Scraping

I haven't been writing much on the blog, because we've only been working on two projects. They both involve scraping.

Inside, the stripping of the dining and living rooms continues. The dining room is totally stripped, but the scraping is still underway. In the living room, everything except the ceiling and the rest of the baseboards is done. On the stairs, the railings are stripped and scraped.

More progress scraping the wainscoting in the dining room

On the outside, we're working on putting back all the missing trim. All the tirim has multiple layers of paint on it, and all of it needs to be scraped. So we scrape the trim down before installing it on the house.

But we see progress being made. The trim is done on the east side, and on the front, all but one piece have been re-installed. The west side has new siding, and now all the trim, except the band board and a couple small pieces, have been replaced and are ready for paint. Even on the back, most of the trim is done.

The west side of the Cheney Cottage, with the new siding and much of the trim re-installed

Every week, when we observe Garbage Day, we've been putting out bags of paint scrapings. It's amazing to see how much paint we've removed, both inside and out. It's also still shocking to realize that, when the trim inside the dining and living rooms was originally painted, it was painted bright orange. We still can't understand why someone thought bright orange paint was more attractive than shellacked redwood.

Next weekend, we hope to complete much of the wiring, so the electrical box can be installed, and the wiring hooked up (we still have the temporary power pole and an extension cord running to the house). Then the plumbing work begins in earnest. The radiators will be re-installed, and we'll work on getting hot and cold running water.