Welcome to the Parlor

the PARLOR

I typically write long-winded entries about all the crummy work and endless details involved in my house endeavors. This time Ill just let the pictures and a short list speak for me.

10 quick points:

1. The paint color is Underseas - Sherwin Williams
2. It was thinned a tiny bit and brushed on. To get the overly flat powdery finish I wanted I brushed the paint till it was almost dry before moving on to the next spot. This has a tendency to "polish" the surface resulting in a more dynamic paint surface. This is tedious and time-consuming.
3. a final coat of very thin paint unified the wall and fully deadened the finish - it is entirely UNwashable ...
4. The furniture is nearly all English ebonized mahogany from about 1875.
5. The center table is American made ebonized cherry with a pink Tennessee marble top - there is a matching table in the Brooklyn Museum.
6. The shorter sofa is English rosewood, 1865 (I have the catalog advertisement for it ...)
7. The taller sofa is American walnut, @1875
8. The rug is a Sabzevar, new, bought on ebay from Iran (before they stopped the imports) I love it.
9. The crystal chandelier is original (so they claim) to the house and was a nightmare to clean
10. The picture rail is new, and works.

Original wallpaper discovered under several layers of paint - I successfully soaked off the paint to see what the paper was like

before - PO's furniture ... shudder ..........

Right before moving in the furniture - yeah, its out of focus and the color is totally off ....

Ebonized furniture, faded peacock blue walls, cherry/mahogany woodwork, Chinese import porcelain, Parian "slave"  and "Azalea" by Albert Moore in an outstanding Aesthetic movement frame (the original is nearly 9 feet tall).

Looks like the Witches oven from Hansel and Gretel.

The mantle and over mantle mirror are not original, but dang don't they look like they have been there 110 years ?

The last of the lilacs ... Period clotting only, thank you.

Bathroom After photos

Wow - that took a long time ...

Nearly 2 months after we started, the majority of work in the Master Bath is done.

Sure, I still need to put in the baseboards and door and window trim, but the bathroom is now usable. I also included our inspiration photo (bottom) so you can see where our vision came from - I wish our bath was a big as the one in the photo.

Theres a closet/cabinet on the right side of the mirror for storage.

late during ... 

mid-during

inspiration photo - really, what are the options with green fixtures ??

The start of something ... wet

Before photos of the bathroom.

I made a serious effort to take these - since I am usually in such a rush to repair or clean that I forget to take befores.

A lot of discovery going on. Don't you love that subway tile and hex floor ?

Wish me luck.

The shower area - and my gallon of vinegar. This is hideous.
Hopefully the original faucet will be reusable - I'm not confident about that with my plumber. 

The plastic tile on the wall was originally minty green. Someone painted it white with those picked out colors added. The 2 doors are to a medicine cabinet and laundry chute.

Original 1900 tile. The top cap tile was chiseled off all around to make smooth walls ready for <gasp> plastic tile installed on top. Pretty much all the original tile is trashed.

This picture just plain makes me sad.

Floor tiles. so much damage to them - only thing left to do is cover and move ahead.

baby steps ...

I admit it: I get overly involved in tedium.

Once the big picture is planned, and the messy deconstruction is done, I become utterly obsessed with tedious minutia: smoothing caulk so that a corner is more crisp than it was built, adding yet another wash-coat of paint to potentially improve the color saturation of the walls, micro painting  with 00000 sized brushes and barely a thimble-full of paint.

Im there, now, in the parlor ... and I am not sure how to escape.

Over the past 2 weeks the ceiling has been nearly completed (save those late night micro-painting adventures). The stenciling is still needed, but I planned for that to wait.

My old cast iron fireplace surround and stone mantle are in place, and the over mantle mirror is bolted to the wall. I have dragged these parts around from house restore to house restore for years. They are not original to the home. Accomplishing this was huge job since I had to build a structure inside of the fireplace surround to support the combined 500-600 pounds of stuff that I attached to the wall. There is a brick chimney inside the wall, and the floor is structured to support a hearthstone, but a proper fireplace was never put in.

In my desire to complete the room before moving in furniture this weekend I am in the midsts of that tedium-cyclone. My focus becomes minute and I get overly involved in adding a layer of shellac to the baseboards, edging paint, and flicking paint drips from numerous previous owners off of the wood trim.

Maybe writing it down in the first step to healing ... nah ... I just repositioned a light to show all of the tiny imperfections on a 2 x 3 inch space in a corner ... I'll be up all night.

What's a Parlor ?

Work in the parlor, the homes most formal room, and the original music room, has been progressing fairly well, but slowly. I cannot believe this has been going on since January.

With the walls painted, the original woodwork in the house looks more outstanding the I expected. I love my bright yellow ladder and note the Dollar Tree bucket and reused yogurt container ... Where would I be without all those plastic containers for wash water and such.

After skimming the walls and priming, painting and general clean up went on fairly well.

As anyone who has sanded even a tiny patch of plaster/drywall mud knows, the dang dust finds its way into places even the dog hair never reaches.

So the walls have a single coat of paint on them, the ceiling base color is done and the border colors are in place.

Last night I finished taping off the outlines for the gold line-work on the ceiling and stuck on a first coat of gold paint. to paint the gold outlines onto the ceiling I bought the "best" quality tiny-detail style roller that Lowes had ... and I can't think of a worse investment. It stinks. it is lumpy, doesn't roll smoothly and smears the paint, but I am not about to go buy more, so I painted and cursed and painted and cursed and finally got that first coat on.

Here are some photos of the room as it is since about 10 pm last night.

Now that it's getting palpably close, I'll probably find more time to post about it here. Stay tuned ...

Picture rail in place, bands of color in place on the ceiling. outlines of gold to come - see below ...

last night I finished taping and painted the first coat of gold paint ... the final design that I did is posted below and includes stencils ... I have never stenciled before ... anyone wanna help ??

The 10 lessons I have learned while skim coating the parlor walls:

1. If you can "get away with" one coat, do it, dammit

2. That is neither skill nor cockiness in your second coat, its teeny tiny air bubbles

3. Hang draperies and framed pictures, appropriately, to hide the pin holes - they aren't going anywhere

4. Plaster dust does not appear to be immediately deadly

5. You will act out every part of your favorite musical while performing this mind numbing, endless, suicide inducing procedure

6. Invest in a Magic Trowel: the love child of David Copperfield and Chriss Angel

7. To successfully limit tracking plaster dust in other rooms you will become the master of your bladder

8. "Catching up on sleep" is the new "black"

9. Easy clean up means skim coat naked

10. The Magic Trowel is much more magical if you remove the cover sleeve before use .........

The Great Dustbowl

Getting smooth(er) historic plaster walls is a simple matter of filling holes and sanding ... sanding ... sanding high spots ... really. That's all it is. Oh ... and then cleaning up the DUST ...

After pulling all the paint and paper off the plaster in the parlor, I now am in mid-patch and sand mode. One thing I already knew is that sanding dust - especially spackle and dry wall mud sanding dust - is "sticky" and it gets everywhere.

I covered the 2 doorways to the room with plastic sheeting (one opening is 9 feet tall and 12 feet wide ...) to contain the dust a little. No amount of prep will thwart it, though. It's all about limiting, not eradicating. I know I'll need to clean it up later, I just don't want to spend 3 days doing it and having it end up in my bedsheets.

One thing I discovered is that you can sand a small patch of spackle with a damp sponge, which really cuts down on dust. This morning before work I "sanded" a few areas that way and then this evening I'll actually sand the whole wall one last time before priming it just to be sure to get it as smooth as possible before skim coating.

This weekend I'm diving into the skim coating part ... cross your fingers.