houses down was going to throw it away. Their house is 1928 and I think this was original to the house. It had been in their garage and was pretty nasty. Yesterday I sanded it down and painted it with the same Honied White I painted the trim. I also had to add the trim piece at the bottom to hide the toe kick. it is in great shape. All mortise and tenon construction and made out of fir. The inside will be painted dark green with paint left over from another project.

There are the drawers. The old hardware was shot (see below) so I removed it, filled the holes, and then repainted the fronts. The insides will also be painted a dark green. Two of the drawers have neat wooden dividers.

The 2 big bottom cabinets were lined with metal (zinc?) but they were ruined when someone left some cans of something in them and the rusted. Bummer.

The is the original hardware, also rusted. They do not seem to be brass, but a thin tin or something. They had a shiny finish, possibly chrome, maybe nickel. I'm not sure exactly when chrome replaced nickel as the metal of choice for plating things.

This will be the top half. It came out of my house and was used as part of the wall that divided the kitchen and the bathroom that was added. Judging from the trim on it and the style of the glass front doors (next picture) it is from the 1890s. There are 2 more drawers on the bottom and then 2 big glass front doors for the top part. I will need to strip the paint, fill some nail holes, and then repaint. It shouldn't be too bad because it was originally shellacked and that is fairly easy to strip. This is made of redwood.

Here are the glass front doors. I am missing one pane, but the other three are nice wavy glass with little bubbles and flaws. Very cool!

This is some 1x6 crown molding I salvaged from exterior of the 1922 addition I removed last fall. This will go around the top of it. I have about 30 feet of this molding so I will also use it around other cabinets.

This is the "new" hardware. The 2 large pulls will go on the drawers on top half of the hutch, and 5 smaller ones will go on the 5 drawers of the bottom half. It is weird that I bought these 7 pulls in 3 different transactions, but they all have the same pattern. It must have been popular at the time. The little cabinet latch (there will be 3 on the hutch) is a restored antique I bought from Ed Donaldson Hardware (~Drool~). I bought a matching set of 10 so all the cabinets in the kitchen will have them. It is interesting that the restored antiques where actually a few dollars less than high quality reproductions.

When the whole thing is put together it will be about 5.5-feet wide and a little over 9-feet tall. It will have cost me about $120.00 for an antique "Victorian" hutch.

Thinking Some More

Just to clarify yesterdays blog entry: I’m not loosing sleep over the corner block, but I do over my own mistakes. I think I was trying to point out that even back then they made mistakes and most of the time we don't notice them, and when we do, we consider them “character”. Perhaps I did not write that as well as I should have, or maybe I wasn’t even sure what I was writing (this is more likely), but reviewing it made me think some more.

I wonder how we will be viewed in 100 years for what we are doing now? Will this time be viewed as the Great DIY Era in American architecture or interior design? Granted, none of us invented the DIY attitude, but it seems that a lot of homeowners are doing work that is of a higher quality than what was done 30 or 40 years ago. Am I right, and if so what can we attribute it too? I think there are a number of things.

1) I grew up mainly in the suburbs. My Mom was an interior designer, and our houses always looked better than most, but we lived in Ranch style homes and I was never exposed to the great Craftsman and Victorian interiors of our past. Once I saw it, I was like, “Wow! I’m not in Kansa anymore.” I knew what I wanted, whether I could afford it or not. As it turned out I couldn’t really afford it and that is why I have the house I do and why I’ve become this hardcore DIYer.

2) The internet. I have learned soooo much on-line. Not only from fellow bloggers, but from the great forums and other sites that just post information about how to tile and put up crown molding. True, there were always books on the subjects, but the internet has made it much more accessible, at least for me.

3) Cable shows. This doesn’t really apply to me because for most of my life I’ve lived without cable, and the rest of the time I’ve only had basic cable, but I’ve heard of all the shows, and they have to have had an impact.

4) The Big Box home centers. Again, this one doesn’t apply to me because I’ve never been in one, but I hear everyone go one and on about the selection, so this must have been an impact as well.


So how will we be viewed? Will we be included with the Arts & Crafts Movement of the early 20th Century and the Aesthetics Movement of the late 19th Century, or will it be something else?

How Perfect Does It Need To Be?

I’m not a perfectionist, I know it. I like things to be done well, and there are something’s that bother me more than others. I like tight joints in finish woodwork. Gaps in joints really bother me. Other things I can let slide. I know my limitations when it comes to working on the house, and for the most part I except them, and I try to live with them. I'll admit that it's not always easy. I am my own worst critic. I have a bad habit of first pointing out my mistakes to people and then showing them the things I'm proud of. Some things seem to bother me a lot more at 12:00 at night when I’m laying in bed then they do at 12:00 in the afternoon when I’m working on a project.

Someone made a comment on another one of my blog entries about some vintage millwork in a house. After paying close attention to some milling while trying to duplicate it, this person noticed that it wasn’t really that accurate. It is not something you would notice if you were just sitting in the room absorbing the ambiance. If you really start to look, though, you can find mistakes in a lot of things. So maybe I shouldn’t be beating myself up so much for my minor mistakes. Maybe partial ignorance can bring enough bliss to satisfy me.

I’ve been working on the kitchen since the late 50s now and I did a lot of paint stripping. I had to go over everything 5 times. First the heat gun, chemical stripper, sanding, primer, and finally paint. I had my face inches from every inch of woodwork in that room for weeks on end. If there were any flaws I noticed them. I noticed nicks and scratches, and some loose joints, but nothing to major. I except those kinds of things on 110 year old woodwork. It is what we call “character”.

Then today I noticed something about one of the corner blocks that I didn’t notice before. I don’t see how I missed it. If I had milled this piece of wood with this flaw it would have gnawed at me and I probably would have considered it a failure and tossed in the waste bucket. I walked by this corner block every day for three years and did all the work of stripping a repainting it. I’m amazed I never saw it.

The picture below shows the block with some “character” but if you’ll notice the center bulls eye is not centered. It is 3/8 of an inch off. Three-eights of an inch doesn’t sound like much, but for finish woodwork, it’s too much. This is probably not going to help me sleep better at night, and I will probably still obsess over my own mistakes, but it is nice to know that even the professional “master craftsman” of 100 years ago made mistakes.

Gonna Buy Five Copies For My Mother!

No, I’m not going to be on the cover of The Rolling Stone, but me and my house are going to be in the paper. The BIG GUEST that I’ve been alluding to for the past week or so is the reporter for the local newspaper, The Times Standard. Here is how it happened.

As you may or may not recall a few months ago I had my house listed on the Local Register of Historic Places. I had to fill out a short form down at City Hall with basic information about the house and they also asked me to write about the house and any history of the house that I know. Well, because I’m obsessed and neurotic I wrote a ton. At the Preservation Commission meeting, where the Commission decided whether my house was worthy to be added to the list (of course it was) the City Planner said that she had never received more calls on something dealing with the Preservation Commission than she had on my application to add my house to the list. When asked by the chairperson whether these comments where mostly positive or negative, the City Planner replied that they were mostly just my neighbors wondering how this would effect their property. It turns out the notice of my application was sent to everyone with-in 300 yards of my property.

At any rate, none of the neighbors are affected by this at all, and the house made it on the list with almost no complaints (Thank you Mr. Droze). I was very excited about being added to the list and started the process of trying to add my house to the National Register of Historic Places. I also told just about anyone that would listen to me for 5 seconds that my house was now on the Local Register. I got a lot of strange comments. Several people thought I was now getting special tax breaks for the city or county. Others thought I would have to get a special permit to change the carpeting or paint the bathroom. Other people told me it was a dumb thing to do because no one would want to buy my house because of all the “restrictions” that the city would put on the new owners.

I explained to them that the only “restrictions” that would be placed on anyone would be what could be done to the facade that faces the street. They wouldn’t be able to pry off the gingerbread, put vinyl siding on, or add huge plate glass windows. In short, they wouldn’t be able to butcher the outside of the house that I have worked so hard on to restore. And if someday I do go to sell the house, I wouldn’t want to sell it to someone that would want to do those things. As far as the interior goes - anything goes. Even if the house is on the National Register of Historic Places you can gut all rooms and interior walls, build a giant pink pyramid, sit under it naked, and eat dog poop. Nobody cares. There are no restrictions on what you can do to the interior or back of the house. What all this proved to me is that there is a lot of ignorance and misinformation of Historic Preservation.

But, let’s get back to the newspaper.

Once a month there is an insert called Restore & Preserve in the local paper. It is usually 8 to 12 pages long, and mostly focused on local architecture, but also does some pieces on cultural history. I read it front to back every month. After reading the issue that came out shortly after listing my house I emailed the editor with a story idea to talk about what it means to have your house listed on the Local Register of Historic places. I thought it would be a good opportunity to educated people on it, and as it turns out, a lot of people could use the education.

The editor emailed me back a few weeks later and said it sounded like a good idea and why not do the story specifically about me and my house. I was a little hesitant at first. I really don’t care for the spot light. Also, most of the houses in Restore & Preserve are, well, restored and preserved. My house – the feculent hell-hole – is far from being restored. I wrote her back and told her about the condition of my house and suggested she go and look at some photos on my web site first. If she still thought it was a good idea, email me again, and we would talk. I didn’t hear from her for several weeks and I was a bit relieved. I figured she had seen the pictures and thought twice about doing a story on my house. Well, last week she emailed me again and suggested we get together. We made an appointment for today at 2:30.

She was here for about an hour and a half with a photographer. I can talk (and write) endlessly about my house and I did. They got a picture of me standing in front of the little door I made. Not sure if I like that or not. It went well, I guess. It is supposed to be in the July or August edition. I’m going to email here some additional “before” shots, along with the paper work for the National Register of Historic Places. I’m going to ask her if she’ll put it in the August edition. That is the same month I’m having the big shin-dig at my house with all the other old house owners. I’m sure they’ll all be green with envy over me having my house in the paper. Should be fun.

I’m Pooped!

I really got a lot done today. Cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. The house is a lot less feculent and should look nice for the BIG GUEST tomorrow. Also, I entered a contest to get my house painted. Considering the house has not been painted in 80 years or so it would be great if I won. When I pulled off the asbestos siding I found a circa 1920s paint job underneath and it is just falling off the house.

The contest is going on at the local Ace Hardware store. I’m not sure if it is really contest so much as a give-away. You take down a picture of your house and write a paragraph saying why you should get a free paint job, and I guess they just pick one somehow. They are going to be using Ben Moore paint, so I guess that’s good. It said something like $5,000.00, which isn’t enough for a good paint job, but what the hell, $5,000.00 towards a good paint job is not bad. Wish me luck.

I got just about everything done on yesterday's list except the thing-a-ma-jig for the stove vent. I’m going to have to wait until the stove is in the room. I was missing one double-switch plate cover so I ordered that from House of Antique Hardware. I also ordered a GFCI plate in the same style. I’m going to be running coax and phone in to the same box in the kitchen and the interface uses a GFCI type cover.

I also hung the lights and they look pretty cool. They did not screw around with these things 100 years ago. The sockets are all made of heavy porcelain and they are put together with tiny, tiny screws that look like they were made by a watch maker. One of the chandeliers has Thomas Edison patents on the inside of the sockets. There are 2 chandeliers like the one in the picture below, and the flush mount fixture is off to one side in a small alcove (not the alcove that leads to the backdoor).

The flush mount came with the milk-glass acorn shade, and the one chandelier came with 2 antique milk-glass shades (should have photographed with the lights off). The other chandelier (not shown) had no shades so I ordered two very similar milk-glass shades from Rejuvenation this morning. The 2 chandeliers are not identical but they are a very close match. The one shown has little brass leaves on the arms that can’t really be seen in the photo. All 3 have great patina.

I’m going to go do a little touch-up painting and call it a day. I’m pooped!

The Big Weekend

Big weekend at The Petch House. It is just going to be a beehive of activity. Here is the plan:

1) Finish painting in the Kitchen (the goal to be finished on Wednesday was a little too ambitious).

2) Rewire the last of three light fixtures and get them hung. Logically I should wait until the floor is sanded, but I don’t care. I’ve been staring at them for more than a year now and I want to see them up. Plus, they’ll look good for the BIG GUEST on Monday.



3) Put up all the light switch and outlet covers. I may have to order a few more due to some last minute changes in the kitchen. Two years ago when I rewired the house I put in push-button light switches in every room and bought these nice cast brass covers from House of Antique Hardware. At that time, I tried to anticipate what was going to be in the kitchen and I bought all the cover plates for that room as well. Some where in this feculent hell-hole (This is my new favorite term. From now one when someone asks where I live I will tell them, “Oh, you know, its that feculent hell-hole at 9th and M. Yes, that’s the one.”) is a box of outlet and switch covers for the kitchen. I don’t think I’ve seen them in over a year.



4) Put un the cast iron thing-a-ma-jig for the stove vent on the wall.



5) Sunday I’m going to clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. I’m hoping by Monday the house will just be a hell-hole and no longer feculent.

There are 2 big events happening on Monday. First, the flooring is arriving. There was a last minute snag with shipping from the mill. The freight company wanted to add a surcharge due to the length of the boards. The owner of the mill had already quoted me a price, and I have already paid him, so rather than come back and ask for more money he is going to deliver the wood himself!! Talk about service! He and his wife have wanted to get away for a weekend anyway so they are going to drive up here (about 300 miles), stay the weekend and see the sights, and then deliver the flooring Monday morning.

Of course, also on Monday the BIG GUEST is arriving in the afternoon about 2:30. As I write this, it is a little more than 48 hours until the BIG GUEST arrives. I’m a little nervous. It is all so exciting. I’m normally kind of a private person (except on my blog) so this is a big deal to me.

Here is another shot of the kitchen. The sink will go under that window. The window used to be taller. It went down to about 18-inches off the floor. It was raised in 1926 when a bathroom was added. Just about a year ago there was a toilet under the window, a claw foot tub to the right, and there was a wall between where I’m standing now and that window. I thought about keeping the toilet in the kitchen. I mean, think of the convenience! But, at the last minute I changed my mind. I’m slowly working away from the whole feculent hell-hole theme that previous owners had instilled in the home. You have to make compromises.



The door on the left leads to small alcove. Immediately to the right, in the alcove, is the back door, and to the left is the door to the scullery. The scullery will become the downstairs bath. The little alcove was opened up to the back porch in 1926 to add additional back doors. I had to re-enclose the porch by building 2 small walls to create the alcove. I added the little stained glass window you see in there. I bought 2 matching stained glass sashes as a local salvage yard. There is the one in the alcove, and the other will go in the scullery/bathroom.

Set Faces On Stun

Ok folks, here are some pictures with paint. I’ve included a few before shots to bring everything in to perspective. This is also an interactive blog entry because I’m looking for some feedback, but first, lets look at some pictures. You might want to put a towel down on the keyboard or just grab your drool bucket before you start viewing.

Before



After



Now for the questions. The color swatch below is the color I’m considering for the roller shades for the windows. Eventually I would like to do something a little more elaborate with the window treatments (And no, I’m not celebrating Gay Pride this weekend just because I’m a man that uses the term Window Treatments - Not that there’s anything the wrong with that. Everybody’s personal sexual preference is there own business.), but right now I’m hemorrhaging cash, so I’m going with a simple roller shade from Smith-Noble. The question is, would that color go well with the walls (See, a Gay man might know the answer to this question), or should I go with a darker or lighter color?



Also, would the cabinets look odd if they were painted the same color as the rest of the trim, or should I play off the green of the walls. I like the simpler approach, but that’s just me, and I accept the fact that I’m a bit odd in these areas, and don’t always make the best choices.

Now let me switch into Corporate Shill Mode for a moment…processing…processing…processing….

The little bucket below I picked up a few days ago. It is so useful for painting I wanted to share it with you. It is called The Handy Paint Pail and it really is handy. I painted with oil based paint for about 5 hours today and didn’t have to wash my hands afterwards. There are disposable liners. It is comfortable to hold – even for 5 hours, and there is a little magnet at the top that the metal part of the paint brush sticks to. This is by far the best $10.00 I have spent in a long time.



Also, If you’ve never been to the Smith-Noble web site to order blinds or drapes you should try it. It is very well designed considering they are dealing with things as complex as blinds and drapes (lots of options). The web site is easy to follow, well laid out, and fast.


Now switching out of Corporate Shill Mode…processing…processing…processing….


Ughh! I need a shower.

I Think I’m Going To Be Sick

I started painting the trim in the kitchen and it is looking so nice I’m becoming physically ill. I think I’ve become so accustomed to living in this feculent hell-hole (Is that too strong a term?) that my body is rejecting anything nice. It is kind of like a man who has almost starved to death will become sick if he eats too much too fast.

Hopefully I can get this finished up tomorrow. I need to start cleaning the house for the BIG GUEST on Monday. It is all very exciting. I’ll be sure to post All The News That’s Fit To Blog on Monday after the BIG GUEST leaves.

Until then…

Bitch & Moan…And For What?

I know I like to listen to myself complain endlessly about my problems. So naturally, I assume everyone on else wants to listen as well. The constant drone of a nasally, whining voice going on and on about how things aren’t working right. Who wouldn’t love that? Case in point: My plaster work.

For weeks I’ve done nothing but complain about my skills as a plaster, the mess, how it is taking so long. And then, of course, there was yesterday’s issue with that one area of the room that I am no longer mentioning by name. You know what I’m talking about.

Well, anyway, here’s the kicker. After I went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how much everything sucks, and what a pain in the ass it all is, it really doesn’t look that bad. In fact, I’m quite pleased. (Except for that one area. Shhhh!). I got the first coat of paint on and it looks good. The dark green does a good job of hiding some of the, shall we say, less than perfect areas of the room. What really came out better than I expected were the areas that I rebuilt from scratch. You can hardly tell where the two doors used to be.

Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t perfect walls. I’m aware of that. This is only the second room I’ve plastered at it was a tough one (There I go again). I knew going in that it would not be perfect, and I except that. On the plus side, it only cost me $120.00 in plaster and about $20.00 in sand paper and I learned some lessons about plastering. Ideally, there would have been improvement over my first plaster job and the kitchen would have turned out better than the bathroom. The bathroom turned out shockingly well for a first attempt – or even a 10th attempt. Perhaps that was part of the problem. I did so well with the bathroom, I got cocky with the kitchen, and when things started going bad I panicked. We’ll call that a working theory.

Anyway, the paint’s on the walls and I’ve got about a half gallon left to touch up some areas tomorrow. I’ve very pleased with the paint. The color is fantastic (pictures soon) and the coverage is great. Tomorrow I’ll start on the trim. Wish me luck.



PS In other news I got a call-back from the job interview I went to on Tuesday. The message was on my machine. I think they are going to offer me the job and I think I’m going to decline. I’m just not ready for full-time work. Besides, if I went back to work full-time, who would stay home and care for the house.

Doh! Doh!

Ran in to a little problem with the ceiling. As you may or may not recall, this kitchen was split in to different rooms and areas. There was a kitchen, a bathroom, a closet, a Murphy Bed alcove (for lack of a better term), and a small area was opened to the back porch. The “bathroom” and “closet” ceilings will not hold on to the skim-coat plaster. I thought I had solved this issue but apparently I had not. Lakewood 2-Flat mentioned a product called “plaster weld”, but when I asked for it down at the local hardware store I was met with blank stares from Jethro & Betty Lou behind the counter. Someone else mentioned shellac on the bare plaster, and if one more person mentions joint compound I’m going to explode. If plaster won’t stick to plaster then why on earth does someone think that joint compound is going to magically adhere to the plaster?

What happened was this: As I rolled the primer on to the plaster the skim-coat basically peels off with the roller leaving behind a stream of very thin plaster flakes. Not all of it comes off, but enough that it is unacceptable. I had a few small areas on the walls in those two “rooms” where this happened as well, but nothing like the ceiling. The areas on the walls are not really an issue. One spot will be behind the cabinets on either side of the sink and the other will be behind a 9 foot tall hutch. I scraped off the chips and re-primed. These small portions of the ceiling have to be re-done.

I’ve decided I’m not going to re-plaster. I’m just too far along in the process to start that again. Besides, for the “closet” area this will be the third time. There is no guarantee a forth time will be the charm. It seems this is a prep issue. Working on the ceiling is awkward and I guess I wasn’t as thorough when I scraped, sanded, and cleaned. I also noticed that it holds on to the plaster in areas where the plaster is thicker. Along the edges where the ceiling meets the walls the skim-coat plaster is thicker (due to my poor skills) and in that area it is fine. The rest of it has to go, though. I scrapped it all off. This accounts for about 20% of the room.

What I’m going to be left with is different textures on different areas of the ceiling and numerous little plaster flakes in some areas. The skim-coat plaster is smooth while the original lime and sand plaster has a coarse texture to it. Actually “coarse” is not the right word. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but suffice it to say it is different. What I’ve decided to do now, is just to prime and paint the whole room as I had planned. Down the road I can put up a tin ceiling to cover it up. A tin ceiling was part of the plan originally. I got a quote of $972.00 for the materials delivered to my door, but decided it was not in the budget. I have other things I need to do while the weather is good, so this will be a nice rainy weekend project this winter.

Now the problem is, what do I tell people about the ceiling. I’m having that group of people over in late August. This is a group of old-house owners and they are all going to be very curious about the progress. They are all pleasant and nice people, but some seem to have forgotten that there Mother once told them, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say nothing at all”. I will be getting the question, “What is the deal with the ceiling?”. I’m working on a few responses.

1) “Don’t you just love it. I saw them do this on HGTV and I just had to have it. It is called {French term for Chipped Plaster}. It is all the rage over in Europe right now.”

2) “I wanted to preserver the history of the house. I think it is important for the historical context to keep a “living record” of the changes and modifications the house has gone through. The ceiling will be my living record" (a tear in my eye and a deep, introspective sigh)

3) I look them in to the eye with a wild expression on my face and yell, “Oh, so are you going to point out all my mistakes, now”. I then grab them by the arm and pull them from room to room demanding that they point out any of my mistakes in these room. “What about that electrical outlet? Is THAT too crooked for you Your Majesty? My father always pointed out my mistakes. Are you my father now!?!” I trail off in gentle sobbing and then collapse on the floor and begin to sob uncontrollably, occasionally looking up and demanding that everybody leave my house AT ONCE!!!


I’m kind of leaning towards number 3. What do you guys think?

Doh!

The previous owners of my house subscribed to the age old adage that everything can be fixed with plywood. So instead of fixing the leaky porch roof over the small alcove off the kitchen they put plywood over the damaged plaster inside the house where the leak was, and never fixed the leak on the outside.

This a common leak for a lot of houses. It is where a first story roof meets a second story wall. About two years ago I removed the plywood and all the plaster came with it, along with mold and dirt, and who knows what. The plywood didn’t stop the water put it did divert it in to the wall. Yea! So the wall was ruined too. Anyway, the first time we got rain I had a puddle in the kitchen. Actually, it wasn’t the kitchen at that time. The house came with 4 kitchens and I was using one of the rental kitchens in the house.

As soon as I got some dry weather I went up on the porch and fashioned some flashing. You can see it in the photo below. That second story wall with the shingles is now my bedroom. It was one of the rental kitchens. You can see the small square vent on the wall. That is what is called a “California Cooler”. They were popular in the Teens & 20s around here. When ever you see them on a 19th century house, like mine, the cooler is a later addition.



The way a California Cooler works is that you have louvered vent on the inside of one of the kitchen cabinets. This vent lets cool air in to the cabinet from the outside. The shelves in the cabinet are thin wooden slats or wire mesh so the air can circulate. They used it to store dairy and other semi-perishable things in the days before the refrigerator was a common household item. The weather here is remarkable on the coast in that it stays cool all year round. Temps in the 50s are the norm for over-night lows in the summer, and the days never get over 75. High 60s and low 70s are common for daytime temps. In fact, I’ve been wearing long johns for the last few days while painting in the kitchen. I’m down to a plank sub floor and the cool air comes up through the cracks in the floor. It is a little cool while sitting on the floor painting the bead board. But I digress. Back to the leak.

All seemed fine with my flashing. For almost 2 years I’ve had no water in the kitchen – until I plastered. We got rain on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It really came down hard on Saturday, all day and night. On Sunday I noticed a small wet spot on the plaster. You can see it in the picture below, in the upper, right-hand corner. That is just below the flashing the first photo. The plaster is still very firm, and it didn’t seem to have suffered any real damage, but it was a disappointment to see it. This means another trip up on the porch roof tomorrow. One of two things has happened. Either the flashing never really worked completely, and a little water has always gotten in, but only enough to dampen the framing, or this is a new problem. Not sure which it is, but at least I discovered it before I painted.



Speaking of painting, I’m in the middle of it right now. I got the walls and all the trim primed. All that is left to do is to primer the ceiling. I took a little break to post to the old blog and shove some grub in my gut before I finish up. I also had to do some laundry because I have a job interview tomorrow. I’m not sure if that is a good thing yet, but I had to dig out something nice to wear, and I rarely wear anything nice, so I had to wash it. It is not a suit and tie, don’t worry. I own one suit and the last time I wore it was when my Mom remarried. I told her then, the next time I wear it will be at a funeral and it will probably be mine. She didn’t think that was funny.

The interview is in a different profession than I normally work. I’m looking for something different. What ever I put down in my blog profile was a lie. That was all part of my master plan to thwart the international gang of identity thieves that hound me at every turn. Right now I work for a small, local manufacturer doing sales and IT work. It is only part-time work, that is why I’m able to do so much work on the house and actually get things done on “a school night”. The new job is for a small telecom company. It is an entry level position but I need a change. I guess the fact that they are giving me an interview is a good sign. I mean, they didn’t just laugh and throw away my resume. Not sure it I’m ready for full-time work, though. Some how I’ve managed not to work full-time for more than 15 years now. We’ll see what happens. Don’t wish me luck.

The Artist Formerly Known As Grex

When I was about 18 or 19 I got a job as a busboy at what was at the time the largest restaurant in the country. There were 14 or 15 dining rooms and they could seat about 600 people at any one time. During the busy summer months they had over 100 wait staff, 30 busboys, 20 or so dishwashers, and the same number of cooks on the schedule at any given time. The place served breakfast, lunch, and diner and it was a freakin’ mad house. It had been in business since the 20s or 30s. The woman who ran the kitchen looked like a Marine Drill Sergeant and had worked there for more than 40 years. It was the only job she ever had in her whole life.

Anyway, I worked there for 2 or 3 years as a busboy. As a busboy I made frequent trips back to the dishwashing room. The dishwashing room was as big as most restaurants. It was run by conveyor belts, shrouded in steam, and occupied my Mexicans. One evening I was there unloading a load of dishes when suddenly out of the steam I saw one of the dishwashers waving his arm at me and he shouted, “Grrrex Morgaaan!”. He shouted it very enthusiastically, trilling the “r” in “Grex” for a long time and extending out the last syllable in “Morgan". I had no idea what the hell he was talking about so I just sort of waved back and headed back out to the dining room.

For the next several weeks, every time this guy saw me he would yell, “Grrrex Morgaaaan!”. It was very odd. A couple of my buddies heard about this and thought it was cool. They all started calling me Grex. So for the next few years I was Grex to 4 or 5 of my closest friends. A few years went by, and we drifted apart, and the name Grex sort of fell by the wayside along with weird hair cuts and bad fashion choices. I haven’t used the name Grex in years.

Last year I was the victim of identity theft. Somehow, someone got a hold of a credit card number of mine and started charging things around the world. I got home from work and there was a message on my machine from the Citibank fraud division. I was getting very nervous listening to the message on the machine. I called them back and they were very helpful. Apparently, the modus operandi of these people is to get a credit card number and make a few small purchases over-seas to make sure the number is valid. In my case they ordered something from Indonesia. If the number is good they will quickly make a few large purchases at brick-and-mortar establishments here in the States before the card is shut down. Citibank is aware of this practice so the small purchase in Indonesia followed by a large purchase at an auto parts store in Phoenix set off a red flag in their computer system. They discontinued the card number and called me.

All went well at my end. I didn’t have to pay for anything and they issued a new card. However, it made me very aware of how I treat my personal information. One area I started to think about was all of the crap I write on-line about me and my misadventures of restoring an old Victorian. When I started the blog a few months ago I decided I needed a new on-line persona that would leave my true identity seeming like an enigma, inside a mystery, wrapped in a riddle. I decided to resurrect my alter ego “Grex”.

All was well except for one thing. I don’t feel like a “Grex”. Grex was a gangly, awkward 19 year old. Now I’ve matured into a gangly, awkward 43 year old. Grex just isn’t me anymore. So I’ve decided to go back to my real name. How much can someone get from a first name, right? So, if any of you are still reading this, from this day forward, you can all me G-Diddy. No I’m only kidding, my name is Greg. A real mystery, uh? Bet you didn’t see that one coming. I was hoping to thwart the master-minds of an international identity theft ring by changing the last letter of my first name from “g” to “x”. It was a fiendishly clever idea, I’ll admit, but as I said, I’m just not a Grex. It doesn't feel right. So, back to the boring life of Greg, and Greg is going to go paint the kitchen now.


PS Just incase you’re wondering, my last name is not Morgan, and to this day I have no idea where that dishwasher came up with the name Grex Morgan. It is one of life’s little mysteries.

Sticker Shock

I guess I should expect it. It is easy not to think about every cost associated with fixing up a room. I just didn’t think the paint would be that much. I went with the Sherwin Williams Majolica Green in Latex Satin for the walls, and Honied White in Oil Semi-Glass for the trim. I got the Pro Classic Enamel which is normally around $41.00 a gallon but it was on sale for $31.00 a gallon, so it could have been worse. I’m terrible at cleaning and taking care of paint brushes so it seems like I have to buy new ones every time I paint, and this was no exception.

Here is what I ended up buying

3 gallons of primer (I can return un-opened gallons),
2 gallons of each color of paint
2 trim brushes
1 bundle of 3 roller covers
4 Tack Cloths
1 bundle of 5 tray liners
1 bundle of latex gloves

Out the door: $249.17

As you may recall from earlier blog entries I have been thinking about paint for the past few weeks. For some reason I had this number in my head of $150.00. I’m not sure exactly where I came up with the number, but when ever I thought about paint I figured $150.00. I wonder if I should revise the numbers in my head for window treatments and the kitchen faucet (last 2 big things I need to buy).

All that is left is to physically paint the room. I got a call from the person milling the flooring material on Friday and he said it could be here as early as Wednesday. I’m thinking Friday, if I’m lucky, so that gives me a good 5 or 6 days to get the room painted. The goal is to be finished by Wednesday. I had wanted to paint after I had the floor in and sanded, but I’m not going to sit around and do nothing for a week, so painting it is.

Stripping Pictures

SEX! Ok, now that I’ve got your attention…

That probably doesn’t work that well anymore to get peoples attention in our society. We are so bombarded by sexual images in advertising that it has all just become a blur. But, everyone tells me this is the greatest country on Earth, so it must be all good. Anyway, this is about paint stripping, as if you didn’t already know.

Kristin, over at 1902 Victorian gave herself the stripper name of Tina Tingles. I thought that was hilarious. Over the past three years I have become a paint stripping machine, but I’m not sure I’m ready for a stripper name. I toyed with the idea of Pistol Pete. It sort of keeps with the whole heat gun thing. I just don’t know, though. I start to picture myself in leather chaps with 2 heat guns in holsters and it just, well, kind of makes me queasy. Anyway, cute names aren’t really my thing anyway.

So, let’s forget all that and get back to the real reason for this post – SEX, I mean stripping – PAINT STRIPPING!!! That’s what I mean. Below, are two pictures of my favorite spot in the kitchen. Pre-stripped and post-stripped. The room was originally faux grained so getting back to absolute bare wood was not really an option, or the intention. I just needed to get rid of the layers of paint and the drips and runs so I could get a nice smooth paint job.

The 2 corner blocks are crammed in to the corner and they coped (sp?) them together. It is interesting when you look at it up close to see that on the bottom the one on the left is in front, but at the top the one on the right is in front. They are sort of keyed together. As a novice wood worker, I find this very impressive. It is really done well. The person who did this really knew what they were doing. I wonder if they got it right the first try, or if they had a few screw ups.

I’ve completely stripped 3 rooms of paint now. First I did the bathroom, then the dining room, and now the kitchen. All three rooms had copious amounts of woodwork. Now that I think about it, those three rooms have the most woodwork of any other rooms in the house. I guess the worst is behind me. The first 2 rooms I took back to bare wood and stained and shellacked.

If I can finish sanding today I can start painting tomorrow. So why am I here typing and not sanding?