Plaster repairs

What you can barely see here is a long horizontal crack in the plaster. Regularly not a problem, but here the plaster had separated from the lath and a patch would have fallen out over time. Thank Al Gore for the internet... and Ask This Old House.

Step 1, drill a bunch of holes into the plaster along the crack. About 85 in this case.

Step 2, fill every other hold with adhesive.

Step 3, add a washer and drywall screw to the holes without adhesive.

Step 4, tighten the screws down and let adhesive cure.

Step 5, remove the screws and washers then to what is by now a familiar chore, filling and sanding the holes.

Roofin

Who knew you could get dropped from your insurance company for a couple of broken shingles? Turns out they can do that. I guess the inside of a garage is like a gremlin, it multiplies when it gets wet and then bad things happen if you feed it cars after 11pm. Check out the before and after pictures. Either my insurance agent can take flattering photos or the insurance company has pretty low standards. Anyway this bought me some time until I can get it re-roofed.

House Guests

Thanks to everyone, human and otherwise who has come by to see the house and say hello.


Chowder, Cal's dog

Jack's response to Chowder

Tibby, makes himself at home.

Best buds

Chasing each other around the bathroom.

Final paint and scrubbing hardwoods

Ta-Da

Rockwood Red, rich chocolate brown.

Jack takes it for a test drive.

before and after scrubbing the floors.

Priming and Painting

After a lot of prep work, we're finally getting some paint on the walls- even if it is only primer.

The walls all prepped and ready for primer.

2nd round of patching, tape dots to help see all of them.

Before on the right and after primer on the left.

Scraping, washing, patching, sanding, priming, patching, sanding, priming and painting

The title says it all. So many little steps have gone into the upstairs. Scraping the wallpaper, then scraping off the wallpaper adhesive residue and then washing the walls. Thank heavens our plaster walls are in great shape, with mainly small hairline cracks. Patching the cracks is mostly just a lot of sanding. It took Molly, Dave and I a whole day to sand one room. Then we discovered power sanders and then Molly and I got another room finished in 2hrs! After that comes priming the walls, then filling in any remaining cracks, sanding those down and re-priming.

D-Day

What a fun day! Everything could not have gone smoother; from the closing right down to the wallpaper stripping. Molly and I spent about an hour taking pictures to document things in the initial state before we started to tear things up. I hope this pays off years down the road when I can't remember how it really was. Then we poked around in every nook and cranny to see there was a pile of great depression era cash stash somewhere. No cash but two sweet discoveries: A) there is still coal in the basement from when the house was heated with coal and 2) a propeller or fan blade of some kind. Cindy Ryan (Molly's mom) came over and lit the fuse on tearing down the wallpaper. She is a cornucopia of wallpaper stripping knowledge and with her help we got all the wallpaper stripped in the main bedroom with 5 hrs of closing. Thanks Cindy!! Huge shout out to Kelly, Karin and Steve for helping with the wallpaper.


Met our neighbors across the street and next door. We are just thrilled to be moving into such a great community and feel so welcomed.

Uff-Da am I going to sleep well tonight.

djt