Fire in the Attic

No worries; the fire was in the distant past.

The son of the third owner told us that there had been a fire in the attic in the middle of last century.  Occasionally we see evidence of it.  Here's another surprising piece of evidence.

This is the jamb for the attic door after I removed the stop so we could experiment with getting stuff up the stairs.  Surprisingly, there was still soot between the jamb and the stop.  It's fascinating to me that it could get in there - the paint in the joint between the two pieces of wood wasn't really cracked.  In fact, I had doubts as to whether the stop was applied or part of the same piece of wood (most of the the other stops in the house are NOT applied molding...).

We're not planning to re-install the door; going without will help air circulation with the new secondary HVAC system.

As a result I have some filling and sanding to do to this jamb...

Base Molding

I spent half of each day over the weekend installing base molding.  At this point I'm really just working on the baseboard.  It's just a simple poplar 1x6 at this point.  Eventually I'll install a decorative base cap on top.

I did the bedroom and its closet on Saturday afternoon.  A fair amount of the hallway and a little of the big room were finished on Sunday afternoon.

There are a couple of curved corners that took some experimentation, hence the slow progress so far.  More on those later.

The Last of the Primer - Almost

I primed the last bit of the big room this morning.  The excess drywall had been leaning up against the lower part of the wall on the right.  The last coat of mud got applied yesterday and sanded earlier this morning.  Now it has two coats of primer and is ready for the finish coat(s) of paint.

You can see the difference in the color; the wall on the right is tinted primer, the wall on the left already has one coat of the finish color.  It is called "Pilgrimage Foliage" and changes dramatically throughout the day and depending on the light.  Sometimes it looks very red, but it has a very orange cast in direct sunlight.

The other three wall in the room already have a single coat of the finish color.  It's taken nearly 5 gallons of paint to color the other three walls, which is the source of some amusement for me.

I was doing some other work last weekend and asked SWMBO to call ahead to get the paint mixed ahead of time.  I asked for 10 gallons; two 5-gallon pails.  This is because I've applied lots of paint in this house and already 35+ gallons of paint/primer in the attic.  You might say I have a little experience at measuring and knowing how far the paint is going to go in this space.

But the folks at the store convinced her she needed only 5 gallons, in single gallon pails. "5 gallons should should give you 2 coats in that room," they said.

"Not!" says me.  Its a 25 by 36 foot room with 13 foot ceilings and I'm painting the ceiling the same as the walls.  Its going to take 10 gallons.  At least.

Must be the new math...

MacGuyver

I spent a good part of yesterday filling holes in the window and door casings, bead board, built-ins, etc.  A local retailer had a "VIP" sale for a few hours in the evening so I got to knock-off early.  

We've been looking for an entertainment console of some sort, but have some interesting limitations.  In the store I stumbled upon this.  We need something short because the attic walls aren't vertical.  In addition, the path to the attic is narrow and winding.  So the curved front might help, but it's pretty long (wide).  The question is, will it make it up the stairs?

I'm not willing to spend a hundred bucks for (non-refundable) delivery just to find out the thing won't fit up the stairs.

So I took this morning off to play MacGuyver and construct this.  It's made of some spare cardboard, rigid foam, and duct tape stolen from The Little Man.  The stops had to come off the attic doorway, but it might just squeeze through the opening.  Problem is... it's still too tall, meaning there's not enough height for a decent sized TV.  Oh well.

So I spent the afternoon painting the walls in this room instead.  Photos and that story at a later date.