Guest Room Update

Finished with the wood -- it's been stripped, sanded, stained and glossed. Next up is primer & paint.

Woot!

Rob

I Can See the Floor From Here

After months -- okay, years -- of tarps and dropcloths being draped over some furniture as we stripped and sanded the molding around the floors and windows (with something like 3 different grits of steel wool for the stripping, then three more grits of sandpaper, and I'm older just thinking about it), we've finally moved on. Today, I pulled the tarps off and we moved the furniture out of the room so I could take up all the padding on the floor. I'm not quite done with the floor...but it's recognizably a room again, and not a big pile of ghostly junk.

Progress. I'd almost forgotten what it looked like.

Rob

3 pounds 1 ounce

Just as I'm starting to work out again, I'm close to ending my stripping career. Today I tackled the floor molding while Kathy (successfully) set up the pipes to accept the new fridge and dealt with some other electrical and plumbing issues (with mized results). The belt sander and palm sander -- even at 40 grain- didn't do very well against the three to four layers of paint on the wood, so it was back to the chemicals for me. I pretty much finished off our second can of stripper, but got a coat (in most cases, two) on the molding, scraping it all off and calling it quits just a few minutes ago.

The number above? That's how much paint I scraped off the wood today, not counting the many gobs that didn't make their way to the garbage bag.

Rob

Healthy Enough to Strip

Well, my illness is, for the most part, over. I'm still a little short of breath, and still cough every now and then, but I've been out in the world for a while now with few ill effects. Even my ear is (mostly) clearing up.

Which means it's back to that old standby -- stripping!

I've spent the afternoon in what will be our guest room, stripping paint from one of the window sills and the closet door frame. Aside from a few moments of vertigo (which I'm sure I would have had in any even, standing on a ladder scraping an area above me, relying on my always-dubious sense of balance), things have been going fine. Well, some of the &%#(*@ paint is clinging to the wood like Paris Hilton to a trust fund, but other than that, no complaints.

Motivating me now is Sharon and Andrew's new living room and dining room. Andrew injured his thumb while he and Sharon worded on it, but it looks awesome -- worth the entirety of the thumb, to be honest. He got of easy.

For my own blood sacrifice -- which is quite a ways down the road, at this rate -- I'm thinking of stray cats and such. It's just a guest room, after all -- Kathy and I won't be spending much time in it. Probably strays will do the trick. Besides, I've got to hold something back for the family room. And the bathroom, although thinking of an appropriate sacrifice for there makes me woozy.

Rob

As anyone who's ever been to a bachelor party can tell you...

All strippers are not created equal. Kathy & I have been stripping paint in what will one day be our guest room, and after lots of coats on one door and window frame, we ran out of our first can on Bix paint stripper. We picked up a second can from Lowe's, and I broke into it for the first time tonoght. The new can is called Jasko's Speedomatic, and if we'd been using it all along, we'd be a lot closer to painting the place and staining the wood. It took off in one coat what the other did in three.

Jasko -- it's Stripperific!

Rob

Stripping on the Weekends

Kathy & I have been stripping on the weekends. It’s a lot of work. I really did a number on my shoulder last week – heck, I was sore all over. But how else are we gonna get the paint off this wood?

Oh… what did you think I meant?

Actually, we’re using white disposable surgical gloves to keep the paint thinner off of our hands. And I have to say, whenever I snap a glove against my wrist as I put it on, my brain gets a signal that something frightfully kinky is about to happen. “All right.. bring out the gimp!'

Rob