Last Saturday it was snowing, so we decided to make an amateur video of Steffi stripping! ENJOY!



Our trusted paint stripping technique starts with the heat gun to remove the easy stuff. We then use a chemical stripper to get rid of the hard parts and the detail. Lastly, we sand the remaining stain off with 180 grit sandpaper. It's a pretty involved process (that looks easy in the video), but the results are worth all the effort.

The music is by Jack Tuttle. He has some wonderful MP3s on his website, and he even gives lessons if you are in the San Francisco area. His website is www.jacktuttle.com. Thanks Jack!

There are some things we've done here and there around the house this fall that haven't been posted on the blog, so this is a brief update post.

I can't pass spring or fall without going to my beloved Growers Outlet, so in late October we went for our semi-annual trip to Loganville to buy some plants. One of my visions was to make the landscape strip more attractive. After the sidewalks were re-done we tried the grass thing, but it didn't look all that great. The earth sunk down too much and the grass was patchy.



I've always found landscape strip gardens intriguing, so this is our go at it. Closest to the mailbox is the annual winter section – kale, cabbage, pansies, etc. To each side of the red bud tree we planted more perennial plants – sage, dianthus, coral bells, daylilies, petunias, etc.



Another section we tackled was the left side foundation. We fell in love with the Southern Living plant collection's "Purple Diamond Chinese Fringe Flower"; however, due to our purple-ish brick foundation we decided to separate the purple evergreen plants with the evergreen "Waxleaf Ligustrum". On the left side are some elephant ears. The larger one is supposed to grow up to 6 feet! We'll see next year…



And what else have we been up to? Well, with the colder weather we've focused our attention back on interior projects. Mainly stripping...



...stripping...



...and more stripping. I don't think we'll ever finish that dining room!

People told us "Oh my god, you're working on the house on Christmas??"...which is funny, because well, what else were we going to do? Sit on the couch and twiddle our thumbs? Of course we're going to work on our house during the little time we have off! Paint stripping, when coming off easily, is actually quite relaxing and fun...


The back bedroom served as our paint-stripping territory. Here we ("we" as in Steffi takes a sec to step away from the scraper and behind the camera) were working on the bathroom door.



Below the 2 layers of white, one layer of baby pink, and one layer of mint green we got to this redish-purplish-brown paint below which lays the wood.



We also knocked the rest of the broken plastic out of the door. Oh my goodness...the wood. How sexy!!



The bathroom built-in. Look at that small strip of wood that has some green and pink on it. That's what we're working on. It may not be much, but it sure as hell is a lot of work!



The bottom part of the built-in. Look at all that stripped paint on the floor. We also discovered another part of a toilet that we never realized we owned!

Getting more paint off the wood.



The bathtub has to be filled for the plumbing inspection. At this point it was leaking and the valves were installed croocked and not to the height we had specified.

We started scraping the paint off the beautiful wood in the dining room.



Closer look.


Not pictured: Putting new sash cords in one of the kitchen windows.

Since we have all this painted over hardware we thought we'd try to boil off the paint. Someone had told us it would help peel things right off. Didn't quite work as well though. I guess that applies more to latex paint, and 91 years of paint means a lot more than latex.

It may look like Patrick did all the work, but believe me that it only looks like this because he didn't take any pictures of me working equally as hard!



Something we could work on from home: Stripping paint from the medicine cabinet mirror.



Scraping away.



Look at all those lovely layers of paint.



The paint is gone, on to sanding.



Yay, the easy part is done - the flat back of the mirror!

I wanted to make a quick blog entry about my goals for the house in 2009. This way at the end of the year we can reflect back and see how many of the tasks we actually finish.

1) Finish stripping the dining room, paint the walls, re-stain/poly the wood work.
2) Finish painting and putting back together the built-ins in the kitchen and bathroom.
3) Finish painting the kitchen.
4) Replace the stairs to the front porch.

I know the list seems short, but some of these projects are huge. The dining room we have already been working on for almost two years. I'm sure there are some things I am leaving off, so chances are I'll come back and edit this at some point.

Once upon a time there was a sad butler's pantry...

But we slaved for hours and hours and hours stripping paint and have almost completely restored it!! The only thing left is to add the doors. (The new hardware has been ordered and is on the way!)

Check out the short video we made to follow its journey through the restoration process. And yes, we did make some improvements along the way - it's deeper than the original size to accomodate more food (and alcohol) storage and we added a granite countertop that matches the rest of our kitchen counters.

We've had some house action again over the last few days. The contractors came back to fix some of the outstanding things, like the bathroom door and window received the missing cap molding.


They finally removed the pipe from our bedroom.



Molding was applied around the door in the laundry - still have to finish painting that part of the laundry room too. As you can see we've put up a quick curtain solution for some extra privacy on the door, and what you can't see is that we also installed weather stripping on the bottom of the door to prevent water leaking in.

In addition our bathroom sink started leaking about 3 weeks ago and was finally fixed (we had an AWOL contractor for 4 weeks). What can I say - what a surprise that another plumbing-related item was not working!! After a month of using it at that. I think we better ask for an extended warranty on the plumbing work!

Then we had some more gardening fun...

Who said anything about child labor laws? Just kidding! Our niece came to spend the night and we decided to play in the dirt for a little bit. We started removing some grass so we can get a small vegetable garden started.

Friday night Patrick decided to take a few pieces of blue tape remnants off the dining room walls. They had served to protest the wall from getting chemical on them while we were stripping the wood. Except, the tape had been on there for so long that it didn't come off on its own. It took part of the wall with it! We thought someone had dry-walled over the plaster, but what came off was thin like wallpaper and had the plaster right underneath! The problem with these things is that once you get your hands on it you continue to pick...



...and pick at it some more...



...and then you're so far you may as well continue...



...and then it's all gone. Thankfully this was a case where we didn't need 2 years to finish it. But now we have one panel in our dining room that has exposed plaster with the original olive-green looking color on it. Patrick has told himself he would not touch any of the other panels...

I know our loyal readers are eagerly awaiting our next post, so I wanted to share a few projects that we have going on.

First up is the veggie garden. It has grown quite a lot with all of the rain. (Scroll down the page to see the photo when we planted the veggies.) I am loving the raised bed because it hasn't really had any weeds and we were able to give the plants some great soil to grow in. I also think it looks pretty cool. The tomato plants are huge, and the green peppers are already full of peppers.



The next project is *drum roll please* - PAINTING THE HOUSE! We have wanted to paint the exterior for quite a while, but it is a huge task. The house hasn't been properly painted in years, so there is a ton of prep work involved. We did hire professionals for this project, so it should get done fairly quickly. The first step was to pressure wash the exterior, which they did on Friday. You should have seen the dirt pouring off the house.

This is what it looks like after the pressure washing. Next up is scraping and sanding.


Picking a color has been a big challenge. I won't tell you what we decided on quite yet.


The last project (but definitely not the least) is stripping our new front door. Our friends Josh and Carl over in Howell Station were kind enough to give me their old front door for my birthday!!! Huge thanks to the both of them! The door is going to look great with the newly painted house.



We'll post more about each of the projects as they progress, but there should be some big changes soon.

Okay, we haven't been posting a lot lately, but it's because we have been busy working!!! Sometimes when you work until late in the evening there just isn't time to write.

Our latest project has been stripping, sanding, and re-painting the linen cabinet in our bathroom. We loooove our built-ins, so we have spent way too much time taking all the paint off just to put paint right back on. It is a little painful when you work so hard to just cover it back up, but it looks really nice in the end. (So it is worth it!)

The linen cabinet in our bathroom was still 100% in tact when we bought the house, and it was carefully preserved under 90 years of paint. With a little help from the trusty heat gun and the old paint-stripper we were able get most of the paint off. Then a lot of sanding (by hand) made the surface flat. The sanding really is the most important part since it is what really makes the final finish look good. Make sure to use a fine grain sandpaper to really get it smooth. If you don't sand enough you might as well have just painted over the existing paint. We like to think of our built-ins as pieces of furniture that are attached to the floor.

The linen cabinet originally had plastered walls, but we decided to line it with the beadboard to tie it back in with the room. Our contractor also built us new shelves.

So here are the photos:

In the beginning... It doesn't look so bad in the picture, but it was covered with so many layers of paint. The last layer was a flat white latex paint. It was obviously the cheapest paint they could find. It needed some TLC, but you'll just have to take our word on it.



This is what it looked like when we took it all apart! It looked quite bare in this state. I still can't believe our bathroom looked like that at one point.



And the bottom portion at the same time...



Aren't those colors lovely?! These are a few of the many layers of paint we had to remove.



Working with the heatgun. Yes, we were too lazy to take everything out of the cabinet.



Doing the final sanding. This is one of the most important parts.



Ready for paint!



Have you ever seen anybody so excited to paint? Didn't think so...



I like this view! :) We added this little storage space over the linen cabinet, and we painted it blue to match the walls.



The finished product! This is really when all the hard work pays off.



We still need to do the doors, and we have started working on the drawer. Of course with the tempature warming up we might be spending more time in the yard over the next few months.

Some exciting things have been happening in Westview. In early spring the Westview Development Committee found out that Quality of Life Bonds were being distributed to improve intown neighborhoods. The bonds were actually on their third round, each one having been for $150 Million. Somehow Westview had been overlooked and not received a single penny. Needless to say we were upset to find out we had been totally neglected and started an angry email and phone call campaign to our councilmember, CT Martin. (Westview continues to face a challenge as we are split between two council districts and have two councilmembers...the majority of which is in CT Martin's area.)

Finally this summer our complaints were acknowledged - we were informed we'd be getting new sidewalks and streets repaved!! (At least the two streets we complained about.) The letter informed us the work would start in early June and be done at the end of August. I think it will be to few people's surprise that despite the fact that it is late September the work is not done! Our street was scheduled first, so we're pretty much done...so I can show some pictures!!


This is what our sidewalk looked like before. The portion in front of our house was actually lacking a curb altogether, though I know other houses on our street did in fact still have barely visible curbs. Because we had no curbs in front of our house we'd constantly have a flooded sidewalk when it rained (not that Atlanta knows what rain is anymore). Oh, and note our decent looking Crossvine growing on the mailbox. This was July 23rd.



Here they tore up the old sidewalk in front of our house. The plan was to raise the sidewalk in order to create a curb. This was July 24th.



Finally two weeks after they tore up our path they came back to put down the concrete sidewalk and curb. You can see their excellent craftsmanship when you notice the fat curb closer to us and see how it gets more narrow behind the mailbox. (It's not just an optical illusion from the leaning boards.) They also left the strip between the sidewalk and driveway apron unfinished. This was August 6th.



It was yet another week before they came back to tear up our driveway apron and pour it the same day. This is the before photo, and as you can see our driveway was in need of some repair. Since the sidewalks were being raised it meant everyone's walkways and driveways were too low, so they tore up parts of everyone's driveways to slope them and line up properly with the new height. So we were lucky to get our driveway fixed in the process!



This is the driveway apron after they poured it. At this point the triangle between the sidewalk and driveway still remained unpaved. Upon my inquiry of the missing piece I was essentially told that I should be grateful that they were even pouring our driveway since it was 3:30pm on a Friday and they were working "overtime" to pour our driveway since their clock out time is 4:00pm. (Another worker tried to downplay this by telling me that the guy was exaggerating.) If I remember correctly I was also told that they would come back on Monday to finish that missing piece. This was August 15th.



Two weeks later the missing triangle was still not done. Not only was it not done, but at one point they came to take away the barricades they had put up to prevent people from walking on the fresh concrete. I finally happened to drive by them as they were working on a portion further down the street and reminded them that the triangle still had not been poured and that it was a safety issue if someone walked down the path at night and could break their ankle because there was no barricade. I think they showed up a day later to finish off the triangle. I noticed too late that they had again failed to put up barricades, leaving footprints on the fresh concrete. (Why pedestrians failed to notice that it was freshly poured is also beyond me, but oh well.) I was pretty much steaming at this point, determined to complain and have them tear the portion back out and re-pour it. In the end I was convinced by Patrick's idea that instead of potentially creating greater damage we should leave the footprints as an ode to the idiocracy of the City of Atlanta employees. This was August 29th.



A week and a half later a contracted company (not City of Atlanta!) came and prepped our street in the late morning by stripping the pavement on the sides of the street. (You can again view the wonderful craftsmanship of the crooked curb.)



A couple hours later our street was entirely repaved and looking great!! :) Please also note the debris left in the landscaping strip. This was September 9th.



In the meanwhile the City of Atlanta workers had still not finished with our sidewalks. The new landscaping strips were still not filled with dirt by our house, instead only with remains of concrete, rocks, bushels of grass and some scattered cigarette buds and plastic soda cup lids, etc. When they finally came back to fill our stretch it took ten (!) workers a full workday (!) to transfer the dirt from the truck to the landscaping strip in front of four (!) houses. (Yes, we actually counted the workers as they were working in front of our house.) I made sure to point out to them that there was a lot of debris that needed to be removed before the dirt should be filled in since you can’t exactly put in landscaping with all that junk in it. I watched one guy do a half ass job of shoveling out some of the debris before the dirt came. Oh yeah, and the best part, this is what the quality of their work looked like in the end:



At the beginning of the project I was just so excited and grateful that we were getting new sidewalks that I was ready to accept anything they did. Now that they are done in front of our house and I’ve had time to reflect I’m really quite upset. Yes, I’m still happy that we got new sidewalks, but this is what we’ll presumably have for, say, the next 30 years! If I was a teacher I’d rate the craftsmanship of the City of Atlanta employees a big fat F. Plus look at the speed at which they carried out the work - they were supposed to be done at the end of August and they are still deep into the project in late September. At no other job would employees be tolerated to perform the way the City of Atlanta employees performed on this project.

So here’s the breakdown of how we got to grade “F”:
- The curb looks like it was created by a drunken person with the wide width on one end and a narrow width on the other. (At one point the backhoe also broke off a portion of the newly dried curb which they had to redo, leaving an obvious “scar” at the joint.)
- A portion of the sidewalk has a number of footprints. (Additional point subtracted to lack of safety precaution.)
- The landscape strips are largely filled with debris, then covered with the cheapest of the cheap chunky fill dirt and a handful of grass seed thrown on it.
- And as an added bonus the redbud tree planted by Trees Atlanta a year and a half ago has pretty much been killed, our Cross vine looks pretty pathetic too, and our bushes along the sidewalk have some gaping holes in them.

But enough bitching. Aside from these flaws we are thrilled to have this freshened up look!! So here again are the before and after photos:





Updated landscaping strip photos to come when they are presentable.