March 6^th, 2004

In January I had a group of old house enthusiasts over at my house. About 25 people showed up for a pot-luck dinner and then I gave a presentation and tour of the house. I think I told you about that. It was a lot of fun. All of these people own old houses in Eureka or Ferndale and they are all very knowledgeable on the restoration process. I think many were surprised by how much I had accomplished in such a short time.

I spent three weeks prior to the get-together cleaning my house and wasn’t able to really work on any projects. Since that time I have stripped almost all of the remaining wallpaper out of the house and removed most of the remaining green carpet and under-layment. I just have the stairwell ceiling and the ceiling of the upstairs hallway and I will be all done with stripping wallpaper. The front stairs is the only area that still has the green carpeting. The next big project will be plumbing and heating. I want to do under the floor radiant heating. Never been a big fan or forced air heat and I really don’t want to cut a bunch of holes for the heat registers.

Radiant Floor Heating, as it’s called, is a heating system where you run a series of rubber tubes under the floor and then circulate hot water through the tubes. The heat from the tubes radiates up through the floor. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It is really big back East and may be popular where you are. You don’t see it much up here. I will be able to run the tubes under the first floor easy enough because I have access to the under side of the house. The second floor is another story, though. The plan at this point is to run tubes up to the attic and then switch to metal pipes that will come down the walls to old, reconditioned radiators in the bedrooms. Not the best solution but the choices are few.

The radiant floor heating is fairly complex and I’ve only described the basics. I’ve bought two books on the subject and am half way through the second one. I’ve found a place on-line that sells complete kits once you decided the system you want to set up. I would like to start the project by the end of March.

Last week I finished pulling up the carpet in the dining room. Under the carpet was, of course, the fake wood tile on top of the 3/8^th inch particle board under-layment. Once I ripped that up I found the original wood floor. Before they put down the under-layment they laid down tarpaper as a moister barrier. The tarpaper stuck to the original finish in places and I had to use a heat gun to get it up. When I was doing this I accidentally heated up some of the paint on the baseboards. The wood was originally shellacked and the heated paint came up quickly in the one little area. This made me curious about the rest of the wood work in the room.

The dining room as you remember had the raised panel wainscoting in it that had been painted green. Well, for the next week or so I couldn’t stop thinking about that little spot of paint I had removed with the heat gun. I was dying to know what condition the wainscoting was in. This last Tuesday I couldn’t stand it any more and I started to strip the paint. This is going to be a very big job. It is very tedious work. I work only 2 or 3 hours a day on it so it’s not too bad. I’ve started with one 10 foot section which represents about 25% of the room. Getting 95% of the paint of is pretty easy with the heat gun. The original shellac heats up to the consistency of molasses and the paint peels off in sheets. It is that last 5% that is the worst. You have to use chemicals and it is a mess. After about 7 or 8 hours of work I’ve gotten about 99% of the paint off this first section. These last few bits here and there are going to be the tough. We’re talking dental picks and razor blades. Very tedious.

The good part is the wood looks pretty spectacular. It is a curly and burl redwood. Picture Bird’s Eye Maple panels and Tiger Maple rails and styles, only red instead of blonde. I’m shocked that someone could have painted this. The work that must have gone into making this wainscoting. Each piece was picked out for it’s heavily figured grain. Not to mention the difficulty it is to work with wood like that. Then after 80 or 90 years (I know is was painted some time after 1973) some lazy idiot paints it. I can’t imagine the mind-set. Anyway, I figure I have about 60 or so hours of work to get it all stripped. I’m hoping I can finish before the end of the month. I’ll send some pictures when I get it done.