Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Damn Weather!

Posted by Peter at Tuesday, December 11, 2007 0 comments
I don't know about you guys but it is just too cold here in Jacksonville, Florida. Today it's suppose to be 76 degrees! Man that is chilly and at night it gets t 54. It's so cold here at night that my wife and I have already started using our heating blanket and 2 covers. I swear we do. In reality, I can't believe how warm it has been for winter. I think so far since October we have had about 3 actual days where the temperature didn't get to 70 degrees. I sure feel so you guys that are getting 2 feet of snow right now, but would not trade it for the world. Anyways just wanted to know where you live and what the weather was like in your old neighborhood.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving with a little bit of shellac pictures

Posted by Peter at Thursday, November 22, 2007 0 comments
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and gorge yourselves with turkey and stuffing, I know I will but before we do that I have fulfilled my promise in posting some pictures of my floor. Now it only has 3 coats of shellac so far and I am going to put about 5 or 6, so it is not done yet, but you can see what it will look like.


This is during the sanding, I rented the U-sand instead of the drum sander. This made sure there were no gouge marks, but it did take a lot longer to sand. I purposely left dark areas and any character marks in the wood.






This is after a couple passes, for some reason my camera was crappy and didn't want to take any good pictures.








This is with the first coast of shellac. I initially thought I was using a 1 pound cut, but after some calculations I figured out I was using a 1/2 pound cut. No wonder it was so easy and didn't create any lap marks. Anyways again the camera didn't give me a good picture. You can see the hazy spots in the picture, I think the inside lense is dirty somehow and have no idea how to clean that. I might just get a new camera on Friday, which reminds me, if anyone needs an excel spreadsheet of all the deals on Black Friday, let me know.




And here is after the second coat, you can see it is a lot darker. My wife wants it dark, so I will have to do a few coats I'm sure. I let the dogs have a test run on it and after awhile I did see that they would start scratching it up a little, so I took out some shellac and blended it out, but because I used such a thin cut of shellac, it couldn't protect the actual wood and I saw where there was a claw mark in the wood that I couldn't take out. The scratch was gone, but the dent wasn't, So it looks like a few more thicker coats should help.

Monday, November 19, 2007

I'm a SHELLAC MANIAC!

Posted by Peter at Monday, November 19, 2007 1 comments
Well this past Saturday I went to Home Depot and rented the U-Sand. I decided on this instead of the drum sander, because it would be more forgiving and I wouldn't have the chance of destroying my floors. The U-Sand was pretty straight forward it had 4 orbital sanders on the bottom (which you have to replace each sandpaper with) and you just push it and pull it. It was very easy, but took a lot longer then the drum sander. I needed every bit of the 24 hours to sand my floors. Even then I didn't completely get every area, but it was better than having to use an edger as well. I made sure that I didn't sand away all the marks and dings that made my floors old. So I sanded lightly to get the old shellac off. I will have to post pictures later, but I like the look of the dark edges and the lighter areas in the middle, it kind of kept the antique-ness of the floors. After I finished that I vacuumed like a demon and made sure that there was no dust anywhere.

On Sunday I started my first coat of dark garnet shellac, if you read my previous post then you know I got my shellac from shellackshack. Making the shellac was simple. I had a glass mason jar and put 32 ounces of denatured alcohol I then put in 1/2 cup of shellac. I think this makes it a 1# cut. Either way the shellac dissolved and the jar was totally black, you couldn't see through it at all, I guess that's how I knew that the shellac was indeed dark garnet. So I made a couple batches of that and let it sit a few days (just so you are for certain that everything has dissolved). So on Sunday I tried it out, and boy was I surprised at how it looked. It made the floors glow. My wife wants it darker but I am assuming the more layers I put on the darker it will get. I decided to try a 1 # cut because I heard if you do to high a cut that brush marks would appear easily. The 1# cut worked well and I had no visible lap marks that I could see, so I might had to go up to 1.5 or a 2 # cut and see if I can get it a little darker. Overall I am pleased and hopefully the floors will hold up well. My wife has been beggin me to finish the living room by Christmas, so we could put the tree there instead of on the second floor landing. I guess her wishes have come true. Next floor to shellac will be the master bedroom. I will pot pictures later on how it turned out.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Shellac Shack

Posted by Peter at Tuesday, November 06, 2007 0 comments
I am ready to start finishing my floors in the living room, I hope that this weekend I can rent a U-Sand machine from Home Depot and start sanding the floors. I decided on the U-Sand, because I don't want to loose the character of my floor. I used a drum sander in the master bedroom last year and it basically took everything off the floor, it also created a big mess and I had wooden snot for about a week.

After I have sanded I am going to use shellac on my floors, I know that shellac is real hardy, especially with dogs, but I like the idea of being able to fix any scratches. I bought some shellac from Shellac Shack and I can't rave more about their service (and price). Malcolm will answer all of your questions and the shipping time was awesome. I ordered on Thursday and I got it on Saturday. I still haven't mixed it yet, but the color of the flakes is awesome. I got the garnet and hope that 3 or 4 coats will give me the dark color I want. I will have to upload some pics before and after I am done with it.

Damn you Clearwire!!!

Posted by Peter at Tuesday, November 06, 2007 0 comments
Well, it's been a long time since I last blogged, because my internet service provider, Clearwire, called me up and told me that they were restructuring their service, so I could choose to have this newer service which would be faster. I didn't think about asking them if it would hurt my blog or not. Of course it did. Though I still like the service, since it's a wireless service and I don't need cable or a phone line to connect, but dammit I lost my host. So I have been looking for one for awhile, but will use the blogger service to do my blogging. Oh well, sometimes you win sometimes you don't. Also the service isn't any faster than before.

Hope ya'll had a great Halloween!

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Kitchen ain't complete without a vintage stove

Posted by Peter at Thursday, April 26, 2007 2 comments
I love craigslist ! Just yesterday I saw someone had posted a link for a vintage electric stove from Westinghouse. Now I know most people like the gas type, and I can't lie, I love those as well, but since I don't have a gas line it would be a big pain to get one installed just for the stove. I had scoured eBay and other classifieds to see if anyone has a vintage stove in the neighborhood. I even would look at cities like Orlando, Tampa and even Atlanta! (Just to remind you that I live in Jacksonville and those cities are quite a distance). I never had much luck except in Atlanta, but to drive 5 hours just to get a stove wasn't ideal. I finally came to conclusion that vintage stoves were never here in Jacksonville and that the Jacksonvillians from old days just used fire and wood to cook food until the 1970's. But to my delight a post on craigslist and to put more sugar on top, it was FREE!!!!! So I borrowed a friends truck, thanks Julie Ann, and I drove to house and was delighted to see this monstrosity. It was big white and dirty and me and my petite wife had to haul it in the truck. I never thought I could strain my muscles around my butt crack, but people I tell you I still can't sit from that experience. We did eventually get it in the truck and brought it back home. As of right now it is just sitting on my front porch until I can figure out what to do with it. If you don't know my kitchen is a mess right now, gutted and beaten, plus we had to keep a dog there for 4 months til we could find an adoptive parent. But alas it's here and I hope that it will work well. My wife is a little iffy iffy about it, but I think an old house needs old appliances. Anyways here are the pictures that she had of it, I will try to post some of my own. It is a 1954 Westinghouse Custom 40 and came with the owners manual, now you don't see that often.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

It's been a long time....

Posted by Peter at Wednesday, April 18, 2007 0 comments
Man, I don't even know how long it has been since I last posted something on here. I know I should do more, but there hasn't been much activity on the house lately. Right now it's still a junked up house with boxes and crap all over the place. I literally mean crap too (damn 5 dogs drive me nuts sometimes). But I have decided to do some work this weekend before my second job kicks in.

I hope that I can finally have the other 3 sides of my house primed by Sunday. I have borrowed a neighbors extension ladder and will make the 3 mile high trek up the side of my house. Now to all of you, how many have painted their house with a ladder and how many have fallen off? I ask this because I am friggin scared of heights, but I am more of a scrooge than that. So I will suck it up and do it.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Vagrants, Homeless and Bums Oh My!!!

Posted by Peter at Friday, February 23, 2007 0 comments
If you live in a historic neighborhood which is coming up from the dumps, then you know what I am talking about. The vagrants that walk around your neighborhood looking for something to pawn. When I saw looking for something to pawn, I mean stuff that is mine!!! If you haven't read before some trash stole my little giant type ladder from me after I had left it out one day. Now let me tell you about this. This act of craziness makes me more mad then when my ladder was stolen. Here we go:

For the past year I have gotten into the hobby of gardening. Now I'm not a good one, but I have successfully grown peppers and stuff. So I went to Wal-mart to buy some garden supplies, pots, plants and a bag of soil. Went back home and opened the bag of soil, put the soil in the pots, put the plants in the pots and added water. Voila! simple gardening. Now tell me what you think these retards stole from me.....


MY FREAKIN HALF USED BAG OF DIRT!!!

Do you believe that? I went out the next day to go to work and noticed that something was wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it and then BAMM, my dirt, my DIRT, MY DIRT! You have got to be kidding me. They left everything else there that had monetary value. I even strategically placed a printer out on my porch, knowing that if it's in the trash it won't get taken as fast, BUT if you put it on your porch, you can damn well be sure it will be gone in the next 5 minutes. They skipped that and went for the dirt. I don't know what pawn shop would buy it or what person they would try to sell it too. It's just crazy. How the hell do you even think of doing that?? Anyways I at least got my strawberries planted before they stole the dirt. Damn them.

Oh yea, does anyone know of a way to construct a gate that will open when someone steps onto my porch? I know it would have to deal with lasers and such, but I am fostering a pitbull and would like to make use of her while I have her. The joy I would have to see their crack addicted ass running down the street with a black pit chasing them. I can only dream.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Question about wood floor refinishing... Damn animals!

Posted by Peter at Thursday, February 22, 2007 7 comments
Well I have decided that moving into the master bedroom is a must now. We have lived in the small guest bedroom ever since we moved into our house. The room is painted and livable, but the question I have is, "What should I cover my floors with?". I know a lot of people would sugguest polyurethane. And I bet that is a good solution, but listen to me first. I have 5 dogs, ranging from 3 tiny chihuahuas and 2 big black labs. They do a number to my floors everyday and with poly I am afraid that I will have to refinish every few year. I know the plus side is that it is very durable, but then the bad is that you can not fix it after it has been damaged. I have read a lot about shellac and have written a few things about it on my blog. The plus is that it is easy to spot repair and dries a lot faster, the bad is that it is easily damaged. I won't even go into the n-th number of other floor finishes either. So if you could please put your input on what I should use. I will take what you say and make my decisions.

Remember: I do have to stay in the house as the floors are being refinished. Please help. Thanks so much.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Porch ceiling is now blue

Posted by Peter at Tuesday, January 30, 2007 1 comments
Well over the weekend we decided to paint the porch ceiling. Up until Saturday it was a multicolored white, pink and ah natural. There was about 7 layers of paint on it and the previous painters surely didn't strip it all off. They actually just stripped bits and pieces of it along with the wood. But anywho we decided it was time to finally paint that sumumabitch. Lita had this great idea she got from a magazine, where someone painted their porch ceiling light blue, to go along with the color of the sky. So we thought it would look good on our ceiling as well, so off to the Home Depot we went. We "quickly" decided on a color, bought it and raced back home just drooling at our chance to paint.

But first we had to prime the damn thing, so we said what the hell it can't be that hard, right??? Were we wrong, unknown to us we didn't think that holding a paint roller off a long pole while looking straight up and dropping bits of paint in your eye would hurt so much. It took us about 2-3 hrs to prime and since it was getting cold here in Florida we called it a day. Let me tell you, I didn't know that you could hurt on some parts of your body. Even parts that weren't even directly related to painting muscles we hurting.

The next day Monday (Sunday was recovery day) we began painting. The weird thing about it was that it didn't take long at all this time. It seemed like it only took an hour to finish up the job and the after results were great. It was like we were looking into the sky, you know with like gouge marks here and there and thickly painted... paint. But we were still happy with the results, we do have some more touching up to do but that will have to wait until this cold weather dies down.

Here are some more pics:

This was the first swipe of paint, we had to see if our eyes had deceived us in Home Depot, but we were pleased.











Lita is working oh so hard to make it look good, she sure knows how to use that stick.











This is me riding the paint roller like an asian cowboy would, spanking the air behind himself. That's basically what I did all day. But the color does look good.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Damn taxes!!!

Posted by Peter at Saturday, January 20, 2007 0 comments
I got my new notice of mortgage payment and saw that I will be paying $200 and change more than I am now starting on March 1. Dammit!!!!!!! Stupid county taxes. I need to fill out that damn homestead exemption on Monday. I wonder if I do that if it will change anything on my payments or if that only helps for next year. Anyways, guess I ain't getting that new iPod anymore. Taxes are the devil!!!!

Thursday, January 11, 2007

UFO'S???

Posted by Peter at Thursday, January 11, 2007 4 comments
Now I know this is not houseblog related, but I saw the weirdest thing last night. at about 10 PM after walking my dogs and bringing them back home, I happened to look into the sky and saw this very bright light streak across the sky. Now I know most everyone and including myself would think, "Wow looks at that comet!" But the weird thing was that this light took a turn UP into the sky. So it didn't just go across the sky it went straight then shot up into the atmosphere, but just like that the light just "turned off". Now I don't know any comets or space debris that can do this, from what I learned gravity pulls things down to earth, not away. I also noticed no sound and it was way to fast to be a plane or helicopter. I wish I could have taken a picture, but it was so fast there would be no way I could have even if I had a camera. I do live by an Airforce base so the answer could be some top secret aircraft they have, but it was just weird. Now I don't make stuff up and I have always said that I do not believe in aliens, but this totally has shook my beliefs. Whatever it was, it was weird.
 

Restoration on 7th