Refinishing, Rejuvinating

After a long, gray winter, the sun is finally shining again, and THANK GOD for that. After many months of avoiding the outdoors and dreading all situations which expose me to the cold for longer than 10 minutes at a time (including every activity at the house), the weather FINALLY hit 70-flipping-gorgeous degrees yesterday. Hallelujah! I even dared to bare my pasty white legs in a pair of shorts today (no, no one was blinded)! And yesterday? I went to bed excited, yes excited, to get up and work on the house again today. Sheesh, I don't think I've been excited about working on the house since...well...the last time the sun was shining...sooo last summer?

But I'm not the only thing getting refreshed around here. While Dad and Todd have been tying up loose ends on the electrical and starting to run duct work for the heating/AC, Mom and I have been tending to some of the finishing work on things like the fireplaces and old woodwork.

I'll be honest, I can't take much credit for the fireplaces. I think I spent one solid afternoon scraping, during which I was more than likely moving at the speed of a snail while silently debating whether I would wear boots or wedges, or wedges then boots, at our wedding this summer.  

Mom, on the other hand, worked her butt off first scraping the bricks first with a chisel to remove all the tangbile debris then scrubbing away the remaining mortar with an acid wash. It was a multiple day process that required more than one wire brush and a lot of muscle, but I think even she would tell you it was worth it. It's amazing to see the original brickwork in all its luster!

Un-chiseled brick v. chiseled brick

Chisel and Cleaned brick - looking brand new!

Halfway through the chiseling effort on the kitchen fireplace.

We're leaving both the kitchen and den fireplaces exposed so we had to clean the full faces of both.

This week, I got to work removing the old paint from the outside window trim. It was a process we had originally turned down, opting instead to just paint over the 100-year paint build-up, but after we installed the new windows we realized needed an additional small piece of trim to cover any gaps between the outer frames and the new window sashes. Once I started scraping in preparation for the new trim, I got a little carried away and decided to try and smooth out all the trim as well. Two days in and not even two windows down. Worth the time? To be determined...

Partially scraped trimwork

There are two things I like about this photo: a) fully functional windows and b) sunshine!

Finally getting down to the wood

The trim has shape? One that doesn't resemble a drippy sandcastle?!

Meanwhile, Mom started working on refinishing the old back porch ceiling. Many years ago, the house had a small back porch which was later closed in and turned into indoor square footage, a common occurrence in so many old homes. Then, when Dad and Todd installed the patio doors for the upstairs a few months back, they replaced some rotting beams on the first floor ceiling and removed the old porch ceiling which had been left hanging for all these years. Surprisingly, Mom insisted on saving the wood for some crafting later, and I, being the character-obsessed restorer that I am, agreed to save it for whatever she had in mind. I'm glad we all trusted her! This week, she went to work sanding and waxing the boards to bring out some of the old paint colors which had long been hidden, as well as the original wood underneath. How's that for character? We should have just enough to use the wood as an accent wall in our downstairs bathroom (the bathroom I've insisted on being funky and charm-filled).  Hoorah!

Wood in it's original state, 17 layers of chippy paint and all.

The beginning of the sanding process...

After: Sanded and waxed to funky perfection.