Bedroom Renovation (Part II) - Paint Stripping

Instead of just repainting everything in my spare bedroom (which already has at least 4 coats of paint), I decided to return some of cypress moldings to their original glory. Since this involves removing lead-based paint, I used a chemical stripper 2 or 3 times followed by a belt and palm sander with 50, 80, and 120 grit sandpaper. A respirator is a must for this job... when sanding, lead particles become airborne and can cause serious health problems if inhaled or ingested.

I started on the baseboards first, with the help of JT. The paint stripper causes the paint to bubble and form this goo-like substance.

After the first stripping, it doesn't look much better.

But after the third stripping, I finally get down to the cypress.

After sanding... beau-t-ful.

My trusty brother showed up and we took care of one of the window casings. These are definitely going to stained and urethaned, so we took extra care in sanding to get all the imperfections out of the wood. That is... except for the gouges that I really liked. They look amazing.

Once all the wood is stripped of its menacing paint, we'll begin the staining process. I still haven't decided how dark, or light, I want the wood to remain. But for now, more paint stripping and sanding awaits...

Library Renovation (Part I) - Floor Demolition

In keeping with my "seek and destroy" renovation style, I decided to remove the vinyl flooring in my library area at the top of the stairs. A couple "before" pictures for the record.

My brother helped with the laborious task of removing the vinyl from the subfloor and then removing the subfloor from the original pine floors. Upon removal, the original flooring was littered with nails that had to be removed. I snapped a couple photos of the nails up and down the hall.

As of yesterday, all the nails are removed and I've started removing the shoe molding and baseboards from both the bedroom and the library area. Next is to strip and sand the paint from the moldings to get back down to the original cypress. At this point, I'm thinking some of the moldings will be stained and clear coated and some will be painted again. But it changes daily.

Bedroom Renovation (Part I) - Demolition

My brother and I started to renovate the spare bedroom in my house, where he will live, a couple weeks ago. This is the first major project I've undertaken, that is except the huge 5 foot hole I had to dig in my front yard to fix a seperated sewerage line. So I guess this is the second major project. Anyway, the original room wasn't aesthetically pleasing to say the least. The green carpet and pegboard all over the walls was hideous. Ouch!

We ripped out the filthy, dusty carpet and to our surprise there were very nice pine floors underneath... just like the rest of the house. We discovered some very cool wallpaper underneath the pegboard. That stuff had probably been on the walls for 50+ years. But it had to come down, which was a real pain. As of yesterday, we finally have all the wallpaper removed.

Wallpaper photo by E.J. Martinez

We're done all the "demo" aspects of the project, and are now moving on to the more detailed work. The windows don't work, so I started to take the window casings apart to fix the counter weights. The windows will also need to be removed, scraped, sanded, and repainted. The plaster walls will need to be touched up where the pegboard nails went through, and there are a couple spots where the plaster is cracking. All the moulding will need to be prepped for paint as well. My goal is to be ready for paint in two weeks. The pictures below show the progress as of last Friday.