Plastering The Parlors

So my intern and I have been working on the plaster in the parlors. Oh, did I forget to mention I have a summer intern? Yes, The Petch House has a summer intern who is a recent graduate of College of The Redwoods' prestigious Preservation Curriculum. This moves the Petch House in to a whole new echelon of restoration projects. I mean, an intern! Come on! That's got to mean something, right? I guess, or maybe it's just free labor. Either way, it is a pleasure to have the help and to be able to pass on some of my considerable knowledge. Well, knowledge anyway. OK, maybe it will be a lesson in how not to do things.

Regardless of the outcome, The Petch House has an intern and the parlor project is back on track. My intern Meagan is from Baltimore, which is strange because I was in Baltimore for vacation last month. I'm continuing my tour of historic east coast cities. Last year was Philadelphia and this year was Baltimore and Washington DC.

My intent was to go to Baltimore & DC, walk hundreds of miles around both cities, take zillions of pictures, and then blog like crazy about it. Everything happened but the last one because I started to get sick on the flight home. By the next day I was in bed with strep throat. A week later and 6 pounds lighter, the moment had passed and I never did the blogging.

There are a few choice pictures below, but that is probably all you are going to get. Baltimorians (Is that what they are called? I'm sure my intern will set me straight.) will probably laugh, but for me one of the highlights of the trip was taking the train from Baltimore's historic Penn Station to the over-the-top Beau Arts Union Station in DC. Union Station is like a beating heart that pumps hundreds of people out in to the arteries of DC every minute. It is quite an experience for a boy from Humboldt County. That and Baltimore's Shot Tower (Google it), but only because I had never heard of a Shot Tower before and found it all very interesting. Really, it was a great trip and I encourage everyone to go.

But now back to the parlors, plaster, and my intern. Megan had planned to intern with a premier restoration carpenter this summer, but for reasons I won't elaborate on, the deal fell through at the last minute. Some how she stumbled on to my blog and shot off an email. I must admit I was leery at first. I mean, what would some ivy league egghead know about old house restoration. Well, CR is hardly ivy league, but still, was the preservation program little more than a diploma factory or did they actually teach real-world skills?

Anybody who has read my blog knows I'm obsessed with detail about this house, to the point of almost being certifiably nuts about it. Regardless of whether Megan had the skills, could I relinquish even the smallest amount of authority over the work being done. I have done every last little thing myself for the past ten years. This would be a stretch for me.

Five years ago I probably would have said no or maybe not even returned the email, but it has been well documented here that I am getting a little fried on the work. I decided to give her a try. I told her a little about my current project and agreed to give her a tour of the house. In her next email she sent pictures of a recent plaster job she was on. It was real plaster, over real lath, in a real historic home of Eureka. I started to get excited.

The next night she came by and I gave her the rare full tour of the home. Few are allowed on the second floor and even fewer ever see the attic. Her enthusiasm was apparent and infectious. She mixed a few batches of plaster for me and I agreed to have her come back. The next night she came back and did some plastering. Below is a shot of the wall she did on the first night.

Megan's Mad Plastering Skilz

I was more than a little relieved that she could actually plaster. Even after one day it was evident she really wanted to help with the project, but if the choice came down to smooth plaster walls in The Petch House or crushing the hopes and dreams of a young woman, I think we all know what would have happened. And for those of you who are still unsure, I'll just say that I would be working alone right now had Megan's wall not come out smooth.

Not only did the wall come out smooth, but in some respects it is better than some of the work I do. I'm more of a slap it up, smooth it out, and move on kind of plasterer. I get a lot done in a short amount of time and it looks good, but Megan's attention to detail means that her corners come out better on the second coat, which means the skim coat will be easier. No doubt she has an attention to detail. At one point last night I thought I was going to have to physically remove her from the scaffolding.

Here is where we are at now. The scratch and brown coats are on all walls and next comes the dreaded skim coat. This is where you separate the real plasterers from the wannabes. This is the money coat. Screw this one up and all of the other work was a pointless waste of time. I'm hopping to keep the childish behavior (profanity and throwing tools) to a minimum if a wall takes a turn for the worse, but I make no guarantees. I had some moments in the dining room I would rather forget, and when think about the kitchen I sometimes end up whimpering in a fetal position on the floor.

I honestly don't think we'll get through both rooms this weekend, but the work starts Saturday. I'll be glad when the plastering is over.

Now a few shots of one of the run-of-the-mill homes in Baltimore. You can't throw a rock without hitting a home like this in Baltimore.

This is the Tiffany stained glass dome...

which is at the top of this spiral staircase...

which is in this foyer...

which also has these Tiffany stained glass windows...

which are under this ceiling...

which is in this modest, 39,000 square foot, 1875 townhouse...

which is just a block from the Washington Monument.

It was all really very nice.

Oh, and this is Baltimore's sewage pumping facility

PS: Alex – Thanks for the glasses. I would not have enjoyed the eclipse otherwise. I thought your original email was spam. Oops!

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.

40% Off Smith+Noble

I got a post card in the mail last week for an Employee Discount of 40% off the purchase of window treatments. I must order before February 21st and spend at least $1,000.

Spending a $1,000 at Smith+Noble would not be difficult at all. Ordering before February 21st would be a challenge, but for 40% off, I'll make the effort. The only real challenge is that I hate making these design decisions in the first place and being rushed to do it would really suck.

My thought was to just order the same roller shades I put in the dining room and then later I can decide on drapes. There are 5 large windows that need roller shades, so that should come to more than a $1000.

I went to the Smith+Noble site to try and find the style of shades with the same hem and add-ons that I put in the dining room and I couldn't find anything close to what I had purchased. I started to think maybe I didn't buy them at Smith+Noble. This was about 2 years ago, so maybe I did get them someplace else.

I shot off an email to customer service to see if they could locate the order. They did, but it turns out the shade style and all of the options I ordered have been discontinued. Here is the response.

Thank you for contacting us regarding your previous order for the roller shades. I will be happy to help you. I located the order using the information provided. Our records indicate the shades were in the Calypso/Cornsilk 843, with the standard spring roll, with the Diana hem. This material and shade style has been discontinued and is no longer available to order. The decorative hem option is also no longer available. I apologize for the inconvenience. I am happy to send samples from our current collection so you can select a comparable material. Please let me know if I can assist you with anything else.

Now I'm back to making decisions if I want the discount. Ugh! Maybe 40% off isn't worth it.

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!)

Shout Out

I'll be the first to admit that I can be tough on local business people who I don't feel try hard enough to get my business. Maybe too tough at times. Regardless, I want take a moment to praise a local business person who did a good job, on time, for a competitive price. In short, he did his job and did it well.

I've had this on-going saga with a tree in my side yard. It has had some dead and dying limbs on it that I've wanted to cut off for the past three years. Three of them hang over my phone lines and every winter I think it is just a matter of time before I lose phone and internet service.

I've considered trimming the tree myself, but it is a good 25-feet tall, and like I said, it hangs over the phone line. I just had this feeling I would end up taking out the phone line and maybe end up in the ER in the process. The scenario that played in my head was me falling off a ladder as the vibration from cutting cracked the dead limb and then I would take out the phone line as me, the limb and the ladder crashed to the ground.

The tree has a main trunk that goes up about 4 feet and then 6 or 8 main branches branch off of that. Each main branch is 6 to 8 inches in diameter and goes up another 10 to 20 feet. Two of these branches were denuded and another was close to rubbing against the house when it blew in the wind. All three of these hung over the phone line.

About five years ago, when two of them started to lose leaves, I took some aircraft cable and tied all of the branches together. I'm not sure if this helped to keep the branches from breaking off, but it helped me sleep at night when we had one of our big winter storms. About 3 years ago I started to call people to see about having the tree trimmed. This usually started in October when the weather started to change and I realized another year had passed with out me dealing with this.

I was amazed out how difficult it was to get someone to do the work. It was usually one of 3 scenarios. They would show up to give an estimate, but then not return calls to do the work. They would show up to give an estimate and say my only choice was to cut the whole tree down. The worst, was when they wouldn't show up at all. After three years I was running out of people to call.

This year I started at it again. I had a promising tree trimmer who came out and looked at the tree, but that only started a 6 week odyssey of phone tag. No matter how many times I gave him my cell phone number he would call my home phone while I was at work. The last time I called I did nothing by repeat my cell phone number several times and he never called back at either number after that.

On Tuesday I called Steve at Eager Beaver and left a message. He called me back a few hours later on my cell as he was standing in my front yard. We talked about what I wanted and he made a few suggestions. I said sounds great, how much. He gave me quote. I asked if he wanted a deposit. He said no, he would just leave an invoice in my mail box. I asked when he could do it and he said Thursday.

I came home today for lunch and there was Steve parked out front with a wood chipper on the back of his truck grinding up the last of it. The limbs had already been cut off and the tree looked great. We chatted for a minute and I went in for lunch. Twenty minutes later I heard the chipper shut off so I went out and confirmed the price. The yard looked great. The tree was trimmed. I handed him a check.

He even took in the slack on the aircraft cable so it is still in place holding everything together, just in case. If the tree does need to come down at some point, I know who I'll call.

Steve
Eager Beaver Tree Service
707-444-7333

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.

Bump & Grind

Now that the kitchen range hood is nothing more than an unpleasant memory it is time to get back to the even more unpleasant task of dealing with the plaster in the parlor. There are no two ways about it, working with plaster, whether you are talking off or putting on, is a mess.

For those of you who are not long time readers of the blog, the plaster in this house was put on in unique fashion for the time. The walls on the entire inside of the house are sheathed with 1X8, T&G “plaster boards”. Plaster boards were milled locally in the Carson Mill at the turn of the century. The boards have dovetail grooves running the length of the boards, spaced 2-inches apart. As the plaster is pressed on to the walls, it fills the dovetail grooves, which is what keeps the plaster on the walls.

An 1893 article in The Humboldt Standard refers to them as “patent grooved lath” and says before the plaster goes on “it makes the walls look as if covered with matched and grooved flooring”. The article also claims that this method saves mortar and makes the home more sturdy and better insulated than traditional lath. While all of that may be true, this method also makes it a pain in the ass to remove the old plaster and get the walls ready for new plaster.

I only strip off the plaster that is failing so most of it comes off effortlessly. What remains though, is the plaster that was forced in to the grooves back in 1895. I must get that old plaster out of the grooves before the new plaster goes on and it does not come out willingly. In the past I used a Rotozip tool with a plaster bit to grind out the plaster. This really makes an incredible mess. As the burred plaster bit hits the plaster in the grooves it sends out a 3-foot rooster tail of ground plaster. Even working with the Rotozip in one hand and a shop-vac hose in the other, the room quickly becomes choked with dust. I must wear what amounts to a home-made haz-mat suit when doing this.


Well, after years of hard work, the Rotozip finally bit the dust – no pun intended. When I was working in the dining room using the Rotozip to remove the remaining hearth tile the front bearing started to make a little noise. By the time I was half way through the foyer and stair hall that little noise became a high pitched scream and now it was both the front and back bearings that were going. Towards the end of the foyer, just to get it to run I would have to flip the switch and the smack the housing with a hammer to get the bearings to move. Needless to say, the plastic housing did not like being smacked with a hammer and eventually I broke the on/off switch.


On Thursday I went to Sears to buy a new Rotozip, but came home with a Multitool. The Multitool comes with a number of different attachments, but the one I use is a flat blade with teeth on the end. The blade moves back and forth at high speed and does a pretty good job of breaking the plaster apart in the grooves. It doesn't remove it from the grooves quit as effectively as the Rotozip, but doesn't make nearly the mess as the Rotozip, either. What remains in the grooves gets shop-vaced out. Initially this process makes much less of a mess, but once the shop-vac comes on the dust starts to get thick. I now run the shop-vac just before I'm ready to finish up for the day, then close up the room for a few hours until the dust settles.

One down and six to go.

Thar She Blows!

I think this entire house could be considered to be my white whale, but in this instance I'm referring only to the newly built and installed range hood. The installation was somewhat uneventful, in that I didn't drop any tools and damage anything, I didn't spill any paint, and I didn't knock any unintended holes in anything. I'm especially nervous and cautious when working in a room that is essentially finished and used every day, like the kitchen. When working in a room like this, my mantra is, “Above all else, do no harm”.

Building the housing for the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module was pretty straight forward. Fabricating boxes from old redwood T&G bevel board is the same type of construction I used in the cabinets for several rooms, so there is really nothing to figure out. It is pretty much just scrape paint, sand, measure, cut, glue, and assemble. Deciding on the right size was the only real challenge. I toyed around with a larger cabinet that had doors or shelves on either side of the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module, but for a number of reasons decided against it.

In the end I decided on a simple box whose soul purpose was to hold the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module. The dimensions of the box were decided largely by the location of the existing chimney vent I needed to connect the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module to. The Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module needs to be 24 to 30 inches above the stove and then tall enough to hide all of the exhaust ducts. It needed to be wide enough to hide the chimney opening and still be centered over the area where the stove sits.

After constructing the box I needed to get electrical up on the wall. Again, this was pretty straight forward. After re-wiring the entire house myself this sort of thing is fairly routine. The outlet for the refrigerator is on the wall just to the left of the stove. The only real challenges were 1) getting through the horizontal framing member that the beadboard is nailed to, and 2) getting through the wall stud. As I pointed out in my last post, the reason I'm doing this project now is because I don't want to knock a lot of holes in the kitchen walls. Because I'm going to start work in the parlors next, I have no problem knocking holes in the those walls. The whole process took about an hour.


The red lines show where the studs are and the blue line shows where the wire runs. You can see I also made a repair to the plaster from damage left over from the 2009 earthquake. This was the very first wall I every plastered. This was done in my pre-blogging days and if I could I would do it over. I really learned a lot. What is most frustrating about that damage is that the original plaster from 1895 came through the earthquake fine. It was my skim-coat that popped off. Grrrr!


On the other side of that wall is the parlor side. By measuring carefully I could cut out one section of the Carson Mill Plaster Board and then drill 2 small holes to fish the wire from the existing outlet to the spot on the wall over the stove where the new outlet needed to be for the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module.


With the electrical in place I could mount the box on the wall and install the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module. Again, this went pretty smooth. I used a lot of duct tape and strapping to make sure everything would stay secure when the next 6.0 or greater strikes. I don't want to have to open the box back up once it is complete.




And here are a few shots of the almost finished product. There is one more small piece of trim detail that needs to go on, but for all intent and purpose, this is the finished look. While not even close to the over-the-top custom range hoods seen in most design magazines, I think it has a certain understated elegance that works well with the rest of my kitchen.

The Parlor Pre-Project

Working on a house is like working on a puzzle. You may be holding the piece of the puzzle with the smiling girls face on it and you know exactly where it goes, but you need to finish the edges first and work your way towards that part of the puzzle. That is what is happening with the parlor project. Believe it or not, the parlor project starts with work in the kitchen.

Ahh, the kitchen. The never ending project that is The Kitchen. The first time I “finished” the kitchen I had a round kitchen table in the center of the room. That didn't work out too well, so I got rid of the table and built an island, complete with marble top and copper prep sink. Best thing I ever did.

The second time I “finished” the kitchen I removed the free standing cabinet in the alcove so I could put the refrigerator there. That cabinet ended up in the butler's pantry. That worked for a little while, but the refrigerator was awkward to get to in the alcove. To remedy that problem, I yanked out the 1890s cast iron stove, moved the gas stove over, and moved the refrigerator out of the alcove and put it where the gas stove was.

The last time I “finished” the kitchen was just two years ago when I built the marble desk in the alcove. I'm now sitting at that desk, as I write. This was another great idea and I now really had a finished kitchen except for one little thing. When I first started the kitchen back in 2005 I shopped for a range hood. The local home center has a selection of range hoods that are all totally inadequate. They are designed to go with modern cabinets and modern appliances in a modern kitchen. There is nothing the wrong with a modern design, but that is not what I was doing. Having one of those range hoods stuck on the wall over a vintage stove would have looked completely out of place.

At the time I shopped around for custom designed range hoods, but could not really justify $3,500 for a copper, over-the-top, McMansionesq range hood. I had only spent about $10,000 on what was pretty much a gut-remodel of the kitchen and there was no way I was going spend $3,500 on something that looked like it belonged in a Roman temple. It would have looked just as out of place as the much smaller modern range hood would have.

I really couldn't find any middle ground in a range hood. I thought about finding someone to fabricate something to my design - that is, if I had a design - but the idea became very back-burner in what was a huge kitchen project at the time and eventually sort of just fell off the back of the stove. No pun intended.

The reason this has come back to the front-burner now (to extend the metaphor) is because I never gave up on the idea of a range hood. In fact, the stove has always needed more lighting. It is one of those things that I always intended to do, but sort of gave up on it because I couldn't come up with a good solution. If I'm going to install one though, I need electricity on the wall over the stove.

The thought of cutting in to the wall up high above the stove is not something I really want to do. It would be a mess, of course, but more than that the kitchen has beadboard on the lower third of all of the walls. I can't simply drill a hole and drop a wire down in the wall. There is a horizontal framing member 3.5 feet up that I would need to get through. On top of that, the fireplace for the parlors is right behind this wall. It is hard to say how far the brick extends in the wall, but the fireplace in the parlor is set at an angle and the chimney has 2 flues, one for the parlor fireplace and one to vent the original wood or coal burning kitchen stove.

What I can do though, is work from the parlor side. That wall opposite the kitchen is in very rough shape and will need to be stripped down to lath and re-plastered. Cutting holes to run wire will not be an issue at all. On the kitchen side I will just need cut a hole large enough for a single gang electrical box. It will make a small mess, but nothing compared to trying to do all of the work from the kitchen side.

In short, now is the time to do this if I'm every going to do it at all.

I'm still left with the problem of the range hood itself. I found a site on line for Vent-a-Hood that has a “Build a Hood” applet on their web site. There is one style listed as JCH/C2 that is not really over-the-top and definitely not a run-of-the-mill hood either. Also, it is not made of copper, so it could be in my price range. Unfortunately, I never found out what one would cost. Several times, from several different computers and different web browsers, I tried to use the applet to get a quote. Each time it crashed on me when I clicked the “Submit Quote” button.

I contacted customer service. They wrote back a very nice email saying they were unaware of the problem and suggested I use the “Find a Dealer” applet on their site to find a dealer in my area. I could contact the dealer and get a quote. I had similar problems finding a dealer and another email to customer service was met with silence, so I gave up.

I was at Sears the next week and I had the idea that I can buy a garden variety range hood and wrap in wood or trim it out in some fashion so it looks like it belongs. I pimped out the fridge in oak and it came out ok, so why not the range hood. The trouble with that idea is that they all have the controls on the front. It just wouldn't work. I then went to the home center to see if they had something that would work, but they had pretty much the same selection as Sears.

What the home center did have though, was a catalog from the Broan company, which makes a dizzying array of range hoods. Inside I found the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module. This is basically the guts of a range hood without the hood. This is what is used in making those over-the-top, McMansionesp range hoods that cost $3,500. The PM390 was $325 at the home center, but I found it on-line for $189 and free shipping.

One, please!


So now I'm in the process of making the box to house the Broan PM390 Custom Hood Power Pack Module. I'm using more of my seemingly endless supply of redwood bevel board that came out of the 2 story addition I dismantled. This is the same bevel board I used to make the kitchen island and the cabinets in the kitchen, bathroom, and butler's pantry. I will trim it out with a 3 part cornice, just as I did the kitchen cabinets I made. It should (fingers crossed) look like it belongs.

Fresh from the woodshed


Cut, stripped, and sanded


The hope is that I can have some assembly done by next weekend so I can get a sense of where the outlet needs to be. With that information I can start to open the wall to find out how much brick I need to cut through. Hopefully, not much.

I've Got It Covered

An alternate name for this post could be 'Hoarders' because I've been hoarding cardboard for the past year just for this weekend. This is my form of drop cloth. I first put down plastic and then on top of that a layer of cardboard with the edges taped together. Preferably I'm working with large pieces of cardboard or the process can be quite tedious. This is the reason for the hoarding. Anytime a box from a dishwasher or piece of office furniture came along I jumped on it.

And now all of my bizarre behavior over the past year is finally paying off.




The big opening between the 2 parlors was reduced down to a pair of french doors during the apartment days, so that will all need to be trimmed out again. I imagine there was a nice spandrel or some fret work there at one time. The verdict is still out as to whether I will attempt to redo that. In a picture below you can see where there was once a door that lead to the kitchen. This was also during the apartment period. It has already be closed off and plastered over on the kitchen side.

The drop-cloth will stay down until after the plaster work is finished. Then I just slice it in to sections, roll it up, and off to the dump it goes. The walls in this room are par for the house. Not the best, but definitely not the worst. The rolling scaffold I made when I did the dining room and then I used it again in the foyer. It has been dismantled and tucked away in the garage since last year. Best $75 I ever spent.



This wall, while it doesn't look too bad, is really little more than a sheet of plaster leaning up against the wall. Most of the keys are broken. How it survived the 2009 earthquake, I'll never know.





These are the other 2 really bad walls that will need to be completely redone. The rest will need patch work and then a skim-coat for the everything. Fortunately, the ceilings are in very good to near perfect condition. There is one spot in the front parlor that has issues, but other than that they are in good shape. This is good because even with the scaffold I hate doing ceilings.

Parlor Pieces

Although the front and back parlor collectively make up more than 25% of the first floor of the house, I'm hoping that the cash outlay over the next 6 months will not be a lot when compared to other rooms. This is mainly because I've already made most of the major purchases for the 2 rooms.



One of the first purchases I made for the house was a collection of 4 light fixtures which came out of an 1890s Victorian in Main. The guy was doing a gut-remodel and getting rid of all of the “old stuff”. I bought 3 chandeliers and a smaller, 2-light ceiling fixture. One of the chandeliers was installed in the dining room. The smaller fixture is in the upstairs bathroom.

The last 2 will be going in the 2 parlors. They are very similar, but one is little larger than the other. This works well in the parlors because the front parlor is little larger than the back parlor. Both fixtures have been rewired and are ready to go.



Years ago I also purchased two new plaster medallions to replace the originals which were ripped out when they put sheetrock up over the plaster. Again, the lager medallion will go in the larger front parlor and the smaller one in the back parlor.

The sheetrock over the plaster was possibly the worst thing that happened to the parlors. This is not so much because I think there is anything wrong with sheetrock. It's because of what the installers did to make their job easier. Not only did that pry off the plaster medallions, but they sawed off the tops of the head blocks.



Head blocks are like corner blocks except they have a crown detail that extends the block a few inches above the top piece of casing that goes over doors and windows. So they wouldn't have to fit the sheetrock around the detail, they sawed off the blocks so they were level with the top casing. Years ago I went down to Blue Ox Mill and had replacements milled.

Also at that time I had new casing milled. I needed casing for a few spots in 3 rooms to fix areas that were modified when the house was cut up in to apartments back in the 1920s. I also had replacement plinth blocks milled at that time, so all of that is just waiting to be installed. I may need to get some baseboard milled, but I am way ahead of the game when it comes to millwork for the two parlors.

Years ago I also purchased replacement hearth tiles. Just as with the dining room, the hearth tiles were beat to crap from heat, tenants, and carpet installers. I would say 40% of the original hearth tiles were just gone, and 20% were damaged beyond use. The original surround tiles are there and in very good shape, but the cast iron fireplace cover is missing, so I've already purchased an antique replacement.



Then of course there is also the pair of pocket doors and pocket door hardware I purchased, restored, and installed. That was a huge job all by itself. Stripping those doors was a lot of work and it took me nearly 3 years to find a set of antique Ives pocket door rollers.

In addition to those expenses that I don't need to worry about now, I have also already rewired both rooms for electricity and ran new cable for phone, internet, and cable TV. I also don't need to worry about dump runs for old flooring and sheetrock, because that was done years ago as well. All told, this amounts to thousands of dollars in material and months worth of work.

Expenses that remain are things like new plaster, which is relatively inexpensive. I need strip paint off woodwork and sand down and refinish the floor. These are also relatively inexpensive things to do. Then there are things like primer, paint, and new rugs. All of these things can add up, but those purchases will be spread out over time, so won't really have a major impact on the monthly budget. The big expense will be be for window treatments. There are 5 large windows, so that could set me back if I do something nice. Then of course there is new furniture. I'm not replacing everything, but it is enough that I will notice the hit on the wallet.

So really what all of this means is that if I were starting from scratch I probably wouldn't be starting at all. I would probably just let out a big sigh as I turned off the lights, closed the doors, and walked away from the rooms.

Let's Try This Again, Shall We

I actually had a rather large summer project that I didn't blog about at all. I painted the 2 story garage out back. It is really a pretty big structure. There are 2 apartments upstairs and 6 garages downstairs, so it is the size of a medium sized house.

I also put two new garage doors on the 2 garages that faced the street and did some siding repair here and there. I had to do a lot of cosmetic repair to the porch columns and I replaced door trim and corner boards. It was another one of those projects that just dragged on for months and months. It is nice to have it done, though. And now, with the push of a button, I can park my car in the garage.

Also, in October there was another blog-worthy event that got no mention here. I was wrangled in to doing the home tour for the Eureka Heritage Society. They've been after me for years to do it, ever since I won the Society's Residential Preservation of the Year award. It really was a honor, and I felt obligated to do it. Still, it was a lot of work getting ready for it. Just the thought of having who knows how many people come in to your home can be a little intimidating.

I was going to do the tour last year, but I didn't think I would have the foyer finished in time and I didn't want to commit myself and then have to rush to finish. This year, since the project was the apartment building out back there was no excuse not to do it. Trust me, I tried to come up with excuses not to do it.

I made the first floor available for the tour and it was an absolute mob scene. It lasted from 12-5 and I'm not sure how many people showed up. They estimate they sell from 300 to 500 tickets a year and it felt like everyone of them came to my house twice that day. At one point I counted more than 50 people in my house. It really was fun, though. I had some friends act as docents and I had a lot of displays set up that went over the restoration and talked about the original owners, The Petch's.

Every room on the first floor is finished now, except for the 2 parlors, which brings me to my winter-time project - my rare winter-time project. I'm going to attempt to get some things done in the parlors this winter and I'm going to attempt to blog about it. I'm not sure how much of either will actually get done, but I'm going to make an attempt.

Even though the parlors have been in a state of disrepair for the past 8 years, they have acted as my living room for most of that time. So this weekend the goal was to move my living room to an upstairs bedroom so that I can work on the parlors. Fortunately, a few years back I ran cable, phone, and internet to all rooms of the house, so it will just be a matter of moving furniture and electronics.

The goal for the parlors over the next few months will not be too ambitious. If I really went at it, I could probably finish these rooms in 6 months, but I won't be doing that. I have done quite a bit already. The sheetrock that was put over the plaster was removed 6 years ago, along with layers of flooring and wall paper. The rooms had also been modified during the apartment days of the 1920s, and that has all been undone.

The goal this winter is to just do some work on the plaster and woodwork. For the walls, I just want to remove the loose plaster and get the walls ready for new plaster. For the woodwork I want to strip off the paint. I'm still not sure if these rooms were originally painted or shellacked. Regardless, I need to get off the thick layers of dripping, gooey paint. There is also a lot of goop along with edges from when the sheetrock was put up.

If the woodwork was originally shellacked I will go back to that. If not, I will be repainting. There is circumstantial evidence that it was originally painted, but I won't know for sure for a few more weeks.

I’m Still Here….Barely

I am so burned out on the house, blogging, work, and just about everything else right now. So, since I can’t ignore the house, work, or most of everything else, the blog takes a back seat waaaaaaaay to the back of the bus.



I did get one project complete this year. Some might call it a pergola, while others may call it an arbor, but I’m calling it a neighbor hiding apparatus. There are potato vines growing up either side, and there are also the 2 mayten trees in the shot, which I planted last fall. All of this is for curb appeal when I go to sell the place in a year or two.

I also have six to seven hundred salvaged bricks from the old Daly’s department store that I will use to make a brick patio. The original plan was to use the bricks to rebuild the chimneys, but I don’t see that happening now.

The other project I have planned for the summer is to reside one short side (25 feet wide?) of the garage building, and then paint that building. This is the 2 story, 1926 building with 2 apartments upstairs and 6 garages downstairs. The second story shingles on this one short side need to be ripped off and replaced, and then 3 rows of horizontal siding needs replacing on the first floor. I had planned to hire someone to do the siding, but after getting 2 bids, with the low one being $9,800, I’ve decided to do it myself.

Oh, joy!

I may farm out the painting, but I won't know until I start getting bids. Something tells me I'll be doing that myself, as well.

Vote Early and Often

Eureka, CA – Home of The Petch House – is on the 2011 Dozen Distinctive Destinations list put out by the Nation Trust for Historic Preservation. I would like to think that The Petch House played a part in the nomination, but it really didn't. Or if it did, it was a very small part. The reality is, The Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau sent in an application to be nominated, which makes it sort of a vanity nomination.

There is a contest going on where people can vote for their favorite destination. Click here to see the full list of all 12 of the distinctive cities on the list. On that page there is a link that will take you to the voting page.

Everyone will be voting for Eureka, right? Right?

The Night Time is the Right Time

Yesterday I showed the new front door windows from the inside with the light coming in. Here is what the house looks like in the evening now.



What I should have gotten a picture of was the light show that was put on this morning with the direct eastern, morning sun hitting the doors. It was almost psychedelic.

And They're In!

First, a little B&A action....





One went in without a hitch and the other one went in with a slight struggle. I need to paint the outside where the glazing putty is, but after that, these are done!

The foyer is a little darker with the new windows, but it's not too bad. They really improve the room. This is another one of those projects where after it is done I have to ask myself, "What the hell was I thinking when I decided to make these windows". It was really a lot of work, but I had to do something.

Still Wood With Glass

Here is a first look of the assembled windows. I finished the corners and oiled the wood today and then went and picked up the glass. Boy, colored glass is not cheap, but does look nice. The glass is just sitting in there right now being held in place with glazier's points. There is no glazing compound.



The glass is red, glue chip, and midnight blue English Muffle. The red glass is smooth, but has flaws and a few bubbles. The English Muffle is a textured glass. It looks much nicer when it is back lit with sunlight. It also should look nice from the outside when the lights are on in the foyer.

When I installed the colored glass in the butler's pantry doors a few years back they did not go in willingly. My solution at that time was to use a utility knife to widen the rabbet just a hair. It was not easy. In anticipation of problems this time, I asked the owner of The Glass Works in Arcata, where I bought the glass, if he could shave some of the pieces down a little if I needed it. He said, “No problem”, but as it turned out everything fit. It was a nice surprise.

Tonight I will remove the glass and primer the exterior side. Then tomorrow I will paint. Sunday is a day of rest, of course. It is The Super Bowel, after all. A friend used to say something along the lines of, “I don't go to church, but football is my religion and I practice my faith on Sundays”.

If the paint dries nicely on Sunday I may try and get on a few coats of shellac on the interior side before The Big Game starts. I don't think it is blasphimous if I only listen to the pre-game shows, but don't actually watch them.

I decided to try and do the glazing myself. As I said in an earlier post, I've glazed more than a few windows myself over the years, but I was going to take these to a glass shop because I wanted the glazing to be crisp and sharp. I can do it, but it does not really come out crisp and sharp. I've always used a putty knife and a tub of glazing compound, but this time I'm trying the stuff in the caulking tube with the special applicator tip. Fortunately, this stuff takes for ever to set up, so if it comes out looking bad, I can always dig it out and take it some place.

Installation may happen next weekend.

Go Egypt!

A new symbol of freedom