Staying Busy!

Haven't posted much lately...we've been busy. We are on "deadline" with the house! Deadline enforced by the baby coming, but more pressing than that the "floor guys" are coming this Thursday! Yep, Mayes flooring out of Beaumont are coming on Thursday to refinish the wood floors in the west side of the house. That means all of the trim above the floor has to be finished. So.....Dan and Steven have been working on b-board for the master bath, hanging the last of the crown molding, building columns and cutting and routing trim boards for the windows. Below is a progression of the b-board installation.

I handled the second half of the b-board project. Spackling all of the nail holes and the priming and painting. The picture below shows the first coat of primer. I finished the painting last night!

And then there is the trim...There are a few "critical" architectural elements in our house that we wanted to save. The top trim pieces from the windows and doors are one of those elements. They are made from true cut lumber and we wanted to hold that look for the house. Who knew saving the trim would turn into so much work! The pictures below show the process we went through stripping each of the boards. A nightmare I tell you...a true nightmare. Each board had probably seven or eight layers of old paint that was extremely "strip resistant." I thought the project would never end until our savior arrived! The heat gun! LIFE SAVER. Steven was able to finish in three hours what would normally take me a full day’s work.

The top most board shows a piece of trim after hours of work. The bottom board shows how each board looked before beginning the process.

Below are just a few of the freshly painted window trim boards. We had 25 boards in all. After the boards were stripped, they were sanded and then cleaned with a water/bleach solution. Then re-sanded, spackled, and primed. Finally a final coat of trim paint color was applied. Tonight they are being hung!

Below is a shot of the window trim boards that Steven and Dan created and that I helped to prime and paint. These are being hung too!

And finally a photo of Steven using the mighty heat gun to strip paint from one of nine window stools. Yes, you guessed it. These were stripped, sanded, cleaned with water/bleach, spackled, primed and painted. And boy are they smooth and pretty now.

Stay tuned. I hope to have before and after pictures of the floors posted next week. Then it's on to hanging doors and door trim and the bath fixtures. We have three sinks and a tub that we are having refinished for the bathrooms on the west side. Progress, progress, progress!