Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Yesterday & Today - Progress

Yesterday and today were not all that bad. I'm still sore from all the yard work Monday, but progress has been made!

I did some more sanding/prepping on the woodwork.

I have found a few more problems with the windows, but those can be dealt with later. I want to get the woodwork done.

With all the striping and sanding, some of the detail of the windowsills are lessening. So, as part of the final prep I'm re-cutting some of the detail so it's sharper. That's what can be seen in the pic.

Here is one of the corner thingies. So far the hardest part of striping all of these are the little groves. Either the scrapers are too big, or the dental pick is too small.

Also in the pic you can see a small gap between it and the mopboard. Not sure why it's there; there's no sign of the wall pulling away or anything like that.


Izzy came in to make sure I was still working.

SWMBO has her trained VERY well!!

These are some of my 'new' favorite tools.

I had never used a detail scrapper, like the one at the top, before.

MAN is it cool!!! Scrapes 90% of any paint on the molding without having to us chemicals. Only draw back is that it's very sharp. I now have 5 cuts on my fingers. Also, this little tool is what's allowing me to re-cut the details.

I can't believe I've never discovered this tool before. I've seen it before, but thought it looked goofy - boy was I wrong!

The other two are old screwdrivers I have ground down to use as miniature scrappers. We'll see how they work.

Look at that!!!!

All those nasty tiles are gone!!! Floor is filthy, but at least the tiles are gone. I hadn't set out to remove them all yet, but for some reason I kept tripping on the ones popping up. So, instead of falling on my face I got rid of the problem.

SWMBO does not know about this yet - hopefully she won't freak.


Just another view.

See the dark line between the window and the mopboard? That's where the top part of the mop board molding goes (yes - it's made up of two parts). I have decided to take the top piece off so I can finish prepping it better.

Okay, now this is the prep area and the scariest section.

We knew there was some damage to the floor here but had no idea it was as bad as it is.

It's hard to describe, but it's as if this part of the floor was pieced together as an after thought.

This is a closer look at it. See that perfect, white, rectangle? Remember it - I'll talk about it in more detail.

Anyway, on the extreme right of the rectangle you can see a swath of floor boards about 6+"s wide. This patch of flooring is about 2' - 3' in length.

Why was the floor done this way?!

This is an extreme close up of THE scariest part.

See all that damage?! Not sure if it's wood rot caused by water or something or if it's termite damage.

When I look at it from underneath (in the basement), there is no sign of damage.

Guess I'll poke at it tomorrow.

Oh well, at least it isn't boring around here!!

Cheers!
Larry~

6 comments:

Sandy said...

I sure hope it's not termites. Looks like a cabinet sat in that white spot.

Larry said...

Knowing our luck it was termites.

I agree that it looks like a cabinet, but why in the middle of the area? I have NEVER seen a cabinet in the middle of a kitchen of this time period.

However, it leads to the thought that this part of the house might have been a porch at some point.

Joanne said...

Hope it's not termites--when we had our floors refinished this month, we discovered that at some point in the distant past the house had termites or other wood-chewing insects, and we had to replace a number of boards. There was no sign from underneath in the basement, either; it wasn't until we pulled up the boards that you could see many of them were hollow.

Larry said...

Tell me about it... We have ran into this so many times already. Tose dang insects just seem to love to eat the stuff that's more noticable. It could be worse though. It could be the subfloor and joists!

Sandy said...

Love the Boo Boo Meter!

Larry said...

Thanks...hopefully it won't get much bigger.