Before the Befores

As promised, this post will be full of older pictures of the house.  We've collected these from several sources - all various previous owners or renters of the EH.  The picture in yesterday's post is the oldest of the bunch.  (I'm still dreaming of finding a picture of the original front porch.)

Continuing with more exterior pictures of the house, here is an aerial photo taken in the mid 1990's:

We'd been told that the house used to be surrounded by trees, but seeing this picture still made me catch my breath.  The only tree in the above photo that was still standing by the time we bought the property is the solitary walnut alongside the drive at the bottom of the picture.  I do wish some of the trees around the house were still here.

Next up is the old bank barn:

I'm told the original barn sat basically where our pole barn now stands.  Although this picture only shows the front of the barn, there was a long "ell" off the back of the barn that extended down nearly to the creek.  Looking out the window as I type this, it's hard to believe the view of the pasture used to be so different.  The old barn was torn down in 1996/97, in preparation for putting the property on the market.  By all accounts the barn was in poor condition when it was torn down.  (It was also, by all accounts, full of large old growth timber.)

Up next, the south side of the house, mid 1990's:

This is one of my favorite old pictures of the house. I've got a list of "someday" projects for the EH, and high on that list is bringing back that little side porch.

At left is a close up of the porch from the picture above. I love the pilaster at the top of the right handrail (which also gives me clues as to recreating the original front porch, another "someday" project). I'm also pleased that this picture shows the interior walls of the porch were covered in clapboard siding. The large pipe that is visible was the vent for the bathroom. If we ever do reopen the side porch we will almost certainly move the bathroom's location at the same time, meaning we could forego this one detail.

The pictures below show the same area, circa 1996 at left, and today at right:

The door and window in the 1996 picture went out to the porch pictured above.  The current door goes to the bathroom.  I wish the 1996 picture was brighter so that I could make out more details on the door. (Looks like we need a larger area rug!)

Our 1996 photographer did a 180 degree turn after taking the above picture to snap these two pictures of the kitchen:

(I hope you'll forgive me, P, if you ever see this blog post, but it was one of the best pictures of the old kitchen.) 

These earlier kitchen pictures intrigue me. What I see in these pictures (especially the horizontal board 2/3 up the wall) seems to reinforce my belief that the kitchen addition dates from the 1880s or earlier.

At right is a current photo taken at the same angle as the right picture above.  The ivory light-switch and plate in the current photo are black in the earlier photo, if that helps you orient the two pictures.  The left picture above shows the wall that used to divide the kitchen wing into two rooms.  (Note the flue cover, and compare it to the location of the chimney in the picture below.) 

The last picture I have to share today shows the back of the house, again circa 1996.  See the little cupola over the kitchen roof?  No one I've talked to can ever remember it having a bell, but it seems obvious to me that it was intended to house a bell.  The cupola blew off during a storm sometime after 1997.  Replacing it is another item on the "someday" list. 

And with that, I'll end this post.  I've got a cake cooling in the kitchen and a seven-year-old boy who is quite anxious to frost it.  : )

Tidbits

Tidbit #1 - I put a load of laundry in the washer a few minutes ago. :)

Tidbit #2 - We have four new barn kittens:

From left to right are Harold, Walter, Maude and Ethel.

Tidbit #3 - I put the last coat of finish on the back bedroom's floor last Sunday:



Part of the plan for tonight is to put the final coat of paint on Cecilia's bedroom furniture so that she can (finally) move into her new room this weekend.

Tidbit #4 - Remember the Leaning House? Well, it's leaning more. I called my mom today and she mentioned that that she had gone back for another salvage trip, but she changed her mind when she got to the back door. Apparently the kitchen ceiling is now caving in and some of the cupboards have fallen off the wall. She didn't go in. "I do have some common sense, despite what you might think," she told me.

Tidbit #5 - I hung these on the wall in the office a few days ago:

I made them about six months before we sold our old house, but after spending the past sixteen months wrapped in newspaper in storage I had forgotten about them. It was a pleasant surprise to unwrap them and realize how perfectly they match the new wall color here at The Einsel House.

Are We There Yet?

I was awakened at one o’clock this morning to the sound of my four year old daughter vomiting onto the wood floor of the little nook at the top of the Einsel House stairs. In an instant I was out of bed, into the hall, turn on the light, and oh no – she’s obviously not finished. Scanning my environment, I shoved aside two cardboard boxes of still packed clothes and dashed into her unfinished room. I got the five gallon bucket (half full of sawdust and various scraps of wood) to her just in time for round two.

Cecilia, bless her heart, was a trooper as I fumbled through yet unpacked boxes looking for cleaning supplies, fresh blankets and pajamas. Charles got home from practice for his latest theater role (Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls) just in time to help by getting Celia settled on a sleeping bag on the living room floor (we don’t have couches yet) while I took a bucket of hot soapy water up to address the wood floor at the top of the stairs. Cecilia, her brother and her father all slept soundly through the rest of the night. Their mother and wife, however, was back up from about 4am to 6am due to a classic summertime thunderstorm. The lightning show through the living room's uncurtained windows was quite impressive, at times almost beautiful. At one point the power went out. I had just enough time to realize that I have no idea where our flashlights are before the lamp beside me blinked back on.

The night just past was in many ways a microcosm of the days preceding it. Within the last two weeks we've dealt with the somewhat predictable exhaustion and overwhelmed-ness of being nearly 9 months into a renovation, coupled with a refinance closing and moving into a house that is still about 20% under construction. All while passing a stomach bug from one family member to another.

Thus the lack of posts here.

It's not that the past few weeks have been all that bad, just that they've been tiring. But in the midst of it all we closed on the Einsel House's refinance, dropping our monthly payment to just under 40% of what it was on the HELOC (and locking in a fixed interest rate of 4.875%). We also spent Father's Day moving into the house. It will take awhile to get all the boxes empty, but it gives me a little thrill to get reacquainted with all the things we haven't seen in over a year - the quilt from our bed, all my kitchen dishes and baking supplies, Neil's antique dresser that I bought at auction just before we sold our previous home.

I can't promise I'll be back up to speed here at the blog immediately. At the moment I'm still rather tired (happy, but a tired happy), and it appears we are not finished with that stomach bug quite yet, either. Finally there's the small complication of not having any internet connection (or even a computer for that matter) at the Einsel House. Charles is working on getting internet at the house, and I'm sure the passage of time will restore health and energy. So please be patient and trust that I will be back when I'm able. Because I do look forward to sharing pictures of a lived-in Einsel House. : )

15,197 Words

Remember – A picture equals a thousand words.

And so, in no particular order, here we go.

First up – matching windows!

Kitchen with new subfloor:

That subfloor is now covered by this tile (they're just self-stick, but they fit the budget):


Refinished bedroom door:

Next up, one of our new curtains for the office, graciously sewn by my Aunt J. (On the bottom half of the window so that we can close them as necessary to avoid sun glare on the computer screen.) Thanks J!

And here's J sewing a curtain. I love the look on her face that says, "You know you really don't need my picture on the blog." (Although I obviously disagree!)

Moving upstairs, here is my mom at work on a little closet tucked into the corner of the back bedroom:

And a blurry picture of the closet taking shape:

Another action pic of mom, this time putting up missing pieces of baseboard in the office:

Still more of mom's work (bathroom closets this time) and more new subfloor:

Two pictures from the south bedroom (carpet goes down in this room tomorrow):

And, finally, two bat boxes on the end of one really long pole:

Finish the Job

Often during the long weeks spent sanding, I would day dream about what all that woodwork would look like when it was finally refinished. Long before we were ready for any finish work I began researching the options.

I freely admit that I'm no expert at finishing. My pre-Einsel experience consists of refinishing an oak dresser in high school and later building a cherry night stand in college. Neither of those jobs comes anywhere close to the scope the finishing job currently ahead of us. There was only one thing I knew from the start - that I didn't want anything too glossy.

Somewhere in my research I learned about tung oil, and I liked what I read. A warm hand-rubbed matte finish that does better than surface finishes at hiding scratches and dings, and that can be refreshed by simply applying another coat of oil (no sanding required). The downsides I read of included a more involved application process with a long drying time between coats. Still, I was intrigued enough to order an 8 oz. bottle from the Real Milk Paint Company. I applied a few coats to the back of a small scrap of walnut trim and liked what I saw. In December I went ahead and ordered 3 gallons of the 100% Pure Tung Oil.

And all through the long winter we sanded woodwork. As we went, my mom took the time to remove long pieces of trim from each window so we could do a better job sanding them clean. Sometime in February I did a trial run using tung oil on one of these trim pieces from a bedroom. And I thought it looked rather dark. Charles' response when he saw it was, "Didn't we just spend two months working so that the wood wouldn't be that color?" Although I didn't want to admit it, I agreed with him.

The Einsel House has walnut woodwork throughout, but there are various shades of walnut in the different rooms. The lightest wood was clearly saved for the living room (where the trim for my initial tung oil trial was taken from). The darkest wood was used in the bedrooms upstairs. While a tung oil finish would look lovely in the living room, we decided it was simply too dark for the trim in most of the rest of the house.


So I went back to the internet and began researching other options. And when it comes to finishing wood there are a lot of options. I admit it was rather overwhelming.

Shellac was the first option I considered. It would be historically accurate and there seems to be an almost uniform agreement on all the woodworking forums that I visited that shellac does a beautiful job of bringing out the depth and color of walnut. Somewhere I read a post in which walnut and shellac were declared "a match made in heaven". And like tung oil, damange to a shellac finish is apparently easy to repair. However, shellac is naturally glossy, and getting the matte finish I prefer would require the added steps of buffing and waxing the final layer of shellac. I also came across frequent warnings that shellac does not hold up as well as other finishes. It's natural nemisis is denatured alcohol, and it is prone to white marks when exposed to water. Given that we have two young children, and given that we have windowsills over a foot deep (which I know will be tempting to use to place drinks or plants on), I want a finish that isn't known for being easier than others to mar.

One day at work as I was contemplating the tung oil v. shellac v. something else debate, I noticed that the woodwork in the office had a nice flat finish on it. The building that houses the law firm I work for was built in the early 1900's by the local Eagles club and restored in the early 1990's. The next time the owner stopped by I asked what finish he and his dad used on the woodwork. "Satin urethane," he replied with hardly a pause, "two coats, and steel wool it between them." But at the local hardware store I could not find anything labeled "satin urethane". (Admittedly, having a preschooler and kindergardner with just-out-of-school rambunctiousness in the aisle with me didn't help.)

A couple days later my mom brought to the EH a few cans of various finish options from the shop where she works. One was Minwax Helmsman Spar Urethane Clear Satin. It took me a minute to realize that this was perhaps the "satin urethane" I had been unsuccessfully looking for. From what I could find with Google's help, this spar urethane would be a very durable finish. It can hold up to water, doesn't discolor with sunlight, and was even designed for use on wooden boats. So I tried the urethane on our test piece of walnut. It was much lighter than the tung oil and the satin finish was still flat enough to please me, but something was lacking. Next to the tung oil, the urethane just looked sort of dull. It covered the wood with a nice flat finish that didn't darken, but it didn't do anything to highlight the color or grain of the walnut. It was okay, but it just didn't have any "pop".

We kept experimenting, using various stains under the urethane, but nothing really stood out. Eventually we had five boards we had various test finishes on. As usual, I don't have any great pictures, but the one at left will give you some idea.

Then I found this article. Way down in the last paragraph was the part that particularly caught my attention. It mentioned that Zinsser Sealcoat (which is a dewaxed shellac) can be used under a satin topcoat. A little more time with Google and I found several other references to using Sealcoat under another finish. Every reference I found spoke quite highly of this finishing process.

So I went back to my trim pieces of walnut and this time I applied a coat of Zinsser Sealcoat and then over it a coat of the Helmsman spar urethane. The sealcoat's difference was subtle, but there. It evened out the red tone in the walnut and it added some depth to the grain. In short, it gave the walnut some "pop" before it was covered with the protective urethane. I presented that walnut trim piece to several Einsel House visitors, and (without knowing what they were looking at) the sealcoat under urethane section was the unanimous favorite. In the picture above the sealcoat under urethane is at the bottom left.

So - that's what we're using to finish most of the wood we sanded at the Einsel House. Zinsser Sealcoat under 2 coats of satin urethane. I hope time will show it is the right choice.

Below is a (blurry) picture of me applying Sealcoat to the stairs:

I was quite surprised by how nervous I felt while putting on that initial coat. The decision wasn't made lightly, but in the back of my head I kept thinking, "All that work, and you could mess it up real quick now." But uncontrollable excitement kept bubbling up above that anxiety, because dang if those steps don't look amazing. : )

Before closing this post I have to add that spar urethane is not recommended for use on floors. In its place on both the floors and stairs at the EH we are using a product called Zip Guard, also in a satin finish.

With that, here's one last picture for today. It's yours truly sanding the first coat of finish on the dining room floor. (It's still waiting for its second coat as I write.)

We're getting to the fun part now!

Pardon the glare from the shop light.

It was 10 o'clock at night, but I just had to take some pictures.

:^)

Sanding Floors

Sorry for the lack of posts here. Last weekend we sanded the wood floors in the living room, dining room and office (former laundry room). Monday we all took a break from the house to recover. This was hands down the most physically exhausting work we have done at the house to date.

We spent most of last week preparing for sanding by pulling staples from the office floor. These suckers had heads barely 1/4 inch wide and legs (is that what they're called on staples?) over an inch long. Thankfully the office was the only room with staples.

Right at noon on Saturday we picked up the floor sander and edger. Here's my dad with the sander, just a few minutes after starting in the living room:

A very long 32 hours later that same floor looked like this:

And the office floor like this:

I actually never ran the sander or edger; Charles and my parents did all of the actual sanding. Charles tackled much of the edging each day, and thus had perhaps the most difficult job of the weekend. The edger was louder than the sander, and much more difficult on the back and arms because it required you to stoop or crouch the entire time you inched around each room.

As you can see in the picture with my dad above, the living room floor had been painted with some type of white primer. Even after the boards were sanded clean, narrow white lines remained between each board. I spent the weekend addressing this problem. Specifically, I spent both days on the living room floor picking out crud from between the floorboards with a dental pick:


I was back at the house after work today, but I think it will take me two more evenings after work this week before I have the entire living room floor picked clean. There are also a few places that would benefit from some attention with the random orbital sander.

So, that was our weekend. My mom was back at work on the book nook today, and I've been conducting various experiments on the back sides of some walnut trim to determine what route we'll use for finishing. My Uncle J has been very busy at the house as well. So there's lots of fodder for future blog posts whenever I find the time to write them!