GHOSTED!

I came home late one night this week to find that we'd been ghosted!

We have 24 hours to come up with goodies for (2) other houses in the neighborhood and ghost them under the cover of darkness!

We in turn let everyone know that we've been ghosted by taping a flyer to our front door.

It's great trick-or-treating for adults!

We carefully picked our victims, snuck gifts onto their porches and ran!  Amazingly almost every house within 3 blocks had been ghosted by Halloween.

Pumpkins


Instead of carving pumpkins, I picked my picked my favorite templates painted them, they'd looked great and were super easy.

Templates from Good Housekeeping, Country Living, and Photoshop

I taped the templates to the face of the pumpkins and traced them out by puncturing the outline with a sewing needle.  After removing the template we played connect the dots using sharpie marker.

Outlined pumpkins

After they were outlined I went back a painted them with simple black acrylic paint.  After letting them dry overnight they went out onto the porch.

We went to the neighborhood party and I handed out candy as Max from "Where the Wild Things Are"

Happy Halloween!

g'night gracie....

Mission 1.1a accomplished.... no baseboards yet but they are on their way

A lesson in stripping paint

Just thought I'd post up a few words of wisdom...or hard lessons as it may be.

Through all the weeks of working on baseboards I feel like I have tried a dozen things to make stripping paint work.  The orange citristrip seems to work but is messy and is still a paint striping chemical.  Although I still think it's a good product if you really want to get the job done it's not the quickest, and is certainly temperamental.

That little triangle pointy tool on the right there...that guy can strip some paint in a WHOLE lot less time than any brush on nonsense.. That whole door frame took less than an hour and a half for both sides. For stripping paint on wood..my new best friend.

Now for metal, that is a whole different story.  We had this hardware on the front closet door that is pretty old.  Nice solid mortise lock set. But it, like everything else, has 3-4 layers of paint on it.

Inside the lockset was actually really clean. Found part of a broken skeleton key, a plastic pearl, and a reather old scrabble piece.

At least I get to use my camp stove for something.

I came across the best discovery I could have ever made in regards to stripping paint off of metal parts.  I neglected to get any pictures of the hardware before I started the process but you can see in the pot the parts are a heavy white / cream color.  bought an old pot from salvation army for a few bucks, add water, baking soda, and boil.  half hour later start removing.  The paint just peels right off in heavy layers.  After about an hour with a wire with this, a plastic tool, and a wire brush......

No more paint!! Brass darkening solution to come soon....

Toodles.....

Just a quick one before I turn in......

Short / Long week for me, I have to go to Sault Saint Marie Wednesday afternoon (overnight) so trying to get as much done as I can before then.  Made quite a bit of progress on the floors tonight, thanks to the help of my new little friend the flooring nailer.

Sometimes butter just isn't butter unless it's parquet.

Starting is always the hardest part. But I got smart somewhere along the way and pullled a line from the old flooring that is there. Much easier than me trying to snap a line from the oh so striaght walls of a 90+ year old house.

That's a start at least. I think I got the hang of it.  Certainly have to admire the paint, got the best painter that  a simple man can hire.

On the latest episode of our old house . . .

I swear it followed me home . . . .











What was in the box . . .?  Just a Tivoli Bedside Table for the entryway.  The Entryway table version of the Tivoli is too wide for our entry vestibule, but the bedside table version fit perfectly!

Living Room

Les worked especially hard this weekend and here's the progress he made on the wood floors.

 With the Living Room floors pulled up you can see what we think are the original floors to the house. (Original being a broad term considering to the best of our knowledge the house was built in 1918, added onto in the 30's, then moved to its current location in 1951)  The original floors appear to be 2" oak plank that at some point were painted navy blue!  There's really no way to tell exactly how old they are, but they are showing signs of dry-rot. 

All considered it would be an extensive effort to restore them, which is a bit beyond our expertise to repair.  We're going to protect them as best we can with a layer of underlayment before we put in the new wood floors.

 

Underlayment in Living Room

Next is the dining room, which currently has an old oak parquet floor on 1/4" plywood substrate, both of which will be removed to expose  the original floor.  Overall we'll be replacing 750 s.f. of floors, which will include the Living, Dining, Kitchen, Guest Bedroom, and Mudroom.

Recently, From This Old House

A little elbow grease, a little grout, and a few extra trips to Lowes and voila!

Finished Entry Way with new light fixture.  After a couple days of curing we can add the base boards and trim back in.






Dining Room

It took about a week to gently persuade the wall paper to, let go! But thanks to a combo of vinegar and steam, we are wall paper free.


As with lighting, good things come in boxes labeled Hinkley!  With 9'H ceilings we and a dining room table that extends to 122" we needed something to rival the overstated size of the room and furniture.  We went to a local manufacturer from Ohio to find a new vintage 3' diameter chandelier.

Coming Soon!


A pleasant surprise, showed up over the weekend . . .