Walnut trim after stripping paint and rubbing with oil mixture.

After hours of stripping paint from woodwork, the walnut wood grain can be seen. I’ve been rubbing the woodwork with a combination of 3-parts boiled linseed oil and 1-part turpentine. You can see part of the trim is shinier- where I’ve rubbed it with oil mixture.

We have lived in the house for 7 months now. Hard to believe! Many projects still in progress including stripping woodwork and finishing the downstairs bathroom.

So far this weekend I have removed the old ceiling tiles and decided the expedient thing to do is to use Rustoleum to spray-paint the metal tracks of the suspended ceiling. It worked quite nicely. I bought new tiles and spray-painted them beige to match the metal tracks. I also managed to strip a good deal of the old wall-paper. A friend who has lots of experience in this tells me it’s OK to wall-paper directly over the old wallpaper as long as it is stuck down tight. I hope this is the case because some patches are difficult to scrape away.

The office located on the second floor in the "tower"

I plan to use brown, tan and blue as my new paint scheme. Will post the “after” pictures soon, I hope!

Bathroom remodel

Checking the level for the walls that will separate the bathroom from the kitchen. So good to have the sub-floor laid! Soon we’ll begin putting in green-board (like drywall, only waterproof) for the walls, then plumbing and eventually tile.

We got a new Insurance company; our previous company dropped us because, basically, the house is too old and the repairs were too extensive for them to keep us. Thank goodness we found a much better agency to work with, and the price was good too.

I have been busy scraping loose plaster from some walls and ceilings. To patch it, I’ve had people recommend Durabond, instead of regular drywall joint compound, so we’ll be giving that a try.

Plans for the immediate future involve getting the bathroom put back together, then moving on to the kitchen. More to come!