Exterior Paint : It's Gotta be Done

I’ve been thinking a lot about paint these days. Exterior paint, to be exact. My poor old farm house still looks like it always has from the outside. And while that’s been a definite asset for our property taxes, it really would be nice to pull into the driveway and smile instead of sigh. My neighbors would probably be happier, too. 

Three very different directions have been rolling around my head. First, there’s the clean look of white. 

My brother tells me, “Sis, a nice coat of white paint makes all the difference in the world. Everything looks nice and tidy.” He’s right, of course. And my house is definitely a prime architectural specimen for white paint. This old folk Victorian has plenty of peers the same color. Plus, there’s something nice about a simple white house. 

Farmhouse Exterior

But then my bohemian side pokes out her head. She likes bold colors. She likes RED! That’s a new thing with me. I spent over a decade clinging to all things taupe and taupe-adjacent. A former landlady used to laugh and say that no matter where I lived, she would always know my home just by walking in the front door. Because every house of hers that I lived in, and there were a few, I painted taupe. 

Or taupe-adjacent. 

I do love this red, though. I’m not a fan of cherry red or burgundy red, but I love a warm, sort of barn red. 

Farmhouse Exterior by Little Rock General Contractors Bret Franks Construction, Inc.

Once that’s settled down, my sensible side kicks my bohemian side in the shins and says, “No, no, no. You want blue!” Ok, not true blue, not primary color on the color wheel blue. But blue adjacent? I think grayed-down blues are very nice. I remember a long time ago, seeing a paint chip that was called "Federal Blue," and that's always been my bar for gray blue. 

And with white trim, blues can also look very clean. It’s the contrast, I imagine. I really do like the idea of a blue house. And the neighbors might not be as shocked as they would with red.

Oh, but then I remember my poor hubby. He likes red, but maybe not for the whole exterior. He is “meh” about white. I can't even consider anything in the same zipcode as brown, since he hates it so much. And I’m not sure what he thinks about blue. What he likes is gray. 

Not grayish something. Just plain old gray. Battleship gray. Bless his heart. But I do think that maybe, with the right level of gray, that might work, too. Especially with a bright colored door. 

Farmhouse Exterior by Providence Architects & Building Designers Union Studio, Architecture & Community Design

I’m just not sure. I mean, I am sure that the house must be painted. Baby poop brown, which is what I've got now,  is nobody’s favorite. And I really am tired of having the ugliest house on the block. 

What do you think? 

This really shouldn’t be as difficult as it is.


XOXO

Paint can image credit: United Soybean Board https://www.flickr.com/photos/unitedsoybean/ 

Once Upon a Window Seat, Part IV: The Final Chapter

Catch up on the project with Part I , Part II and Part III.

The mostly finished window seat and book cases.

Building a window seat and book cases in our living room proved to be challenging, but the work wasn't over after the last board was fastened and the last cabinet door hung. I wanted the wood to complement the other dark woods in the room. Woods that are likely to remain, such as the mahogany china cabinet, antique piano and foyer doors. 

This piano is probably the oldest thing that I own. 

One thing that breaks my heart about this house is that the old, original parquet floor in the foyer only comes part of the way into the living room. Oh, to have parquet throughout the house!

I used oil-based stain because it has a longer working time than water-based. With pine, you never can tell how stain will absorb, so I wanted something that I could work into the wood really well. I chose antique walnut, which is the same stain that I used on the foyer doors. It also complements the piano and china cabinet. Wearing rubber gloves is a must when working with stain, especially if you're covering a lot of ground.  

Find an old rag that you don't mind sacrificing, and rub the stain into the wood really well. When you wipe off the excess, work in the same direction as the wood grain to avoid dark streaks. 

Smaller cabinet door for under the window seat.

The trim around the cabinet doors doesn't match the plywood perfectly because they're different species with different levels of porosity and wood grain. Once I wiped on polyurethane after the stain was set, the colors turned richer and the differences became less noticeable. Although we hadn't painted the room yet, I taped off the walls around the cabinets to protect them from stain.

Although I knew better, I used masking tape to tape off the cabinet. It peeled off some of the paint primer on the walls. If you try this at home, do yourself a favor and use painter's tape.

After staining, I installed the cabinet hardware. Prefab cabinets come with pre-drilled holes for hardware. When you build your own, you have to figure out where the hardware goes. 

First, I measured the distance between bolt openings on the door handles. They're usually somewhat standard, but measuring helps avoid major screw ups. I marked the edge of the cabinet door to show where the handle should fit.  

Sometimes it's easier to measure from the 1-inch mark than from the end of the tape.

Tiny silver marks on the door from a washable marker help with alignment.

Finding the width of the trim helps you find the center where the handles should fit.

Speed Squares are such amazing little tools. So simple, but they help you keep everything straight. 

Speed Squares have a perfect 90-degree angle, which keeps things straight as long as the edge of the board is also straight.

To the extent possible, keep the drill bit horizontal to the plane of the cabinet door. If the bolt holes are tilted, the bolts won't align with the door handles.

Slip the bolts through the back side of the door and into the handles, and tighten them until the handle fits snug against the door. 

After installing the hardware, there was one more thing left to do. I deliberately left the back wall of the book shelves bare because I wanted to decoupage pages from old books. 

I cut out certain paged and pasted them on the wall with thinned wood glue and a sponge paintbrush. It's like going back to kindergarten craft time, except that nobody tells you not to eat the paste (Don't eat the paste!). The only rules that I discovered are that thinning the glue with water makes it easier to spread, but thinning it too much can warp the pages. 

This is my Edgar Allan Poe section when I'd just started the job. 

Lime green flip flops aren't mandatory. 

We ran out of time because company was arriving, so I had to put the remainder of decoupaging on pause. I do that a lot, putting off projects. 

A bit of advice for decoupaging. Cover the surface with pages that aren't special before layering on the pages that you want to see. That way, you won't have to cut and trim and cuss to make the pages fit the way you want them to. I trimmed and cussed a bit. 

Besides finishing the back walls, there are two more things that have to be done. I still need to finish sewing the bench cushion cover, and I want to install a plant shelf between the two book cases. Mr. V. and I found two of these brackets at a little antique shop, and they will fit under the left and right ends of the shelf. 

$20 for a pair of these. Not too shabby. 

It will look a little something like this, except that I'll fasten them to the cabinets so that Mr. V. doesn't have to hold them forever. 

He isn't crazy about modeling for me.

All in all, I would call this project an official success. The bench seat is so sturdy that I can walk on it without any bends or creaks, and the cabinets are so sound that I think that's where I'll hide next tornado season. 

Building a custom cabinet takes a lot of planning, flexibility and compromise, especially in an old house where nothing is square.  But that's also part of the fun. You can customize it any way that you like. As long as the structure is sound, anything goes. 

XOXO

Once Upon a Window Seat, Part III

Other installments of this project are found at these links: Part I , Part II and Part IV.

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This is the third installation of my window seat and book case project. In Part I, I showed how Mr. Vagabond and I plotted the layout and started building the framework. Part II shows real progress with the bones of the window seat and book case really taking shape. In this installation, Part III, we’ll take a look at some finishing work issues that arose and how we worked around them. 

Throughout this project, I learned one very annoying thing: It’s not easy to find a straight board. At the finishing carpentry stage, I also discovered that it’s not necessarily a good idea to buy small boards in strapped bundles. 

We needed 1 x 2 pine boards to use as cleats, which would support the shelves. We bought a bundle of “premium” boards that looked pretty straight. The label gave me some confidence about the purchase:

See? Premium lumber. It has to be good, right? We were disappointed when we cut the straps on the bundle at home. 

Aside from the fact that there was not a single straight board in the bundle, we also discovered this:

This made me wonder what other grades they carry besides “premium” and what those grades look like. The challenges that this premium lumber presented were wrestling with each of the boards to mount them relatively straight, and sanding off the rough, gnawed-looking texture. Thankfully, 1 x 2s are thin and light, so we were able to force them into position as we screwed them into place. To do that, we marked off the level line where the board would mount, pre-drilled the holes and then fastened a board with one screw. After one screw was inserted we pushed or pulled to align the board, and then fought with the rest until it was secure and somewhat straight. Never underestimate the importance of checking the lumber that you buy to ensure that it’s straight. If there are several boards strapped into a bundle, cut the bundle and check each one.

Sanding off the coarse surface proved to be an impossible feat. The more I sanded, the worse it looked. It went from jagged to fuzzy, and never improved from that point. I turned the most awful side toward the wall, and let the least awful side face out. Because I needed nice-looking boards for the front edge of each of the shelves, we made another trip and bought cedar 1 x 2s. They had beautiful, clean, straight edges.

Most of the materials that we used were pine. Additionally, we used poplar plywood and some cedar trim. Staining the three to look reasonably uniform was challenging, but it worked out. 

There’s a trick to nailing a board and then hiding those nails, and that trick is called “countersinking.” Finish carpenters know this trick well, and it is one way to make your project look more professional. This is a close-up image of one of the cedar boards after I had driven in a finishing nail. Notice that the small nail head stands proud of the face of the board. Also note the small depression in the center of the nail head. 

The plywood peeking out under the cedar board would eventually be covered with fancy trim molding. 

I drove in each nail, leaving the head proud of the boards by about 1/16 inch. This saved the boards from being dented by the hammer. Countersinking the nails requires a small tool called a nail set, or you can also use a larger nail or a screw, like I am using here. Anything with a small tip and a head that you can whack with a hammer will sink the nails. 

Tap the nail set or nail or screw with a hammer, driving in the nail until it looks like the next photo. This leaves a small depression that you can fill with stainable wood putty, or caulk if you plan to paint the board. 

After the book cases were finished, we started on the cabinet doors. The left and right cabinets needed doors, and we worked around the nailed-down bench seat by building doors for the front side of the window seat. In this photo, the doors are only set into place and held there with shims. This just gave us an idea of how it would look once the doors were hung.

The doors were another very simple design. I cut 1 x 4s with 45-degree mitered corners, forming a frame that fit each opening. Then I covered the back side with plywood. It’s wise to measure each opening separately and build each door to fit those measurements. Measuring one opening and building the doors the same will invariably result in one door that doesn’t fit. After cutting the frame boards, I set them on a very sturdy and very flat surface, pre-drilled through the corners of the frame and nailed the assemblies together. You can use wood glue for a tighter fit at the joints, if you like, but it wasn’t necessary with ours. This is basic joinery; a butt joint. Butt joints are where two pieces of wood are butted together and fastened. If you have mad woodworking skills, you’ll probably want a fancier, sturdier joint. 

Covering the back side of the door frames was fairly easy. I cut the plywood approximately 1 inch smaller on each side, making a piece that fit the opening, and with a generous amount of excess past the edges of the frame opening on the back side. After laying the plywood on the back side of the frame and nailing it down, I secured each edge of the plywood to the frame with very plain, narrow, lipped molding. The small lip slips over the edge of the plywood and fits flush for a clean, tidy look on the back side of the doors. 

At this stage of the game, we were really starting to see major improvement. The whole room took on a more finished look, which is saying a lot. The living room has been one of the biggest challenges in the renovation. It’s a little over 12 feet wide, but almost 30 feet long. The window seat and book cases helped balance the room tremendously, making it feel less like a shotgun and more like a living space. 

My next and last installment will be staining the book case, and a special treatment that I am still applying to the back wall inside each of the book shelves.  


XOXO

Broom Fell, Company's Coming

**It's been a while since my last post. Late winter and early spring always seem to be ridiculously busy. This past season was no exception. But now I'm gearing back up for renovating this house.

Anyone who knows me also knows that my house is never visitor-friendly. It’s a construction zone with (mostly) nail-free sleeping areas, a (mostly) finished kitchen and a (mostly) finished downstairs bathroom. Everything else is a black hole of doom that’s riddled with stacks of plywood and lumber, power tools, hand tools, nails, screws, paint buckets and measuring tapes. After my morning staircase sweeping ritual today, the broom fell in the foyer. If you’re superstitious like me, a broom hitting the floor is never a good sign. It looks like company is coming, so I’d better get crack-a-lackin. 

After settling the broom back against the wall, I looked for my measuring tape. One of my measuring tapes. ANY of the scores of measuring tapes in this house would be fine, if I could just find one. But I found something better, which was a very special old notebook. Like any writer, I have notebooks upon notebooks, many of them so old I can’t even remember what’s inside. But this one is different. I recognized it immediately. This notebook contains every measurement of every wall, floor, doorway, window (even the crooked, round window), alcove and hallway in this house. Forget the measuring tape; I just struck gold. Let’s get this party started!

When I say we measured everything, I mean everything. Even the rafters in the attic!

Now, when planning for company, it’s best to begin with the things that absolutely must be finished by the time they arrive, which will probably be later in the summer by the way the broom bounced. Thank goodness it didn’t flip over. You don’t even wanna know. Mystical broom bouncing has a lot of subtle nuances to consider. With that in mind, I have two major project that I want to complete. Three, if the stars align just right. I need a functional laundry room, I want to finish the windowseat/bookcase combination in the living room and I’d love to have the upstairs bathroom beautified. 

Saying that I need a functional laundry room isn’t quite fair to the room. It functions just fine, but it’s a long way from convenient. When we moved here, Mr. Vagabond had the brilliant idea that we didn’t need any furniture for our bedroom besides a bed and nightstands. In his opinion, we should store all our clothes in the laundry room. I argued with him about that, but I eventually had to admit that he was right. We have never dressed in the bedroom, and we probably never will. We take clothes to the bathroom to dress, and the bathroom is just a few steps from the laundry room. I hate it when he’s right.  The problem with his brilliant idea is that all we have in the laundry room are a couple small cabinets and a bunch of shelves. I need cabinets in there, so that’s on the list. 

I refuse to post an image of the laundry room in its current state. You're welcome.

As for the windowseat/bookcase in the living room, that one shouldn’t be too difficult. I already have it framed out on the floor. I just need to finish building it, and then get it painted. 

The birth of a windowseat and book case. Salvaged lumber came in handy.

I'm thinking about something kind of like this:

This would be an easy build.

Or this:

Not so easy, but I love the idea of a table in front of the windowseat. 

The upstairs bathroom is a whole ‘nuther story. That room is beyond hope. No amount of paint or new flooring is going to cut it. That room has to be gutted and completely redone. 

First, it looked like this:

Ew.

Then it looked like this:

Not much better, but at least it's not disgusting.

The shower stall is so tiny, I can barely shower in it without knocking down the curtain. There's a pile of Romex in the shower and a big weird curtain in this photo. Don't ask. I have no idea why.

As you can see, I have my work cut out for me. What else is new? 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting photos of my progress. Stay tuned!  And for Pete’s sake, steady those brooms. 

P.S.  Did I mention that I also really, really need a deck out back?

XOXO