Rehabber’s Rehab

Thor, Matt and I spent the week dry-walling in the living room where the half wall was removed, cleaning gooped up paint off the walls and cleaning up the disgusting mess created by the insulation that rained down when we took off the kitchen ceiling.  This stuff was so foul that Thor even broke down and wore a face mask.

Friday:

We were trying to clean up because Thor was hoping to move in over the weekend.  The goal was to have things cleared out at home to move them and to have the sanding done and things clean so we can bring things in on Saturday.  I was at home cleaning when Thor called me in despair.  The spackle wasn’t drying, there was no way to finish sanding and things were a wreck.  An adjustment to our plans needed to be made, and it’s hard to admit the goals you set are a little too ambitioius.  Fortunately help was on the way. (more…)

So I spent the day stripping paint off of the trim, and this post was originally going to be a How-To, however, the process was so inefficient and frustrating I don’t think that I can presume to tell anyone how to attempt this process.

I want to strip and stain most of the trim in the house because it’s all original and it all matches and has the same pointed detail at the top.  Plus I love the look of all matching unpainted stained trim that you see in a lot of those old craftsman homes.  The trim that was above the demi-wall between the living and dining rooms I intended to put above the large window in the sunroom to help integrate that room with the rest of the house and not have it look like such an addition.

So after reading several how-to’s, I though i could easily tackle this project myself in not much time.  Perhaps these people who wrote these how-to’s, who made this project sound so easy, did not have seven layers of paint to contend with.  Perhaps they did not have to deal with the unbelievably dark stain and several layers of varnish underneath the paint.  I hate them.  The paint did not come off easily or evenly.  The wood underneath looks a little splotchy due to the chemicals and uneven paint.

For others stuck in this nightmare, when I figure out a good way to do this, I’ll let you know. Here are the pictures from my first attempt.

One of the first things that I noticed about our house is that it does not have all of the nice stucco detail that a lot of the homes around Oak Park have.  It is what makes the stucco charming.  Matt used to hate stucco until he saw the hosues here.  In Oak Park, they fit nicely in the nighborhood, and don’t seem tacky, but rather charming.  A large part of this is the trim, which our house is sorely lacking.

These are some of the details we found on our walk today that I think might be nice.

12►

Rusty takes time to smell the flowers

So to get ideas for what we want to do to the outside of the house, Thor and I have started taking a camera on our walks with the dog. We’re hoping this will not only help us figure out what we like, but exactly what is wrong with the house  now that we need to fix.

Right now I don’t think that the outside of the house could get much uglier or have less character, so anything we do is bound to be an improvement.  However, any changes we make we definitely want to fit in with the character of the neighborhood.  And looking at a house and knowing instinctively that it is ugly is different from figuring out how you need to fix it.  So, in our ramblings we have identified the main problem areas, and hopefully are beginning to get some ideas on what we want to do.

So pictures of things we like will be forth coming, and maybe then we can gradually compete for second ugliest house on the block