Finishing (and Refinishing) Projects at Year's End

I'm not sure what spurred my current obsession with finishing, repairing, sorting, and putting away. Maybe it's been concern to finish things "before the snow flies." Maybe it's wrapping up projects before the year's end. Maybe the new house has inspired my inner "Becky HomeEcky." I hope it's not a sign I'm fixin' to die!

Whatever the explanation, I've been working on projects I've been meaning to get to for years. Here's a piece of furniture I found in the trash in Manhattan during the first Reagan administration. Although it wasn't damaged, its varnish was crazed and blackened, and its drawer pulls had been removed. I had some wooden drawer pulls I'd collected at my local landfill, and it went straight to my bedroom.

I salvaged quite a bit of furniture over the years, repaired and refinished most of it, but this item languished. It just didn't look that bad. About 10 years ago, I bought fancy brass drawer pulls for it, but postponed refinishing indefinitely.

During that last unexpected spell of warm weather in November, I hauled it out in the yard and stripped off the old varnish. I was really surprised by what was underneath! A bit of walnut colored stain and some tung oil, and it's quite pretty.

The Joy of Gravel

Last fall, early snows kept us from graveling the driveway. We waded snow and mud until April, when it finally got dry enough to have this work done.

The muddy wagon ruts are replaced with a lovely, smooth driving surface, which we enjoyed at least as much as apple blossom season.

What's Cooking, Princess?

The new house is all the things we hoped it would be--wonderfully warm, easily cleaned, with plenty of closets and cabinets--but we're all having a little trouble adjusting to the new space. Princess is still looking for that perfectly cat-sized hiding place.

I hope this picture doesn't suggest the Fatal Attraction bunny to you. In November, we moved the canned goods from the old house to the new cellar, and Princess had to inspect the canner. Although the size was reasonable, it didn't remain long enough on the kitchen floor for her purposes. The rocking chair seat will have to serve until something better comes along.

One Teacup at a Time

We're living in the new house now, still doing finish work, and still moving in, a little at a time. I don't have any interesting progress photos to share, as the changes are incremental and unspectacular, but I felt the need to break blog silence anyway.

I had thought when the walls were painted, the floor covering laid down, and the cabinets installed that most of my finish work would be done. There were just a few doors to install and paint. We bought pre-hung masonite doors, and installation took one day. They were already white, so how long could it take to get a little off-white, washable semigloss paint on them? Turns out, a really long time.

Our house only has four rooms, so how did I end up with eleven doors to paint? Well, there's the front door and the back door, the cellar door, the bathroom door, the bedroom door, and the office door. Then, there's the pantry door, the double doors in the bedroom closet, the office closet door....

The "pre-primed" masonite doors didn't take paint well, so two coats of primer were required, followed by two coats of semigloss. Eleven doors, painted four times each. The doors started out one shade of off-white, the door frames a different white. The primer was a greyish white, and the final coat a pale, pale yellow. ("Mesa Beige," actually. The naming of paint must be an interesting industry.) I still catch myself humming "A Whiter Shade of Pale."

Now, we've moved in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the part of my office contents required to keep working, and I'm chipping away at the rest. We're turning the old house into a workshop, so I'm trying to decide where stuff "belongs" before I move it over here, and trying to not leave wreckage behind. The TV, china cabinet, and the parrots are still in the old house, along with most of my books, our home-canned goods, and my grandma's china collection. It feels like we're moving one teacup at a time.

Including the Kitchen Sink

I've received a complaint from Pendleton County on lack of new house photo coverage. August was a busy month, but it turns out that newly painted walls don't make really interesting photographs. Here you see the intersection of two kitchen wall colors, and the kitchen cabinet installation, already in progress. This is the same flooring we have in the whole house. It wasn't hard to put down, but there really is a lot of it. My knees are still complaining. The kitchen counters and counter top are in now, as is the sink.

Shopping for Color

I made three trips in three days to the big-box home improvement store in Lewisburg this week. I don't usually go to Lewisburg more than once a month, so this is city-overload for me. The motive for this frequent driving was paint selection for the new house. On Thursday, I got paint samples, on Friday I bought paint for three rooms and half-pint paint samples in some colors I wasn't sure about, and on Saturday, I bought more paint.

I really love looking at paint, and paint-color displays. Here are just a few of the colors I brought home and held up against the walls. You can see I'd already decided on "green" and "blue" and "yellow," but comparing hues and tints and shades...I could turn it into an end in itself.

I'm evidently not the only one who sees the possibility of paint-choice paralysis, according to The Onion's Study Finds Paint Aisle At Lowe's Best Place To Have Complete Meltdown.

"Even the most well-adjusted individual can be reduced to a feeble, trembling shell of his or her former self after a half hour of paint shopping at Lowe's," said Dr. Olivia Kang, a behavioral psychologist at the University of Texas and lead author of the study. "The pressure to make a decision between two seemingly identical shades of beige, the glaring fluorescent lights, the frantic patrons on all sides—it's too much for the human psyche to process."

"In terms of causing normal, healthy adults to completely lose their shit, the Lowe's paint department amounts to a perfect storm," Kang added.

New House--Ceramic Tile

I've painted the drywall with primer, and we've installed the ceramic tiles we'll use as a "hearth" for the wood stove to stand on. These were, for the most part, fun activities, and they made the house look different, which ups the satisfaction ante.

This week, the kitchen cabinets we ordered came in, but the flooring has been delayed until next week. I've been playing with paint samples, looking at them in different light conditions, holding them up against the cabinets, a flooring sample, the windows....I suspect I could do this indefinitely, as it is a lot of fun, but I've picked out some colors, and today I went to the store, and came home with paint for the bedrooms and bathroom, and...more paint samples.

New House--Finishing the Interior

The drywall is up now, and last week I painted it with primer. It has become hard to photograph progress now that all the walls are up and painted uniformly white, but you can see the textured ceiling and the new ceiling fan here, and the drywall in the process of being primed.

This week's project is the subfloor, and, perhaps, the tile platform for the wood stove.

New House Update--Siding Is On!

The house siding has been complete for some time, but rain and other projects have kept us from staining the exterior. Inside, drywall is going up, and should be complete soon.

Power Line Preparation, Part Two

I've been teaching bunches of classes, but there's been unblogged house progress. Here you can see siding, and the setting of the power pole at the end of May. You can see that we also got the garden in.

Cutting Trees

The new house will require a new power line and pole, and last week the electric company's tree workers came to clear the path. Unfortunately, our old pear tree was one of the casualties. The pears were unpalatable, despite my best efforts, and sizable chunks of the tree itself fell off every autumn. Still, it was beautiful when it bloomed in the spring, and the deer seemed to enjoy the rock-hard fruits.

You can see the pear tree on the right in full flower, April, 2008.

Here is the old house after all the tree-cutting.

Here is why chunks of the pear tree fell off every summer as the weight of pears pulled on them. I suppose we're lucky the whole tree didn't fall on the house.

A decrepit Norway spruce, some smallish sugar maples, and two black walnuts also were in the way. The rest of the trees cut were black locust saplings, sprung up in fence rows.

House Progress

After all that rain, there was finally some house progress last week!

New House Update--Siding!

Work on the new house has started again! We got our hemlock siding, and other things we need to finish the exterior last week, and Friday, subtle changes in our stalled project were apparent. I hope there will be more exciting photographs this week.

Snow On Snow

It snowed twice last week, piling one snowfall on another, and we've had one night colder than any time last winter. Yesterday's rain has turned into today's snow, and we can expect more of the same. The new house looks sad and spectral, and the sky is more like mid-January than the end of autumn. I'm reminding myself how lucky we are to have the old house and a warm wood fire, but I can't help taking in a little gloom from the atmosphere.

Roof, Doors, and Windows

The roof is on, and the house wrap, doors, and windows make it look like a solid structure. We will have to look at the home improvement store advertising until the hemlock siding is cut and ready for us. I hope that will be soon, but, like so many things, the lumber will be ready when it's ready.

An End To Transparency

This is probably the last picture of the house as see-through structure. Now the roof tin will shut out the sky (especially the rain!), windproof wrap will stand in for the exterior walls, and the doors and windows will assume their intended positions.

Rafters, Part 1

Here's where we're stalled, with two thirds of the rafters up, roof tin stacked neatly to the side. We're waiting on more rafters from the sawmill.

Something Overhead

The walls are up, both exterior and interior, and the ceiling beams are in place as well. It's easier now for me to visualize it as a house, with rooms and windows to look out. Quite exciting!

Good Clean Fun

With the walls going up, we realized we needed to run out and buy a bathtub, since tub-shower combinations are too big to go through doors. I really liked the packaging slogan!

Walls Going Up

The walls are going up. It's beginning to look a little bit like a house!