BEDROOM

My bedroom does not usually look like this. It is being painted. Okay, it's getting READY to be painted. It's been Blue-blue on Blue-blue for as long as I've woken up within it. No wonder I'm depressed. Miles Davis might have seen this.

I've pulled everything away from the walls on one half of the room.

"ONLY HALF???" you scream.

 Hey, I LIVE here!

The bathroom is being redone at the same time (I DO like a challenge). I knew to prep the walls and ceilings first, with caulk and spackle and all. All artwork came down and I squished my room to one end, which is easy when your room is twenty two feet long. Here I have my paint pails, sandpaper, tools and caulk on my antique Wurlitzer organ (the checked tablecloth). I don't know what I was thinking. I would soon transfer them to my Victorian Side Table.

Of course.

Apparently this was a Laundry Day. Bedsheets included.

Note the 1950s recessed central light fixture hanging down. I didn't remove it, despite my hatred for overhead lights, especially this variety in my 18th Century home (even thought his addition was built in the 1950s).

I've simply too much to do before the end of the year. Remember, I have to get this place refinanced or else I LOSE it.

That light fixture will be screwed back in place and forgotten.

The wall I would attack first. Yes, I would remove the heater. Sheesh.

Note the protruding new electrical receptacle (try saying that while drunk; you might as well say 'judicial system,' which makes you sound drunk even when you say it straight), which is not buried in the wall for a good reason.

The reason is because this wall is originally an exterior wall, with lap siding behind the homasote (not drywall, in case I said that before). I will eventually remove the homasote and expose the lap siding.

Blue-blue. On Blue-blue.

Yeccchhh.

Unfortunately the wrong color!

I had decided a number of years ago that I would paint this room peach with sage trim. Some among you might cringe. "How how how....what what what...?"

Now don't get your little girl panties in a bunch.

I had the same reaction when I was restoring the 1845 Cason House in Hodges, South Carolina in 1989. The owner, Peggy Smith, insisted on this color scheme. She even went so far as to suggest burgundy for the door and window trim.

I thought this was ridiculous until we got the paint. Then I saw the madness to her method. Peach is warm and sage is cool. They go together beautifully. And the peach changes color as the light through the windows changes. But burgundy for the trim?

I had my doubts. So, unknown to Peggy, I lightened the red and only used it for the rails and stiles of the doors as well as the window sashes. The outside casing and trim were painted sage. And for the panels of the doors, I concocted a silver-gray for those interior trim elements.

When I was done, I had to marvel at how well it worked. And every morning, when I awoke in my bedroom at the Cason Farm, I smiled at the colors of the room.

But, but, BUT!

Back to Connetykit.

What you see in the paint store is not what you see on your walls. Never is. I knew that I had chosen a "peach" that was closer to a "salmon," and I HATE orange. Nevermind that salmon and peach are both sort of orange. Peach is PEACH. Not salmon.

See the difference?

This shows the new color on top of the old color, the salmon behind the peach. I mixed in almost one to one a lot of ceiling white to get the right shade.

Despite the blue trim, I knew it was the right color.

Of course I had already painted the ceiling.

I'm liking it. Here the sage trim (which didn't need to be altered) can be seen on the door facings. The blue still jumps out and says AAAAUUUUUGGHH!

At least I'm not using the Wurlitzer for a paint table anymore. Note the fan and baby powder. It's June. Eighties already with eighty per cent humidity. It would stay like this until October.

The studio, normally accessible, is now a catch-all as well as a place to prepare paint. Foil, buckets, and all.

I painted the walls, ceiling, and facings other than those of the windows. I also left the spaces below and above the windows for later. I was hurting too much from all the work; the last thing I wanted to do was to sit on the floor (it really hurts, I'm old) to paint the sub-window stools. But now it was time to get the windows ready for paint, and that, as we say in the painting business, is a bitch.

First, one must remove the side stops that hold the window sashes in. Then, one must cut the weight ropes in such a way that the weights do not fall, crashing through the wood sill to become an irretrievable cylinder of rough steel.

And this is the easy part.

Dis windle is ruff. Vey, vey ruff.

The glazing putty has been missing for some time, and despite the storm windows, water has seeped in and peeled the interior paint. My guess is that it was doing this before there were storm windows. I took these and all other lower sashes) to the garage to sand and prime them.

Nice shoelaces, hey?

Proof that the windows were painted without actually removing them,  which is normal and I'm not. And yes, they are a sort of shade of white, not blue-blue as I've been saying. Just wake up to such stuff and you'll be saying blue-blue! Blue-blue! Lots of chunky paint, all lead-based. Was I afraid? Did I cringe and hug the feet of my very cute neighbor girl?

You bet I did.

Or would have, if I had one.

No, I donned my respirator and scraped the paint with a carbide scraper while vacuuming the chunks and dust at the same time. Covered everything, including myself with a Tyvek suit when the dust got fine.

"This is one of my (un) favorite things..."

I HATE brass weatherstripping between the sash and casing. It usually tears and bends, allowing air to get in, and it often makes windows unmovable. It'll cut yer hainds perty good, too, especially when removing it. Which is just what I did. Only this window set had the stuff. I imagine old Chet Izbicki was cold-natured. I am not, but I like my windows to not leak. I use other technologies rather than those available in 1950.

The parting bead is a strip of wood set into a dado (remember these terms, there will be a short quiz after you read this) cut into the window casing. It drives most homeowners wild, as they have no idea what to do with it. This one shows signs of water infiltration, which has caused it to warp and curl from its little dado channel. This will also make the window impossible to operate.

Now these little beauties are NEVER supposed to ne nailed, but most of you cretinous humans don't know that. I, on the other hand am one of the few among you that know how to deal with such recalcitrant pieces of wood.

Because it's already warped, I had to nail it. Actually, I used a tiny screw (predrilled the hole of course). But only after having cleaned out it's channel (oh my!).

What a pain in the ass!

Opening the window weight pocket can be challenging. First remove the stop, then the s sash, then loosen the lower parting bead. Look for the slotted screw about two-thirds the way up the glide (where the window sash slides). Clean this out and remove it. If God smiles favorably upon you (and She doesn't often, I can tell you), it will come out with a little coaxing and effort. If not, get out your multi-tool to cut through the dried paint (again, if you're lucky) or through the wood itself. Many old-time carpenters only cut the bare outlines of the pocket door, leaving it for YOU to complete the cut eighty years later when the rope has disintegrated and the window has fallen, smashing your fingers while breaking all the panes.

Life's good, isn't it?

This one (and all the other six in the room) came out with my multi-tool, though I didn't have to wrest them from their moorings by cutting the wood. Not true for my kitchen weight pockets, which I had to re-carve entirely.

Oh look! Weights! Six pounds each. If I was a truly responsible restoration tech (which I am on other people's jobs if they pay me to be one), I'd rehang the upper sash even though I'd never use it due to having storm windows. Upper sashes were important at one time, and especially in high-ceilinged homes in the South, where it gets hot enough to need them to operate (at least before air conditioning and storm windows came along). But though it gets hot here, the ceilings are only about four inches from the floor. I decided to screw in the upper sashes. Let someone else rehang them. I put the upper weights back into the pockets in case someone else wants to make them work. I replaced the ropes and made the lower sashes work better, tightening their courses.

Windows empty of weights, ropes, stops and sashes. Awwww.....

THIS is what I'm talking about. The Paint Scheme from The Cason House Upstairs. Reproduced exactly. I like it.

Some of you (well, only one, let's admit it) might notice that NEITHER THE BEDROOM OR BATHROOM HAVE FINISHED PICTURES.

There's a reason for this.

They're still not finished.

But I'll have some more-or-less pix soon.

In the meantime...

              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.

       THE CRITTERS OF SPRING

The next bunch of posts are continuations of NINE DAYS OFF, which started in May around Memorial Day 2018. So you will be taken back to late spring and Summer, which was a real bear this year. To prove it, I present the bear below.

The wooly bear caterpillar is  a predictor of the weather, or so say the old-timers. If, in fall, the black sections, usually at both head and tail, are particularly large with a small area of orange in the middle, it indicates an early freeze followed by a lot of cold, then turning to a mid-winter warm-up followed by a frigid late winter. If it is nearly all black, you'll not remove your long underwear ever, including during bathing. So it was in 2015. Go back if you want to see what Cold looks like.

I didn't believe this when I first arrived, but I'm sold now. And the bear above is a perfect example. This was taken in April, which was cold enough to have two small snowstorms last year. This bear predicts a very hot summer followed by an early winter and practically no fall. And though our summer was a bit hot, never topping 93, the humidity was high enough (70% and higher for four months) to make everyone miserable, especially me. I HATE the heat, and high humidity makes me sluggish and cranky, especially when it interrupts my Farm Restoration Schedule. And this was NOT a year for delays.

My five-year balloon note to the Izbicki Family was due on November eighth, and though they certainly didn't want the house back, neither did they want to be stiffed for over sixty thousand bucks. So I had a LOT of work to do through the summer to insure a decent appraisal and keep any inspectors happy.

And yes, the wooly bear is not necessarily a predictor of humidity, but it did warn me. And it was right.

This is also what convinced me to finish the flying beam system in the attic before the real heat set in and to move the remaining summer operations inside.

My hummingbird feeder outside the kitchen window. Usually frequented by a few female ruby-throats and one dominant male that drives virtually all the others off, I found it different this spring.

A few girl birds check it out, keeping a wary eye for the male.

 A few more join them.

A whole gaggle of girl birds show up, and to my ultimate surprise, after a confrontation or two, the male is driven away by the females. Maybe this really WILL be the Year of the Woman!

The girl birds settle in.

Holy hell! There's an awful lot of them! And they choose to share rather than compete.

Some squabbling occurs when there's not enough spaces, but no single bird takes over. Hmmmm….

I decide to pull the other feeder from the attic and load it with sugar water, putting it in front of the living room window twenty feet away. I never did this before, as the male simply took over both feeders to where the ants and yellowjackets were the only one besides HIM to get any sugar water. Typical male. Both feeders are inundated with girl birds. The males stay the hell away.

I ain't NEVER seed this befoah!

And it would continue all summer.

The dwawgs, when not sleeping in cool dirt outside, take refuge in the fireplace, cleaned out specifically so they can enjoy the brick hearth. Marley takes it over, being the hottest-natured.

They continue to bring me treats. Apparently I'm not eating enough.

This young possum might have made a good meal, but I'm just not that crazy about stewed possum. I keep thinking about Pogo. Also about how disgusting possums really are. I fed it to something in the woods.

 

Speckle claims the Dog Deck.

Marley, satisfied that Dad has enough to eat with her Possum Offering, digs a hole in the moist dirt and occupies it.

                            BEEN A WHILE, ADN'T IT?

                                                                             

Norwich harbor on the Thames River looking south to the Thermos Factory in the distance. This is the deepest harbor on the east coast, over three hundred feet deep near New London eight miles downriver. Or so they say. I haven't measured it. We are all waiting for things to look like this again, green trees and no ice. This river NEVER freezes, though. Too deep.

I've been perty damn busy this year with improvements as well as refinancing the Farm. I lost my insurance, took four months to find other insurance, came down with a rouser of a head cold that went to bronchitis and two months later is still infecting one half of my head. It's okay, it's the half I don't use. Just last week I got laid off from my job of the past fifteen months. So now I have no excuse for not posting what I did last year.
To my chagrin, I have so many pictures that were taken at different times and that also need to be posted chronologically by the job that it will take me days just to upload them in the proper order.
So bear with me. Those that still read this thing, anyway. All one of you.