A few steps closer...

Well, the weather has been nice, so it's been slow going on the woodwork in the house. The bad thing is I'm so close to having all the prep work done! If I could only concentrate on DOING it it would be finished in about two days, then I could start on the plaster skim coat.

Here's a peek at one of the 'little' problems I keep running into. Remember all that termite damage? Well, one of the worst spots was around the back door leading into the utility porch. A lot of the molding was eaten away from the back.

I tried to fix the problem by filling the back with wood filler. The plan was then to finishing filling in the eaten away spots from the front with top quality wood filler.

Unfortunately, the stuff on the back warped the thinnest section at the top of the board. No matter what I tried nothing worked to smooth it back out.

In this close-up you can see just how bad it is.

The pic doesn't do it justice, but the top is so warped you can not lay a straight edge on it.

Now, as you may remember from earlier posts, we were told that the wood was imported French heart pine. Since then we have found out that it is also known as yellow hard pine. What ever you might call it it is very expensive to find it in the board sizes we have in the house. I was told we could order it in at $10 a lineal foot!! That would place this board at around $60!!!!!!

Just look at the veining - looks beautiful doesn't it?

We started looking all over for a replacement piece of wood. A friend of ours actually had a piece, but it was too short.

Then the other day I was walking by the burn pit and noticed a board we had tossed out by it for burning. The original board was 10 feet long and painted that hideous green that the walls are painted. It was one of the boards used to cover the plumbing chase. When we first removed it the ends split, it was pitted, and the nail holes ripped out. We also thought that it was the cheap type of pine you normally find at the local DIY shop. However, with the way the weather has been, the paint flaked off while it was laying out there.

Low and behold!! Look what it turned out to be!!

Here is the board after I cut it out of the original board. I got lucky because the side edges and ends of the board were so bad I had to cut this board out of the center and that just so happens to be where the best veining was located.





Isn't this board a beauty?! I have rescued the other board that was with it and managed to save the left over pieces that could be used from the main board.

Caution - the next part is not for the squeamish!!

Cat barf - it's not just for cleaning up anymore!!

Yes - you heard me right.

The other day one of the cats got sick and barfed in a couple of areas. SWMBO cleaned it up. I don't do animal barf - I can handle just about anything else (I use to be a morticians assistant) but I can't do animal barf.

Anyway, when she cleaned it up look at what she found.

Do you see that nice, clean, shiny spot? That's where the cat did the deed.

The stuff wasn't there for long, but it sure removed the adhesive.

Yup...a close up.

Isn't it nice, clean and shiny?

Here's the second spot.

This is even in one of the thickest adhesive spots, but it still came up.

Another close up - sorry for the fuzziness.

Now if only I could come up with a way to reproduce the chemicals that create the 'barf'. If I could do this, I could bottle it and sell to other people who have floors like this!

On the other hand, perhaps I could just feed the cats some epicac and have a cat barfing party!!!

Oh well, here's to wishing......

Cheers!
Larry