Sneak Peek at the Spare Bedroom before/after

Before

Unfortunately there are no really detailed "before" photos of the walls and their condition. I can assure you that they looked like they had been imported from afghanistan. The patching and sanding on this room alone took me an eternity.... or so it seemed. The paint on the floor was also an issue. It too much longer to heat and scrape that off than I ever expected. Here are some after shots........




There is only one coat of finish on the floor in these shots and as you can see, it is still drying. I will hit it with 3 more this week and we should be moving the furniture in a week after that. The blue was hard to capture with the light coming in the windows, but it is somewhere between a robin's egg and a Tiffany's box.

Some images of the brick and what I am up against

Here are some photos that I took of the immediate brick issues that I could see. I am sure that once I get up on a ladder and begin examining, the issues will increase in number.


You can see in the photo above the sloppy, concrete based mortar applied to the joints. It is on the surface of the brick and is generally awful looking.



The image above represents what a majority of the brick is starting to look like. This is why I am seriously concerned.



This is an example of the moisture getting into the porous brick and cracking off the surface when it freezes. Repointing will put an end to this.

Ok, so there are many projects afoot

I am currently working on many different projects at once. Dining room, final punch list in the living room, the spare bedroom floors and walls, a contractor is coming to do the front steps, and the second tier of the rock wall terrace. WIth all of this on my plate, I am feeling much pressure to begin pointing the brick on the house. This pressure is mostly from sweeping up the newly dissolved mortar that has fallen onto the walkways week after week. I also seem to have a carpenter bee problem as I have seen them burrowing into the mortar on the front of the house. I have been taking pictures of the current state of the brick and doing some reading on how to properly do the work. I am going to do this little by little as I have with all the other projects. Here is a great link that I found to an article on This Old House's website on repointing brick. You may love it!

Click here for the article

Stone Wall #1 Before and After

So one of the first jobs I started on when we moved in was to repair this collapsed wall. There was an earlier post of this, but these photos should give you an idea.

Here is the before:


and here is the after:

Trying to save the bedroom door

We found this in the back corner of the basement. It has some pretty severe water damage and one of the tenons has pulled away slightly. It perfectly measures the opening in the bedroom doorway, so this means that we can use it if we can resurrect it. I am certain that it is original to the house. I will be working on this over the weekend. More then.

Some before and after flooring

So I have been on the flooring kick lately and I don't think I posted any comparison photos. Here is the first one:

This is the division between the living room and the dining room. The living room is finished. It is the perfect shot to give you the before and after idea. Here are two more with the close up of each side:
This with the tung oil and resin...

This was what the floors looked like before.

Gonna Reupholster this baby in Mohair

Found this lovely piece at a garage sale in Upper Black Eddy, PA. for the very reasonable price of $50! I am looking for some upholstery mohair in white to re-cover it in. I may dye the mohair a cool green so that it has some reference to the original.

Some notes about the pine floors...... again

Sometimes, when you pull back the carpet on an old wood floor, there is evidence of where area rugs used to be. You can see this because there is a significantly large rectangle of bare wood in the center of the room, and the flooring around that rectangle has been painted. I had mentioned this in an earlier post, and I was optimistic about the fact that this would make refinish much easier. I was totally wrong and here is why.

First off, the bare patch in the middle had no protection whatsoever. As dirt filtered through the carpet, it was forced into the grain of the soft pine below. This fact coupled with there being no rug on that floor for many years has created a floor that is not so much patinated as it is grey. Grey with general dirt patina....... Now, when you also take into consideration that the floors were exposed and not treated with oil to maintain their flexibility, you have a situation where the grain is starting to delaminate. While sanding, the disc tends to slide under one of these lifted grain laminations and rips it free. This has become a whole new challenge. I am getting there in terms of having the floor ready for finish, but it has taken a far greater effort than the floor downstairs that had the polyurethane on it. Between the urethane coating and the exposed bare floor ( both being damaging treatments ) I would take the urethane over no protection in terms of a restoration project.

I will begin to apply the first finish coat next weekend. More on this when I have photos or news.