Day 17 of the Great Es(c)rape: Nice surprise!

Look at the nice surprise we found hidden under some paint on the door casing and sidelights! It looks like this was varnished at some point to match the door (which was never painted) and then painted over. While the casing around it looks to have always been painted, we're hoping we can keep this unpainted. It's only a coat or two of paint so it's coming off like buttah.

Really nothing else to report. Still scraping, of course. And the scrape goes on...

The Great (E)scrape 2013: Day 15

It's been a while since my last update and that's really because there isn't much to report. We've been scraping. And scraping. And scraping. And...well, you get the idea. It's a slog, that's for sure. I feel like for 15 days we should have more to show for our labors but, really, it's very slow-going. Our hope is that once we finish the porch we'll be able to see more progress in a quicker fashion. It's really because the front porch has so many little details that it is slowing us down - they are beautiful details, mind you, but they make for slow work. For example, you'll see below the railings and balusters. We caved today and went to our friendly, neighborhood Home Depot for a heat gun. I had resisted the idea of a heat gun originally but, honestly, it was a wise investment. For the low price of $49 we were able to make some real headway on these puppies. Well, maybe "headway" is overly optimistic. Those few you see in the photo below took about 30 minutes to do. And, then, I went and made things worse by counting how many total there are: 100. Oi.

Nevertheless, we're moving along. Today was a duo work day with Tim doing some of the high points, me doing some of the lower points, and Ohara keeping Floyd busy. And, we should all appreciate how important it is to keep a kid and puppy busy while in the midst of a house project, right?

So, two weeks in. We're hoping to maybe begin painting someday soon and then move on the second story of the front of the house. 

The Great Esc(r)ape 2013: Day 5

Total burns: 3

Total blisters: 2

We've put in a solid few hours each day after work scraping the front porch area with the help of our new friend, the Speedheater. I am still very much enamored of our Speedheater but its novelty as a cool new toy has worn off. It's just a lot of flippin' work. I keep reminding myself and Tim that it will all be worth it in the end: we will have a beautiful house with paint that will last many years. Yes, that's what I keep telling myself. We'll see how long this strategy works.

You can see some of the fruit of our labor below. We've definitely learned a few things so far.

1) Having one person hold the Speedheater and the other person scrape goes a heckuva lot faster.

2) You need something into which to put all the scraped paint. There's a ton of paint on this old house (we're loving referring to it right now as This Old Crack House) and it gets heavy fast.

3) Gloves are needed. You can easily burn yourself on the metal parts of the heater. I learned this the hard way (sad face).

4) The power switch is in an inconvenient place on the handle and easily turned off.

5) Make sure you have a heavy-duty extension cord. It draws a lot of power and gets hot quickly.

Other than that, it's pretty great. 

The other part of my motivation strategy is to do the front porch area first simply to be able to have something finite and complete to see relatively soon. I really would like to be able to paint by Sunday (today is Thursday), at least the clapboards. The railings are going to take a lot more time than I had hoped and we're going to need some other tools to help us with the scraping of the more intricately carved woodwork. We'll definitely update when we start.

Friggin' Amazing: The Story of How the Speedheater Changed My Life

Do you see that? Do you? That, my friends, is bare wood after countless layers of paint (many with lead, I am certain) were removed. Do you know how long that took? About 2 minutes. No kidding. Do you know how much muscle was required to remove it? Barely any. Seriously. We got our Speedheater late last week but had made prior arrangements to go camping and just tried it out this afternoon upon our return. 

If you read earlier posts, you'll know that I found out about an American-made version from a This Old House post and then learned it was not as sturdy or as well-made as this Swedish, original version. I ordered it for about $400 plus shipping and had it two days later. It comes with the Speedheater itself as well as two scrapers and some holding brackets.

I think I was most impressed when Tim used it below on the porch floor. This thing melted off layers upon layers of paint effortlessly. I gotta tell you, I spent many, many hours a few summers ago trying to do unsuccessfully by hand what this thing did in seconds. It is so amazing. Even better (oh, yes, it gets better), it makes no noxious fumes, no lead dust, and only requires some gloves. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. I honestly can't wait to paint the house. Yeah, that's right - I just said that I can't wait to paint the house.

Soooooo cool. While that little piece of the porch floor above took longer than the clapboards - mostly due to the many, many layers of paint - when I asked Tim how long it took to do the whole strip above the stairs, he remarked, "Less than a beer's worth." In real-time, I think that means about 20 minutes. Seriously cool, folks. So, here we go. I'm off to get the paint tomorrow and we'll just start one side at a time. I think the biggest obstacles are finding staging to reach the highest parts of the house and figuring out which parts will be which color. Seriously. So cool. Seriously.

Beginning the House Painting Slog

Here is Tim, beginning what will surely be months and months of scraping and painting the house. Yes, after much deliberation (MUCH), much hemming-and-hawing, and discussing strategy, around 3pm yesterday Tim decided we should just start. We ran to Home Depot and purchased what is aptly called the PaintEater. What you're seeing in the photo above is about 20 minutes of work. After that point, Tim switched to the strategy of smoothing down the bumpy paint and smoothing what was there.  He pretty much got all the way down the side of the house after about 2 hours. Still, phew. It's going to be a slog.

While he was happy with his work, shortly after he started feeling sick. After removing his lead paint-safe mask, I saw paint dust all around his nose. I think we're going to need to switch strategies, switch tools, and switch face masks. I'll probably end up buying the SpeedHeater infrared paint remover - one recommended by This Old House. It's a lot more expensive than the thing we bought at Home Depot but won't create dust.

In more fun news, we're closer to picking out a color combination. We know that this house was originally a three-color house per a 1933 assessor's photo we have. At some point, however, the house was switched over to all white, except for the window muntins. We're planning to revert back to that 3-color scheme, focusing on a greenish-gray for the overall color, a cream for the trim, and a darker greenish-gray or tan for the accents. There are some nice Sherwin-Williams brochures on historic color combinations and we like Chatroom/Muslin/Beach House or Rare Gray/Casa Blanca/Pewter Green.

As we get deeper into this interminable project, I'll certainly update.

Researching historic paint colors

Having a lot of fun looking into historically accurate paint colors for the outside of the Bangor Foursquare. After doing a bit more research about tools to strip paint from clapboards, and reading about the Silent Paint Remover, we learned that it was a less sturdy version of the Speedheater Infrared Paint Remover. We have decided we will invest in the latter rather than the former. Hoping to get cracking this fall, with the help of some rented scaffolding.

So, that brings us to decision-making about possible paint colors. Found some cool resources and tools, such as these websites, featuring the American Foursquare style. Here are just a few:

• Northwest Crossing - The American Foursquare
• Old House Colors - Colors for Foursquare Houses
• Sherwin-Williams - Arts & Crafts Era (Exterior)
• Vancouver Heritage Foundation - True Colours Palette
• City of Roanoke - American Foursquare

From among all of these and from some great picture collections on Flickr and Pinterest, here are a few of our favorite color schemes:

Painting Clapboards and Installing a Cat Door

As of Memorial Day Weekend, we are all officially moved into the Bangor Foursquare! It's been wonderful to be back - albeit a bit weird at times (is it a new house? an old house? is it my house? it is our house?). A few little niggling projects awaited us, however. I spent most of this week scraping paint from the clapboards outside, as some of it has begun to peel and flake. I recall hearing that the previous owner of the home would have one side of the house repainted every five years. Well, I did not keep up with that schedule and it shows. I think what I find most disconcerting is that I had to have the north side of the house repainted when I bought it in 2007 as I got an FHA mortgage and some of that paint is already peeling. So, this time hubby and I are attempting to do it ourselves. Two days ago, this consisted of a lot of hand scraping and spot painting. I found this result to be less than satisfactory. Yesterday, I converted to hand scraping and painting entire sections of the clapboard, making the paint appear to be a little more consistent in color. Regardless, however, it appears this will be a laborious task. As I attempted to tackle the cracking paint on the front porch trim today, I felt pretty daunted. It led me to asking Internet what to do. My long-term love, This Old House, showed me this post, which led me to this product - the Silent Paint Remover. I'm thinking this might be the ticket to repainting this old house. It makes me even wonder if we can do the whole thing ourselves -- which makes me daydream about all sorts of exciting color combinations. It's been an all-white house for a very long time but I know it wasn't always such. As loyal readers may recall, a few years ago I got a hold of a photo from the Bangor Historical Society of the Bangor Foursquare circa 1930, showing multiple colors. Of course, being a black-and-white photo, the actual colors are hard to identify and I can't see any evidence under the paint layers outside. So, we'll get creative me-thinks. It's exciting to ponder.

So, while I marinated in my consternation over the painting situation today, I decided to tackle another project that has niggled at me since we moved back in.  My new family includes this fine fellow, Barney the Cat.

Barney is - how should we say it? - stinky. He is a stinky, smelly cat. But, we love him nevertheless. So, my solution for dealing with Barney's eau-de-poopy is to house his cat box in the basement. My slight OCD-ness, however, has not meshed well with having the door ajar. I was loathe to cut a whole in the beautiful solid wood door but, ultimately, I am happy with the result:

As with any project I tend to tackle, it wasn't anywhere as easy as I expected it to be and it took twice the amount of time I expected it to take. I was mostly concerned how it would sit in the door given the panels. But, in the end, this $30 beauty from Home Depot did the trick (To add insult to injury, Barney is not only stinky, he's kind of chubby. The brand name of the cat door was Hefty Kat). Barney has already mastered the in-and-out of it, being the smart, stinky cat that he is. All in all, a good day's work. Time to get cracking on some Father's Day dinner. We're excited to finally have our grill at the Bangor Foursquare - I don't know how we would survive the summer months without it.