We Rock! Remodelling an Old Stone House Part II

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This post will have quite a few pictures, but not very much writing.  If you missed Part I check it out here.  

This is the main floor of the house, I took some before pics on this floor.  This is the main entrance looking toward the kitchen at the back of the house.

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Living room from entrance.

Living room toward dining room.

Living room toward entrance.

Kitchen

Okay, the fun is over, here is Manuel working in the front entrance.

I like the arch on the ceiling.  The stairs to the basement are on the right.

All done in the entrance.

The Pillsbury Dough Boy dropped by to help, oh wait, that's me ;) 

Johnny finally takes a picture and this is the best he can do?

Okay, that's better.

Hmmm, maybe there is a reason there aren't many pictures of me.  After we knocked down the plaster, we had to carry it by shovel through the house and throw it in the trailer.

Room # 2 done!  We got a break in this room as someone had already taken down the lath and plaster from the ceiling, oh how we wished they had gone further, but no, just this ceiling was done.

Room #3 Dining Room

The last wall on this floor, heading down the basement stairs.

Here's something funny, Johnny took down a heat vent and this clock slipped out of it.  I can't 

imagine there was very good air flow going into that room.

Are you all as tired as I am?  Drop by for a visit, 26 King St.

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We Rock! Remodelling an Old Stone House, Part I

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This is our big project that we are working on now that we are "retired".  Retirement, you are a lot of work, time to find a day job ;)  

This is what the rooms looked like before we got at them.  It is a four bedroom house so multiply what you see by four, add a bathroom and open area in the middle.

We were surprised to find out that this is a solid stone house, 16" of stone, not stone clad onto wood.  Yay!  We were so proud of our first wall.  Each wall had strapping, then lath and plaster, then at least 3 layers of tar paper, one layer of wax paper (heavy duty) then strapping and drywall.  Not to mention layers of wall paper. Every wall we demolished was 2 walls worth. What a lot of work.  Only the ceiling had insulation, three kinds!  Vermiculite, wood shavings, and fiberglas blow in.  We live in Canada where we get -40 degrees in winter, there was no insulation in the walls at all!

 During the time that we did tear down we  got rid of the top layer of gyproc and first layer of strapping.  At this point we popped off the plaster, then came back and popped off the lath.  The reason we did this was because we always separated the wood pieces from the rest of the mess.  We took the wood home and burned it and the rest went to the dump. 

Here is Johnny (Manuel) ready to do damage!

Day after day we made a mess, and then cleaned it up, made a mess, and then cleaned it up!

Johnny made a trough so we could shovel the junk into it and it would slide down into the truck, my job was to stand in the trailer and spread the debris around so we could pack in as much as possible (we later upgraded to a dumping trailer, that was a big help).

On to room 2

And room 3... and so on, and so on.

 Time to get rid of some of the lath.

This part was enjoyable (and believe me, it was the only enjoyable part).

Finally down to the last wall of the top floor,

and heading down the stairs to the main level.

This is just a small part of the mess that we dealt with day after day.

I couldn't tell you how many truck loads of wood we took out of here, or how many pounds of gyproc and plaster, heavy, dirty, dusty work.  My life has been threatened if I should ever buy an old house again ;)  

And just so you know, I was working beside Manuel all through this, he just never takes the pictures.

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Little Bedside Table

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Today's post is a cute little bedside table that a customer asked me to makeover. There was nothing wrong with it, she just wanted a change.  I forgot to take a before picture, sometimes I just get working on something and forget to take a photo :(

I sanded the piece down to bare wood, painted primer and then white paint.  After that I stained it with gel stain, and then did some sanding.  To finish off I coated it with polyurethane.

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Antique Scalloped Edge Table Given New Life

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A lady called me and said she had 2 tables to give away if I was interested.  I LOVE when that happens.  She wasn't sure if this would be to my liking, well it's not, I don't like it, I LOVE it!!!  This is actually exactly my taste, well a little shabby, but otherwise, Awesome!

The top was in very bad shape, the varnish was chipping right off.  I sanded and scraped it, there was a big white stain, but luckily it didn't affect the wood.

The hardest part was scraping off the edges.  The finish chipped off, but it took a lot of scraping.

I mixed some brown gel stain with a little black stain and stained the top.  I painted the legs smoked turquoise.

When it was dry I polyurethaned the top and antiqued the legs with ebony stain. 

I think this one might be a keeper, I'm not sure where I will put it, but don't know if I can part with it.  Time will tell I guess.

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Pallet Coffee Table, the Sequel

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This is my second pallet coffee table.  This time for the legs I used parts from the pallet, I like the way they turned out.  I couldn't bear to use my old gray 4X4's and then stain them so I had to come up with another solution.

For this table I used 2 complete pallets, plus one extra piece from another pallet for the last leg.  Luckily I have an ongoing supply of them.  I purposely used the cracked and broken slats because they add character to the piece.

I hope you like it!

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Antique Door Made Into a Bench

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I started this project with this old door.  My original thought was to make a tall hall tree type bench.   I removed the window and the hardware and sanded it down.

After letting it sit, painted turquoise, for a couple of weeks, I changed my plan and cut it into pieces.  At this point I pretty much had a pile of old lumber because most of it fell apart.  I guess after this I forgot to take pictures for a while.  Basically I reglued and reorganized all of the pieces and added a piece of plywood where the window was, and this is what I had.  I added the support for the seat.

At this point the character of the old door was hard to see so I added some of my own.

Once I painted the new additions it became obvious again that this started out as an old door. I left the original paint on the end pieces because I like the look of the chippy paint.

I almost didn't antique this piece, and once I did, I couldn't believe I had thought about not doing it.  It brought out so much character!  I only antiqued the turqoise part, I left the old finish alone.  After antiquing, I coated the whole thing with polyurethane to protect the finishes, old and new.  

Choosing the fabric is always fun, I have been wanting to use this fabric for a while and I love the way it looks on this bench.

Here is a closer look at the end piece, I love how it turned out.

Happy, happy, happy!

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