Our house has many beautiful period details: mantels, moldings, pier mirrors, wainscoting… but the floors are a whole different matter.
When we moved, every single room had some kind of floor covering. The third floor, was all stick-on tile. The parlor floor was mostly parquet laminate and ceramic tile and the same for the garden level. Unlike carpet, removing sticky tiles or glued-on laminate usually leaves behind a trail of destruction and an unholy mess, so we proceed with caution.
So where were we?
Ah, yes, the façade. The epic project to end all projects.
To recap: scaffold went up, and we had 28 days to strip. On day 29, the scaffolding turned into a pumpkin and went on to a different job site.
(or at least I think that’s what the weird bird thingies are). Continue reading
It’s been a while since the last post, a perfect storm laziness, heavy work load at our day jobs and a good amount of House Paralysis. (House Paralysis is a real condition with symptoms including indecision, moroseness, and a general lack of enthusiasm for any and all home projects. Unfortunately there is no cure for this condition, other than time and impending house guests).
After the rush of getting the house ready for guests, the work slowed to a crawl – that is until a few days ago, when our front parlor went from this: Continue reading
While picking through a pile of house parts that were in route to the dumpster, a Brownstone Detective found this:
It’s a section of the tile that surrounded a fireplace, with the wall still attached to it. It was covered in silver paint, probably spray paint. I know from the real estate listing photos that it was the tile that complimented the fireplace mantel currently disassembled in my cellar (one of the three Killian Brothers mantels I brought home). There was quite a bit of non-painted tile intact (not that it matters, because paint comes off tile quite easily).
It took about 15 minutes, some nail polish remover, a metal scraper and a Mister Clean Magic Eraser sponge. Now it looks like this:
It’s the same style of tile of three of our fireplaces (parlor and garden), but it’s not an exact match: colors are similar, but it’s a much larger size. It’s also still attached to about an inch of cement. I have no idea what I’m going to do about that. I love love love love old tile. I have no use for it (due to the color/size discrepancy, not to mention the hunk of wall that comes with it) yet I’m happy I have it.
(which is probably what all headers say about every bit of useless crap they own).
(on a side note, I wonder if the people removing all this stuff know that one little piece of tile like this retails for between $7-9? And that the two large flower relief tiles that were part of this set sell for about $50 each?)
(sad)
Our world is covered in (undesirable) paint: woodwork, walls and hardware. Sometimes it seems that all we do is remove paint – and yet, we haven’t made a dent!
Egg and Dart patterned door knob.
Back plates with tape residue
Intricate (and rusty) door set
The door knobs and plates we picked up on our trip to the Historic Albany Foundation’s Parts Warehouse were no exception. Luckily, removing paint and grime from hardware is actually pretty easy. It just requires water, baking soda and a little time. Using a stainless steel pot (once you use it for this, you can’t use it for food anymore, so make sure it’s marked accordingly).
Boil up water with baking soda. How much baking soda, you ask? Uh… a bunch? Some? I’d say pretend you’re boiling pasta and add about 4 or 5 times more baking soda than you’d add salt (you can also substitute the baking soda for dish soap, just be careful not to let it boil over, as things will get very sudsy). Once the water comes to a boil, toss in your hardware. You’ll see the gunk come off in the foam.
Let it boil for a little while, then check to see how your door knobs are doing.
Some of the items may need a bit of scrubbing. The paint will be soft and bubbly and will pretty much wipe off. It goes without saying that they will be very hot, so curb your wild enthusiasm as you grab the searing metal to admire your handy work.
Back plates free of paint, but still looking a little sad
Once your hardware is free of paint, you may find that it’s still looking a bit shabby. Sometimes items get rusty after their bicarbonate bath, but it’s all temporary – because you’ll buff the living daylights out of it.
If it’s good for rims and candle stick holders, it sure is good enough for our door knobs
Some metal polish, a little steel wool and an old T-shirt will get you this:
Before elbow grease and after
After it was all said and done, our door hardware looked like this:
Things have been a bit sluggish over the past few months, but a few projects did get crossed off the list. First up: front doors.
The doors are not original, but they are close enough. The previous owner installed these and overall, we’re really happy with them. They are a close match to what the original doors looked like. The problem was the finish – or lack thereof. Our house has southern exposure and it gets quite a bit of morning sun, which was unkind to the varnish.
Here is a before/during shot (of course I forgot to that a proper before photo). Both sides used to look like the one of the left.
Removing the finish (with ZipStrip)
Once free of the varnish (and whatever else coated the door), we gave it a light sanding and filled in some holes with putty.
The wood was quite damaged in some spots, and we decided it would be better to paint rather than stain it. We decided on black with just a tad of shine (which is a fun thing to go buy at the Benjamin Moore paint store).
– You just want black?
– Yes.
– We have this new onyx color that has a little bit of gray…
– No thanks. Just black.
Anyway, here is what it looked like with one coat of paint:
And this is what the doors look in place. Of course, we forgot to paint the outside of the trim holding the glass. We also learned that entry door hardware is absurdly expensive (particularly the period appropriate kind I want), so the full makeover of the door will have to wait a little longer. Considering I’ve been slacking on the façade job, pretty sure no one will notice the unpainted trim…
For the Why Did They Paint Over This? file:
I decided to take a break from stripping the bedroom walls and strip the front parlor fireplace cover. This poor thing has been relegated to the basement since before we bought the house, as the previous owner replaced it with one of those awful Home Depot brass monsters. Here it is in its gaudy paint scheme (which incidentally matches the paint scheme of our front parlor/living room. So. Much. Muppet Flesh paint!)
I wasn’t expecting much from this cover, until the paint started coming off. Unlike the one in our bedroom, which is just black cast iron, this one has a little something-something going on:
It’s been 147 days since we last occupied our bedroom. It all started back in August, when we treated ourselves to some professional help and had all the woodwork in our bedroom stripped. Our paint-caked walls were a casualty of the ferocious paint removal activity, and the room looked like an alien murder site. What started as 2-week project, has morphed into a monster of a redo – actually, I think it’s more aptly an undo, since we’re trying to undo what has been done to the space over the years and restore it to what it once was.
This is what happens when ZipStrip drips down your walls.
But it’s totally worth it: after a full on chemical assault, details like this appeared.
Since the room was already an empty hot mess, we decided to tackle the ceiling next, and a bigger mess was made. (Never underestimate the filth that hides in a 120 year old house. Nothing can prepare you for that). Because the plaster was beyond saving, everything came down to the bare joists. The ceiling was leveled and dry wall went up. (I intensely dislike dry wall, but that’s fodder for another post). Once the ceilings were closed up and the first layer of joint compound was applied, we hit a bit of a morose patch and not much happened. Didly squat. Zilch. Nada. We camped out in the rear parlor and our lovely victorian home now resembles a very messy dorm room.
Things finally got back on track this weekend, when we tackled the walls and started removing all the evidence that an extra terrestrial being was slayed here. The advice we were given was to skim coat the walls, which basically means applying a thin layer of joint compound over the entire wall. I didn’t much like that idea, because just knowing all of this grossness would forever live beneath our pretty walls really bothered me.
Damaged plaster, filth from the ceiling demo, and splotches of paint stripper.
The hot mess in all of its glory.
Since my experience with removing paint from the brownstone façade was pretty straight forward, we figured it would be a total cake walk to strip the walls back to the plaster. Our old friend PeelAlway1 was called back into service. Ignoring all advice to work in manageable chunks, and still under the delusion that this would be easy, we decided to tackle one whole side of the room.
This is what more or less 4 gallons of paint stripper look like.
In a sign of uncharacteristic restraint, I decided that perhaps we should save that little sliver of wall above the fireplace for another time. About 18 hours later, it was time for this:
A glimmer of plaster somewhere back there
A previous resident of our home must have been a pink enthusiast: the house is pink on the outside, and at one point, it was pink on the inside too. Removing the paint from the interior walls proved to be much more difficult than I originally thought. Given the smooth surface of the wall, the paint will not let go without a fight. And fight we did. After about a half day worth of scraping, brushing and picking, most of the paint is gone. We’ll need another spot treatment for the stubborn patches and the wall trim. 3 guesses as to what we’ll be doing next weekend…
Stubborn paint and cracks galore
With the weather getting cooler stupid cold, the work outside has slowed stopped. October/November were not particularly productive because work (as in we need to fund this restoration by actually working) got in the way. Here is where we left things off:
The garden level is mostly done, but there are still some stubborn patches, primarily where the stone is deteriorating. It’s particularly bad where there are patches on the brownstone. I have yet to find a good method of removing paint from cement (at least I think it’s cement – I can’t tell for sure since it’s covered in paint).
Not surprisingly, we are STILL waiting for estimates from the contractors for the stripping and repairing of the brownstone. Somehow, I have a feeling I’m in this for the long haul and I best get cracking and learn how to patch the stone myself.
A Pink Brownstone in Brooklyn 