BATHROOM

So, with nine days off (actually ten, which included my vacation plus two weekends, one containing Memorial Day), I decided to get three projects under way as well as close to finishing. I'd paint half of the bathroom, the entire bedroom, and wrap the stove and dishwasher in varnished longleaf pine in a board-and-batten design.

It shouldn't take more than a day or two...

stripping the bathroom walls

I can hear you thinking 'HALF the bathroom? Why HALF?'

Well, look at the picture above. One half of the bathroom has the tub, which will need tile and a glass enclosure. I have Masonite 'tile' and duck curtains. I am poor. I cannot AFFORD real tile or a glass surround at this time. So I worked from the right side of the toilet around the left side of the room, ending at the unseen corner to the right.

Because of the tight time schedule and because I am cheap, I thought I'd just prime the wallpaper and roll on a few coats of paint I already had.

Well, you know how I am.

I started, didn't like the peeling and tears in the wallpaper, so I wet it down and began to scrape. I cringed at my foolhardiness.

The walls aren't made of drywall or plaster in this room. Like the kitchen and studio ceilings, they are sheets of homasote, a type of lightweight fiberboard popular from the 1940s through the 1970s. It's weak, porous, and stinks when cut with a saw. They supposedly still sell the stuff, though Grok knows why. My ceilings in the kitchen was sagging, if you remember . So when I started the stripping of wallpaper, I expected trouble.

Wallpaper comes in two varieties; paper and vinyl. If you wet the paper, it separates and a flat blade can scrape it off easily. Vinyl repels water and usually requires scoring with a sharp utility knife for the water to soak through. I prayed I would find no vinyl; I knew the first layer was paper.

Luck be a lady tonight!

The sink wall

I lucked out! The first layer was backed with plain paper, as was the rest of the wallpaper. I didn't have to score it; merely wetting it with cheap automotive blue windshield fluid (yea, that stuff is Da Bomb) made it easy to remove. It will only take off a layer at a time, but it works like magic. The big fear I had was the last layer.

Homasote is SO porous that anything glued to it would likely have penetrated to the point of causing my scraping to gouge the surface. I might end up pulling out the walls themselves. So much for three jobs in nine (ten) days... 

The last wall, where the refinishing of the walls would end at the left. Note the Masonite 'tile.' As well as the horrific blue-blue on blue-blue of the bedroom beyond.

Surprise at the sink wall

I whooped for joy when I got to the wall itself. It had been painted with two coats of the same sickly blue-blue as the bedroom, and the finish was semi-gloss. The paper came off easily while a good wash with soapy water and a scrubbing with a plastic scrub pad did the rest. I removed the crappy tape joints. I could do a lot better.

The sink wall stripped. I did not strip the bottom three feet; I intended to put wainscot there. I'd already wired in the vanity lights a few years back.

The ceiling is also homasote, and I decided to keep the one lath strip rather than remove it for taping and floating. I did wash off the mildew spots, though, revealing the other tape joints as whiter stripes. They're not joints, they just cover nails.

I still don't know what this feature was. Apparently someone cut out a twenty-eight by fourteen inch rectangle, then replaced it and floated it very badly. I don't know why; there are no pipes or electrical lines there, other than the ones I put in myself. And I know I didn't do it. Too high up for a body. Hidden treasure? It'd have to be a small treasure; my interior studs are live-edge slabs of pine and chestnut eight inches wide by one and a quarter inch thick. Snaking the wires through a one inch space was fun, let me tell you.

I taped and floated the homasote, a new experience for me. Note the pencil marks, these are tiny  holes and discrepancies in the float work. So much for just slapping on a coat of paint. Once I get into something, I dive perty deep. After floating, refloating, filling small holes and sanding out lines, I rolled on a mixture of 2 parts drywall mud to 1 part white latex paint. This gave a heavy orange-peel texture that evened out the fibbrous walls, the tape, and the entire surface.

I knew I wanted  a light teal or aqua for the walls, as it would add a cool element to the warm, deep orange-red of the heart pine wainscot below. Being the cheapskate I am, I went to the paint store and asked to rummage through their off-mixes (very inexpensive) and recycled paint (free). I found a few colors I liked and intended to mix them with others to tweak them. In the end, I found this green that suited nicely, though I would have preferred it to be semi-gloss, which holds up better to moist bathroom air. The trip to the free bin paid off twice, though, as I found a red I wanted for the windows and doors for the bedroom.

The sink wall wainscot, still being trimmed. This beadboard was a small amount left over from a job while I was milling heart pine at DCAM, where I worked for three years. I took home a lot of cast-offs, and will thank Brian Cooper for allowing me to add them to my project. Reuse, reuse, reuse! Hey Brian!

I precut, sanded, and finished the boards in my shop; varnishing in the house will leave the taste in your mouth for days.

After the lights and mirror went in, it began to look like a nice bathroom. I still had to add the cap to the wainscot and put in a new floor. Note the hinges on the door; the pins are on the inside, and both this and the door where I'm standing open INTO the tiny bathroom. No wonder they never put in a sink.

The bedroom door after I removed it, took it to the shop to scrape, sand and prime, then rehung it to swing OUT. This is a colonial era door, and as you can see from the bottom rail, has been trimmed extensively. It is unlikely that there was a door there originally. The bathroom was a part of the long room that is now the studio and served as three tiny bedrooms when The Izbickis lived there. Indoor plumbing wasn't installed until the fifties, and the bedroom wall to the left has lap siding under its drywall. The bedroom is a 1950s addition. Note the new, unpainted stops on the frame.

The hardware, including screws, keeper, latch bar and guide, thumb latch and handle. The handle was wrapped in blue tape to keep it from overspray of the steel. It is pewter.

Very old and very heavy hinges, one stripped and cleaned, the other still needing attention. Not typical Colonial, but vurry vurry nice. The pins do not remove. Note that they are not as wide as today's hinges; Colonial doors such as this one are only an inch thick.

I did not strip all the paint, as it was far too thick. I sanded it, patched it, and removed as much of the chunky stuff as was necessary.

  

Note the still-painted strip to widen the door at some point in the past. The area near the latch needed the most attention, but I did not completely patch the scratches above the thumb latch, which have been deepened over the centuries by many a thumbnail.

Well, well! This door has been reversed before! Note the mirror-image screw holes for the hinges. Nothing ever changes.

Except the direction of this door.