Main Bathroom Update

The main bathroom is another project that I have been working on. Last week I finished cutting in the primer on the walls, then I scraped all the trim.

One of the neat things I found here was the old exterior trim color, it's the brown/olive looking color on the door casing. This room used to be a side porch. I know this was an exterior color because when they closed the porch in and hung the interior door they just slapped the hinges up on the casing, you can see where they were on the casing on the right. That color was directly underneath.

Once the scraping was done I primered and painted all the trim, then painted the walls.

Sorry for the pics, it's very hard to get decent shots in this room.

Left to do still is install 1/4 round and baseboards, caulk, and paint the ceiling.

Porch Update

I finished painting the white trim area on the porch and finished up installing the drip edge.

This is how the porch looks as of now.

Next I'm going to turn my attention to the upstairs balcony.

Installing drip edge on porch roof

Yesterday I began installing the drip edge on the porch roof. I should have done this last year when I installed the shingles but for some reason I didnt.

I had to cut the drip edge for the curved section of the roof. It's sort of like a kerf cut.

I was able to complete about 2/3 of the roof. I still have to paint the other part before I put the drip edge up.

 Before

After

Screen Porch

Over the weekend I worked on the screen porch. I had mentioned earlier that there was one small section that I didnt get screened in because I needed to finish framing it in. When this was a sunroom this section was just closed off, there wasnt a window here. You can see the section I'm talking about in this picture from last week. It's the small strip between the column and the wall.

Here is the basic framing.

Instead of hacking up the trim on the columns as was done previously I cut the framing to fit around the trim.

You can see the missing trim that was cut away previously, this will be replaced later.

I added beadboard to the top to match the rest of the porch then primered and painted it and installed the screen.

There are still lots of little trim pieces to add to it but I needed to hurry and get the final screen up.

With the porch completely screened in we cleared the room out and pulled up the masonite that was stapled down to the original floor. It took about an hour to pull out all the 1" long staples from the floor.

With that done we brought our wicker furniture in.

The next day I began work on the brackets for the screen doors. We still have one original screen door on the house, it is on the upstairs front porch door. The screen door is built the exact same way but it has some very nice brackets on them.

I removed one of the brackets to use as a pattern.

Sixteen brackets later and I primered and painted them.

Then installed them.

Man, what a difference it makes. Soon I'll build a screen door for the front door, then all the screen doors on the house will match.

Columns complete

Yesterday afternoon I finished painting the columns. I still have some trim to install on them but that needs to wait until the railing and balusters get installed.

I also attached the aluminum screen to the doors, installed them, and installed the screen all the way around the screen porch (except for one small area that needs some more framing). Hopefully today I can scrape, primer, paint and install the trim that covers the edges of the screen.

Front Porch Work

Well I've finally gotten back to work on the house. It feels really good to be accomplishing things on the house again. It's been almost 6 months now... I took the entire week off last week so I could get the front porch done.

I was so excited about getting back to work again that I forgot to take pictures the first few days.

I started by clearing out the screen porch area, it had become a holding space for new antiques in need of restoration. Then I began installing the 2x4 framing that the screen will attach to. While I was doing this I had some help that was scraping old paint and primering on the rest of the porch.

There was an area of the framing on the screen porch that was missing. It was made this way but I still cant figure out why. Anyways I built the sill just like the rest of it. Here is a pic of it (sorry, no before pic).

I will fill the seams in with bondo and sand it smooth.

I found a nice set of wood screen doors at Home Depot for $20 each! I had to widen the doorway by 6" and cut down the doors by about 4" for them to fit. I used a dowel jig to reattach the top part of the door.

In the above picture they are just sitting in place. I took out the fiberglass screen and will be using aluminum screen in it's place.

Next I got back to stripping the columns. The last time I worked on the columns was last year, you can see those posts here, and here.

The double column at the right side of the stairs had a lot of rot at the bottom. Unfortunately there was no saving the bottom section. The wood used in the columns is 1" and 1 1/4" thick so I bought 2x6's and 2x8's and ripped them down to the correct thickness. Here is the rebuilt bottom section, as I mentioned before I didnt get pictures for the first few days so I dont have a before picture of the column base.

Then I installed the top part of the column and primered it. The capital of the column was also rotted. The way it's built it has a large block of wood in the center and the decorative trim is attached to it. The large block of wood is what was rotted. I used an old sill beam to get the correct size piece of wood I needed, 3 1/2"x6 3/4"x18". I ripped it to size then attached the trim to it.

Then I installed the column.

The capital is built wrong so I'm going to need to take it back down and rebuild it.


Another capital had a lot of rot so I had to rebuild it as well. This one is not near as complex as the double one.

As you can see from the picture above there are only two original pieces on this one. I ripped the block of wood to size then cut out the decorative trim by tracing an original piece from another capital on to a 1x6, then cutting it out with a jig saw. I used wood hardener on the original piece that had some rot.


Next I finished rebuilding the soffets and facia on the porch roof. Here is a before picture of one of the areas.

And here is after installing the soffet and facia.

The spray foam is a small area of rot that I couldnt cut out. I filled it with the spray foam then I'm going to cut it down and cover it with bondo then sand it smooth. I still need to install the facia trim in two areas that you can see missing in the pic.

In the before picture above you can see that the ceiling was missing from the front part of the porch. That was the next thing that I installed.

With all the columns finally installed I began painting them.

I finished four columns before it got dark on me. I will finish painting the rest of the columns this afternoon then finish painting the screen porch area so I can install the screen.

Work continues on the columns

I am slowly getting the columns done. So far I have 4 of the 8 1/2 columns that I took down re-installed.

I'm making one change to the columns as I put them back up. The cap where the top and bottom parts of the colum meet is a weak spot. The cap is nailed to the bottom part of the column then the top part is toe-nailed to the cap.

I know it sat that way for over 100 years without a problem but I feel better adding a little structural staility to this area.

What I'm doing is taking a small 4x4 piece and screwing it to the base with 3" deck screws. I then screw a 3/4" piece of flooring to the 4x4. This makes 4 1/4", the size of the opening in the top part of the column.

I then take the top part of the column and slide it over the 4x4 and secure it into place with more 3" deck screws. This also has the added benefit of repairing the caps, most of which are split in half as you can see from the picture above.

I got a little bit ahead of myself and started installing them before primering. Hopefully I can finish all the columns by this weekend. That may be a bit of a challenge though, the double column by the steps has rot at the base, and the capital is rotted on the single column across from it.

Porch Columns

I decided to get back to work on the front porch columns. They have been sitting outside in the elements since I took them down way back in March.

I didn't get many pictures of my progress. Here is a picture of one of the columns during scraping.

This is the top half of the column. I am completely removing all the paint from the columns so it's a very slow and tedious process. I completely stripped, primered and installed one column and stripped half of another column before it got dark.

Here is a pic of the column installed, it's not a great shot since it was dark before I remembered to take the picture:

House Painting

Yesterday I painted the front first floor of the house.

House painting and other things...

Even though I haven't posted in over 10 days a lot has been going on here.

I finally finished laying the insulation and sub-floor for the laundry room/attic.

We also decided to hire out the scraping and primering of the house since we are running out of time before the baby is born.

It doesn't even look like the same house with some primer on it. It's about half way done now.

Last night we installed the attic stairs that go to the main attic. The main reason for this is not really storage but the huge amount of debris up there. It's full of 120 years of coal dust, bits of cedar shingles, and mortar from the chimneys. The coal dust and other debris is slowly sifting down through the beadboard ceiling and getting all over everything. The existing attic access was barely large enough for me to squeeze through, let alone a shop-vac.

Here is the opening framed out.

Here is the stairs in place.

I will clean up the ceiling and add the trim later.

This morning I painted the porch floor. It's a Valspar porch paint, the color is brownstone.