French doors are a royal pain in the butt

Ok so the perfect patio door that would allow lots of light through was stripped, painted, and re-painted. and then it was time to weatherize.

an important step to block rain and wind from coming inside. so sergey got some clear silicone gel for me, loaded it up into one of those gun squirty things, and told me to go for it:

basically its fairly easy – press on then gun, squeeze out the silicone, smooth it out, wipe off excess with paper towels.… Read the rest

Transom – Finished (almost)!

And yet, much remains to be done. like the molding (thankfully we got some very similar molding at the brass knob warehouse). but for now, here’s what happened after peel away layer 1, 2, and 3 failed to take out the gazillion or so layers of paint covering the transom. I gave up on perfection and decided to sand the transom, rosettes and the top portion of molding.

I did use my sander, although I did resort to sanding sponges to do crevices.… Read the rest

Transom Adventures: take 2 & 3

After second application of peel away was removed, and the transom was scrapped for a few hours, it looked worse, if that’s possible. half the molding missing, probably did not make appearances better

 

so back to putty peel away

the crevices in all their (rather gross) glory, after the third round of peel away. discouraging isn’t it?

 

and the overall take — which i decided would have to do for sanding:

… Read the rest

Transom Adventures

With the plan to put in a new patio door, it made sense to tackle the transom and molding around it. One of the features that sold us on the house is the amount of original woodwork intact – moldings, rosettes, stairs, banister, wood paneling, transoms. All covered by layers, and I mean layers, of paint.

I don’t have a very good before shot of the transom, I was so anxious to get to it.… Read the rest

November/December Chalkboard

i tried to go light on this one (no need to overburden ourselves) and hopefully we will be able to cross that top thing off of our list pretty quickly.

also, we decided to leave the fireplace for the summer, as of right now the chimney sweeps won’t be able to show up before december and really I don’t have any faith in that pledge, so I am just not going to deal with having a hole in my dining room for 2 cold months.… Read the rest

October is not our month

well, we got a few things done. and the things we didn’t, well they aren’t that visible here.

i think between the dryer (nope still don’t have one) and the fireplace (yep still waiting for that estimate in the mail) we deserve a bit of a break. besides, we have been doing lots and lots of measuring as we start thinking about the kitchen lay out. so, I am not going to do a recount (let’s just say chalk board wins this one).… Read the rest

Dryer Saga

documenting our little adventure with the dryers at least gives some sort of satisfaction/closure in the process. we are down to one – we returned the broken electrical one to sears yesterday, still ahve the gas one sitting in out house, since we lost the receipt (yea, not cool, but what are you going to do).

sears didn’t have the one to match our washer in stock. so we came home without one.… Read the rest

Noooooooo

So I did my research on electric dryers. Found the one that actually matches our laundry machine. Found it on sale. purchased the dryer online. no delivery. boooo. off to sears in woodbridge,va we went.

Here we were 40 minutes outside DC on Sunday morning:

(via stereojam)

Pull up to appliance pick up, wait for 40 minutes, the guy can’t find our dryer because our confirmation email doesn’t have the name/picture of the dryer (are you for reals sears????!!!).… Read the rest

in limbo

why did we have to stop work on the drywall?

well, we had another fireplace estimate for work necessary to get our fireplace in the dining room working. it went well.the guy told us we may have to take apart part of the wall on second floor where the chimney is to do the necessary work. so we stopped the drywall project.

and now we are waiting, and waiting, and waiting for an estimate.… Read the rest