Move over "Hardy Boys"

One of the disappointments with our new house is the lack of interior architectural trim. We still have the colonnades and window trim, but it appears that there were once built in book cases(flanking the living room fireplace), a buffet in the dining room bay window; and based on our neighbors floor plan and the remnants on the colonnades, there would have been wainscotting and a plate rail through out the dining room.

At some point in its history, the house was used as a rental, and the bookcases were removed. The dining room fared worse however; as the buffet and wainscotting were removed and the walls then sheet rocked.

We had been intending to eventually remove the sheetrock and try to recreate the wainscotting; however that was several projects down the list.

A couple of nights ago, while merrily stripping the colonnades, I moved on to the adjacent baseboard and discovered that it was a different type/finish of wood. Not too surprising considering that they probably mangled the original baseboards when they removed them. What was interesting though was the way the front of the baseboard protruded out past the front of the adjacent door trim.



I hadn’t noticed it before, but it everywhere else in the house there was about 3/4" depth between the wall and the front of the door trim. In the dining room, that was down to 1/4" or less. Hmmmm. Surely they didn't just slap the sheetrock on top of the wainscotting?

I figured the best way to check, was to open up the light switch and see what was behind it. Yep that’s real wood back there. You can also see the reduced wall->door frame clearance in this pic.



The next step was to make a small, inconspicuous(?) hole to see what was really under there.


After a round of self congratulations, we moved on and stripped the rest of this part of the wall.





It now seems that we now have wainscotting in the dining room. We still need to replace the vertical battens and plate rail, but we're under way to returning the dining room to its original glory, and we didn’t have to strip paint off the wainscoting.

Stripping in the Dining Room

When we moved into the house, all the internal trim was painted white. This can be seen in some of our earlier posts, and the following couple of shots.





Based on the age of the house, and a neighbor’s dining room that was built to a similar floor plan, we were pretty sure that there would be vertical grain Douglas fir trim under the paint. Between the colonnades, and all the window trim that’s a lot of paint to remove, so we bought a "Silent Paint Stripper", some scrapers and got started.



We've got a lot to go, but so far it’s been quite pleasant putting in an hour or so in the evenings.

La Cucaracha (and fleas!)

Thought it was about time we showed you the not-so-pleasant side of moving into a new house. Oh yes – stripping paint and rolling back carpet may LOOK like fun, but lemme tell you, nothing beats finding out you have been visited by the proverbial seven plagues. Good thing we don’t have kids – I’d be worried someone was coming over to take our first born.

I have to say, the carpet never really grabbed me. Apart from the slightly sticky feeling when you walked on it, that is. This carpet is practically brand new (the tag on the underside said it was manufactured in July 2004) but I had my doubts about it before we moved in. We had decided the carpet would go before we even put an offer in. Of course, as PK mentioned earlier, we hadn’t quite planned on taking it out so soon.

We moved in on the Saturday, and I had managed to keep something between my feet and the floor successfully for two days. Shoes, socks, even slippers had been employed to keep the brown mankyness at bay. Monday morning dawned bright and clear, I was finishing up getting ready for work when - lo and behold! – a flea appeared on my hand! After a full two minutes of squealing I managed to get out of the house and head into work. I’m driving onto the freeway when I feel a sharp biting on (of all places) my ear. Yes folks – I had a flea in my ear. You gotta laugh at that one. Seriously.

After much thought and serious consideration we decided to remove the carpet from the living room that evening (alright, I talked PK into it – helped along by the fact that I got bitten again while I was talking to him on the phone in the living room). Thankfully the wooden floors were in a fairly good state of repair, as stated in previous posts.

That evening, after removing the carpet, we noticed some roaches out on the back patio. We have orange and lemon trees out the back so it’s understandable to have a couple of critters. Just one or two, mind you, nothing to get excited about. Or so I thought. I had already called our friendly bug man to come and spray the house for the fleas, so it was a simple matter to book him to spray around the outside of the house as well.

Later on that evening I went back outside again with the Maglite, just to check on our friendly non-rent paying guests. You guessed it – the party had got a whole lot bigger. Turns out there is quite a bit of room under the bricks in the patio. The roaches may well be holding it up. Here’s a photo for you bug lovers out there.



Our bug guy came over on Saturday and sprayed inside and out. No more fleas, thank goodness. We will be stripping the rest of the carpet out at some point in the future but not for a wee while. He did say that we had a serious Oriental cockroach problem, as evidenced by the HUMUNGOUS amounts of roaches that crawled out and died over the next two days. It was a war zone – bugs everywhere outside, and some even trying to come inside to convulse and die on the kitchen floor. We had to resort to blocking the gap under the kitchen door to stop the little buggers from coming in. Our bug guy said we should keep spraying for the next few months to keep them from coming back, and PK has reported that we have had no sightings of veteran bugs since Sunday. Fingers crossed they stay away from here on out.

Floors

When we purchased the house, the previous owners had done a fair amount of "sprucing up" around the place. They put in new carpet throughout the majority of the house, and ceramic tiles in the kitchen and dining room.





Unfortunately; we weren't too keen on the ceramic tiles. We liked the idea of stripping both the dining and living rooms back to the original wooden floors, and refinishing them, however we were going to hold off for a few weeks before doing anything that major.

The fleas living in the carpet accelerated the timeframe somewhat.

It took about 20 minutes to roll up the carpet from the living room and boy what a difference. (OK it looks better in real life. Much better)



Next, we were on to the dining room.
I don't know how long it took to put down the tile, but it took about 90 minutes to pull it all up using a hammer and a pry bar. Unfortunately, it took the rest of the afternoon to lift the Harditex cement board that was put down over the wood floors. I should be grateful though, because it meant that there was no grout or glue on the floor itself.









The floors are Douglas Fir. They will need some repair, as a few of the boards are damaged, rotted etc, but we're hoping they will clean up nicely.

Job 1. Electrical

During the pre-purchase inspection, we discovered that a previous owner had replaced the water feed from the main to the house with PVC pipe. Unfortunately, they neglected to do anything about the electrical ground, which was still attached to the old pipe, and running nowhere. This was clearly a problem, although given that most of the outlets were either two wire - or three pin but had no ground connected, how much of a problem was open to discussion.

In the hopes of avoiding a future electrical fire (or some other equally shocking experience), I decided to install a ground rod. Shopping at the local Home Depot gave me two size options; 5/8" * 8' and 3/4" * 10'. Subscribing to the "bigger is better" mentality, I went with the larger, a coil of armored #6 ground wire and completely the wrong fittings to clamp them all together with.

Another trip to Home Depot, a different salesperson (this one a retired electrician) saw me on the right track and we had progress.

Leaning the ground rod against the side of the house, I started to see why the guy laughed at me when I told him I had bought the 10' rod. The gable at the end of the house is only about 9' above ground, so the first trick was to dig an 18" hole to get the rod started. Back to Home Depot to buy a shovel.

After that I really did start to make progress. Honest. I had made a cap, from 3/4 cold water pipe, to protect the end of the rod while I whaled on it with the hammer. That 10' rod was looking less and less like a great idea. Eventually I got it in though, and ran the cable. It's not quite done yet - I need to shorten the cable, but its better then what we had.

New house. New Blog

Welcome to our blog. Its intended to be an online record of restoration/remodel of our 1921 bungalow.

Here are a few pictures of the front: