CURVE APPEAL

    I took this photo today and thought I would quickly share it.  It is beautiful to me for several reasons.

  

1. It is the only wall original to the house we kept in tact.  Donnie repaired the plaster.

2. The picture molding was missing from much of the house upon purchase back in 2011.  We replaced the lost and damaged molding throughout the house and found a fabricated rubber molding to match the wood so we were able to span this original curved wall.

3. This color (Benjamin Moore's Buxton Blue) on the walls of my future bedroom  is peaceful. 

A HANDRAIL IN THE MAKING

    As we've come to find out, to no surprise, nothing original to this house is available in your local hardware store or even the specialty lumber mills in the area.  What this means is we find the closest product available (such as the crown molding in the roof repair which has the same basic profile but is slightly less thick),

Missing crown from roof

Newly primed close match to original crown

 change to an entirely different product (such as deck railing pickets since the deck is a new feature),

New deck, new pickets

beg, borrow or 'steal' from areas of this house or another local house (thank you Garland house),

Old floorboards from our kitchen and Garland Street house sistered in to the  back room

 pay an arm and a leg to have a product duplicated (the stair spindles are so unique),

60 duplicated spindles .....  Ka-ching!

OR

we make it ourselves (because, I've been told so many times and I am now beginning to believe it,  "Carlie, there's nothing we can't do." - DLS).

    So, make it we did.  We purchased an outdoor handrail that was close in size to the existing original rail at the top of the back stairs. 

Original handrail atop the bead board (2nd floor)

We milled the rail to be close to the original.

Purchased fir rail with a portion of the right side bead cut off

Using the table saw to remove the bead on each side of the rail

The router will give us a curved side

Clamping the rail before routing

After installing the rail it was time to sand the peak off the top side of the rail (originally milled to be an exterior rail it required a peak to shed water).

A palm sander comes in handy for this task (Thanks Lucius for such an awesome gift years ago)

*We are far from finished.  Check the following posts for the magic of Bondo and the completed wall.

  

"FINISHIN' WITH..."

PRIMING!

5 piece corner

trimming out in progress

fascia for the garage

corbels

TEETH ! (only 1/2 of them)

fascia, crown molding, quarter round, soffits 

et cetera

Carlie "finishin' with" priming.

IT'S A JUGGLING ACT

    This renovation adventure requires someone, or several someones, skilled at keeping numerous projects in the air at the same time. A variety of jobs must be done either in preparation for an upcoming contractor or in conjunction with a current contractor. This past week has been a terrific example of keeping all the balls in the air.

    As the roofers continue to repair the roof,

  (shaping copper)

(replacing water damaged wood)

( applying underlayment and TPO)

    I purchase and prime replacement molding that they will install below the soffit.

  Meantime, Donnie removes the 7 foot windows leading to the rooftop in order to repair the sills so the roofers can make the roof water tight.

     Concurrently, Wallace clears out crawl spaces, relocates old brick to be used in the foundation work, and launches and attack on the bamboo (a story for another posting).

A ball was dropped when the roofers got soffits up before being primed.  Now we must get up on the ladders to protect the wood.