acres of woodwork

the good bones house remodel update:

For weeks I've been scraping, patching, plastering, sanding, priming and painting.  This is what I look like most of the time.  I call it my Rhoda look.

paint-scraping maniac

I lucked out with some great help on this project, too.  Even though he's scraping in this picture, I nicknamed this guy Runs With Paint for how well he hustles on the job, especially when rolling paint. 

  

A big priority for this project has been the floors.  While solid, they were worn and seriously needed to be refreshed.  First on my list, I hired the wood floors to be refinished.  Then I dredged up the courage to yank out the linoleum in the kitchen.  Happily it was glued to a plywood under-layment and not the sub-floor which I have had happen before and is a hassle.     

The wood floor refinishing guys lent me this nifty long-handled pry bar called The Mutt to take up the old cracked linoleum flooring.  It made the job so much easier than a regular flat crow bar.  I slammed it under the edge, lifted the underlayment a wee bit, then slammed the mutt further in  and lifted.   After more slamming and lifting, it came up in large sections a few feet wide.   The bar does most of the work, as it should be. Almost a cake walk.

Then we used the little cat claw and pliers to yank out the hundreds and hundreds of tacks.

The linoleum in the entry foyer had a great pattern but was too worn and water damaged.  It was only tacked down on the edges without any glue at all. I got it all up and out in about twenty minutes. That's like a small miracle right there.    

The wood floor refinishing guys turned me onto a smart scraper to add to my artillery for removing loose paint from wood trim.  I've always used a chisel edged scraper but they showed me the advantages of this pull-action scraper, especially good for reaching tight spaces and applying steady force.  Their own scraper came as a promotional gift from a wood-flooring company and isn't available in stores. Here's a comparison of a pull-scraper type from the hardware store (the bottom one) and theirs (on top).  I really liked the long arm and lighter weight of theirs. 

Speaking of wood flooring, each unit of the duplex has 1640 square feet between two floors and they are all wood except for about 400 of them.  The skinny quarter-sawn oak on the first floor and mixed oak upstairs have all been being refinished by Cross Flooring, including two significant patches they blended splendidly.  

Ken and Mike did the first couple of coats. After that dried we put  rosin paper down to protect the floors while we continued to work for a couple of weeks. 

Today Nate buffed it and gave it a  final coat, so we won't walk on it for a few days so it can cure.

Meanwhile I will focus my energy in the kitchen which has had very little attention all these days. 

For more posts on this project, select the tag "good bones house remodel."