Painting

25. The ceiling is up and divorce is narrowly averted…

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 11 Comments

There were only two of us who showed up to work this weekend, and the grunt laborer should have called in sick. The pay isn’t good enough to work through sneezing, coughing, nose running, head aching, sore throat type of days. But this is no union job, as Mr. Homeworks Contracting reminded her several times.

There were four days to get the job finished. It was already a week behind schedule (lumber shortages), so when the truck pulled in with thirty 14 foot pine boards strapped to the roof, everyone was ecstatic.
Fourteen foot boards are long. Very long. Picture the old Three Stooges episode with Curly carrying a board, turning around, and hitting Moe in the head… Each of these thirty 14-foot boards got moved at least nine times during this project. When the laborer complained that we were moving the boards a lot, Mr. Homeworks Contracting got huffy. Mr. HC got huffy at least nine times during this project; the laborer complained — whined even — at least ninety-times-nine times during this project…

So, the laborer thinks, The wood is delivered, let’s get this stuff up and call it a day and have a beautiful new ceiling.

Hah, that’s why the laborer doesn’t get paid the big bucks!

First, Mr. HC goes over the boards with a fine tooth micro-lens to detect knots, holes, and the tiniest indentations. Each spot is circled and wood putty is put on the small problems, bondo for the bigger holes. The repairs have to dry and then be sanded. The entire boards are then sanded with fine grit sandpaper.


Then the boards are moved to a new spot and primed. Then the boards are moved to a new spot and sanded again. Then the boards are moved to a new spot and…wait, am I repeating myself? There are thirty boards. It’s a small house. We covered the front yard,the back porch,

and the living room.

It took three days of prep time before we could even think of putting them up onto the ceiling. Here are boards painted with the first finish coat of Sherwin Williams Steamed Milk semi-gloss latex. Of course, they had to be moved again — outside to the saw — and cut to the correct length.

So far you have only heard the board story; the ceiling story is bad too. Of course, it isn’t level. It’s an old house and the kitchen is not exactly on a foundation — more like attached to the foundation. Shims take a long time to put up. Luckily the laborer was busy painting and whining while the supervisor was quietly putting up shims and trying to not fire the laborer.

Anguish for Mr. HC who has to have everything straight within 1/16 of an inch.

Monday morning dawned early. It was a beautiful sunrise and the work crew was ready.

By this point, all expectations of finishing the job were gone; but here’s the point of this entire post: Prep work takes patience (I think I’ve mentioned before that I might be somewhat lacking in the patience department…) but if it’s done correctly, then the finish work goes quickly! Mr. HC has enough contractor experience to know this; the laborer is still learning.

We worked well as a team on Monday (finally). Of course, the team effort had Mr. HC cutting the boards, as well as air nailing them in place. It was also his bright idea to wax the boards so the tongue would slide easily into the groove. All the laborer did was hold up her 7-foot part of the board and pound it in place. Mr. HC also invented a nifty little gadget to help hold the boards up in the middle. This gizmo went all the way to the floor and had foam attached to the top so it will hold the board in place without scratching the finish.

At 4:30 we were having celebratory glasses of wine while looking at our new ceiling, all complaining, whining, nitpicking, and disagreements behind us.

Just in case you forgot what the old ceiling looked like:

Before:

Before

And the fabulous new ceiling:

new wood ceiling

Ceiling boards, $350 from Wayne Lumber

 

Critics often accuse blogs of painting pictures of life that are too rosy, too upbeat, and too unrealistic. Not this post; this one is warts and all. It wasn’t an easy weekend, and there wasn’t much laughter. So what did we learn?

  1. Expectations ruin everything — and this includes all of life: work, play, marriage, relationships, friendships, sickness, health, future plans, you name it. Get rid of ’em.
  2. Patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue…
  3. Silence is a virtue too. Don’t whine. Don’t get huffy. Put in earphones.
  4. Call in sick when necessary.
  5. Love each other and forgive. A glass of wine helps; if you don’t drink wine, practice hugs.
  6. Celebrate together. Hurray, we have a new, gorgeous ceiling!

(My husband’s name is Mr. Homeworks Contracting and he approved this message.)

16. The Color of Apples

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 8 Comments

More thoughts on color…I’ll try to keep to the topic this time.

I’m having trouble making decisions about paint color in the kitchen. It is — or will be — black and white mostly (floors, cabinets, counter tops, walls) with rich chestnut-colored wood antique pieces (island, cupboard, butcher block tops). It needs an accent color. I thought I had decided on a delicious apple-cranberry red. Sister Diane (rehabitatdesign.com) sent me 10 sample shades of cranberry-ish reds from Benjamin Moore. Every time I looked at them, I chose a new color as the one I liked best. Asking Mr. H.C. for his favorite just confused matters even further. Being a word person, the names of the colors matter to me–several times my favorite turned out to be Confederate Red, but how could I pick that color for a Pennsylvania cottage kitchen? Why couldn’t my favorite be Hot Apple Spice? (Pomegranate wasn’t bad and that’s acceptable…I DO realize this is extremely silly.) I finally put them away in the envelope to look at again later.

This kitchen (with our floor) doesn’t seem to have any other colors except the general colors of the accessories–pottery, dishes, glassware, etc. I guess that’s always an option. (Just look at what light does to the colors in this photo!)

While the samples were languishing away in the envelope, I received my free issue of Better Homes and Gardens. I signed up for a free year at the Home Show in February and had it sent to the Apple Hill address. It’s the only mail we get there, and it’s always a nice surprise. In this issue is a lovely black and white kitchen with apple green accents. (Are you noticing a theme here? It is called Apple Hill Cottage after all!) The original rooms in the cottage were all painted in different shades of green. Not anything particularly inspiring, but green nevertheless. After considering it a bit, I’ve realized that green has always been my favorite color. Even as a young kid when people would ask my favorite color, I would say green. There isn’t a hue or shade of green that I don’t like (unless it’s some shade of yellow that is being falsely called green). In my current house, three rooms are green and the living room is autumn colors with a moss green rug and chair. So after checking out the onscreen colors at Benjamin Moore, I’ve decided I like Lime Twist, Paradise Hills Green, Fresh Grass, and Apple Lime Cocktail. (Napa Vineyards is nice too.) Notice that these colors all have perfectly lovely names–Paradise Hills Green, ahhh…

The floor is wood, but these might be the general colors…

I was looking at the Armstrong tile page and I came across a “picture this floor” demo. Choose the room you’re doing, the style of your room, the floor you like, the cabinet color (very limited choices here), a paint color and…Voila:

I got to compare the green colors listed above; this one pictured is Lime Twist. It’s a very fun tool. You can find it here: Armstrong Room Planner.

This is just for the general idea–I really disliked all the reds I tried.

So now I’m back to confusion again. Blue is definitely out, because Mr. H.C. hates blue. Who knew? How could he have such aversion to the color of sky? I recently read a blurb on color that suggested people score better while taking tests in rooms that are painted blue. The same article suggested painting your ceilings blue, the sky color, for calming effects. Noooo, don’t want a blue ceiling. I do love this kitchen though:

The screen door to the pantry is so interesting, and I was planning on putting one just like it in our kitchen going into the pantry/laundry room/basement, but Michael says no go. Bad air flow for a screen or something like that…

Another color consideration is this– There is not a lot of natural light in our kitchen, and I think this is a point for the light, spring green. A double window is over the sink and the only other light comes from the narrow french doors we found for the entry.

$35 each–$70 total. SOLD!

It was so exciting to find these. We’d had a long dry spell at our favorite Junque store haunts and were thinking we’d just have to go with Big Box new. After pricing one up ($750 at HD!) we stopped at the ReStore in Washington. Two miles and ten minutes later we found these beauties.

The message here is: Patience. (I think I’ve heard that before!) Don’t be in a hurry.

So what I really think is this: If you surround yourself with what you like and don’t worry about style, or trends, or matching colors, it will all turn out lovely in the end. I’m hoping!

8. Random Mew-sings on Kitties, Perfectionism, Paint, and Freedom

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 3 Comments

I’m posting this from my IPhone so it is very imperfect! I can’t get the photos to be placed where I want them, and I’ve lost several huge chunks of text — just out there somewhere in Saved WordPress Land… Did I mention typing all this on an IPhone keypad? It’s very frustrating, but I’m here at the cottage for working, not writing.

Happy Fourth! May you think about your freedoms today …

We had several firsts with our kitty this week: He was here to greet us when we got out of the truck on Friday afternoon. Sleeping in the side yard under some bushes, he was trying to keep cool in the ninety degree plus temperatures. We invited him inside and gave him lunch–we didn’t even have to ring the dinner bell. We had errands in town and he wasn’t interested in going back out in the heat, so we left him sleeping on the cool linoleum floor. He made himself right at home–he was sleeping on the bed when we returned.

So the name Phineas T doesn’t just roll right off our tongues. Half the time I can’t remember it. If Michael calls him anything other than Kitty, it’s likely to be George or Elmo. Cats don’t really come to their names anyway, do they? Here Elmo, Elmo….

After I finally chose the color for the kitchen cabinets — Steamed Milk in a semi-gloss sheen — the painting contractor husband started with second thoughts about oil base. I’m thinking he was worried about my lack of skill in the painting dept.; he is a perfectionist. I myself have those tendencies. Sometimes it’s not a good mix; sometimes a person is needed who will just jump right in and get it done. Sometimes I can be that person, but not in the aforementioned painting dept.–there I will always defer. So we dithered. We bought a gallon of latex in Steamed Milk for the insides of the cabinets in case it was too difficult to make the oil look good. “Oil is hard to use,” he said. “It runs, it drips, it is sticky, it smells bad, it is hard to clean up.” Not to mention that it is now considered to be a hazardous material! (More on that later…)
So I have now tried both types of paint. And the verdict is…

OIL!

It looks much better than the latex. It feels better on the wood. And how wonderful it is to have the perfectionist painting contractor look at a drawer just painted by the grunt laborer and say, “Wow! That looks like you sprayed it on!” High praise, indeed, and good for the soul.

With the exception of choosing the color (463 shades of white) the main difficulty lies in the actual purchasing of oil-based paint. The big box stores don’t even sell it. In PA it can only be sold to residential customers in quarts. If I were painting a pipeline, I could get it in larger quantities, but probably not in the lovely off white color of Steamed Milk. (Isn’t that perfect for a kitchen?) I digress…

A few weeks ago my niece posted this on her crafty blog handmaden.com “Little-known-fact: You can’t buy spray paint in Chicago’s city limits. This is not good news for crafters. So we started this crafternoon with a trip to the suburban Home Depot for some metallic spray paint.”

Rant ahead : Now I get why Chicago has done this; I understand that kids buy the stuff and either harm themselves with it or use it for graffitti. In PA the law is eighteen and older to buy alcohol, cigarettes, and spray paint! (A sales clerk at HD carded me the other day when I was buying a can–I was incredulous to say the least. She told me that at WM the clerk carded her for white-out!) Where will it end? What do you think is the ratio of responsible buyers vs. those who will be using these items illegally? I guess in Chicago it must be pretty low. Since it is the 4th of July, let me just suggest that freedom always comes with personal responsibility. Can I say this is government protection on steroids? I personally want the freedom to buy spray paint and white-out and a gallon of oil-based paint. Accept no substitutes! (There is no substitute for spray paint…) and if we’re considering substitutes and personal freedoms and government regulations, I also hate those squiggly light bulbs …