Savannah

Last weekend Lita and I went to Savannah for a few days. It was our first time going there and didn't know what to expect. Lita was told by a coworker that Savannah was a very nice looking city, with its old buildings and such. I didn't know what would actually be there and just figured that it would be like Jacksonville, old buildings here and there sprinkled with some new towers. Boy was I wrong!

Our hotel was about 10 minutes away on Abercorn Street and the neighborhood looked just like any suburban neighborhood did, with its strip malls here and there, Burger Kings and McDonalds on each corner, of course it was the first time I saw an actual Piggly Wiggly! After checking in we left the dogs in the room and went straight down Abercorn. At first it was the normal bungalows that I have been accustomed to here in Jax, but then out of nowhere came these rowhouses. You could tell they needed help but they were so beautiful, I thought already it was the greatest place. Little did either of us know that we had just only been through the Victorian district. This district is starting to revitalize just like Springfield is. I figured it couldn't get any better, but then the oak tree lined streets started to part and in front of us was a little pocket park with grand homes all around the park. I couldn't believe what I saw and as we kept driving the houses were just grander and grander. As you can tell, that is how it went the whole time we were there. Every turn we were just in awe of whatever was in front of us. I couldn't believe there was a city that still had most of its historic buildings intact. Jacksonville has lost a lot of it's history to the wrecking ball. A lot of the buildings being torned down to be rebuilt as parking space. Our Main St. isn't even the main street anymore. There is absolutely nothing on that street to go to, besides the new library. It is a shame to see the old pictures compared to what is there now. Anyways back to Savannah. We had a blast there and my wife is for certain that our next home will be in Savannah. I think our next trip is to Charleston, heard it was a bigger version of Savannah.

Here are some pictures of our trip:

The Return.....

Well it has been quite some time since I last wrote anything, but I am finally back. Well for now at least. I guess after the debacle my FSU Seminoles have been having, I just couldn't get up to write anymore. But since the season is over (which actually ended about 4 months ago) I can go back to writing about my house.

Since I last left off there has been no real changes. I did prep the master bedroom for paint, which it hasn't been painted yet. I have also replaced the bad floor boards that I have in the living room. I thought this job would be hard, but I found out that it wasn't as bad as I thought. The worst part is finding replacement heartwood pine flooring. I'm lucky enough to have some dumbass neighbors who buy historic homes and just rip out everything inside and throw it out. As you can tell I have been dumpster diving a lot. I also found 2 old sinks from different eras. I'm not sure how old they are, but they have openings slotted with 2 faucets for hot and cold. So I can only assume they are old. Back to the flooring. Another thing that was difficult with replacing the wood flooring was cutting out the bad parts. I could have done it the easy way and just ripped out the whole floor board, but I wanted to save as much flooring I could, so that meant squaring up and cutting the floorboard while it was still on the ground. Let me tell you that was hard, I could never get a good perpendicular cut. And when I did get a good cut, using the chisel was horrendous. I found that putting a saw blade on my dremel was the best way of getting a good cut.

When I finally got everything cut to size and installed the new old floorboard, I ended up with space between the new and the old floors. The new floorboard I had was about 1/16th skinnier in width. I though it wouldn't make much of a difference, but after putting it in, you could see the spacing so well. Solution: Use a broom or brush and brush the sawdust that will no doubt be there into the crevices. I forget where I got that idea, but I think it was on someones blog. That worked like wonder. Now all I have to do it complete the other floorboards, sand the floors and then put some shellac on them. Yes folks you heard right, I am going to shellack these damn floors, but that will be another day. Until then Merry Christmas and send me some money.

Another house on fire

Wow, yesterday another house caught on fire in the neighborhood. That is now 3 houses in the past couple months. I think there is an arsonist out there, because this is just too fishy. For the 1 year I have lived here, I had not seen a fire and now in the past 1-2 months, there have been 3. And all of them are homes that are being restored and currently empty. This is sad to see 3 more of these wonderful homes to go. There was a story a few years back of a woman burning houses on purpose to scare people from moving here. I wonder if this is the same situation. I can tell you that I will not be moving and I hope we get this bastard.

Oh the sweet smell of house fires in the morning.

Well looks like another house has caught fire in Springfield. That's two in the past few weeks, this one a little more suspicious though. I was walking my dogs in the morning and right out my front porch I saw police cars blocking off the street next to me. I live one house down from the corner of 7th Street and Laura Street. The "blazin' house" was on Laura Street. Since it was 6 in the morning, I just thought they were doing some kind of construction on the street (8th street is being totally redone). I should have known something was up when *ding* I smelled smoke in the air. But I didn't think of it as anything. When I got to work a coworker of mine asked me if I lived close to the house on fire, I was just sitting there staring thinking to myself, "Damn am I stupid". This time the house fires were way to close to home, even though my house was still far away to not be threatened, it was just alarming to me that it could happen to anyones house. This house was just magnificent, it was a victorian style home with stained glass windows, wrap around porch, great woordwork. Now the weird thing about this fire is, that it started on the second floor of the house. "How is that weird?," you ask. Well there was no electricity in the house at the time, so the house could not have been on fire because of electrical issues. It seems either someone set it on fire or some kind of small fireball thrown from those creatures from the Lord of the Rings. Either way very suspicious. I am leaning towards the fireball.

I guess sometimes these things happen, it's heartbreaking to see, but these beauties can't last forever. I just hope that if someone did set this house on fire that they find this person soon. I hate to see them go, but I'm optimistic that the house can still be restored. I am going to drive by and see the damage. I think it is just relegated to the second floor. I always wanted that house, but I guess I am kind of lucky that I never got it.

I hate carpet

I'm sure all of you agree with the title of this post. As being owners of historic homes, one of the worst things to see when you buy one of these beaut's is carpet over the original hardwood floor. I had taken out all the carpet in the house so far except the dining room. That's where the fridge and wall oven are located at this moment. Well, I decided to rip up at least part of the carpet and see what was underneath. This is what I found:






























Looks like more and more of those damn laminate tiles. But the one good thing is that they come off a lot easier than the ones in the living room did. I did find out that my floors are not in the best shape ever. There is termite damage and when they put the laminate on, it seems like they had to really heat up the surface. So the woor floors look like they got burnt. I hope that, that isn't the case and it's just the adhesive they used. I can't wait to get all this carpet outta here. I HATE CARPET!!!

For Sale Buy Owner

Yesterday after taking a look at the burned down house I decided to ride around the neighborhood looking for scraps of heartpine flooring or anything that some renovator was throwing out, like a vintage sink I found a few weeks back (I'll post pics of that later). As I was riding I saw a lot of houses that were for sale but ones that I never saw on the mls listing. Of course the reason why, was because they were all being sold by owner. After I rode by a few I figured I might as well take pictures of these houses and post them online. Maybe I will be fruitful in driving some interest into Springfield. I would at least be happy to see more 'normal' people, than the crazy ones. Here are some pictures:


This house needs some real TLC, but it looks like it would be a wonderful house.


Me and Lita actually looked at this house about 2 years ago. Looks nice outside, but the inside needs some serious work.


Another house that we looked at. Was in way better shape when we took a look, even though it was still in shambles. Had nice coffer ceiling and detail.


Another nice renovated home, only problem is that it is right across the street from a school.


Good looking house, I wonder how much they want?


Nice looking Spanish style home, I know Lita likes it.


This one was on the mls listing, but they wanted a lot of money for it. I bet they still do.


Another one for you DIYer's out there. This house would look great if done properly.


This one looked like it had been partially burned at one point, but it may still be salvageable. This is for you major DIYer's with big paychecks.


Another one of these victorianesque homes. I've seen the sign up for this one for a long time.


A small bungalow type home. I believe it is right across the street from the one above.

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire

Well today I worked on prepping the living room walls to be ready to paint this weekend, but after all the sanding and filling of holes I took a bike break. I decided to ride around and take a picture of the house that burned down a few days ago. I remember when Lita and I were thinking about this house. We saw the For Sale sign out front and gave the number a call. The man on the phone was asking for way too much, so we passed on it. I guess good thing we did. It was a great looking victorian house too. Now it's just the next in line to be demolished. It's a sad thing to see these 'ol beauty's go. I've already seen a few in the area that will be or have been torned down because of fires. I'm guessing it's because of faulty knob and tube wiring, or faulty crack head neighbors trying to rid of us sane humans.



Nice, huh? Did someone go get those damn marshmallows????

Paint + Rust = Crap

Well yesterday I was doing some caulking of exposed nail holes on my exterior siding. After I was done I saw that the front of the house where I had previously primed(which by the way is still unpainted because we can't decide on colors) has small little dots of rust coming through the primer from the nails behind them. At first I thought it was only a couple then that became a few, to some, then it seemed like all of them. Now should I resad those areas and then caulk them and prime them with oil primer instead? I used just regular water based Zinnser Bullseye or something from the HD. If that is not a good primer, than what should I have gotten. I'm afraid that everything I have done will be for nothing. AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (Now turning green and my clothes are ripping from my body.... it would work, but I'm asian so back to my normal self). dang

Revenge against the garbage monsters... well sort of

Yesterday I was welcomed to the most beautiful sight of trash strewn across my front lawn. This is the first time it has happened to me, but I have seen it happen to others in my neighborhood. If you don't know already, I live in a area that is going through some gentrification, so we have some people that live here that are, how should I say it...... residentially challenged. They go around going through peoples trash and taking whatever they can to sell to make some drug/alcohol money. I'm sure some of you know exactly what I am talking about. Anywho, I decided to take revenge on these bastards. Now I don't mind people going through my trash to "salvage" something, but at least clean up the mess. So what I did was collect as much cat poo I could get from my 5 furry friends and I gently placed it between some goodies in the trash. I placed it outside and with a grin on my face I went back inside to sleep. Well this morning I woke up to find trash yet again piled on the lawn, but the weird thing was, the bag of cat poo I placed in the garbage was taken??? Now I don't know if I actually got the revenge I wanted, but I was both happy and grossed out. Well I just hope that whoever it was got the idea. If not I will have to keep my pitt outside and give them a bigger surprise.

Mount Dora, Florida

Well this has been my first post since the last millenia, but anyways here I am. Been a bit busy the last month, hence the reason I haven't written anything, but this past weekend Lita and I went down to Mount Dora.

For about the last year or so, Lita has been bugging me to go to Mount Dora. How she even heard of this place is unknown to me, but I always blame it on my chihuahua Peanut. So it's his fault. She had been talking about this place non stop everyday it seemed, always asking me if we could go there, but I just didn't like the idea of driving 2.5 hours just to look at some antiques. From what I heard it was a big haven for antique collectors and such. So this past weekend we decided to go, it worked well with the work meeting I had in Orlando. Now hearing about Mount Dora so much, I had amental image of some kind of grand place full of anitque stores and old homes, but as we were coming closer and closer all I saw was grass and cows. It sure wasn't the grandest old town I thought. But it did have some very nice areas. The downtown area of Mount Dora was wonderful, it is set right on the edge of Lake Dora and the town is set on a hill overlooking the water. The town didn't have many old homes that I could see, they did have one that was huge, but we weren't able to get a tour of it. The shops were nice and what you would expect from an older downtown area. But the main reason we came, was the Renningers Flea and Antique Market. Now that place is what puts Mount Dora on the map. It was the largest flea market I had ever been to and had many awesome things, too bad we didn't have the money to buy much, but Lita did find a few nick nacks to buy and we had a great time talking to people and looking at stuff. We also got a few ideas from the things they did have and hope we can incoperate that into our house, whenever it is finished. I would highly recommend going to Mount Dora and having a look around the antique market and the downtown area, other than that it is really bland, but it was worth seeing the smile on Lita's face. Maybe we can go there again sometime soon and bring more money.

I am now a historic home owner!

I bet your saying, "Peter, how can you say you're a historic home owner now, when we know you already bought a historic home?" Well this is how I know I am a historic home owner now. I got something stolen from my house! I've been to many neighborhood meetings and every meeting someone says that they had gotten something stolen from them at least once. I've heard stories of huge 250 lb pots to tools to anything that these SOB's can get their hands on. Well today I noticed that my ladder had been hi-jacked. And it's not just any ladder, it's one of the Little Giant type ladders. But the thing that pissed me off the most was that I was almost done priming the house. I mean dammit! They know exactly when to hit you. Now I know that I should have taken the ladder inside, but I thought no way that anyone would see the ladder from the front of the house. But to my surprise these dirt bags can smell anything remotely close to them that will fetch them a few dollars so they can get their alcohol and drugs. I am so pissed right now. I just hope that they had hell dragging the ladder with them. I hope they fell down and cut their knees while hauling this big thing with them. Those bastards!!!!!

Patching and removing wood floors

Well today I decided to pull up some of my wood flooring that had been damaged by termites. I went online and read a few articles on the 'how to do's' of replacing floor boards. It seemed easy enough, drill a few holes and then use the handy circular saw to cut a few lines down the board, then you just pry up and voila - a hole in the floor! In reality, I drilled the holes, then used the circular saw only to hit the nails that were used to secure the floor boards in the first place. Then after totally screwing my circular saw, I tried to pry the board up. Too bad the board came up in only pieces and I had to scrape and dig to get every bit out. Even then I still need to use a chisel to straighten the good board with the holes I drilled in. But eventually I got a few boards up. Now onto the successful part of the day. Patching holes that termites made. WOOHOO! Well after the tremendous amount of time it took to take up one board, I started to dread thinking about pulling up all the boards that have been damaged. So I decided I would try to patch some areas that weren't that badly damaged. I took a piece of wood that I had previously pull out and I started to scrape it into the shape I needed to patch the board with. The area isn't all that big, so it was a good practice piece. It didn't take long to shave off a little at a time until I got the right size. After I was done, I just plopped the sucker into the hole and I was pretty happy with the end results. Here are some pictures of the wood pulling and patching. Enjoy!

Anyone know where I can get old flooring?

Well I am almost complete in stripping the old glue off my living room floor and am getting ready to sand afterwards, but before I do that I need to get some replacement flooring for my floors. Some of the wood peices have been eaten away by those darn pesky termites. I can't wonder why God ever decided to make those things, I'm assuming it was actually Satan himself who created these buggers. He loves to enjoy watching us new old home owners rip up the carpet only to find millenia linoleum under it. Then pull that up only to find that the wood flooring under that has been ravaged by his creations. Anyways I was wondering if anyone knew of a website or some place in Florida where I could get salvaged old wood flooring. Mine are 2.5 inch old heart pine and I want to finish them with some shellac or maybe poly, depends how old I want to go. But if anyone can lead me to the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks a lot!

Riverside/Avondale Home Tour Review

Well this past weekend was the Riverside/Avondale Home Tour. They had 10 buildings on the tour, but only 7 were actual homes. Also out of those 7 homes 2 were not even close to being finished, so that actually left 5 homes to be viewed, which was pretty disappointing. Not the say that the 2 houses were in bad shape, I can see the beauty in them when finished, but to have them on a home tour??? Why??? There was nothing to see. One home was actually just frames with no walls, just wires and duct work. It was just a skeleton of itself. Onwards to the other 5 homes, as you can tell I didn't take any photos, because I was overly impressed with any of the homes. All the homes had a great looking exterior, but once inside they were all pretty bland. (A note some of the backyards were wonderful though.) So I was pretty disappointed this year, but one house that was very interesting was the Mediterranean style home, with original stuccoed walls, high high coffered ceilings and dark woodwork. The house was amazing until you went into the kitchen, where it fell into a restorers nightmare. The kitchen had been overhauled and had pale woodwork, which didn't match at all to the dark woodwork throughout the house, but that house was by far the highlight of the tour. I guess I was hoping to see homes back to their original beauty, but I did realize that it is of modern times and people need to renovate their homes to match their livelyhood. All in all it was an ok home tour, they had a much better one last year. Of course they did have one house which I didn't actually lookat because they had so many stuffed animals in there. Lions, tigers and bear OH MY!!!

Woohoo a free domain

Well I found a site that gives you a free domain, so now people don't have to remember hanjin1.clearwire.net. Now you can go to www.restorationon7th.co.nr , hmmmm I guess that will take a bit more to remember, but at least my web address now corresponds to my blog. If anyone wants a free domain, just click the link I have and sign up (part of the agreement is to keep a link of them on your website). Anyways this beats paying money for a domain. We'll see if anyone uses this address or not.

As for the house project, or as my wife would call it DAMMITTTT!!!! , right now we are pulling up all the old glue that held down the linoleum tiles that covered my floors. It's tedious job, but it beats hanging off my roof trying to sand the last bit of clapboard siding. I guess I will have to do that this weekend, I really need to finish that siding. Oh well, more cleaning and scraping and sanding and painting, what a week!

Messy house = Small house

Well yesterday Lita and I went to our weekly animal rescue group in Springfield (SACARC) which is held at someone's house. This week we went to Anastasia's house on 9th St., first of all she had a big house (not finished yet, but whose is?). It was a really nice house and looked so open and spacious. That made me think about my house with all the boxes and crap still there (Yes we still have boxes even 1 year into moving). Anyways Lita had been saying that she wanted to rent a storage room to move everything in. Hmmm I thought "Wow maybe that would make the house look bigger!" bright idea by me of course. So it looks as if we will be renting out a room and putting our junk in there. So it is true a clean house does look bigger, who'd a thunk it?????

P.S. SACARC is trying to create a dog park in our historic area. We need 150 pledges of $25 by Thursday to get it. So far we have 85, if anyone is willing to help go to sacarc.org and click the dog park link, then download the letter of intent form and fax it to 904-241-1680. We would really appreciate any help that we can get. This is for our furry little friends, hell they need a park too!

Lita is here...

Hello. This is Lita. I am blogging here for the first time and I hope my husband Peter doesn't erase this post. I have my own blog but no I am not sharing that with anyone. Sorry. It's just too personal I think. But maybe I will create another one that is more public-friendly. I mean, not that my current blog is XXX rated or anything like that, it's just that I am not comfortable other people reading it. So just read this blog. It's more fun here anyway.

The last several weeks have been really hactic for both of us. Busy volunteering here and there and other personal activites. So in short, we haven't had that much chance getting anything done in the house. I am basically not the type of person who likes to get dirty but since we own this old house, I don't have much choice.

Today, I plan to do some cleaning in the house. It is so hard to do that since 90% of the house is filled with our stuff or should I say junk? I need to sort out the stuff we don't need and donate them to Salvation Army. Then rent a storage somewhere to store our furnitures, etc. We plan to rent the storage this weekend. I hope I can finish my living room in a month. That would be fab! Then I can start doing the dining room. Master bedroom is next. Peter can work on the outside of the house while I do the inside.

I just want a nice-clean-finished-looking house.
Ours is far from all of that.
Damn.

Did I win the lottery last week?

Donations anyone???

I saw this donate button on someone elses blog before and decided to put one on mine, (heck any money is good money). We all know the costs it takes to restore an old house, and I for one am finding out how much. The rule of thumb is estimate what you think it would cost and the time it would take and times it by 2 or 3 or 4 (depends on the person). Well it's not the easiest thing to do, but I love old homes, just like the rest of us and I am damn sure going to see this one come together, HELOC or no HELOC. So you can take that ELoans.com!!!!


Anyone looking for a part-time employee???

Frustrations in getting that darn HELOC FROM HELL!!!

Well most of you don't know, but I have been trying hard to get a HELOC for my house. You know how the story goes, buy old house use credit cards for restoration, now can't pay for everything without eating 1 every 3 days. You know how it is. Anyways I decided to try and get a HELOC, from several lenders, but when I told them my situation (especially the part where I tore out the whole kitchen and bathroom downstairs) they said that getting one may be tough. I have only lived there for almost a year, but the mounting expenses have cut down on what I can do for the house. I'm sure not having a kitchen and bathroom downstairs will only lower the cost of my house. I wonder if there is another way to at least be able to consolidate our house debt. Damn credit cards, they are the devil!!!! Well wish me luck in finding someone that will help me out.

New Banner

Since I saw a lot of people with new graphical banners, I thought I should change mine as well. So here it is, tada! Hope it is cool, tell me what you think.

Springfield Annual Home and Garden Tour!

Woohoo! It's finally time for the Springfield Home and Garden Tour. I love when home tours come around, because all of the houses give me so many ideas. The good thing about this year is that the Riverside/Avondale home tour is next week! Boy so many houses in so little time. If anyone is coming through Jacksonville, FL, you need to hit up the home tours this weekend and next. It will be a blast. I will post pics of all the houses that I attend.

Exterior colors, version 2

Well I tried another set of colors, this time with different shades of the green and cream color. The green turned out a lot better and I am way happier with the results, but the cream turned into more of a yellowy color. I didn't really want yellow, since there are a few houses around that are yellow. I guess I will have to make another trip to the paint store and try another cream color. You know, I thought that doing the prep work for the exterior was hard, but picking colors will kill your brain. Anyways here are some pics of the new colors:

Exterior colors.... decisions, decisions

Well I started priming the front of the house a few weeks ago and have done most of it. I still have some areas that I have to smooth out, but I just don't want to deal with it yet. Lita has really wanted me to finish the front, so that at least when people walk by they won't say, "Damn, look at that crack house!" Now they will say, "Damn that's a nice looking crack house." Anyways we decided on colors for our house and have gone with a cream base with a grey green trim and accentting the windows with a dark red. So far we have this:



I think the cream is a little to brown, maybe a little lighter. What do you think?

As you can see I haven't finished stripping the beadboard ceiling. That will wait for a long time as that is the hardest area to strip. Very hard trying the use a grinder facing up. I may just end up replacing it all.

Old postcards and photos of Springfield

Here are some photos and postcards I found of my neighborhood. Boy, was it beautiful then, I wish we still had the trolley going through Main St. Anyways enjoy!

Kramer's Antique Improver??

Went to the antique store yesterday and saw a booth they had, advertising Kramer's Best Antique Improver. I was wondering if anyone has ever tried this stuff on their floors? I have a room that I have sanded but have not put anything on it as of yet (yes I am that lazy). I saw this stuff and read the back and saw where it says that it's good for floors as well. I've tried searching and haven't found anyone that has actually used this stuff yet. I've seen the examples they had at the booth and they look real good. The one reason why I am thinking about doing this, is because I have many animals in the house and using poly on the floors might not be a good thing, especially without anyone there to supervise. Also boarding them for a few days would cost me a bundle, so I am looking into this natural way of doing it. I have thought about shellac too, so that may be an option as well. If anyone knows anything about this please give me a feedback. Thanks a lot

Painting at a halt

Well since last weekend when I first put on the primer I haven't been able to prime anything else. Of course the weather has to do something with that. Why is it that every time you plan on doing something that Mother Nature has to rear her ugly head? Oh well, I think I might have a few nice days this week, so I will let the siding dry some before I put on the primer. In the mean time I did perfect scraping out the corners and getting all the old caulk out of the siding from my second floor. It's amazing how an old house will turn your fear of heights into nothing. I risk my life on the porch roof just to scrape out some caulk. I can't wait til I have to paint up there. One dilemna I am going to face is how I am going to paint the right side of my house. I have a chain link fence that is about 3-4 feet from the house. I'm not sure if a rented scaffolding will fit inbetween that space. I hope it does, because I wouldn't want to try scraping and painting off of a ladder.

Painting has begun

Well not that much painting. As I have stated in a previous post a long time ago. I had a painter come strip my house and paint it for a fee of $5,000.00. Well as all of you may know, he got paid $2,000.00 and then basically did diddly squat. He stripped some of my house but did it half-assed. Basically I ended up finding out that he was actually working on someone elses house when he was suppose to be working on mine. So long story short, if your asian and the guy that's working for you is asian. Don't fall for the "since we're both asian, I'll give you a deal" crap. I'm sure it works with other races as well. Anyways I decided to start on the stripping and painting myself, especially since the weather has been kind to me. I sanded and caulked and cleaned the front of my house (well the wall that is under the front porch at least) and put on the primer. All I can say is that it looks so good white. We were so used to the faded green brown color that was stained on the wood that the white just looked gorgeous. Another thing I found out, painting with a paint brush is brutal hell! I never thought that painting would hurt so much. Now I am dreading having to go on a ladder and scaffolding to paint. I know that spraying paint is easier, but heard that the paint doesn't hold up well. I wonder if rolling the paint on the siding is better?
Oh well, I will post pictures when I have one whole wall with trim all painted.

The war on Milk Paint

Well it has been awhile since I last posted, the reason behind this is I have been at war on milk paint. Every trim in my house is painted with milk paint and 12 more coats of paint on top of that. I've had good success removing those top layers with Soygel, Peel Away, and regular methyl chloride stripper from Home Depot, but none of these have been able to scratch anything on the first coat of paint, which is milk paint. Actually until yesterday, I didn't know it was milk paint, but today I found out it was, because I was able to remove it with milk paint remover.

I ordered some of this after reading some posts from other home bloggers and hoping, just hoping that this would finally take the paint off. So I mixed the powder in some water and let it sit awhile. Then I pasted the solution on the trim and waited, actually I waited for 24 hours. Here are the results:









Milk paint before








This is milk paint remover applied onto the trim








Here is my first scrape test after 24 hours









Voila!!!! IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!
























Here is the progression from beginning to end.


The bad part about doing this, is that I found that my trim was not varnished or shellaced prior to the milk paint being painted on. So it seems that I won't have my dream of shellacing the trim. Seems to be too much trouble trying to get the paint out of the wood grain. I guess I will just paint over it or milk paint it again. Well at least I know what works against milk paint and now you do too.

Dire situation in Springfield!!!

As some (hopefully all) of you know, I live in Jacksonville, Florida in an area called Springfield. Springfield is Jacksonville's oldest subdivision, right on the edges of downtown. Here we have a beautiful view of the city and only a couple minutes away from the St. John's River. Over the long history of Springfield, there have been good and bad times, but over the last few years new residents have moved in and started the revitalization process of Springfield.

In Springfield we have a Historic Jewish Center that has been abandoned for quite some time. The issue with the Springfield residents is that it is being awarded to River Regions Human Services, to be used as a facility to treat people with drug addictions, debilitating mental disorders, and those who are involved in anti-social and criminal activities. Now I'm not saying that River Regions is a bad organization, because the do a great service in helping poeple with needs. The problem I do see is that they are trying to establish this organization in a residential area that has been hard at work to revitalize and reverse the bad rep that it has aquired throughout the years. Now there has been a public outcry on this situation and it has been in the news, but it looks that the government is going to award them with the building. The only fire we have to this situation is that the Mayor and the city is backing the people of Springfield in not giving River Regions the permit it needs to do work on the building. We still have hope and wish that everyone will be able to help our sub-division in fighting this and help River Regions find a more suitable building.

Thank you for your time and help.

Gary from This Old Crack House is a Godsend!

Well this is actually old news, but I had been looking a some clawfeet for my newest clawfoot tub. I got it free, but with no feet but who am I to complain. Anyways I went to the salvage yard and they had a plethora of feet to choose from, the only exception was that I had to buy a tub to get the feet. Oh well, I have 2 already I don't need 3. So I put a post on my bolg and low and behold a savior came. His name is Gary and he sent me 4 wonderful feet for my tub, I am pretty sure they will fit, but I haven't had the chance to put them on because I have loads of junk in my tub and my 4 cats love using it as their sleeping quarters. Here are the pictures of the feet (I didn't actually take these, Gary sent them to me so I could see what they look like)



Thanks a lot to Gary!!!!!!!