It certainly was Labor day weekend

Every day was  a day of labor.  Yesterday I finished sanding the upstairs bedroom, a finished attic, while lots of volunteers helped out with painting downstairs, thanks family.  We found out that all the walls need a thorough washing down with TSP prior to painting due to the general nastiness left behind by the previous owner, and apparent smoker.  Once the walls were washed the Bulls Eye 123 stuck to the walls much better, though a second coat is needed on almost every wall.  The hot pink room may even need a third one, I noticed a pinkish tinge in there while I was sanding today.  Greg was even kind enough to swap one of the bedroom lights for the hallway light.  We like the look of the smaller fixture better in that small of a space.


Today was another long one, it started at Menards to pick up some light fixtures, fluorescent tubes, and a few other needs, then off to pick up a dehumidifier for the basement.  When I started it up this morning around eleven it was 75% humidity down there, by the time I left this evening it was down to 64%.  I am just glad I can run it into the drain, it would be filling up faster than anything right now.  With the moisture level dropping in the basement the smell is dissipating as well.  I may still end up tearing out all the extra walls down there, just to be certain the moisture problem is taken care of, but that is for another day.

I did finish cleaning out the gutters just in time today, I only had one left and knocked that out when I got there.  It was a good thing to, since it has been raining since around one this afternoon.  Walking around the house it looked like all the water was going out and down where it was supposed to be, so hopefully the new gutter extensions will help keep the water away from the foundation as well.

The biggest accomplishment today was sanding down the first floor; two bedrooms, a short hallway, and the living room.  The floor by the front door was the worst with the remains of some sort of flooring stuck there.

Of course when sanding floors don't forget your breathing and hearing protection.

Living room before:

and after sanding:

Sanding Floors

The first thing we noticed about this house when we first looked at it were the wood floors.  Almost every room has the original hardwood floors from the fifties, in other words, nice.  The next thing we noticed was that they all need refinishing. So this weekend I rented a floor sander and have started on the process.  Using a floor sander exactly like the one in the This Old House video on stripping floors, Yesterday I got started on the process.

Above is the original floor, to the right after one sanding using the roughest grit paper.  I got four different grits, and will try out the finest to see the difference, but I may just use three.





Below is after the second pass

and the third pass

One thing I noticed after doing the sanding was about where the disks started to wear down.  While I visually checked the sanding disks during the process, I really didn't notice any real wear or build up of dust that would limit the functionality, at least to my uneducated eyes.  After the fact I noticed that the amount of dust left by the sander was the key indicator.  The part of the room where I started at had a lot more dust than the where I ended after each pass (remember to vacuum between grits)  So to start today I will redo the second half of the room, basically reversing my usual path.

Getting started I was surprised to find that the two plugs available in the upstairs bedroom, were not able to handle the load of the sander, I popped two breakers right away.  I ultimately had to run a cord to the kitchen to find a twenty amp circuit.  Which just means that we will have lots of fun when we bring in the electrician.

Stripping

We started stripping in the black and hot pink bedroom.  I was hoping that we wouldn't have to remove the built in cabinet doors, but quickly realized that it would be better to do outside for a couple of reasons.  The first, one operable window does not equal well ventilated. Second , you can get much better leverage, and access to details while using saw horses.  Most important if you take the doors outside, you don't get in the way of the painters trying to cover up that hot pink wall color.

We tried out Citrustrip after talking to an associate at Lowes.  It has a less chemical smell to it, is not as harsh as some of the chemical strippers, and is a bit more environmentaly friendly.  Using it we found that you just have to experiment as to when it is ready to remove, it took off four layers of paint with one application.  We let it work overnight, about 13 hours, before scraping off the bit you see here.  Unfortunately we didn't take it all off at that time, so it ended up drying onto the surface.  Another light coat to rehydrate and it all came right off.  It didn't take much at all to make it work, we expect this bottle to help us with a lot of cabinets.

A lot of cabinets

Our Old House

This is house is the inspiration for this blog, and in it we plan to follow our renovations, improvements and insanities as we run ourselves ragged making this house our home.  Having just closed we are in the process of cleaning, sanding and refinishing the wood floors, stripping built in cabinets back to the original wood, priming all the walls for future rational colors (hot pink is not rational), cleaning out the gutters, working with contractors to get a new roof and new windows installed, as well as various other specialist related activities.