More Treasures

We spent a good part of the day cleaning up so the woodwork can get sprayed this week.

While cleaning one of the radiators, She Who Must Be Obeyed found this thing stuck between the radiator and the wall.

It was jammed in there pretty tight, so it took me a while to find the right tool that would hook the fabric and allow me to pull it out.

It looks like one of those tubes of buckwheat that you can heat up and wrap around your sore neck. And it has a stylish plaid flannel cover. Who knows how it ended up there.

We'll add it to the other treasures we've found and the $1.68 we have in lint-covered change from the laundry room.

They'll make a fabulous prize pool for something. I'm not sure what...

New Carriage House Doors

The new carriage house doors arrived today. Installation is about half done, so they don't open quite yet.

I'm extremely happy with how they look. They are a dead ringer for the old ones.

We ought to be able to get cars in the garage this weekend!!!

Removing Wall Coverings

There were some places in the living room where the cracks in the plaster looked a bit wonky. We were concerned that the plaster was falling apart, but we got lucky.

As we poked around near the cracks, it turned out that the walls were covered in "wall paper". It really appeared to be more of a fabric than paper. And, of course, was covered in many layers of paint.

The plaster underneath is bare, so this may be original. Fortunately in most spots the adhesive had failed, so it came off quite easily. It shouldn't take much prep for painting. We probably can just wipe or sand off the adhesive residue and we're good to go.

The panel molding is in great shape, except for the paint that's on it. It's Peach, just like the walls. And the same sheen as the walls. And has an orange peel texture like they painted it with a roller. In addition, most of the crown is painted in dead-flat ceiling white.

To the right of the door in the picture, all the paper has been removed. Above and left of the door it's still there.

It should look a little better when we're done. ;-)

Priceless

2000 square feet of builder's paper - $40.

2000 yards of masking tape - $150.

Me not having to stand on this scaffolding - Priceless.

Bill is getting a bunch of rooms prepared for painting: the Dining Room, Living Room, Entry, Front Hall, Main Staircase, and upstairs Front Hall (pictured). I'm glad it's him on this scaffolding and not me.

It's not that I'm afraid of heights; I'm just afraid of falling...

Doing the prep for painting the woodwork is my least favorite thing, so I'm more than happy to have someone else do it.

Carriage House Door Headers

The opening and the ceiling are at the same height, so without modification a standard garage door won't work. Nor will the "quick-turn" short radius tracks.

So Johnny was here last week putting in headers that create the necessary clearance. They are all clear cedar, just like the doors and should last at least as long as I do...

The doors have been built and are being primed at the shop. The final coat of paint will go on in the spring. As will the paint on the headers.

The doors should be ready to install next week.

Carriage House Doors

From the time we moved in, only one of the carriage house doors has worked.  The others have various problems and don't open so we can't get all the cars in.  The one pictured opens, but it is in bad shape along the bottom edge.

The doors are traditional carriage house doors.  The rightmost panel swings open like a normal door while the two on the left open into the garage like bi-fold closet doors.

Being a lazy slug, I'd like to not have to open and close the doors manually.  So keeping the existing mechanism isn't going to work.

As we've been looking at different options, a company looking to get back into the midwest market approached us about using their product.  It's a single piece garage door that kicks outward at the bottom before rotating and sliding back at the top.  The reason why it works well in California is because they don't have to shovel the snow out of the way to get the door open.  Needless to say, that style of door isn't an option for us.

We did find a company who can reproduce  the look of these doors, but use a standard multi-panel rolling mechanism.

And the HPC has approved it.

So the project has begun.

Music Room - Part 5

I made it - it's done!

I painted the doors yesterday and re-hung them this morning.

While waiting for the paint to dry we moved all the furniture back, hung artwork, etc.

Other than the kids' bedrooms, this is the only room where all of the furniture came from our previous house.

Now I just need to put away all the tools, etc before the family comes over tonight.

Music Room - Part 4

I started on the music room back in July.

Life and other things conspired against me, so this has taken longer than expected.  It was my father-in-law's favorite room, so I'm sad he's not here to see it nearing completion.

It took forever to get the woodwork prepared for a new coat of paint.  I tried to disturb as little paint as possible - before starting I'd tested the paint for lead and the top coats were fine, but the oldest coats were lead-based.  So I followed the new EPA guidelines, just to be safe.

The room was an off-white color with a peach undertone.  We've gone to a historic color called "Georgian Green".  It's similar to one of the early woodwork colors in this room.

The ceiling effect is similar to a cloudy sky.  It is made up of several layers.  Two are the same as the woodwork (Ivory Tusk) and the other two are a metallic silver.  I did the first two layers and got frustrated, so She Who Must be Obeyed did the final two layers.

Some of the screws for the window and door hardware were missing or broken (what a surprise!).  So I've had to go to Seven Corners to get various replacements.  Thus the need for more antiquing solution to get the new brass bits to look like the old brass bits.

Hopefully I can get the last bit done tomorrow to meet my goal of having it done by Christmas.

Kid's Bath - Part 13

The linen cabinet arrived last week.  Bill and Johnny picked it up from the cabinet maker, painted it, and installed it.

It looks great and is a pretty good size.  The tall ceilings make it appear shorter than it actually is.

I had to scramble around a bit - I'd forgotten about knobs. I found some at Rockler while I was up there getting some more solution for antiquing brass (for my other ongoing project; blog post coming shortly).

We're nearing the end of this project.  All that's left is for me to install some window hardware.

And the tissue-paper window treatments have to go....  ;-)

Kid's Bath - Part 12

Mirrors!  We finally have mirrors!

We'd ordered some online a while ago.  A long while ago.  After several days, we received the *first* email from the vendor saying something along the lines of, "We value customer service and have received your order.  We anticipate that it will ship on [... some date about a month in the future]."



As the estimated ship date rapidly approached, we received a second email saying something along the lines of, "We value customer service.  Your items are anticipated to ship on [... some date about a month in the future]."

Really?  Good customer service is two emails in the span of a month with no explanation as to why the items are delayed?

So I had She Who Must Be Obeyed cancel the order.  There's only so many times you can shave without a mirror before you slice off some important part of your face.

And I went searching...  and found some different ones at Just Vanities.  So I placed the order.

And within *minutes* I received a response saying that they'd received the order, the items were in stock, and we should receive them within the week.  Oddly, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

The next day I received another email saying that the items had been picked from the warehouse and would be shipped shortly.  Again, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

The next day I received another email saying that the items had shipped.  Late in the evening I checked the tracking number, assuming that they'd just have started their journey.  I was surprised to see that they'd already arrived at the Fedex facility here.  Again, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

They'd shipped them overnight at no cost.

But it gets better.

When we opened them the next day, they looked better in person than on-line and really tied things together in the room.  But... one had a manufacturing defect; the paint was bubbled along the edge of one of the frames.

So I called their customer service line.

The person said that they would ship out a replacement.  And that we should keep the old one; if the manufacturer wanted it back, they'd send a pre-paid shipping label to us within two weeks.  If not we can dispose of it as we see fit.  Again, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

The replacement arrived within two days  Again via overnight Fedex.  At no charge.

It is interesting to contrast the behavior between the company that started every correspondence with "we value customer service" and the one that never mentioned it once.