Front Porch Walls Finished & a Couple of Surprises

Finally!! The front porch walls are all finished...the scraping at least.

We can't believe how long it took to scrape all the intricate, detailed, hard to get to places. Thank goodness we don't have one of those real ornate Victorians!

As mentioned in the title we had a few surprises the past few days while scraping.

The first was the inner trim surrounding the window inserts on each side of the door as well as the inserts themselves. Two different colors of stain were used - presumably to contrast and highlights.

In this picture you can see the whole door / side window setup sans paint.





In this one you can see the darker stain of the side window inserts as well as the lighter stain of the wood holding it in.



Now this is where it gets real interesting...

See the darker stain? Well, it was top-coated with either shellac, varnish or something else. Whatever the top-coated was made the thick layers of paint slough off like pealing skin when the heat gun was applied. In fact, the paint puffed up! It reminded me of a piece of Kraft American Cheese fried or broiled. If you've ever seen this done you'll know what I'm talking about. Even the fine detail came out more crisp and clean than when using the other stripper.

This led to the next surprise.

While scraping the paint off the dark stained area I kept thinking to myself "man - this reminds me of something, but I can't put my finger on it."

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks... THE TRIM AND MOLDING IN THE HOUSE IS DARK STAINED WOOD COVERED WITH WHITE PAINT!!!!

So I grabbed the heat gun and went inside.

Now remember, this is what the pedestals separating the foyer and living room look like now.




The one above is on the right - looking into the foyer.

This is the pedestal on the left side after only about 30 minutes of work (if that) with the heat gun.




It still needs cleaning up. I think using alcohol and 0000 steel-wool will do the trick. The larger pieces of paint just need to be flicked off.

But just look at the stain and patina under there!!!!

Isn't this AWESOME!!!

Based on the amount of time it took to do the pedestal it would probably take just a week-end to remove the paint from the rest of the trim/molding in the living room. Another major plus is that it's by far easier to clean up than using the stripper we used in the kitchen.

Why oh why wasn't the trim and molding in the kitchen this easy?!?!?!?!

Before I forget, see the electrical outlet to the left, and the hole above it? Look around the hole and you will see dark streaks on the wall paper. When we first got the house SWMBO plugged something into the outlet. It burst into flames - scorching the wall and destroying the outlet. When the outlet was replace we lowered it. Now there is a hole in the wall. Eventually it'll get fixed.

Anyway...moving on...

For grins-n-giggles here's a picture of our house guest from last week-end. She is sharing Izzy's favorite perch; the one that allows her to look out the front door.

Aren't they cute?
Actually - they're more like little monsters.

Izzy's little friend is named 'Princess'. She is the baby of SWMBO's uncle Jimmy, the one who was helping us scrap a few weeks back.

HEY! Come to think of it... See the dark streaks in the molding in the picture? That's the dark stain coming through.

Well, that's about it for now. It's getting late and I'm tired.

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry