Rehabber’s Rehab

This holiday season was filled with fun and sadness, and between the two, and the house, I am worn out. However, we have started to turn a corner. It had seemed like everything that had happened until now was progressively making my life worse and worse. Everything was dirty all of the time, the dust had spiraled completely out of control. We lost electricity in half of the house, there was no shower, the only toilet was in the stinky make-shirt bathroom in the basement. To top it all off, it was cold. Really, really, cold. all of the insulation had been removed from the back of the house in re-doing the sunroom, and it was making winter in Chicago pretty unbearable.

So we retreated to my mom’s for a month, but now we’re back.  The cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom are in, the floors look awsome, and there is consistent electricity, including overhead lighting in the living room (a rarity in Oak Park), and now, we finally have the refrigerator actually in the kitchen.

This past weekend was spent on a few miscellaneous projects.  We got the the window trim all put back up, in the dining room and main bedroom and it looks great.  The new continuous window sil blends in beautifully with the rest of the original trim.  Matt and Thor also got the refridgerator put into it’s built-in cabinet.  And it works, too.  Probably the biggest task was getting the giant bathroom linen closet cabinet in.  A good 2 hours was spent with Thor and Matt locked in the bathroom as they tried to lift the cabinet in and maneuver it into place with about a 2 in area of wiggle room.  They got it in, and trimmed out.  We just need to finish drywalling in the top area around it.  Meanwhile I worked on stripping the door to the basement in hopes that putting that back up will help keep the house warm.  We will get there.

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This weekend I finally finished the first in the great door reclaimation project, our bedroom door, which I’ve been working on since the Martin’s were here last.  All the doors are now down but the most important one (the bathroom of course).  All I can say is that doors are a lot bigger than the trim I’ve been stripping so far, and that there is a lot more of them than you think there is.  And they have two sides.  Ugh.  Far more time consuming than my previous projects.

Although it is just the two of us, in our house we are so close to your neighbors that you need the privacy a door can give you.  Especially since we have no blinds up since we’ve taken down all of the trim that you could hang them on.  We have one spot in our bedroom that you can stand in to get dressed in without being in the line of sight of either of our neighbors, and we’ve definitely gotten tired of sneaking around in our own house.

I started by removing all the hardware from the door and throwing it in a bucket, screws and all, since I didn’t want to lose any of it.  Then it was time to bring out the trusty ole’ heat gun and to strip the paint off the flat outside and inside portion of the panels on the side of the door that faced into the bedroom.  I got this done in about two sittings (or hunchings). The edges of the panels took considerably longer.  I couldn’t really go at it with the metal scraper because it was too easy to dig into and gouge the door.  I finally found a use for all those chemical strippers on this part of the door, and they worked pretty well at getting a bulk of the paint off.  I still can’t stand the smell and it is much messier compared to the heat gun, but seems to be quicker and less damaging to the door.  After getting most of the paint off with the chemical strippers, I went over it scraping with a small screw driver the spots of paint that were still left, and using the Dremmel in some places. (more…)

Thursday

On my lunch break I took a trip to Costco to stock up for the soon arriving horde (the Martin’s, Matt, my Dad and Granddad), the main essentials being snacks (dips, crackers), bottled water (even though the tap water in Chicago is very good), and most importantly Gatorade. Gotta keep the workers happy, otherwise they are running out every five minutes to pick this stuff up. After work it was off to the paint store. Thor and I were determined not to repeat our earlier mistake of just buying paint and putting it up, so we bought about 7 samples of paint for the living room. It’s actually pretty nice that our Benjamin Moore store sells tiny samples that you can put up and try out for only about 3 dollars. I wanted blues, he wanted greens, and we wanted to paint one wall a neutral color. I figured we’d put them up and duke it out. (more…)

Last night was spent slaving over a bucket to clean up this:

Drywall dust from patching the plaster covers every surface

And hours later, I ended up with floors that look like this:

Living room after one mopping

I felt like I was completing a sisyphean task, with every moping merely spreading the dust about in slightly thinner and more even layers, and the living/dining room and back bedroom looking no better after each effort.

After that, tonight I was done.  I mopped again, only be faced with the same slightly lighter thin film, add this onto my already bad mood, and I had had it.  I retreated to the garage and my trim stripping and left the cleaning to the men.  Like it should be.

An hour later, they had done a brilliant job cleaning, and i was in a calmer and more zen like state after methodically peeling paint.  We took a dinner break to build an impromptu fire pit (not sure how legal that is…) and burned at least 6 inches off the wood lathe pile.  Thor and Matt returned to clean up the supreme dirtiness of the kitchen and I got another board done.  In the end, my mood was lifted and it turned out to be a good night.

Rehabbing as therapy.

I have two words for you: Heat Gun.

I fell in love with this device about 5 seconds after using it when the paint began to bubble and peel off immediately.  My previous experiences working with chemical strippers left me frustrated and with unattractive results. 

Perhaps they are more effective if you are not attempting to remove 10 layers of paint at once. After a couple of hours of layering on the stripper, waiting for it to work, scraping off some of the paint and then repeating this process again and again, only to be left with wood that looked uneven and splotchy, I was considering giving up and giving in and just paint it all.  I decided to try another chemical that is supposed to remove 7 layers of paint (right up my alley) and be stronger than the others.  I would say it was even less effective than the others.

I thought I’d give it one last try with the heat gun, and after about 5 minutes of fiddling with it to get the hang of it, I was removing paint in long strips leaving a clean board behind. So, here is my how to strip paint with the heat gun: (more…)