I Took the Plunge!

[Gothichome]

Matt, even roughed in that door is great improvement. Did Ober managed to score any goodies?

[Ober51]

Matt, even roughed in that door is great improvement. Did Ober managed to score any goodies?

Quite a few! Many are in the basement, some have been used in my restoration (ie matching bead board in the kitchen).

I have a lot of original paneling from that house that we hope to use in a project, too. Oh, and one of the doors in my kitchen (leading up the back staircase) came from there, too! The more I think about it, the more I remember.

[awomanwithahammer]

Looks beautiful, Matt, and I love the new front door with the beveled panes.

[phil]

Matt the eves look good. I ran into some rot in the same area, just under the eves. My house has spme plywood overtop and I'm replacing the roof. I stopped to coinsider tearing it all out and decided it wasn't holding anything , the wood there will just dry out, It could be stuffed in underneath later if I am worried about it. i figured as long as the water leaves the area, its not going to be such an issue.

the flooring by the door looks great. One issue I thought you might look into is that the end grain is exposed there and as it rains those boards will grow in width become tight, maybe buckle , maybe check near the ends. Anything you can do to keep the water out of the endgrain will help. the problem is that the endgrain can sort of wick water in so maybe paint it more often or consider a strip to cover the endgrain maybe? see what others think about it? maybe get another opinion on it? Ive seen people finish ends like that by running a groove along the ends and put a little strip to cover the endgrain, indoors to prevent chipping, but maybe it would help outdoors to help it with the wicking? I think it will be hard to keep it that tight with the weather and time involved because they will grow and shrink in width.

I fiberglassed my front and back porch. I like it , its waterproof but not so original looking. we get so much rain that any outdoor wood is an ongoing battle. Your house has such a nice style and that siding really looks great.

Phil

[Lily left the valley]

Everything looks faboo.

Hearing how your siding removal went, I'm hopeful that when we get to that stage we'll be as lucky.

Our original front door isn't too different from your new old one. Your glass is fancier though.

Our side door was replaced at some point with a cheap modern one. I've been keeping my eye out for an affordable new old door. I hope to get as lucky as you!

[MJ1987]

Greetings from snowy Westwood, New Jersey. This shot was taken a few weeks back, on 12/2, after a light coating.


Slowly but surely the kitchen comes together. The ceiling was patched and painted with two coats. First coat on the walls went up a couple of weeks ago (BM's Good Vibrations). I've been working on getting the chestnut baseboard back in. There are a couple of challenging cuts. The baseboard will actually be four pieces. The originals were ripped out many years ago when they replaced the flooring several times with old linoleum/Congoleum. They consisted of a base, a shoe, and a base cap. The restoration includes all of that plus a 1.5" strip of chestnut installed at the bottom in order to raise the height to meet the original height. Everything will be stripped, stained, and polyurethaned to match the rest of the house.

I'm itching to get to the windows but they can't go back in until the walls are painted. The walls can
t be finished until we finish up the last of the rough work. Once that's done, it's off to the races!

[MJ1987]

Just some updated photos of the kitchen reno. Coming along...

[Manalto]

I'm jealous of your beautiful woodwork, Matt. I may have to pick your brain on your technique when I get to that point.

Carry on - looks good!

[phil]

looking great especially those windows. Its enough to make others reconsider painting them

a few tips that could help with installing and piecing together your baseboards :

I sometimes need to join baseboards. what I do is use a sled for my tablesaw or use the radial arm saw. make the two cuts in sequence, so if there is any crookendness to the cut it is the same on both sawcuts. of course squareness isn't so important as the ability for the two boards to butt together perfectly and still be dead straight in line with each other. .. if they were both a degree off, that wont matter. The important thing is that when you butt join the planks there isnt't a kink caused by misalignment. there cant' be a gap in the edges that butt together or you wouldn't have a strong glue joint.

I make the two end cuts at a 45 degree angle to the face. ( I guess its a mitered butt joint)

this allows a bit more surface area for the glue and seems to hide the joint better than a square cut butt joint.

often I find I want to thicken them up by adding a strip behind. particularly if I ran them through a planer to flatten them and clean them up. so what i do is glue a couple of long strips to the backside of the board. this helps strengthen the joints and align them. if you plan to put wainscot on top of the baseboard you dont want the baseboard to look "buried " by the thickness of the wainscot so you can increase the spacer strips to bring the baseboard out from the wall by 3/8" or so.

sounds like yours are more complicated so if they have more pieces you can stagger those joints as well and that will add strength. I usually sand floors with all the baseboards off. it allows a bit more space to work. I still use thedrum sander , edger and the big pad sander, but then the inch or so nearest the wall gets covered by the baseboard and a second inch by the corner round. I find that easier than working around them when sanding. - but maybe you are planning some sort of flooring?

Id also check if there is any bow to the floor, If you need to you can lay a pencil on the floor and slide it to make a line on the board to plane it to. usually the corner round will hide some gap. of course you can run into a situation if you remove too much wood then where it meets the next one you may have a difference in height. the fit to the floor is more fussy on the long runs. the corner round can bend to fit the floor , the baseboard cant' bend at all that way. Id put some marks about 8 inches up from the floor or whatever height your baseboards are so you can use them as sort of "targets" for the height. its most noticeable when one baseboard ends and another begins , like at corners, then you want the top of them to be on the same plane.
if there is some gap under them then the corner round hides that. You can fill with foam to prevent air circulating under the baseboards.

I found a lot of my walls had a gap , some scraps added behind baseboards and the plaster was only finished down to meet the baseboards. this leaves a lot of room for air and I could tell by the dust accumulation behind baseboards that this was air infiltration. Ive been using drywall mostly so then I run my drywall to the floor so some of it is hidden behind the baseboard, then there is no air movement under and behind the baseboards. also you can fill any holes in the sill plates from old wiring. I find stopping air movement from basement to main floor and such helps insulate against drafts. I see you also ran your drywall down to the floor like I did. at least that way if you dont put the baseboards back right away it looks better in the meantime.

the old way was to do the lath and plaster rough coats, then they installed the baseboards quickly when it was still wet. this allowed the baseboards to fit the wall better and with less finicky fitting than if they finished the plaster walls before adding the baseboards. often the wall bows a bit, and so do the baseboards because they are not perfect. then you see the gap between the top edge of the baseboard and the wall. You can use putty there if you want. I try to get them to fit as well as possible because you do see that. if there is a bump that prevents the baseboard from fitting to the wall, then I may remove some material from my drywall or from the back of the baseboard to get a closer fit

in my house the corners are lapped so one piece is "captive" you can decide which way to show the gap if you have enough wood to shorten them to fit. Its common practice to arrange those joints so the corners with the gap are less noticible when you enter the room. the end of the board is visible one way and not the other so you sometimes have a choice which way they are oriented. in some fancy baseboards you may have to do a "coped fit" but mine are just flat and square.

where butt joints meet , sometimes you can make the cut a degree or two out of square with so that the face that meets the eye is tight and the rest cant' bind up the joint before the surface meets. I do similar if I cut flooring and make butt joints, in that case I make the top surface fit a bit tighter than the bottom which you never see. It just makes the butt joints appear a bit tighter. I find that if there is some gap between boards you don't really see it but if there is a gap where one plank meets the other end to end it looks better if that joint is closed up. most floors have a bit of gap between planks for expansion and contraction. on old floors sometimes you can close them up with putty. my rule of thumb is that I fill any gap I cant' stick a credit card into but if they are smaller gaps than that, then I leave them to allow room for humidity changes.

to fill them I like to lay masking tape at the edge of either gap , I align the edge of the tape carefully. then the gap still shows but the tape covers the wood right up to the edge of the gap.
then fill the gap completely with putty, colored to match. then I pull the tape when wet. doing it this way allows you to really fill the joint because you can press the putty down and in with the putty knife easily. this usually creates a bit of a bump along the narrow strip of putty, it is overfilled a bit.
I let the putty dry and then sand or scrape it flat. that bump of putty takes up the space of any shrinkage as it dries, I want it proud of the surface a little. if the gaps have very much width then I cut tapered sticks about 1" tapered from about 1/16 to nothing. then I put glue on them and press them down and later sand them flat to the floor. this is because putty can fill small gaps but then larger gaps are filled with wood. if the tongue is in the way then I just cut the strip down so it is suitable.
if I putty nail holes I punch holes in my masking tape, then fill the hole and pull the tape while it is wet, similar to above. it helps avoid covering too much surface area with putty. also the putty fills the nail hole rather than just filling the surface of the hole.
I find the putty looks best if it's not over any larger area than it needs to be to fill any gaps. punching the tape allows me to do that more easily. if there are more holes I simply move my piece of tape from one hole to the next and continue.


some dont fill any of these gaps. it depends how you wan to finish the floor. I usually like to end up with very few gaps, then there are less splinters to catch your socks or swiffer on. if the floor changes humidity lots then you need more gaps to accommodate more movement , you always need some. if you get a little kitchen flood it can hump up.

I use the water based putty for floors. if you do get a little flood the putty turns to mush as it redissolves in water. if it's just a spill like a dropped drink that is cleaned up then the finish wont allow the putty to get wet. dont use water base putty outdoors. even if it dries out you can reconstitute it. the solvent base putty is harder better for furnature but it has a working time and the working time of the water based stuff is longer.
I like to mix two or three big batches you cna keep them in a giant syringe or a little container then put that in a zip lock with a damp towel and it will last forever. this way you are not trying to constantly mix the special color you need. when I use it I mix the colors loosely or observe how dark the adjacent floor is. If it isn't all the same tone it hides better.

I use the long thin nails that come in strips for the nail guns. they are a lot thinner than casing nails. You can use casing nails if you pre-drill the holes but if you dont pre-drill it is easy to crack the old baseboards as they are so dry and old.
I made a little tool just a chunk of a bolt with a hole drilled part way through that is a little bigger than the nails. I use that to start the nails and it prevents them bending as I drive them. once I just have 1/2" or so of nail left then I remove the tool and the nail wont bend.

I like to put masking tape on the floors before I install the baseboards, then mark all the stud locations on the tape. then when I nail the baseboards I know exactly where the studs are. avoid running wiring in this area if you can.

the casing nails are stronger but I've never has any issue. Those thin nails hide themselves well. I like to place the nails where I see defects like knots or natural coloration to hide them better. You can use a nail gun but I find that it helps a bit if I choose more accurately where the nail should be and it is hard to be accurate with a nailing gun. I just take pliers and break off a bunch of nails from the strips they sell for the nail guns. I think they are about 3" long and very thin. if you are super fussy and you look at the heads they are oblong and you can put the oblong in the grain direction. a wood color wax crayon will hide them well after you use a nail set.

if I can't tell where studs are then I drill very small hole beyond the baseboard then stick a pin or thin nail in there to see if I still feel solid wood. If it isn't hitting the stud I move along until I have success. no point nailing to drywall. I put two at each stud, that seems enough.

Phil

[MJ1987]

I'm jealous of your beautiful woodwork, Matt. I may have to pick your brain on your technique when I get to that point.

Carry on - looks good!

Thanks, James!

The PO came over this weekend to check out the progress. According to him, those double windows in the kitchen never worked. They were painted shut for as long as he can remember (he's in his 60s and was born on Clairmont). I almost didn't stain them. I was thinking of keeping the kitchen white to meld more with the white appliances and cabinets. BUT....I had to test a little spot to see if the woodwork had ever been natural....BINGO....it had been. The scheme will be white/pale yellow/jade green/natural woodwork. I'm a little nervous but I'm sure it'll all work out. It usually does.