The Great Esc(r)ape: "It's comin' along!"

"It's comin' along!" These are the words guiding today's post as we've heard them at least a hundred times this weekend as we continued to scrape and paint. There's not much to say, really, same-old, same-old (i.e., scrape, paint, repeat). So, we'll just nix the yakkity-yak and show you the goods:

As Tim says, "It's gettin' there."

Knock, knock...

Our 8-year-old is a big fan of knock-knock jokes. So, in Ohara's honor, I present this to you:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Lattice.

Lattice who?

Lattice please be done scraping now.

Ugh.

We are nearing the final stretch of scraping on the front porch, now moving to the outside. One piece to be tackled - and perhaps the most formidable - is the lattice, as you see below.

I was able to get a lot of the fronts of the lattice strips and even the tops but getting behind, as you can see, is not quite as easy. 

Taking this break to whine, perhaps it's worthwhile to mention at this time the various scraping accoutrements that have come to our aid in this pain-staking process. 

As pictured above, you can see the very helpful gloves (those heat guns are hot!), a couple of the scrapers that came along with the Speed Heater, and various and sundry other scrapers and implements that have come in handy along the way. Nevertheless, none of these are quite right to get those lattice strips that rest behind the front ones. Grr.

We are making painting progress, however. Tim has begun scraping and painting under the eaves and it's really looking nice. One piece we have left, though, is the wood surround by the front door. I was hoping we would be able to strip it completely so it went along with the front door (open slightly ajar in photo) but it's not looking promising. We'll probably end up painting it but deciding on the pattern feels daunting. We'll also have to figure out what to do with the screen door. Tim and I put that in a few years ago when the house was white. Now that it will be not so much white, it's going to be a bit of an eyesore. Decisions, decisions...

Painting Progress!

Well, here you go: one whole piece of the house with painting complete! Of course, this is barely 1/16th of the house actually completed but I am quite pleased with the results. You can see our three-color paint scheme here. We're contemplating adding a stripe of green to the molding around the window, however, to add some contrast - not quite sure yet.

Taking tomorrow off to continue scraping - hoping to have all of the railings and columns done tomorrow and keep working on the lattice area outside. Then, paint, paint, paint! Yippee!

The Great Esc(r)ape - Turning the corner

Took a half day yesterday and all day today to paint and continue scraping. It was pretty exciting to put the second coat of paint on the porch clapboards. I am really loving the color - it's interesting how the shade changes depending on the light. I was also able to put the first coat of trim paint on the porch windows and top board. It was a little too chilly, however, to put on the second coat so you'll need to wait to see the finished product. I was a bit hesitant to paint around the door mostly because I'm still not sure about the pattern and what color should go where. I decided to go with the flow for the window so hopefully it will stay somewhat similar as things progress.

As I took breaks from painting, I kept scraping. Finishing up the porch floor and working on the endless spindles on the railings. Like other projects in this nearly 100-year-old house, this one turned up an unpleasant surprise: a rotten spindle under countless layers of paint.

I'm actually amazed that the paint kept it all together as long as it did. In fact, it looks like a number of the spindles were replaced at some point as well as the lower railing (seen to the left of the scraped spindle below).

So, the millwork place in nearby Brewer will be getting a visit from us to create a new spindle.

I was happy to finally finish scraping all of the inside spindles today. Of course, the majority were scraped by Tim when he took off work last week. Tomorrow perhaps will find us finishing the outside as well. Tim wanted me to tell you that I then went outside to vacuum the lawn - many paint shavings on the grass with the Shopvac. He found this funny.

Day 3,275 of the Great Esc(r)ape: We're Painting!

Look at that! That's paint on that there wall! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. Seriously. I think you'd feel equally excited if you had been scraping paint for what seems an eternity. While we're not quite done with all of the scraping of the front downstairs of the house, we're ready enough to start painting. We got one coat on all of the front clapboards this afternoon and it feels very satisfying. I am also loving the color (thank goodness, right?). It's hard to tell from the photo but it's a grayish-green. We bought the crazy expensive Emerald paint from Sherwin-Williams that is also self-priming. According to random stranger passing by, we should still prime anyway but I'm going to trust that the crazy expensive paint is crazy expensive for a reason. It's funny - we get a lot of people driving by, walking by, passing by, all giving us lots of unsolicited advice. It's almost a community project at this point.

Anyway, it looks like it might rain tomorrow so probably no painting or scraping but I'm excited to see some progress that isn't just scrape-worthy.

Day 27 of the Great Esc(r)ape

Blogger tells me this is my 301st post since beginning this blog in 2007. Wow! That's a lot of house projects -- or at least a lot of talking about doing house projects. The latest, of course, being scraping the exterior of the house. Unlike my past house projects, however, this one doesn't seem to be the most interesting to blog about, mostly because very little progress is made in any period of time and the progress that is made looks a lot like the progress made the day before that, and the day before that, and - well, you get it.

Just to demonstrate how much paint has actually been scraped, I took a picture of our full box of paint peelings.

This box is actually the second box we have filled, believe it or not. I also wanted to show the latest area of scraping focus - the porch floor. As you see in the picture below, there is a heckuva lotta paint on this puppy. I don't think I've bothered to ever count layers but there are at least 3-4 layers of gray, a layer of sage green, a layer of dark green, and a cream color.

While the Speed Heater is marvelous at getting most of it off, you can see above a section that has been scraped where there is still paint adhered. I'm guessing that without sanding it's probably the best we're going to get. And, as I've said before, I'm loathe to sand any of it due to the inevitable lead paint that's in there. Anyway, it will end up being better than if we had just painted over the top of it again so we're going to be happy with what we have. I put in my hour for the day so I'm going to call it. We'll end up having a Scrape-a-thon this weekend with Labor Day - maybe even some paint and painting accoutrements will make an appearance? Here's to hoping.

Day 21 of the Great Esc(r)ape

The front of the first floor of the house is officially done. Now, don't go getting all excited - I literally mean the front. Not the floor of the porch, not the railings or stairs - just the front. Ugh. I have worked my fingers to the bone the last two days just to finish the front. I was really hoping for some gratification this weekend by painting at least part of it. The scraping is taking waaaaay longer than I thought (you'd think I would know this by now: that any project you assume will take you X days will actually take you 10X days). I was hoping to have the whole porch scraped by now and be able to paint so I am going to take what I can get. The plan tomorrow is to sand down what's out there and then start painting...yes, what is it that they say about the best laid plans?

One bright thing in my endless slog of a day was finding out that the few 2x4s below (originally put in place to hold the previously existing screened-in porch) not only were finally able to be removed, but revealed the original casing. I was quite sure that the porch contractors had done a hack job on it but - lo and behold - they actually built around the beautiful architectural detail. Huzzah!

So, here's a shot of the front as it stands today. I'm exhausted. It's time to call pizza guy.

Post script: I'm realizing how tired I must be when I post these updates as the parentheses around our little play on words seem to move around the word "Escrape" in the title.