This Old House - Part II The Fireplace

Time and tide wait for no man, I've been told. With the winter weather swirling around, threatening to chill us - should we dare to venture outside - indoor projects become more interesting.

Ron has been wanting to "zoosh" up the fireplace since I offered up an off-hand question about it possibly looking better painted white. He's generally not one to let moss grow on him and we went on a jaunt to our local Kent store to see what could be done. An hour later, we left with trim, paint and a couple of odds and sods. (Side note: we love Kent. The staff are always helpful, they've given us tons of advice (and parts - but that's a whole other story) for free! Use them, if they're in your 'hood. It's a good Canadian company.)

Original fireplace

Probably the funniest thing about this endeavour is that we don't have a car. Add to that the fact that lunch had long passed and we hadn't eaten...well, you have the makings for odd circumstances. We marched (dubiously, I confess) into a local restaurant called Kelsey's Roadhouse. (It's a chain, not surprisingly, but we weren't convinced, just by the clientele seated in the window...it reminded us of the mushy-vegetable restaurant in Courtenay, in the Comox Valley.) Be that as it may, we ventured in, and were met by very friendly staff. No one seemed non-plussed about our 8 foot lengths of trim and other accoutrements. They treated us very well and made sure that everything was top notch. We were pleased with the service and the food, no mushy vegetables to be found.

Some of the lumber in question

The bus driver was more dubious, as we boarded the #51 Greenline to head home. Of course we promised not to accost anyone with our decorative trim and behaved like this happened all the time. The trip was unremarkable, no heads were coshed.

Anyhow, a few days after Christmas, Ron decided it was time to tackle our next improvement project.

Chair rail molding

He added trim around the upper mantle, columns and medallions and then sanded the wood. I tack ragged, filled nail holes and helped to paint. 

Embellishments are important

Of course, we're quite pleased with the result. We feel that it just looks more finished and like is was meant to be there, instead of added as an afterthought. Some people might be horrified that we covered up the natural wood, but with so much wood floor, we figured it wasn't an unpardonable sin.

Almost finished product

 

A bit of the details

What's next? Maybe painting the kitchen, or our master bedroom, or even the guest bedroom. There should be enough to keep us busy over the winter.

This Old House

I gotta tell you...Ron gets a bee in his bonnet quite frequently. He's a bit like a British Bulldog that's bitten something and doesn't want to let go. He did it with the paneling on the sun porch, he's done it with numerous other things in the past.

I'll give him his due: it almost always pans out. The paneling came off the sun porch fairly easily and only a small part of the wood siding underneath needed repair. The porch looks so much better now that it's the same colour as the exterior of the house.

His newest "project" was to strip off the paint from the hinges, door knobs and locks that we have in the house. We noticed that they seem to be engraved or had some sort of filigree, but the detail was buried under 100 years of paint. He found a video that said all we really had to do was simmer the pieces in hot water and baking soda to get the majority of the paint off.

It can't be that simple, right? Well, actually it was. Sure we needed to pick out some tight spots and brush and scrub a bit, but the majority of the paint lifted right off. We're left with some pretty amazing hinges that strangely don't match...one side has one style and the other side has another. Quirky.

The set on our dining room door is stamped April 3 1877, Pat B. (Patent reference, or manufacturer? Not clear, but patents usually have a number assigned, no?) So, a bit of scrubbing with steel wool, sanding and rubbing with alcohol, some goo gone and a bit of mineral oil later and we have clean hinges of indeterminate metal type. We're pleased, and really, that's the payoff, right?

It's been a pretty cool exercise and no one else might notice, but we love the hardware!