Monday, March 24, 2014

Choices, decisions, and broken nail gun

Seriously.....I will be so far behind before I even get started this spring if this weather doesn't change soon. As the snow melts.....more and more broken branches are exposed.  Oh my...what a mess.  We couldn't start the clean up now even if we wanted to because the branches are still frozen to the ground.

I've been busy checking out shelf bracket designs (simple but not too simple) and paint colors as we continue to work on the kitchen ceiling and the paint scraping in the staircase.  I picked up some Martha Stewart color paint chips while I was at Home Depot the other day.  That didn't help at all.  I found a few I liked in the store and then when I arrived home and looked at them under my lighting condition....they just didn't work.  I know I do not want or like a green with blue in it.  I'm also finding that on cloudy days (which we have a lot of during the winter) the medium toned colors and definitely the darker shades that I wanted to use in the family room are appearing far too dark.  I can see why everyone goes with beige but I've vowed to go with a vintage color palette so I'll keep looking at my color chips.

There are three doors on the upstairs landing.  I have two doors 1/2 scraped, 1 entire door and jamb scraped, all of the base board scraped, and 1/2 of each remaining door trim scraped.  Some of the paint is coming off so nicely and not leaving any paint behind.  Then there are other places where the paint is so gummy and thick that it balls up or smears.

I'll stain the doors and paint the trim just likethe plan for the first floor.  Two of the bedroom doors will need to be turned around.  At some point they changed them to swing out into the landing.  Don't know why but I want them changed back.  I have to change the door hardware because they used modern hinges and the rest of the house has ball tipped hinge pins.  Originally the house had surface mounted hinges and rim locks. They were removed and regular ball tipped hinges were installed probably as an update.  It would be nice to go back to the rim lock style but not at this time.  I need just 12 hinges and then all the door hinges will match.  If I were to change to rim locks and surface mounted hinges the cost and time to hunt down the pieces would slow down an already really sssssslllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooowwwwww restoration.

I tried to take a photo or two of the landing and stair case and found it to be impossible to get it all in one shot.


Here are two shots of the kitchen ceiling.  We need to buy one more sheet of bead board plywood to finish the ceiling. AND we need to buy a new nail gun.  Seems that nail guns don't like being dropped off of a ladder and onto the floor.  It no longer indexes the nail.  I didn't look at it but R said something about the plunger and something else.  Easier to just buy another one.  It wasn't expensive and we need it now.  Our other nail guns are either too big or too small of a nail for the ceiling and the trim.

4 comments:

  1. That staircase is beautiful. Why would anyone paint all that wood??

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  2. Actually the wood isn't great wood for staining. I think it's redwood or fir. It looks like the living room, vestibule, foyer, center hall, and staircase were shellacked originally but it looks like they started painting it right away because they had just as many layers of paint as the unstained birch trim in the dining room.

    I'm going with ultra white semi gloss trim and then the floors and doors will be stained dark. The staircase will have dark stained treads and handrail, the rest will be painted white.

    I've never in my life seen so much
    caulk and sloppy painting. What a mess. I so want to paint but I need to get the prep done right and now is not the time to cut corners.

    I need to Stay Calm & Continue On!!!!!

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  3. Are you currently looking for ball tip hinges? I have a few that I was going to put on eBay...let me know.

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  4. Yes I am.

    I need 6 sets. Let me know how much. These are interior door size??

    Are you going to list them on Etsy???? That's probably cheaper than eBay OR you could just send me a PayPal invoice and bypass listing fees completely.

    Email me at my personal email. That's the one I used to use for the freebie emails. I wish I had time to do that again but I don't have enough time to comb my hair let alone comb the Internets for freebies.....LOL

    ReplyDelete

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