Living Room

The living room is about 18' x 12'. On the front wall there is a large fixed window, another wall has a brick fireplace with a double hung window on either side, another wall has the entry into the dining room, and the last wall has an entry way coming from the small foyer.

The fireplace, as well as all the woodwork has been painted over (several times). The keys of the plaster ceiling are starting to fail and it is rippled in some areas. The original floor is intact, although covered with paint splatters, and some old carpet glue (at least that's my best guess as to what it is). The original floor registers have been boarded from behind and are no longer functional. Instead, someone installed ugly baseboard registers. There is no ceiling light or fan (only room without). There is a very strange electrical outlet on the front wall, like nothing I've ever seen before.

My plans for this room include:

• stripping the paint from the brick fireplace
• removing the plaster ceiling and replacing with drywall
• stripping the paint and refinishing all woodwork
• restoring the two double hung windows
• refinishing the floor
• removing the wall between the living room and dining room, to bring the staircase into the living room
• adding electrical outlets
• installing a light fixture in the ceiling and ceiling fan
• painting the walls and ceiling

Before moving in, I removed the carpet from this room. Removing all the tack strips and staples was a lot more time consuming.



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FIREPLACE RESTORATION

I wanted to start with stripping the paint off the brick fireplace. 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". After searching the internet, I came across someone's advice of soda blasting. Instead of shooting sand, this machine shoots baking soda, a non-abrasive alternative which doesn't cause any damage to bricks or mortar. In fact, you can even use it to strip woodwork and to clean paint off glass! 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, and fire damage. After watching some videos of it in action, I was sold.

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 (which, oddly, is black). 1 bag of baking soda, 50lbs, lasted a bit over 2 hrs and only 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 not much 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 compressor, which could barely keep up, I gave in and rented an industrial compressor. Then I started flying through the bags of soda. It used to take 2 hrs to get through one 50lb bag with my compressor. It took about 20 min with the big compressor.

Earlier, 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. This is a serious pain, but it helps a lot.

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. I'm almost done. I still need to clean up the edges.

So far I've used about 20 bags or so of baking soda. My estimate of baking soda, compressor rental, various paint strippers, etc is that I have around $750 in this project total. Way more than I expected. And what I thought would be an easy "weekend project" has taken around 9 months on and off so far...

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 2 days. Remove the paper and scrape as much of the Peel Away off the bricks 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, 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).



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CEILING DEMO

I have removed the plaster ceiling and lath from the living room. That has got to be the dirtiest job on earth. I think I hauled out a ton of plaster and lath, 1 bag at a time, and filled 3 trash cans with lath.