Small Victories

The electrical wiring in our house has become my enemy. Whoever did the wiring was not terrible, but was by no means excellent. They took a lot of short cuts, ran crazy wires all over the place and did a TERRIBLE job mounting the boxes. Pretty much it looks like they used a hammer and just punched a hole in the sheet rock and tore the hole to about the right size with their hands. Annoying.

Also whenever I open up an outlet I find just a crazy mass of wires with no real rhyme or reason. Several of the switches in our house are so crazy old and have been painted over so many times I'm amazed that they still work!!

So when the power went out on Saturday we decided to do some electrical work. :) Micheal started working on the ceiling fan and I started switching out the light/outlet combo in the guest bathroom.

Before
(I cheated, this is actually the light/outlet combo from the MBR, but they're the same.)

I cautiously removed the faceplate and found this...

Looks scary doesn't it?

I always make sure to take a picture of the wire setup before I disassemble so that if it doesn't work I can go back to the picture to see what it looked like when it did work. As I removed wires from each outlet I tagged them with color coded sticky tabs (I know you love that Bridget!) so I could remember which wires were attached to the switches.


I added a level of complication by choosing to do a stacked light and full outlet vs the outlet/light combo that was originally there. I'm going to refrain from posting my "how-to" until I get my dad to approve my electrical methods. Some lessons I learned though are:

1. Even though there are 5 wires running into your box not all of them have active electricity running through them. You need to determine which one is bringing the power to the box (which one is "hot".)

2. Getting all of the wires into the box is a process that needs to start at the very beginning. As you start connecting things you need to think about the wires and how the can be folded back into the box. Pushing everything in at the end is not going to work.

3. The sides of the two receptacles cannot touch - it causes a mini-explosion! Use electrical tape to cover the exposed sides that might touch each other.

4. Drawing a diagram of how everything should fit together is very helpful. You can quickly get bogged down in the wires once you dive in.

5. If you elect to insert the wire into the back of the outlet versus hooking it over the screw it can be difficult to remove if you need to change anything. You need to twist it out like a screw instead of pulling it out.

Once you've got all that done and everything is hooked up right you get a beautiful new switch plate! (Ignore the scuffed wall and ugly trim, those have not yet been addressed.)


***DISCLAIMER*** Working with electricity is tricky business, F2F does not condone working with electricity without any pre-existing knowledge of how to do this safely. If you do not feel comfortable or experienced enough to do electrical work consult a professional. Fortunately I have one on call at all times. :)

And here is a sneak preview of the fan process!!

Plans for the weekend

Alright, I'm getting serious...I want my bedroom done! So this weekend we will dig in and do the final touches so we are ready to install our new ceiling fan!! Thanks to some Christmas generosity from my dad and Diana and my grandparents we are able to order it WAY sooner than expected!! What's left:

1. Prime and paint ceiling
2. Fix caulk and paint trim
3. Finish paint around north wall window
4. Touch up any green paint

I'm very excited! Almost time to start decorating!

In the shadow of Kari's work - Micheal's Dresser

Deciding whether to post my dresser, following Kari's restoration is a difficult proposal. We picked up this dresser for free on craigslist, the owner had tried to refinish it but had succeeded in wedging the drawers shut. The dresser was painted black, not just painted, but every inch was covered. The drawers would stick because the 1"x1" wood pieces that act as drawer guides were painted and the sides of the drawers were also painted, causing the two surfaces to disagree. The most interesting aspects of the dresser is that all the drawers have key locks and the dresser is assembled with rough dovetail joints and old t-head nails (think small railroad spikes).














The first step was sanding the dresser and removing the decorative molding (twisted pillars) on both sides of the face. In the process I had to remove several of the old guides (the previous owner got creative with a chisel in an effort to smooth the guides). Since the structure of the dresser is pretty rough I decided to keep it simple, minimal sanding and leaving all of the numerous imperfections.








We used Glidden's Black Onyx satin-finish and avoided painting the guides and the sides of the drawers (even as raw wood the fit is tight). My only hindsight critique is that you can see the edges of the bare wood peeking out. I may yet decide to use a black stain to darken the drawer openings. I struggled to find drawer pulls, but ultimately decided on antique nickel pulls.

All in all I really like how it turned out.
Micheal

Long awaited before and after pics! - Kari's Dresser

Sorry guys, I've been totally lazy about providing before and after pictures of all the work we've been doing. I've come up with lots of excuses as to why I haven't posted them, but in the long run excuses are like...(you know)...everyone has one. Today the sun is out (after 2-3 inches of snow yesterday!) so I had some natural light and some extra time so the pics are in!

Refurbishing/Refinishing an Antique Wood Dresser

We got this dresser off of craigslist for a whopping 20 bucks! The guy was moving the following day and needed to get it out that night so we bartered from the 40 asking price down to 20.



Step 1: Thoroughly clean the outside of the piece with soap and water getting all excess grime, gum, candle wax, etc. off.

Step 2: Begin sanding all of the flat surfaces with 100 grit sandpaper. The outside of this piece was wood veneer - a lot of sites will tell you not to sand veneer, and while you do want to be careful there is quite a bit of stain and lacquer that you have to sand through before you even get to the veneer. I used a hand sander and was able to remove all of the water stains, burns, and most of the scratches out of the top by sanding through the lacquer and stain down to the wood.

Step 3: Remove all hardware. Use a sanding pad or sanding sponge (Fine or 150 grit) to sand all of the corners and crevices and do a final oversand of all areas to smooth it out.



Step 4: We used a stain + poly blend instead of doing it separately and ultimately I really liked how it worked! It goes on quite a bit more like paint than it does like stain.

I applied with a 3 inch stain sponge. The most important thing I learned was to apply in full strokes - you paint it on with the brush (DO NOT WIPE OFF!) going in full strokes from end to end of the piece making sure the coat is even. Painting it on like this allows for the shiny poly finish to come out, if you wipe it off it is more of a matte finish.

Step 5: Let that coat FULLY dry and do a gentle sand with the 150 grit sanding sponge to prep for the second coat. Apply a second coat of the stain. Repeat this step until you have reached the deepness of color you want.

Step 6: Reattach or replace the hardware. We had to replace the hardware because one was missing and two were broken. We got really lucky that the desk I purchased had beautiful period appropriate drawer pulls that I could take and use on the dresser! To use the new hardware we had to drill new holes - determine which drill bit will be the same size as your screw and predrill the hole. (After you have measured carefully where you want your new pulls to go!) Screw in the new hardware.

Step 7: Stand back and feel good about restoring a beautiful piece of furniture!



All in all this took me about a month to a month and a half to finish and was a lot more involved than I thought it would be. I'm very happy with the outcome and will no doubt dive into another piece of furniture sooner rather than later!

Catching up!

So I wanted the blog to be a bit more "together" before we released it to the public but with limited time to just sit and mess with the layout the blog, like the house, will be a work in process. So now we're going to catch you up on some projects that are in progress!

The Master Bedroom - Wow this room was special...



Not only was the wallpaper lovely, the yellow and blue paint was a cheap oil-based paint painted over latex. It is NOT a good idea to used oil-based paint over latex, it just peels right off and leaves a nasty finish.

The renovation plan:
1. Strip wallpaper (check!)
2. Sand & repair walls (check!)
3. Prime & paint walls (check!)
4. Stripe & paint trim (partially complete)
5. Paint ceiling (still to do)
6. Replace ugly can lights in ceiling with a ceiling fan (still to do)

Kari's How To Guide for Stripping Wallpaper

So in our house there are a few decisions that need to be made before starting any project. First - do we have everything that we need or do we need to make a Home Depot run; Second - is this a one person or two person job; and Third - Is this a kitty friendly or not kitty friendly job?

What you'll need to strip the wallpaper - a sprayer of some sort (I used a garden sprayer - super time saver!), fabric softener, scraper (metal or rubber), and a plastic drop cloth.

This is a one person job, it might go a bit faster with two but it was easily done with just one. Also, this is not a kitty friendly job - it makes a huge mess! So we had to put the cats up in another room (as we currently have no door on our MBR.)

So, fill your sprayer with warm water and put in some fabric softener - I don't have exact measurements, I generally "feel" things out as I go (Micheal hates this...) Before you start spraying or scraping put down your drop cloth, it will make cleanup SO much easier. Then spray down the seams of the wallpaper. At first I was spraying all of the wallpaper and this worked, but I found it much more effective to just spray the seams to get the peeling started and the rest of the paper peeled much easier when dry.

My wallpaper came off in two layers, the outside paper and the layer underneath with the glue. Work in panels, spray a seam - let it set for about 2-3 minutes and tear down that panel. Then saturate the remaining glue/paper layer and let it sit for 5-10 minutes. For me it nearly fell off the wall when I put the scraper to it. Using this method I got the wall done in about a half and hour and didn't have to actually "scrape" any wallpaper off, it just peeled and fell off as I went.

The process:



You can see all steps in this photo - on the left is the clean wall, in the middle is the glue/paper layer that needs to be saturated and peeled, and on the right is the lovely wallpaper.

Clean all that up and then patch any holes that are in the wall. We had to removed several sheet rock anchors that left pretty big holes in the wall so that was a fun process. After you've patched your holes (we used the hole-patching material that comes in a tube and turns from pink to white when dry) sand the patched spaces and the old paint on the walls. Clean all the dust off the walls, tape, prime and paint!



We used one coat of primer since the yellow was easily covered and then painted with a Low VOC paint called Harmony from Sherwin Williams. It was AMAZING, almost no smell at all! Good for us and good for the environment. It took two coats of green paint to get the the color and consistency that we wanted.



We have now taken down all the trim to refinish it...(that will be another post...) and are hoping to finish this room up soon! Leave us some love in the comment box, anyone can leave comments even if you don't have a Blogger or Gmail account. I'm trying to set up an option so you can subscribe to updates by email. Check back soon for more updates!