Paint Stripping Fun (again)
We got a bunch of work done on the house today. My Dad came down to help. We first wired-up a new outlet in the basement on an individual circuit for a chest freezer that my parents got for us as a wedding gift. Due to the fact that we couldn’t support the freezer with our existing electrical system, and that they used it to store food for the rehearsal dinner, the freezer has been at their place since prior to the wedding. Well, now we have a shiny new outlet, so we’ll be able to move it down here soon. My Dad had constructed a base for it already (it will be in the basement, so we wanted it raised a bit in case of minor water on the floor, which happens in basements). We just need to add a bit of plywood to that, and we’ll be set.
Speaking of stuff that I should have done a while ago, I uploaded some pictures of the fireplace that we opened-up in the living room. I had apparently uploaded them at least once in the past, but I couldn’t find me linking to them anywhere in here. Here’s a link to the right position in the album detailing our work on the living room: 
After we were finished with the wiring, we came upstairs to start working on the living room again. Jenny was already in gear and in action stripping paint around the door from the hallway. I got my dad set up with the chemical stripper (CitrusSrip is what we’re using) outside with the quarter-round and some trim pieces that I had removed from the walls. While he was doing that, I worked on taking-up the last of the quarter-round, and working on getting more of the tack strips off of the floor (fie on those!). After he was done with getting the stripper painted onto that wood, we decided we’d go up to my parents’ house for some food. My Mom was making soups and the like for my sister’s birthday party tomorrow, so she had some ready to go for us. We enjoyed the soup (a good thing on a cold day like today), and we came back to our home to get to work again. When we arrived, we discovered that the temperature had dropped a bit, and the stripper wasn’t working so well on the wood outside anymore. We decided to move that wood into the basement (no fumes == safe for basements!). My Dad got started with that, and Jenny and I went back to paint stripping. Woo fun.
Once he was settled with the wood in the basement again, he came up to see what else he could do. I had been pondering what to do about the big picture window–it really needs to be reglazed, and it was going to be impossible to strip/sand/refinish some parts of the window while the sash was in place. I decided that this would be a good time to figure out how to take it out. I could kind-of guess how it went in, so we decided to give it a shot. The first hurdle was disconnecting the chains balancing the sash. This turned out to be somewhat more interesting than I had figured. I expected to find a hook or some easy attachment mechanism at the top of the window, but none was to be found. I tried a few things that I thought might disengage the chain, to no avail. Then we decided to try to tip the bottom of the window in, as if we were going to take it out. We were thinking that maybe the chains attached to the side of the sash somehow. Weren’t we surprised to find that the chains ran almost the entire length of the sash, and there was an ingenious little attachment device at the end of each chain. The chain ran in a channel in the side of the sash, and there was an enlarged hole in the sash at the end of the chain. Inside this hole was a curved piece of metal, through which the chain passed. At the end of the chain, holding it into the curved piece of metal, was a simple split ring. Removing the ring let the chain out of the curved metal bit, and the sash was free! Yippee! This also answers another question I had for a while–the window does indeed open higher than I thought. With this system, the window can be raised all the way to the top of the opening. It doesn’t have to stop at the pulleys, because the pulleys will fit into the channel, and the weights continue to provide balance!
As we were winding down, we realized that we were getting hungry again. A couple of pizzas from Pizza Hut, with toppings to make everyone happy, were the order of the evening. Then we went back and worked for a few more hours. Those few hours were pretty productive, though. Earlier, my Dad had put some of the chemical stripper onto the wood around the big window inside. While Jenny and I worked with the heat guns, he worked on some of that window. The stripper did a good job, and almost all of the old finish (which was apparently shellac) came off. He cleaned the stripper off of the wood and then cleaned the wood with some mineral spirits. It looks awesome. It will sand-up really nicely, I think.
All in all, it was a good day. I fell about two feet short of my goal for paint stripping today, but oh well. I was close, but I was tired. 🙂
Check here for some more pictures!
jonathan
