Porch Ceiling Restoration

When I removed the aluminum siding, I was disappointed to see that the original beadboard porch ceiling had been painted over. All the porch ceilings in this area were originally stained beadboard. I have taken on the painstaking process of removing this paint. Paint removal is particularly grueling when working upside down. For this project, I decided Peel Away 7 was the best approach. It's obvious that the stain was in beautiful condition when they decided to paint over it.  It is still bright and shiny, but after all the scraping and scrubbing and paint remover, it will probably need to be refinished anyway.

Built In Cabinet Restoration

There are built in cabinets and drawers in the dining room with leaded glass windows above. Like everything else in the house, they have been painted a few times over. I am stripping them down to bare wood and refinishing them and staining them the original color again.

Floor Leveling

There is a load bearing wall down the center of my house. Beneath this wall is a large beam in the basement. One side of this beam is resting on top of the foundation wall. The other stops short of the foundation wall because of the side door landing, and is instead held up by a column. This side has sunk about 2" over the years. So the floors in the house are sloped toward this end of the load bearing wall. This isn't really noticeable in any room other than the kitchen. Since I will be gutting and renovating the kitchen, the floors needed to be leveled. The concrete floor in the basement needed to be broken up in order to pour new footers for 3 new screw jack columns. I bought the heavy duty screw jacks from Lowes after the first ones I bought bent like a tin can. Don't skimp on things that are holding up your house... The idea is to adjust the jacks a tiny bit and gradually lift the beam over time. This is supposed to prevent plaster cracks... I'm sure it helps, but it doesn't prevent them. I have lifted maybe half an inch total in probably 6 months and I have some cracks in the stairwell plaster. Granted, that was the only place in the house where plaster cracks already existed (probably from the gradual drop of the beam) and it just made them worse.

Unfinish Attic

The house has a full walk up attic. It was converted into a "bedroom". The walls were covered with 70s ugly wood paneling. The floors were covered with the same ugly indoor/outdoor carpet that was in most of the house when I moved in. I decided to UN-finish the attic and put it back to original. I stripped the wood paneling and carpet. I found most of the treasures in the attic, including the best one, an old tin toy car probably from the 20s.

Plaster Ceiling Demo

The house has most of its original plaster ceilings and walls in tact and in very good condition. However, there were some noticeable sagging lines in the ceilings from plaster key failure. I decided to just remove them. I want to keep all the walls original, but I think plaster is just too heavy to be on a ceiling. So I will be replacing them with drywall. An added benefit of removed ceilings is that there is easy access for rewiring, insulating, etc. I wouldn't recommend this if you have nice floors as hundreds of pounds of plaster and lath goes crashing to the floor throughout the process. My floors need refinished so this was not a concern of mine. But it did create a massive mess. There is 100 years of black filth (from coal furnace?) behind the plaster and lath, mixed with plaster dust and such. You must remove everything from the room first. And then hauling it all to the curb takes several trips and is backbreaking work.

Exterior Paint Stripping

After removing the aluminum siding it was obvious that the paint was in such a state of deterioration that it would need to be completely stripped from the entire house. This is a massive undertaking. There is at least 50 years of bubbly, cracking, peeling paint to remove from a 2.5 story, 1300 sq ft house. Also, all the staples that held on the aluminum siding must be removed, and they don't want to let go.

I began this process by dry scraping. I don't know what I was thinking. Then I purchased a $25 Wagner heat gun, this helped tremendously. I did 2 of the 3 porch railings this way, and both columns. For the clapboard siding I think I have decided on the Paintshaver Pro. This is basically a handheld electric planer that shaves the paint off the face and bottom edge of each clapboard. It is a costly device (around $600 for the cheap model) and should be attached to a HEPA vacuum to suck up the lead paint dust. After a ton of research, this seems like the fastest, most efficient method.

Cedar Shake Siding Replacement

Upon removing the aluminum siding, I realized that the front of the porch originally had cedar shake siding. However, the bottom row and a half of it had been cut to fit the aluminum siding. I tore the old stuff off and put all new cedar shake up in its place. This project took a couple weeks and cost around $250.

Aluminum Siding Removal

The exterior of the house was covered in ugly, boring aluminum siding sometime in the 70s. It covered all the character of the house. This summer I began removing it. I started with the front of the house. The original wood is in great condition. The biggest issue is that in order for them to get the aluminum siding to fit, they broke off the edges of each window sill, cut trim off, or removed trim altogether. The most unfortunate part of all, and what I kick myself for everyday now, is that this missing trim was probably amongst all the misc wood that was piled under the porch which I threw away shortly after moving in. Aghhh! The paint is in really bad shape, it has deep cracks, is peeling, and blistered. It needs to be completely removed from the entire house. The only rotted wood I have found is the porch roof due to bad roofing, and the underside of the roof overhang on the back of the house, also due to bad roofing. All the missing trim has to be fabricated (generally by driving around looking for something similar on someone's house) and replaced. While removing the rear siding, I learned that I used to have a balcony off the bathroom upstairs, on top of my back porch. The door was removed, and a small window put in its place. Next to it used to be a full size original window, also removed.

Brick Fireplace Restoration

The original brick fireplace had been painted over at least 3 times in its life. One of my first projects was to restore it. I began by removing the ugly brass screen. I read that you shouldn't use a sandblaster on masonry, and that the best way was to just use old fashioned elbow grease and paint stripper. After about 10 hours of scraping and scrubbing, I was getting nowhere. I kept thinking "there has to be a better way". I searched the internet and came across someone's advice of "soda blasting". Instead of shooting sand, this machine shoots baking soda, a non-abrasive alternative to sandblasting which doesn't cause damage to bricks or mortar. I did some research and found that it was used to clean the statue of liberty and that it is used a lot for paint removal from bricks of historic buildings, and to clean fire damage. After watching some videos of soda blasting in action, I was sold.

I purchased a soda blaster (which is just a sandblaster with a different feeder valve). After getting fully geared up, with ear plugs, respirator, paint suit, gloves, and hood, I was ready to go. In about 2 hrs of soda blasting, I almost completely cleaned off about 17 bricks and the mortar between. One 50lb bag of baking soda lasted a bit over 2 hrs and cost around $20.

I had to remove EVERYTHING from the living room and seal it off. Open the windows for ventilation, and put an exhaust fan in the window. The room became a giant cloud of dust in no time. After awhile, it looked like I was standing on a white sandy beach, as baking soda covered the entire floor.

After many hours with my air compressor, which could barely keep up, I gave in and rented an industrial compressor. Then I started flying through the bags of soda. I could get through a 50lb bag in less than a half hour.

I had tested some Peel Away 1 on one brick to see if that would work better than soda blasting. It seemed like it would take way too long, so I opted to continue with soda blasting. When I blasted the test brick, I noticed it came cleaner MUCH quicker. So I decided, at that point, to do the whole fireplace with Peel Away.

I covered the entire fireplace with Peel Away 1 and waited about 12 hrs. I peeled off the paper, scraped as much excess Peel Away off the brick as I could, then scrubbed it all down w/ water...BIG sloppy mess. That still left a lot of Peel Away residue on the bricks, and some spots of paint left here and there. I then used the big compressor to clean all the faces of the brick.

If I were to do it over, this is what I would do. Get a bucket (or 2) of Peel Away 1. Put it on (USE GLOVES!) real thick (1/4" or so) and get into the mortar good. Cover it up with the Peel Away paper (you'll have to buy extra packs) -Sherwin Williams. I'd probably wait a week. Remove the paper and scrape as much of the Peel Away as you can. Here's the tricky part. If you already have nice floors, I wouldn't recommend this. I tried everything, plastic, towels, masking tape, and towels to keep the water from the hardwood floors. It didn't work. Luckily, I still need to refinish my floors, so it's not that big of a deal. But supposedly Peel Away 1 will darken hardwoods, so that concerned me. I don't want the area around the fireplace to be darker than the rest of the floor. So now you get bucket after bucket of clean water, and a scrub brush (try to find one w/ long stiff bristles), and scrub the Peel Away off the brick and mortar. Let it dry. Then soda blast. SunBelt Rentals carries the compressor and some even have a nice soda blaster to rent (which I would have done, had I known ahead of time).

This project took me a year on and off, and cost me around $1200. It was the biggest mess on earth, my entire house had baking soda in it, even though I had tried to block off the living room as much as possible. It got into the ventilation system and redistributed all over the entire house. But in the end, it was worth it, the fireplace is beautiful now.

1 year anniversary

April 1st, 2009 marked the one year anniversary of owning my home. I had
planned to be much further along in my restoration, but got a reality
check on how long (and costly) this stuff is. I thought stripping the
paint off the brick fireplace would take ONE weekend and a few gallons
of paint stripper....WRONG! In the end it took me almost a year (on and
off) to complete and over $1000 worth of baking soda, compressor rental,
and other expenses. And I'm STILL cleaning baking soda from my house!
It's EVERYWHERE!

So in one year's time, here is what was accomplished:

• The attic was completely un-finished. All the wood paneling and other
  wall materials were removed, along with some of the framing. All of the
  carpet was removed. About 100 lbs or more of raccoon poop was removed.
  And lots of treasures were discovered, including the most important, the
  tin toy car.
• In the basement, footers were poured to support the new column screw
  jacks that are supporting the beam which is directly underneath the
  load-bearing wall that goes through the center of the house, which has
  fallen 2" on one side over the years. The process of jacking the beam
  up is about to begin.
• In the dining room, the sagging plaster ceiling was removed and the
  paint has been partially stripped from the built-in cabinets. Old
  newspapers were discovered under the drawers.
• On the exterior, the awnings were removed from the front two upstairs
  windows and across the porch. A massive mountain of crap was removed
  from under the porch. Minor roof repair was done to the garage. The
  missing gate was replaced on the back of the fence, along with random
  fence boards that had been removed. The side screen door was replaced.
• In the kitchen, at least 5 layers of flooring were removed, which had
  accumulated throughout the years to about an inch and a half thickness.
  The drop ceiling was removed and the remainder of the plaster ceiling
  above was also removed. The sofets above the cabinets were removed.
  The carpeting was removed from the back porch. The wood paneling was
  removed from the back porch, as well as window trim. The drop ceiling
  as well as tongue and groove wood porch ceiling beneath was removed from
  the back porch area. The tongue and groove exterior wall was removed
  from inside the back porch from when it used to be outdoors.
• In the living room, the carpet was removed. The sagging plaster
  ceiling was removed. The paint was stripped from the brick fireplace.
  The baseboards have been removed for paint stripping.
• The carpet was removed from the remainder of the house (upstairs
  bedrooms, hallway, and staircase).
  

Treasures

During the demo, especially in the attic, I've come across a lot of interesting little "treasures". The most notable being the tin toy car I found in the attic. My best guess is that it was made in the 1920s. I have not been able to find any information on it online, haven't seen another like it, and there are no markings on it. I have also come across newspapers, magazines, pictures, tins, jello, gelatin, maple syrup and perfume bottles, etc. More pictures to come...