finished the first coat!

I finished the first coat on the second half of the basement. I already put a second coat on the other half. I have been rolling it on and then brushing in the crannies. I have my favorite little handy pal that has a magnet to hold the brush. I also like using a chub.

Still need to do 1/2 the trim in the basement...at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

still....painting.

Still working on the basement. Hope, hope, hope to finish the walls on Friday. The trim is looking better with a second coat. I also put a second coat on the stairs tonight.

I met the neighbor across the street. He gave us a couple mango that they got from a friend in Florida. Nice guy.

Still Painting the Basement.

Tonight I put a second coat on the half of the basement we painted last night. At least it goes quicker.  Painting this paneling is just a pain. And...it is going to take a lot of paint. I think I am going to have to get another gallon. This would be the $45 a gallon paint.

Gina cleaned some shelves to prep them for painting. About 8:30 pm...I came out of the basement to prune out the deadwood from our olive tree.

Paint....

What a better way to spend a Monday night then painting in a basement. We almost have the first coat on 1/2 the basement. It is very slow going thanks to all the nooks and crannies. It will make the rest seem like a breeze. We got the paint for the basement at the local place...not cheap...but it goes on nice.

The colors do go better than what the camera picks up. Of course anything would be better than daycare blue and yellow.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

So. There is a room in the unfinished area of the basement that only has a toilet in it. The previous owners left this large mirror hanging over the toilet. The room is right off of the laundry area and is slapped together with miscellaneous panelling. The toilet itself is fine, just the old style with a 50 gallon tank... or so it seems compared to the new ones.

We nicknamed the bathroom the Wicked Queen's Thrown because the mirror looked like something you would see in the Disney film.

Wicked Queen's Thrown

I thought the mirror was some plastic thing purchased from Kmart in the 70s. Well, as it turns out it is really about 100 years old. The mirror is a Louis Bierfeld mirror... from the early 1900s. Of course now it seems we should keep it there... What better decoration for behind the thrown but a Sheraton Mirror?

Paint, paint, paint.

It has been a little humid so we couldn't do much on the first or second floor.

Margie came over on Saturday and helped do a little cleaning. We had a dinner from Tommy's Deli in our new favorite outdoor spot - in the shade under the grape arbor.

Gina and Margie

On Sunday, Gina vacuumed and vacuumed all the dust. She also cleaned up the kitchen counters. Amazing how the 40 year old formica has held up. I spent the lovely weekend in the basement painting. We were just going to paint the blue woodwork, but after removing all the velcro and nails from the walls we decided we needed to paint. We also thought if we were going to paint that we would tone down the sunny yellow. The photos don't show it well, but we did get a reddish brown for the stairs and wood work and a khaki color for the wall.

Basement walls

Stairs to basement

Basement hallway

The walls in the basement are tongue and groove pine paneling...slow painting to hit all the grooves. 

Floors done!

Aron came with his guys and put the last coat of poly on the floor. We are very pleased with the floors. Aron told me he has been doing floors for 53 years. He told me his guys begged him to keep working so that they would have a job. He said it gives him a reason to get out of the house every day.

Dining room from front door

Living Room

Living Room

Kitchen

He left off the radiators so we could paint behind them and paint the radiators better too. He told me if we need help putting them back on to just give him a call. We gave him a good tip. Nice to know there are still good honest people out there.

While the floors were drying we started to clean the door hardware that is solid brass. There were a few skeleton keys left. I found one match. I am trying to use enviro friendly ingredients to clean the brass. The lemon and baking soda is working well. I even soaked some in a little Lea and Perrins. I am using a little Goo Gone to get rid of the paint. We are pleased how they are cleaning up. I am only doing one set at a time so as not to get the parts mixed. As we took them off the doors, we put all the parts in ziploc bags and labeled them. And of course..putting them back in the baggies after they are clean and dry!

Peeked at the second floor

second floor bedroom floor

I peeked at the second floor when I went to open the house this morning. The change is pretty dramatic from the black crap that was all over the floor.

Second floor bedroom

I also took a couple shots I wasn't able to the night before. Like the view into the dining room from the living room.

view from living room into dining room

I also had to put out the dust and debris collected from doing the floors. Luckily the sanitation men took it all. There were quite a few contractor's bags.

bags of yucky dust

The house is kinda smelly from the oil-based poly. We are taking the night off to deal with our abundance of vegetables from our CSA and maybe clean some of the door hardware.

Aron the floor man!

Aron and his three helpers came today. The kitchen took a little longer to get the black stuff up and he was still there when I got off of work. I got to see the floor before the poly.

the view into the dining room from front door:

looking at the repair between the dining room and kitchen

kitchen into the dining room

first floor bedroom

living room

view from living room to dining room

They vacuumed up the dust and then put down the first coat of poly. I could only peek in a few doors to get a glimpse of the floor.

my patch job

close up of the oak floor

kitchen into dining room.

first floor hall

living room

kitchen

dining room

dining room

kitchen

so while Aron was doing this... I put a deadbolt on the basement door. 

Wood floor repaired!

Tonight we finished repairing the wood floor. It turned out better than I thought it would. I didn't trim the existing floor exactly enough so I had to shave off about a 1/16th of an inch. Thank goodness for the power hand planer. The existing pine floor is just slightly thicker than the oak. Hopefully the flooring guy can smooth it out.

We then had to clean everything out of the first and second floor. We won't be able to work in these areas for 5 days.There is plenty to do. We can get into the basement going through the basement door.

We also got the quote from the electrician today. Seems reasonable too. Unfortunately that will have to be done after the floors.

Repairing the wood floor

We decided to tackle the floor repair ourselves. The floor needed to be repaired where walls once were.
I pulled up the filler they used and cleaned the cavities.

I found some old newspaper that they laid down during the last renovation (when the tile was installed). It was dated from 1969.

The area closest to the front door went in pretty easy. 

I fixed a large hole from where they had moved the radiator.

Lodi isn't the most helpful.

Jason however is. He came over and helped move the appliances out of the kitchen. We moved the stove to the basement. We may keep it as a spare. We put the fridge in the garage. We might just get rid of it. Now we only have a cooler...but we have a freezer in the basement that we can make ice.

It got too late to finish the floor. I cleaned up the edges of the opening to make room for the new floor. Will have to finish it tomorrow, since the flooring guy is coming on Wednesday.

I have to repair an area of the pine floor (the flooring covered with the black stuff) where they had put in a bad mismatched plug to fill a hole.  Luckily there is some excess flooring running into the eaves.  The multi-tool came in handy to get into the small space and cut a replacement board. I also got a sliding miter saw since we are going to be doing a bit of trim work. Good thing Sears is less than 2 miles from the house. Had to make a second run there to get new drill bits when one broke.