Adventures in Renovation

What a huge pain in the ass. I spent 12 hours last Sunday trying to put up some baseboard before the floors guys came the next day and it felt like I barely got anything done. I wanted to at least get the electrical behind the baseboards around the outside brick wall because then it would be all ready for my electrician to come in and finish up. But man, what a pain it was.

When I first started demolition on this house I found these blocks of wood embedded between the brick that confused me. Initially I though they were structural but then Greg told me they were there so you have something to nail your baseboards to. How convenient! So I spent a lot of time knocking out plaster along the walls trying to find these hidden wood blocks. But nailing into them wasn't as easy as it seemed. I couldn't use Bryan's finish nailer because those nails were too short. And when I manually pounded in some 8d finish nails, the board would move around and wouldn't really set very firmly. Somehow those blocks of wood were shifting in the wall.

A lot of the old baseboards I pulled off, were nailed partially into the floor. But I couldn't' do that because I'd run the risk of nailing into the wiring running behind. So I tried a bunch of things. I tried framing nails but they were messy and not any more effective. I tried screws but they left a big hole in the trim and those would totally mess with the next person who tried to take them off. I can see it now. "What the hell? Who the @#$%! screwed the baseboards to the wall?!" I even tried nailing the baseboard straight into the brick with fluted masonry nails. I was crazy and desperate at this point because I had gotten down to pieces where there weren't any wood blocks in the wall to attach to at all.

Finally Bryan suggested the winning strategy: attached new pieces of wood to the brick for the baseboard to attach. After I chiseled holes in the plaster, I cut squares of 3/8" OSB plywood and hammered them into the brick with the fluted nails. Then I had a much stabler surface that was close enough I could use the finish nailer to aattach the baseboard. It was time consuming, but effective.

The good news is that the baseboard looks great. I wasn't sure about the style and went around in circles trying to decide on this trim, but I ended up going with what approximated my old trim. The finishing touches really bring it together. Next time tho, I'm going to use some Tapcon screws because the fluted nails had a tendency to break the brick out pop out because of all the beating it took to drive them in.

Posted by at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I can't believe this story is already a week old, but here goes anyway. After the floor guys came and left because they were "unequipped" to fix my floors, I had to fix them myself. It wasn't as hard as I had imagined. It didn't involve the usual multiple trips to the hardware or switching to back-up plans or anything like some previous projects. Like say the bathroom tile incident. Pretty much, after the bathroom tile problems, I didn't want to go near these patches. It was worth it to pay someone to do it for me for $50. Oh well.

One reason I was hesitant was because I never really found any good instruction on how to do it. Greg told me about cutting off part of the groove and what not, but it still didn't click. This cheesy website told me to use a chisel primarily to make cuts at the end of the board and then split the middle with a chisel. I didn't realize that these instructions were for wood plank placed over a subfloor. Otherwise they usually tell you to drill holes where you want to make cuts like an inch away from a joist, and then connect the holes with a jigsaw cut perpendicular or a circular saw down the length of the board (like these instructions). Then you nail a 2x4 to the old joist so you have something for the new floor board to sit on.

I ended up doing the whole thing with a chisel and a circular saw. And it was damn loud. First there was constant pounding in a big empty, echoy room. Then after I fired up the circular saw I would go deaf for brief period. All this noise led to one of my neighbors to leave a note in my door about neighborhood courtesy. That was the first time I had heard any complaints, but this was definitely some of the loudest most annoying work I've done so far. Especially since all of it was after I got off work at night.

Everything worked out okay in the end. The flooring I bought at salvage was just barely thinner than my old flooring but the gaps aren't all that noticeable. I had to sand a bunch of paint off them with my belt sander too but other than that, well worth the $14 bucks they cost me. I didn't end up splitting any of the wrong boards like I was worried about and I didn't run out of flooring at the last minute. The verdict: Definitely pretty much good enough.

Posted by at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are some photos of my floors refinished. I posted some before and after photos on flickr so you can get the full effect. It reeks of polyurethane. You can smell it before you even walk through the front door. I told Vicki it smells like victory.

They look absolutely beautiful. I love the color. It came out a real aged amber color. I've never live in a place with wood floors like this before. I took my shoes off and skated around on them the next day. The floor is still pretty rough with lots of nail holes and gaps in the wood, but that's the kind of character you can't buy with Pergo laminate flooring. Man, I hate Pergo.

Posted by at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It's been a long rough road when it comes to floor refinishing this week. Very frustrating. It's probably better I waited to post otherwise I wouldn't have been able to contain all the cuss words.

The floor refinishers came out to finish my floor last Monday morning and the first this he says to me is, "I notice you've got some holes in your floors and some extra boards up there. Are you gonna fix that?" And I said, "No I was kinda hoping you could help me out with that." At least that's what his boss told me. Marty said he would probably fix it for like $50. Sounded like a great deal to me because that would save me hours of work.

But here he is, the morning my floors are going to be refinished, telling me "I'm not equipped to patch that" and "that's not on my work order." This wouldn't be that big of a deal except for the fact this was the 5th company I'd gotten a quote from, the company I wanted to go with originally was totally booked through the month, and the last guy I tried to get just stopped returning my phone calls. I've got to move in. Vicki's feeling the stress so I'm feeling it double. "I'm not equipped" wasn't what I wanted to hear that morning.

I'm pretty sure that's not what he really meant. I'm sure he knew how to do it. If he needed to, he could have probably gotten the tools to do it if he hadn't brought them. In retrospect I wished I'd have asked him "What do you need? I got plenty of tools here." My suspicion is that he didn't think he was going to be paid for it. Like I was expecting him to do on the side for free. I didn't think of this till later of course. I wish I would asked him how much he wanted or whipped out some cash. But really I wish his boss had either put the repair on that work order like it should have been, or have told me that I needed to slip him some dough to begin with.

Either way, he left and said he couldn't come back out till Saturday. So last week I concentrated on patching my floors. It took about three night of work and was really loud. So loud, one of my neighbors dropped and anonymous note in my door about the noise. (More on the fun of wood floor repair later.) I worked on it till 1:00 in the morning on Friday. The last hour of which was spent moving everything upstairs back downstairs again and cleaning up for them to come work the next day.

Saturday morning I go to meet them bright and early 8:30 AM. I get a call 20 minutes after they're supposed to be there from the guy who's going to refinish my floor telling me they won't be there till Monday. I'm like "What do you mean Monday? You were supposed to be here today, twenty minutes ago." He says, "Oh.. Marty didn't call you already?" Nope. Marty did not call me. So then I ask, "Why are you calling me if Marty was supposed to have already called me?" To which he replied, "Hey, I'm just the mechanic." I'm still trying to figure out what that one means.

When I called Marty, he tries to explain that the floors aren't dry yet at the previous job so they can't come out to my place yet. Really I don't care all that much that they're coming Monday, I just want to know when they're ACTUALLY going to come. Not just tell me what I want to hear and lead me on.

"I talked to you Thursday to confirm you were coming Saturday. Why didn't you tell me yesterday? Didn't you know the floors weren't dry Friday?" All he could tell me was the floors weren't dry Friday and then they weren't dry the next morning. "What can I do?", he said. To which I replied, "Yeah. What can I do?" Because I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. They might be pissing me off, but Monday is still sooner than two weeks from now.

So instead I spent the weekend working on the baseboards. I worked about 12 hours yesterday on them and then had to go through the whole routine of moving everything downstairs and out or their way again.

This morning finally, they showed up and did the whole thing in one day. That's it. Apparently my floors with really rough and he had to go over them like 5 times, but they're looking amazing now. Two coats of polyurethane (one quick drying and one regular) and that's it. And for all the grief, I have to admit that it's really really exciting to finally have it done. It's awesome. I'm totally psyched. I would have taken some pictures today, but the floors weren't dry yet. I promise I'll post some pictures tomorrow so no one will have to wait in suspense too much.

Posted by at 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

That's the new motto for my house. Everything twice. As in, I have to redo everything twice on this house it seems like. Plumbing... the half wall... painting...

I painted the tub Monday with primer but ran out. So I went back to Home Depot for more paint the next day, but I couldn't paint that night because the primer says to recoat either within one hour or after 48 hours. So I wait to Wednesday night. I put another coat of primer and two cans of flat white spray paint. But for some reason the spray paint didn't coat very well and built up tiny little balls of paint where the tub was rusty. Now it's been a while since I've used spray paint, but I don't remember it being this hard to work with.

So after 4 days of messing with this, I had to repaint it again. Everything twice. I sanded the whole thing smooth again and repainted it. This time with a regular pint can of flat white Rust-o-leum and one of those half-width paint rollers. It only took 5 minutes to roll on and worked much better. I wish I had done it that way to begin with. I'm going to put another coat on for good measure today.

Posted by at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vicki and I scraped the paint off the bathroom window this weekend. Now the bathroom is a hundred times more beautiful. It's a beacon of light at the top of the stairs.

The funny thing is, it took me 10 months to realize all the windows upstairs are all plexiglas. I guess I just ignored them because they were covered in paint. I was probably fooled by the really nice replacement windows downstairs, also. I just assumed these were good quality too. When in fact, they are the crappiest aluminum frame and plexiglas replacement windows you could buy. Oh well. I'm going have to live with 'em for now because there's definitely no money in the budget for 5 new windows.

Mostly, I've been working on my tub last weekend. Vicki and I got it all cleaned up inside. It's in fair shape. There's a few divets in the porcelain, and the bottom has some etching, and there is some rust creeping in around the drain, but that's pretty standard for a really old tub like this. I started stripping the paint off the outside of the tub because I read you should remove the old stuff before repainting.

WARNING: Boring home improvement details ahead. Don't say I didn't warn you.

There are about 4 layers of paint on the tub but only half of it is painted. The side that was against the wall and on the bottom aren't painted. Those surfaces have a lot of rust.

I used some standard paint stripper but it only worked for the top 3 layers of paint. The bottom layer is probably some kind of oil-based enamel and didn't respond well to the stripper. It just kind of made it googey and spread it around.

From my research I figured out the way you're supposed to do this is strip all the paint off the tub, grind, sand or use hydrochloric acid to remove the rust down to the metal and then repaint with and oil-based enamel. My friend Regina did this to her old tub. Apparently it took a long time and was a real big paint in the ass. So I've decided to take the easy way out of this one. Rust may eventually eat through the paint but I won't be living here when it does.

I sanded the tub last night with a big grinding wheel thing. I bought this thing that's like a big, hard Brillo pad that attaches to a drill. I pretty much wore down one of the two discs doing it, but the surface is definitely smoother. Well as smooth as the rusty outside of a cast iron tub can be. Tonight I'm just going to spray it with some Rust-o-leum car primer and then a coat of white Rust-o-leum oil-based enamel spray paint. The name of the game is 'good-enough.' I've got to get the tub out of the way of the floor refinisher this week so I have to get it done before it goes in the bathroom.

Posted by at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good news, I hope. Yet another floor refinisher came out to give me a quote on Saturday. His price was almost as cheap as the guy I wanted to go with originally and he said he could probably start at the end of this week (Thursday). Looks like one reason he's cheaper is because his estimate says they're only going to put down two coats of polyurethane instead of three. You're supposed to put down three coats on a pine floor, but for a few hundred bucks less I'll put down a third coat myself. Or maybe after it's FINALLY done, I won't even care about a third coat.

I hope this guy works out. He was voted "Best of Baltimore 2004" by the City Paper as his business cards, answering machine and website will all tell you.

Posted by at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)