Sand It. Wash It. Stain It. Paint It.

July 2013

This is the Daft Punk interpretation of my life.  Before we could screen in our porch we needed to stain it.  To say I was dreading it was an understatement. I actually got a quote for a contractor to stain it and paint the floor, but when the price came back at $1,100 I knew we had to do it.  The biggest issue was finding a time frame to do about 3-4 days worth of work.

The first step was to sand the entire porch.  There were several areas which had been stained by standing water and also by general wear and tear.  Josh and I decided that the Fourth of July was as good as an excuse as any to finally get on this project.  After about 2 hours we had sanded every inch.  Not fun work.   Then we used a borrowed power washer to fully clean the entire structure.  We also power washed the front porch and the sidewalk.  This was exciting and boring at the same time.   Power washing is messy and loud, but everything looks so pretty afterward! We then showered and decided to be American and went to a BBQ and drank alcohol.  Phew.

On Saturday, we got to work staining the wood.  Once again this is a job that is both fulfilling and exhausting.  There was a lot of surface and it started off easy as I used a 4" brush to stain the raised bed walls and the cap.  Then things got harder as I crawled through landscaping and started doing the vertical uprights and the rafters.  The sum up is that we started at 10am.  By 4pm I was spent.  We ran out of stain and had to make a Lowes trip then we ate dinner, then Josh went out and powered through and finished staining at 10pm. Cringe.  My arm was tired and my neck hurt.  I also dropped a very large cup of stain all over myself.  It was one of those days.

On Sunday, I was grumpy, but I knew we needed to power on.  A month prior we had taken the time to patch all the cracks in the concrete pad, we also filled in the gaps between the raised beds and the edge of the patio.  Since they had now dried the only thing left to do was paint the floor.  I was not planning on taking this on the same weekend, but then I figured this might be my last chance until the Fall. I woke up and went to Miller Paint bright and early, after cleaning the floor one more time, I was ready.  Armed with a satin finish Cabot floor paint (karma) I started painting the floor. It took 8 hours to dry before the next coat so I started at 12:00 on my hands and knees.  It was easy, especially with my trusty knee pad, but it was a bit of a 'just keep swimming' moment after the day before.  Around 8pm I came back and did one last coat and finished up around 9pm.  Thank goodness the Pacific Northwest has such long summer days.

So the round up.  Three days, roughly 30 hours of sanding, staining and painting and our porch was filled with fresh surfaces. We spent about $180 on stain and paint and we used some brushes and sanded pads to the tune of 40 bucks.  So you can count that as a $920 do it yourself savings.

The Fireplace Shake Up

January 2013

Josh and I did some traveling for the holidays and enjoyed relaxing around the house.  We were able to catch up with friends and finally watch some of our favorite tv shows.  But, after two months off I was itching for another project.  I don't know what it is about the holidays but I got the urge to strip some woodwork again.   For Christmas, we had asked my parents for a new fireplace surround.  For those of you who don't remember it looked like this in 2010:

Then in 2012 it looked like this:

Our chimney lacks a damper so we knew we lost a fair amount of our heating through our rattling unsealed brass fireplace surround.  Combine that with its poorly working accordion doors and general sooty appearance and we were ready to break up. As a side rant, do accordion doors work on anything?  Seriously, every house I have ever lived in had some janky accordion closet door that you fought with until you pulled it off it's track.  Poor design.

Our new surround came, looking all fancy and oil rub bronze, but alas there was a good number of things wrong with the fireplace.  The mantel has always made me feel a little let down.  We have a pretty big mantel, which I love, but it lacked the character that I had hoped for.  Taking a cue from our dining room built-in, I thought about stripping the top half.  It would tie the dining room and family room together and hopefully showcase another awesome piece of 80 year old wood that was hiding behind layers and layers of paint.

Josh bought me a heat gun for Christmas and it was all I could do not to remove our stockings and garland and go to town.  I waited, and was excited to get moving.   I started one weekend in the corner and by the end of the day I had stripped the top of the mantel.  I learned alot, mostly, that I am not a huge fan of heat guns. Holding the heat gun and a scrapper is exhausting work.  The place immediately smelled of burning paint which no one in the house was thrilled with.  A side note, I was sure there was probably one coat of lead paint wedged in there so I was wearing a mask and googles. While it was faster then stripper, I found it much more work and potentially more toxic for my family.  After finishing the top I decided to use gel stripper the crown moulding portion. 

This of course doubled the time of the project.  It took three passes to get the mantel completely paint free and each coat took about 24 hours to work.  It was slow, but I got back in my rythmn of coming home each day and scrapping off some paint and then applying more stripper to another section and covering with with plastic wrap.   I was laborious but I think it only took me a full week.   Also based on another awesome blog I read I used stainless pot scrubbers dipped in mineral spirits to remove all the paint that was trapped in the grain.  In the past, I had used a brillo sponge, this was much better and held up great!

Once I sanded the mantel down I went ahead and started applying stain. By now I was pretty good with staining and busted out our old Gunstock stain and my trusty staining clothes.  It went pretty quickly, I did one coat a night with a steel wood sand in between.  It ended up taking 4 coats to completely cover the areas.  There was some paint I could not get out of the tight crown moulding.  I cheated and took a stain colored sharpie (yes they make these) and colored all the paint bits brown and then stained overtop.  It feels cheap and wrong, but honestly, you would never know, and it saved me breaking down to get dental tools out.

At the end of two weeks this is what I had to show:

Built-In Finishing Touches

February 2011

After several weeks of stripping... the built-in.  I moved on to sanding, patching, and painting the lower portion.  This got a healthy three coats of Bone White (see earlier blog for color information).  I also bleached all the drawers down and put new cork liners in the bottom.  Apparently, I am not only a DIY maven but also apparently a clean freak.   After the drawers were lined I installed some brand new knobs I got at Restoration Hardware.  These are amazing, they are real solid oil rub bronze knobs that weigh about a pound each.  I love that they are slightly over sized and remind me of the talking door knob in Alice in Wonderland.  
 

The lower portion went so quickly and easily I felt super successful and excited about the end of the project.  Then I started staining the top.  This took a few tries to get right.  I was trying with a brush at first and it just didn't seem to be going on evenly.  Each time I would sand all the stain off and start again.  Finally I discovered staining with a rag... this was much more successful and after three coats I felt pretty good about my staining jobs.  The second to last step was applying a sealer... I debated between varnish, lacquer, poly or just an oil treatment.  The Internet is a warren of conflicting information, after hundreds of articles and blog entries I gleamed this: varnish is REALLY hard... you should be a professional or at least have a spray gun for it.  Oil would require me 3-4 times a year apply a fresh coat to protect the wood from sun, water, and whatever I left on top.  Apparently lacquer can also go yellow and eventually chip off... urgh.  So I decided good old fashion poly would be my trick. 
 

Of course, I had similar issues with the poly.  I was tentative and putting it on way too light.  The issue with poly is when you are applying it to the surface it looks horrible.  No matter what you do there is brush strokes and small air bubbles.  What I eventually learned was if you apply it thick enough then these spread out and go away as it dries.  After a few different methods I settled on foam brushes. These did not leave brush strokes and after three coats of poly I finally had to admit, I might be done.   I touched up the paint around the top and called it a day.  Needless to say this was a labor of love.  It took we two months and way too long to be proud of.  I think a capable person could do this in about 5 days but in the end I feel like the result was pretty professional and I will admit to running my hands along the glossy top every time I pass it!