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.

So it seems.....

So it seems that there are a few of you out there who are reading the blog and I am surprised when I meet you and you tell me this. This is of course due to word of mouth but it still surprises me. So first off, I wanted to thank you all for checking in. It is reassuring to know that there are some people out there who are interested.

Now I have been thinking about these posts lately that have been about furnishings and what is actually going into the house. I have had a conflict with whether or not this is valid material for such a place. I go from thinking about this being a house blog and focusing on floors, re-glazing windows etc, to this aspect of the house which is more about decorating and less about restoring. I feel that the character of the house is enhanced by the decor, and that is a vote for keeping up with the design postings.... but my conflict continues. I am posting a poll to see what you think. Be my guest and vote!

Third floor spare bedroom renovation

So the main spare bedroom is underway. The first task was to remove a very strange set of closets that had been haphazardly installed. There were four solid handmade pine doors across the outside wall. Behind each was a bay with a hanging bar and each bay was lined with cedar particle board. Now I am making this sound a lot better than it actually was. The cedar board was screwed in with dozens of drywall screws, the design was all wrong for the house, and it was unfinished. The good news is that when I took the unit out, most of the solid pine that was used was recyclable. I will use this wood for shelves in the attic studio. The closet was not too difficult....easy in fact compared to the floors.

The floor was painted around the carpet which was both good and bad in terms of sanding the floor. The painted area was a top layer of acrylic, a layer of glue which held the carpet, and two more layers of paint. The disc on the sander hits this and immediately gums up. I picked up a heat gun and tried to remove all that I could before sanding. This worked a bit better and I have made some progress. The area that was unfinished has had so much foot traffic without the protection of the carpet that the pine is more of a grey color than a patina. The area under the paint has a more of a patina to it and matching that to the grey dirty area has proven difficult. Eliminating the rectangle in the middle of the floor will be a challenge. Here are some pics.

Before:

Here is the sandpaper pad

New dining room chairs!

So I went down to Mode Moderne and bought some Eames DCM chairs. Michael at the store was extremely patient as he took me to the warehouse and looked over what was available. I cannot say enough great things about them. This place is packed with great finds which are all in great shape. You can see the website here. Below are some pics of the chairs.