Bathe it in Impervo

Satin Impervo Alkyd.

$79 a gallon.

Seriously.

And it's awesome.

Even though it's priced like it's made of unobtainium by little elves nearing extinction in a far off land.

In this photo it's still wet - it keeps a wet edge forever, which is one of the things that makes it great for moldings - so it's quite glossy.  Once it fully cures in 7-10 days it will have much less sheen.

The left-most bookcase is only half done, so you can see the color difference between the primer and top coat.  The trim color is "Monroe Bisque" in this room.

In the photo you can also see the rolls of carpet and carpet pad.  I'm in a race to get all the painting done before the carpet installer comes...

... And More Primer

I love the smell of oil based paint.

Not!

The longer dry/cure time results in a much nicer finish on the trim, so it's worth the smell.

All the woodwork in the back part of the attic is fully primed now.

The initial primer coat is done in the front part, along with filling the nail holes and caulking all the joints.  I just need to finish "spot" priming the front and then I can move onto the finish coats.

The back half of the attic will be the same color as the trim in the rest of the house.  The front will get a slightly different color however.

Coping

Just like in life, it's how well you deal with irregularities that sets you apart...

This morning I cut all the base shoe.  I installed all of it in the bathroom because it will be easy to paint in place.  That's not necessarily true in the bar area.  Some of the shoe will be difficult to do in place, so I'll prime and paint before installing it.  Other parts need to be stained to match the cabinets and that's also easier done prior to installation.

One of the tricks to get a tight fitting inside joint is "coping"  Remember in the previous post where I mentioned that nothing is plumb, square, or level?  Coping solves the problem when corners aren't 90 degrees, too.

 Rather than cutting both side with an inside miter, you only do one (the one on the right in this photo).  Just let the other side die into the corner.

Step two is to to take a pencil and rub it along the edge of the mitered cut.  It gives a clear definition of the molding's profile.

Now just take your coping saw (you wondered why it was called a coping saw didn't you?) and cut along the pencil line.  You don't want it perfectly perpendicular; removing a little extra material at the back of the molding will actually make it fit better in the end.

When you're done, it will look like this photo.  It's OK that it is ugly at the back, as long as you followed the pencil line along the miter's edge...

Then flip it back over and check the fit.

Voila.

Perfect joint.

Bar Cabinets

Last weekend I installed the cabinets in the bar.

Nothing is plumb or level in houses, old or new, and this house isn't any different.

I halfheartedly tried installing them the old-school way with shims and a level.  I've done it before and it's still a pain.

I say halfheartedly because I found these things on the web and wanted to try the old-school way before plunking down any money.  They are way cool and made the job so much easier.

Once I got them installed it really did take less than 5 minutes to level the entire bank of cabinets.  By my self.

Tonight I cut and installed the rest of the base molding and cap around the cabinets.

I also cut and installed the cap down the staircase.

The last thing before priming all this woodwork is to cut and install the base shoe in the tiled areas.

And Curved Inside Corners

I mentioned an a previous post that there was an inside corner to be dealt with as well.

This uses the same technique, but requires that you cut the pieces narrower at the front.

And different tools to sand on the inside of the curve, of course.

In this photo there is a single coat of oil-based primer on the base and cap.  I'll probably need to install a shoe as well.

How to do Curved Moldings

I mentioned in a previous post that there were some curved corners that had to be dealt with.  There are a couple of curved corners in the attic.  They echo a curved corner that's in the kitchen near the door that goes into the dining room.  We also used the curved corners to soften some sharp angles, in particular making the hallway feel more open than it really is.

They are cool, but you can't really run molding around them in the usual way...

The first step was to cut 3/4-inch wide pieces of base board.  Of course, you're going around a curve, so they are not cut at 90-degrees; the back side is narrower than the front.  Once they were all cut to the proper angle, I attached them to the wall using construction adhesive and to their neighbor using gorilla glue - there's just metal mesh lath and plaster behind the curve; no framing to nail into.  Then sand to round-off the joints, fill the gaps, and sand again.

The next step was to install the cap.  Same drill; cutting small pieces at an angle to make the curve.  This was the first one I did, so things didn't quite fit as well as the ones I did later.  It just required more filling and sanding than the others.  ;-)

Note that these curved walls were shaped by hand - they are not entirely constant radius.  That means the angles are slightly different for each piece of molding I cut.  The numbers on each piece indicate how many degrees off perpendicular I cut at each end (i.e., the one marked "3" was cut 3 degrees off perpendicular at each side).

After scraping off the excess glue, sanding, filling, and re-sanding you get something that looks like this photo.  Now it's ready to be vacuumed, tack ragged, and primed.

Special note: The photos are of the three "outside" curves.  There's an "inside" curve as well that I'm still working on.

It's similar, but harder.

Up in the Air

Finally.

We have central air.

The HVAC guys were here late in the week to do the finish work on the system for the attic.  Now I can work up here without melting.

OK, it's not quite that bad.  Since the insulation was installed it stayed 5 degrees warmer than the rest of the house (in the summer).

The system has two zones, so we get independently controlled chilled air on the second floor as well.

Now we can all sleep comfortably on hot summer nights.  ;-)

The Bar Tile

More tile got installed this week. This is where the "wet bar" will be in the attic's big room.

It's a honed travertine marble and is laid out using a small Versailles pattern.  The pattern appears to be random, but it's not.  In addition, there are 4 different sized tiles used in a pattern like this, which result in the grout lines needing to vary in width. Both of those contributed to a little head scratching during installation, but it all worked out and the final result looks great.

Cabinet installation is next, though I need to install a little more baseboard in another part of the attic first.  Then baseboard around the cabinets and I can finally crack open the paint for all this trim.

For those who've been wondering why I've waited with the final coat of color on the walls - look closely at the the sliver of wall at the left edge of the picture.  It's one of many examples of what happens when you install molding, tile, cabinets, etc.; so you just wait until everything else is done...

This photo provides perspective of where the bar area is.  The broom is leaning against the fridge enclosure and the bar area is beyond and to its left where the light is reflecting off the ceiling.

New Attic Bathroom - Part 3

Because there are no lights installed yet, it was hard to tell if the walls were ready for primer.  So I dragged in a shop light last weekend.  The walls needed one last touch of love (mud).

Then a couple of coats of primer and two coats of ceiling white.

Lastly, a first coat of the chocolate brown on the walls.  It coordinates with the accent tile in the shower.

The base board also went in.  There's a funky corner that I have to deal with before the base cap and shoe can be installed.

The final coat of the wall color will wait until all the wood work is painted.

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...