painting

It's not complicated enough that a novice DIYer has to learn the skills, tools, techniques and best practices for what is otherwise a simple job in the hands of the All Knowing. He also has to learn the Babylonian nomenclature for the stuff he needs to do it. For instance, last year I was derailed for two days trying to find the name for a particular type of moulding I needed for the wainscot in my master bedroom renovation.

I had the same problem trying to find the rooftop vent "thingie" for my bathroom fan. The not-too-bright helper for the GC I'd hired to rough-in my upstairs bathroom a few years ago had installed the wrong kind. It's not called a "fan vent". It's called an "exhaust roof cap". It took me an hour in Google just to find the correct name for it.

Igor may have known what it was called but not what it was for. It's intended for a pitched roof. I have a flat roof. As a result, this was the source of three years of water leaks which were damaging my pristine walls and kept me scratchin' and fixin' until I sussed out what the problem was. After finding the product (a Broan #636 roof cap) it took three seconds with the literature to find "DO NOT INSTALL ON A FLAT ROOF".

On a pitched roof, the exhaust port (on the right) is oriented "downhill" (I'm sure there's a construction term reserved for that). What happens on a flat roof is that any storm force wind blowing into that port will pop open the lightweight damper and the rain will pour in.

It started as an easy breezy project -- an (almost) laborless Labor Day. Seven years ago, I scrubbed, scraped, skimcoated and primed the first and second floor hallways. Last year, I did a little more scraping and added another coat of primer. So why have these walls not been painted since I moved in nine years ago? Call it Home Stretch Complacency, Last Lap Crash, whatever. I just never got around to deciding on a color. Primer white was fine for now.

This weekend my intent was to deal with this, or at least add another coat of primer. I narrowed the finish paint down to two colors and had every intention of painting it today. I'd decide on the color at the Benjamin Moore store.

It was gonna be such an easy job, something that this old house doesn't throw at me often. I mean, the walls have been prepped twice. All they needed was a tinted primer coat and paint. But just to be safe I decided to inspect the walls and take care of any nicks and gaps around the baseboards.

I can't freakin' believe it. All my tools are back in the shop where they belong, the paint's up, the room is clean, the nine-month saga of the master bedroom renovation.... so OVER!

Okay, there are still a few things left to do: the cabinet drawers and doors, the hallway stained glass windows, the doorknobs. I'll get around to it.

Over the last few weeks I've been finishing up the hallway, the two closets and my outside plantings. There's always a sense of closure when I lay that second coat of paint, especially after a nine month project. I used a wedgewood blue matte finish. It was down to that, salmon or a pale yellow. I couldn't decide so I just closed my eyes and picked one. I like it. It's sorta weird in these shots because the camera makes it look lighter than it really is.



If you haven't followed the saga of the bedroom renovation, this is all new work, not woodwork refinishing. I tried to keep it period though and with the possible exception of the floor, I think it works. No sheetrock and clamshell moulding here!



It's time to reflect back on the lessons I learned. At the top of the list is, don't use engineered floors if you have big, energetic dogs. The floors already look like they're five years old (I'll post some shots later). The engineered floors held up well in my office but I have a plastic chair mat and there's not enough room in there for the dogs to get nuts. I really should have gone with solid hardwood flooring, which would have been cheaper anyway.

Secondly, I'm not sorry that I built that curved plaster corner on the closet. I'd never done one before and I think it's a nice detail. But, man, between the plaster, the baseboard complexities and the cedar paneling inside the closet, I probably spent two weeks just dealing with the annoying geometry.

This room was orginally two bedrooms. The smaller one on the left was probably intended as the baby's room. I converted its doorway into a window opening so the hallway will get light from the south-facing window in that room. It will get a pair of stained glass windows.

Yeah, I know I need door knobs. I actually ordered a whole bunch of amber knobs, locksets and brass plates five years ago but I dropped one on a tile floor, shattering it. No spares either. And now I can't find the company I got them from.

The cedar closet turned out pretty well, even if I can't hold a camera level. What you can't discern from the shot is that there's a six foot wide cedar shoe rack at the bottom/back of the closet.

What you also can't tell from the shot is that closet is actually quite a bit wider than it looks. It extends three feet beyond that intersecting wall, where the old closet used to be, and it's 'L' shaped. My neighbor, Betsy, calls that 'L' my "panic room" but it managed to fit all my retired musical gear, including two huge speaker cabinets.

I've been referring to this project as my master bedroom renovation but it also included the hallway and an existing walk-through closet (also cedar). The hallway walls only have primer on them because my next project is to rebuild the funky and crumbling skylight over the stairs. I'll be breaking out the stained glass tools for that. It's also a bit involved because the only way I can work on the skylight is to build a temporary scaffold.