Stripping Wood Doors, Part 42 -- Removing the Moulding Trim Around the Window

I've lost track of how long this project is really taking.

But, weeks after I started stripping the bathroom door, I finally got the rest of the whitish-yellow enamel out of the nooks and crannies. It was a brutal process, completed in the odd moment I found here and there. Here's the door, without its six coats of paint:

Next step is popping out the window glass so I can get the last bits of paint around the moulding trim. Many of the Web sites I found indicated that it wasn't worth saving the trim, that it would take hours to try, and that they should just be chipped out. What I couldn't find were good instructions on how to save them if I wanted to--I was probably using the wrong search terms, but whatever. We managed to figure something out.

I figured it would be more of a hassle to go out and get new trim and miter cut it to the exact proportions, so I really wanted to try reusing them first. So I took a box cutter with a thin blade and gently ran it along the seam to loosen any adhesive and remaining paint. (The box cutter belonged to my grandfather; I love using his old tools!)

Then I took an old screwdriver and a mallet to very gently separate the trim from the frame. A poor use for a screwdriver, I know, but it worked.

There are three nails holding in each piece, with a glob of some kind of adhesive in the corners. I would need to lift out a piece straight up first before removing the others.

I grabbed Ted, who is always happy to find a new use for his Dremmel, and within seconds he had cut through the nails on one side.

Then, using a spatula to protect the glass, he took the screwdriver and gently worked it along the edge to loosen the trim the rest of the way. It then popped straight up. The others quickly followed suit.

Voila! Half an hour from start to finish, we had the trim pieces and glass removed.

And seconds after that, we had the door flipped over to start stripping the other side. This side of the door has some very beat up, very bubbled and flaking shellac. It comes off very, very well with a dab of stripper. I should be able to sand everything in the next day or so. Maybe I'll actually have the door stained and back in place this time next week. We're all getting a little tired of the screen we're using to "give us some privacy."

The bathroom door was, by far, the worst one in the house as far as paint to be stripped. Every door in the basement (there are eight or nine of them, I forget) has paint, but it's a single layer of gray that comes off easily with a heat gun. There is only one other door in the ground floor unit with paint, and it, too, only looks like it has a coat or two of paint on it--and not the evil enamel. (The bathroom door in the tenant unit is equally offensive as this one was, but I won't be addressing that for years, yet.)

So, in other words, I'm glad I started with the worst of the bunch. Everything else is going to be easy after this.

Stripping Wood Doors, Part 3 -- Using Citristrip on the Hardware

We were busy this week doing a few repairs at the rental condo. Between that and client work, I haven't had much time to get back to stripping the bathroom door. But before going to bed last night, I decided I could spare a little time stripping the hardware for it.

I used Citristrip. Remember how the doorknob and plate looked a few days ago?

Here it is now. Ta-dah! Shiny.

And here it is with the rest of the hardware in various states of the stripping process.

Unlike the wood, I only need to leave it on the metal for a half hour or so, and the paint wipes right off. I used a turkey lacer to gently rub it out of the grooves. (It's the long metal needle-like thing with the curved end, on the bottom piece of paper towel.) For soaking, I use a disposable metal tray with a lid. (In this case, a pumpkin cake mold.) The lid keeps the Citristrip from drying out, and I can reuse it again. Afterwards, I wash everything in mild dish soap. It's important to bag and tag everything so as to remember where all the parts came from--there are dozens of tiny screws, in different sizes.

We won't be doing anything to polish the old brass parts; I rather like the patina. And even though the polished nickel has worn off in parts, we won't be replating it. I want it to look like the hardware has been here for generations.

I think this is even more satisfying than revealing the old wood

Stripping Wood Doors, Part 2

I can tell how irritating a current client project is when I find that I'd rather strip paint than work on a book layout. But, duty called, and I had to put off removing the Citristrip from the bathroom door, which is not really a bad thing, as the paint has been stubborn and an extra long soak will no doubt save me a little effort down the line. Twenty-four hours after initial application, I was ready.

When I first started stripping, not knowing any better, I used a metal scraping tool. This has the potential to gouge the wood, because the stripper softens the surface. I put many a nick in the bathroom trim until I found a Web site that recommended using plastic only. Since then, I've had no problems with making permanent dents.

As this is a bathroom door, it's probably always been painted. Eighty-five years later, and with the removal of six coats of paint, here it is. Well, a portion of it, anyway.

Of course, while most of this side of the door has been stripped, it's far from done. I now have the nasty task of getting the enamel paint--which is immune to the heat gun and resistant to the scrapers--out of all the nooks and crannies. I use a combination of toothpicks, a brass-bristle brush, tiny scrapers, tons of curses, and metal turkey lacers--the lacer has a curved end just the right size for running along the groove. It will take hours, whole evenings dedicated to the task, and as work-that-pays-the-bills seems to be getting in the way this week, it will be a few days before I update the results.

The dreaded enamel paint and the very bane of my existence.

As a total non sequitor, and because I like word origins, I had to look up the phrase "bane of my existence." Here's what I found:

"[B]ane" was once a very serious word. The Old English "bana" meant literally "slayer" in the sense we now use "killer" or "murderer." Early on, the English "bane" was also used in the more general sense of "cause of death," and by the 14th century "bane" was used in the specialized sense of "poison," a sense which lives on in the names of various poisonous plants such as "henbane" and "wolfbane."

From this very literal "something that kills you" usage, "bane" by the 16th century had broadened into its modern meaning of "something that makes life unpleasant, a curse."

So there you go, your word for the day, courtesy of the now-defunct "Google Answers" page.

Bathroom Progress...Not So Much

I feel a little guilty calling this post bathroom "progress." Mostly, we're still in the tear-it-apart and figure how it originally went together phase.

Step one, pull out the ugly old cabinet.

The ugly old cabinet with a weird flexible plastic drain pipe that continually clogged with all the hair it trapped. Seriously, what a hack job.

Turns out, the sink's not as old as we thought. The date of manufacture label indicated it was made in 1996. The back, however, was rotted at the bottom. As it butted up to within half an inch of the tub, it was impossible to clean up any water that splashed back there from the shower. As careful as we'd try to be, some managed to get back there.

(The sink has now been sitting in the middle of our kitchen for the last two weeks, where it has become a favorite hideout and perch for the kittens. We really need to get that down to the alley for trash pickup.)

Step two, cut a hole in the wall and stare at the components for a few days, as you mull over the best way to proceed. The plaster all had to come down anyway. There was black mold growing on the wall, and the lathe behind was rotted -- all from water getting trapped back there.

That's about where we're at currently. We've assembled all the supplies (we think) we need in order to replace these pipes and get the new sink installed.

So, I guess that will be this week's step. For now, the kitchen sink is doing double duty as a wash basin.

Sneak Peek of New Bathroom Fixtures...

We're doing our bathroom remodel in stages, replacing the sink and toilet first and then the shower in the spring. I just finished ordering everything we need for stage one, and we should be able to install them in early January. The faucet from Porcher I posted a few days ago:

The vanity and stand are from Rohl; purchasing online from someone who had a clearance sale of old models saved us $500. (Even among online vendors, there was a difference of $800 between the highest and lowest price. Seriously. For the exact same item, with the exact same item number. Do they just pull prices out of the air?) At present, we have a humongous cabinet vanity which is way too bulky for the room. Although this has approximately the same footprint, it will make the bathroom seem bigger because of the openness. We toyed with the idea of a pedestal base, but opted for this one because our bathroom--which is only 5x7--has little room for towel bars and toilet paper holders. We'll be able to hang hand towels from this and store toilet paper rolls on the glass shelf below.

And finally, what I'm most excited about, a reproduction pillbox toilet from Sunrise Specialty. I've wanted one ever since I spotted it in Jane Powell's Bungalow Bathrooms. It was the biggest splurge, but we're justifying it, at least in our heads, because we have been able to save money elsewhere and were also able to restore our original 1920s toilet in the basement rather than replacing it, as we thought we'd have to do. Again, it was going for 50% of what similar vendors were asking.

Isn't it just beautiful?

It's Sometimes Hard to Support the Little Guy

The fun part of any home renovation project is shopping. We try to shop locally when we can, but honestly, it's hard to beat the deals you can find on the Internet.

We recently went to a bath and kitchen showroom in Chicago to get a firsthand look at some of the items we were coveting. The service was great, and the salesman was able to educate us on what to watch for when buying fixtures from different manufacturers. (Plain ol' white porcelain, for instance, is not an industry-standard color.)

During our visit, the sales guy told us how the staff had all accepted pay cuts to keep the company afloat, and how one of their competitors—who had been in business over a hundred years—had to close its doors this year due to the bad economy. Like everything right now, the kitchen/bath industry looks pretty grim.

He typed up our quote, telling us the bid was good "forever," and not just for their standard 30 days, and we took it home to discuss; we never make such large purchases without going home to mull it over a bit. And, admittedly, to comparison shop online to see if the prices are at least in the ballpark of what they should be.

If the difference is negligible, we'll buy from the local guy, even if it's a tad more, just because it's less of a hassle and it keeps the money in the community. But in the case of our bathroom, the difference was HUGE. For instance, after about twenty minutes of poking around online, I found our faucet for less than half of what the showroom was charging. Free shipping and no sales tax certainly helps. (Chicago sales tax is 10.25%—yeah, that's right, highest in the U.S.) The 5% coupon code I found cinched the deal.

So I do feel bad that we can't go with the local guy this time, who was so nice and who works on commission. But when an hour or two of my time surfing online cuts our bathroom renovation costs by roughly 35%, it's kind of a no brainer; we're watching every penny in this economy just like everyone else. Even if we have to order from four different merchants to get everything we need, the savings are worth it to us right now.

On another note, I think we found a company in Chicago that takes donations of old bathroom fixtures for resale. I'll check them out, see if they'll take our old things, and post the link later this week if it looks like a good thing.

Light Fixture Fetish, Part 2 — Anyone want a set of sconces?

As much as I've tried, I don't like the sconces we have in the bathroom. Like 95% of the fixtures that were still in place when we moved in, they're probably original to the house. However, even if I get the paint stripped off them, I just don't think they'll wow me. Nothing wrong with them, they just don't fit our vision for the bathroom and we'll be going with a different, although still vintage, pair.

Here is one in place beside the half-stripped medicine cabinet.

And so, after a fair bit of searching, we came across this vintage pair of porcelain bathroom sconces in excellent condition. They still have the porcelain pulls and three-prong grounded receptacles. (I didn't know it, but the earliest such receptacles date to the 1920s.) We won't use these receptacles, but they do look neat.

Don't worry, I won't throw out the old sconces, because they are vintage and worth saving. Like I said, they do need to be stripped. Also, one is missing its switch (easily remedied) and both need to be rewired, but if there are any among you who would like to give them a new home, let me know. We'll be rewiring the bathroom circuit in the next month, and installing the porcelain sconces then. We'll store the old set until finding someone to take them off our hands.

So, if you'd like the pair of sconces with the shades, just drop me a note in the comments or e-mail me at editor(a)compassrose.com with your contact info.

Bathroom Decisions -- Repair or Replace the Hex Tile?

So many decisions need to be made before we begin the major demolition work of the bathroom.

The bathrooms in each unit of The Box House still have their original hex tile, and I love the look of it. Unfortunately, the floor in our unit also has a big crack across nearly the entire length, right in the center of the room. (I think the tenants' unit is fine, but it's been a while since I actually looked at the floor critically.)

And no matter what we try, it never really looks clean. If the surface ever had a coating, it's been worn away. The grout is really grungy, too. And who knows what it looks like underneath the cabinet vanity some previous owner installed. It could be even worse.

Poking around the Internet, we found recommendations for Dremmeling out the old grout and redoing it, but that still leaves the issue of the very large crack and the general dingy look of the tiles. So we're toying with the idea of replacing the floor.

The bathroom is small, only five by seven feet including the tub. The section we'd have to replace is maybe 25 square feet.

I ordered a few tile samples online, and here's what we have so far:

The ones above (the blue and the soccer ball pattern) are modern versions. I love the cobalt, which happens to be my favorite color. They measure 3/4 inch, rather than the 1-inch we have now, although they do come larger. They are not historically accurate, as the edges are beveled and the tiles themselves are quite shiny. While a floor made of them might look cool, it wouldn't look right for our 1920s home.

The ones above (with the HC codes) I absolutely love. They are historically accurate, are the exact same size we have now, and come in many colors. The lighter of the two whites actually matches ours, but the blue here is more of a navy. (They also come in a nifty red, but I didn't get a sample of that one.) There are numerous vendors online who sell them; the price averages $10-20 a square foot. They come polished and unpolished (these are the unpolished).

I'm flip-flopping on a daily basis about what to do--some days I think "let's just Dremmel it, regrout, and live with the crack." Other days I think, "Well, if we're gutting everything else, why not this, too?" If we replace the floor, we'll go with the historically accurate tiles. And if we do that, we may create our own design—why limit ourselves to the blue rosettes?

American Restoration Tile has numerous pictures on their site to inspire the creative muse.

Are we crazy for even thinking of trying to replace the floor? How big a nightmare will it be to pull up the old one?

Bathroom Renovation Reset

Okay, this is embarrassing.Would you believe I started the bathroom renovation a year and a half ago?

I got as far as half-stripping the medicine cabinet.

A great percentage of wood trim at The Box House—all six bedrooms and both bathrooms—have been painted. Numerous times. There are, as far as I can tell, five coats of paint, the last being this absolutely brutal flesh color (that I've complained about before) that is resistant to just about every stripper known to man. Even the much-praised Silent Paint Remover was useless. I was so completely disgusted with my lack of progress, that I set the project aside "for a few weeks" to focus on other things.

Well, between the roof and the garden and the tenant unit and fun projects, like stripping sconces, the time sort of got away from me. And here we are, a year and a half later, still staring at this very ugly, half-stripped cabinet. Well, not all of it. Half of it is in the garage, half-stripped. I dread having people come over to visit; between the partially demolished state of the bathroom and the toilet, which requires a bucket of water to make sure everything flushes properly, it's just not guest friendly.

For us? We've been living with it forever. It's amazing what becomes "normal" after a while.

We were at my Cousin John's for Thanksgiving dinner, admiring his complete kitchen remodel that he accomplished over the course of the summer. A whole new kitchen, one summer. It put me to shame.

So now that we're just about finished with Mom's room--all we have to do is rewire and install the finished sconces--we'll be focusing our attention on the bathroom. And to heck with the strippers and the Silent Paint Remover. I bought a $20 heat gun from Menards and already it seems to be doing a better job at cutting through the paint.

I'll post pictures of the progress soon. This is a project that will take us through to Spring, because we're ultimately going to have to remove the radiator to tile the wall and floor. Nothing like starting this project just as winter settles in.

Wish us luck.

My Career as a Stripper is Off to a Rocky Start; Franmar's Soy Gel is a Bust

All the wood trim in The Box House, and all of the wood doors, will eventually need to be stripped and refinished. Some of the wood is covered under many, many, many layers of paint. Some of it has been worn down to bare, grayish wood. And on most of it, the surface is coarse and bubbly, as if the varnish had been applied too thickly in the past, or, more likely, the wood was not cleaned and stripped before being revarnished.

Before the reality of what this task actually would entail sunk in, I was really looking forward to revealing all that lovely, lovely old growth wood.

Earlier this week, I had a night to myself at The Box House--the first night to myself in almost three years. Ted and Mom were at her other house, giving me a night completely on my own to destress and decompress. (I know I've been somewhat bitchy lately.)

Instead of just chilling by myself, maybe by watching a little bad TV or reading a trashy novel, I decided to start stripping the paint on the bathroom cabinet in my mom's unit as a surprise.


Ted and I used a Home Depot gift card we got for Christmas--the best kind of gift ever--to buy a respirator mask rated for lead paint:

I coated the exterior of the cabinet in Soy Gel paint remover, which had worked so well on our annunciator box. It claimed to be able to quickly strip several layers of paint at once, including latex and enamel. Ha! I left it on for a few hours, and it barely softened the first layer. I tried scrapping off as much as I could, slathered the Soy Gel on again, and left it overnight while I watched the original The Wicker Man on television, a much better movie than the Nicholas Cage remake.

Even with a good 12 hours, it still only barely was able to soften the top few layers, and not even all of that. Again, I scrapped off as much as I could, discovering that about three layers down was a layer of golden-yellow enamel paint. Damn. Its cast iron constitution didn't even flinch in the face of the Soy Gel.

Later in the day, Ted came back with the car and a few odds and ends from the other house. I had hoped by this time to proudly reveal the clean and bare wood of the medicine cabinet, but no dice. I hadn't even been able to soften the paint on the hardware enough to dig down to the screws to take the door off. But we gamely slathered on another coat of Soy Gel, this time on the hinges only, and went out for sushi.

Eventually, with some softening, scraping, and scrubbing with a wire brush, I found the screws and we were able to get the door off, which I carted to the basement, so completely sick of the whole thing that I couldn't even look at it anymore.

Still, we decided to give the Soy Gel one more try and coated the inside back of the cabinet with it as well as the frame.

By morning, the only section that had bubbled up is the chippy bit you see on the back. I attacked the cabinet with my carbide steel scraper, and was able to get off just enough paint to see that yes, the cabinet is indeed made of wood. Very solid, dense, thick-grained wood. Yes!

I didn't wear the mask in the morning, figuring that I wasn't actually discharging lead dust, and besides, I had the exhaust fan going the whole time. Still, something about the Soy Gel chemical itself made me sick, and I was puking the rest of the day. Poor Ted. He calls me his Canary because I am always the first one affected by chemically smells, and once I get a headache from something like this, that's it. I can't keep anything down in my stomach.

So now I'm feeling completely dejected and bummed out. I need to find some non-toxic or low-toxic product that actually works, as I have 30+ doors and miles of trim to refinish. Anyone have a suggestion for what has worked for them? Soy Gel has been a total bust; I had such high hopes based on their promo:

In addition Soy Gel goes a long way, with one gallon giving you up to 200 sq. ft. coverage. That's THREE times the coverage of most traditional strippers!! With SOY Gel you won't have to deal with harsh odors that we all know so well with other strippers. No odor SOY Gel is the perfect helper for anyone wanting to remove paints, urethanes, and enamels.

I've gone through more than half of a quart bottle already, and all I've had removed is the paint on my annunciator box and the first layer and maybe part of the second on the medicine cabinet. If I'm doing it wrong, I wish Franmar would come out and show me how to get it to work. Twenty bucks for a quart of the goo--which is certainly not "no odor" as they claim--is a bit steep.

Antique Quilt Making and Sewing Photographs

The Library of Congress is an excellent resource for vintage photographs. A great number of images in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog are in the public domain. My mom and I recently searched through the collection to find old photos of women sewing or quilting. We downloaded them to our hard drive and, because there were no known rights restrictions on the images we selected, we cropped them, modified them, and uploaded them to Shutterfly to be printed.

We're planning a "quilting" theme for her bathroom, as my mom's a quilter. I'm not sure to what extent we'll take the idea, yet, but to start with we're going to hang photographs spanning from 1890 to approximately 1945 of women, children, and the occasional domesticated male sewing or making quilts. Here are a few of the images we found:

I love this one. It was taken in Chicago right around the time The Box House was built and shows a group of flapper girls demonstrating a new seam ripper. The caption indicated they were models.

This one cracks me up. It's from an old stereoview card and the caption was "A stitch in time." We found a variation of the theme, same caption, with a grandmother sewing a little boy's pants, but I think this one is funnier.

Here is a little girl hand sewing quilt pieces in a pattern called Flying Geese. I was probably her age when my mom taught me how to sew; I made a Flying Geese quilt top some time in college, but like all my quilt projects, it was never finished.

In the tenements, everyone had to work.

This one makes me a little sad; the poor mom looks just so exhausted. Her son on the right looks like he's up to something, and the cat looks plain smug.

All in all, we found about 12 suitable images--way more than can be crammed into the tiny Box House bathrooms, but enough for my mom to swap 'em out when she gets bored.

*Although we've modified these images a tad, feel free to use them on your own Web site if you stumble across this--we'd just appreciate a link back. Click each of the images for a larger view.

Bungalow Envy

I love our Box House, but I am suffering a bit from bungalow envy. It's not like I've even been in very many of them. Most of our friends live in condos or two flats or out in the suburbs. Ted and I have one friend who just purchased a 1920s bungalow, but as he lives on the far southern end of Chicago as to be practically in Indiana, we haven't been out to see it yet.

So why am I envious of these homes I've only really ever driven by? It's the bathrooms. Or at least the ones I've seen in Jane Powell's Bungalow Bathrooms.

They're gorgeous, big and roomy. I know I sound crazy when I describe the spaciousness of bungalow bathrooms, but compare them with what we have at The Box House:

Wait, that's part of the master bath at our condo, where our tenants are currently enjoying the jacuzzi tub and the marble shower (oh jacuzzi how I miss you). Here we go:

This is the bathroom in Mom's unit. That's Mom's hand in the photo; she was jotting down measurements during our final walk through before close. Give or take an inch, the bathrooms measure 5 feet by 7 feet. Each unit has only one bathroom, not counting the scary toilet in the basement.

The bathrooms in both units do have the original hex tile. But the old medicine cabinets are under forty layers of paint, the toilet is wedged between the sink and the wall (your elbows bump both), there is an oversized radiator behind the door that is taking up precious space, and yes, the sconce light with its open socket is actually within the confines of the shower, inches from the shower head. We figure the toilet and tub are original, the shower head, shower enclosure, and vanity are not.

The bathrooms are at the top of the list of things that must get renovated this year. I can go for quite a while without a dishwasher or doing my laundry in a 30-year-old washing machine, but a girl needs a decent bathroom.

Seeing as how our design options are limited due to space, what would you do to update this bathroom? We're ready to gut it to the walls, and are open to any suggestions.

Our Standard Low Tank Toilet

"Behind the nuts were even bigger nuts," Ted explained as he described trying to remove the tank from the bowl of our 1920s Standard low tank toilet in the basement. I was wedged into the corner of the tiny bathroom, which thankfully was now clear of spider eggs, twisted awkwardly and trying to keep the 7-gallon tank from crashing to the floor as Ted attempted to remove the final nut holding it in. Or what we thought was the final one.

Twenty minutes later, my interest in the toilet had waned and I was rearranging unpacked boxes in new, more-interesting configurations while Ted continued to putter with the tank. He had it propped up with a stack of paint cans he found in the electric room, the 3 x 10 foot room in the basement with two outdated service boxes and shelves filled with various types of paint cans left by the previous owners.

Finally, after a bit more banging around the bathroom, success!

We were taking the toilet apart in order to thoroughly clean it, sanitize it, and to more or less see how it worked and what kind of seals we would need, as it was leaking slightly. Sure, it wastes a lot of water with each flush, but it's vintage, and would only be used as the spare toilet if the ones in the units were occupied (or if one of us was having trouble digesting our dinner and didn't want to...er...offend).

Only, with the tank off and more light illuminating the base of the bowl, we could see that it was cracked in several places. Is it worth salvaging? Or, since we have to pay to get a new toilet seat and replacement parts anyway, is it better to simply get a whole new, more energy-efficient and environmentally responsible toilet? Touch and Flow sells vintage parts, including bowls, and has instructions for making repairs. And I like the idea of salvaging this if possible. Thoughts?

And before you ask, yes, I have used this toilet, grotty though it is at present. In a moment of desperation because we were locked out of the upstairs units and while hovering precariously--Lord knows I wasn't going to sit on that--I made this house truly mine.

Men have it so much easier, don't they?