Oh, What Shall We Do with a Drunken Builder?

...early in the morning?

In keeping with the strange artifacts that have emerged from our kitchen, we add these bottles.

That's eight (count 'em!) bottles of Muscat wine. Empty, you'll note. All eight were hidden in the ceiling, lying on their sides, with the caps screwed back on. Four were grouped in one place and the other four huddled together across the room.

Now, I'm no expert, but I reckon it only takes a day, maybe two, to plaster a 12x12 room. So did this guy (or guys) really go through eight bottles of cheap wine in one day? While working??!!

Unlike the Look magazine "time capsule," which was obviously meant to be discovered by future generations, these were probably being hidden from the boss/homeowner. No wonder the ceiling came down so easily.

The Prisoner of Hart Mansion

We found this lady locked inside the kitchen walls.

I don't know how long she's been here -- or why -- but I'm guessing she's original to the house. The picture appears to have been carefully cut from a magazine. The back side appears to be from the middle of an article or an advertisement on the opposite page.

We've released her from her confinement and placed her carefully with the 1967 Look magazine and other artifacts as they emerge from the kitchen. Welcome back to Pacific Grove, whoever you are.

Four Floors Down

Q: When does a three-story house have four floors?

A: When it's in your kitchen.

Don't get it? Then you haven't seen this kitchen. Kathy single-handedly removed all the green ceramic tile, which made a big mess and made the floor almost an inch lower.

Under the tile was a stranded-wood veneer that had been painted green to match the old cabinets. For for awhile, at least, the kitchen had a green-painted wood floor. Cute.

Under that was checkered linoleum. We peeled that up, but it left a residue of sticky felt backing. Turns out that if you pour water on it and let it soak for 15-20 minutes, the felt comes up pretty easily. (Messy, but easy.)

And under that is a floor of 6" redwood planks. We think that's the bottom layer, but we can't be sure until we pry up a board or drill a small hole through one. Either way, that's four layers of flooring in one room. Sheesh.

Say Hello, Kathy

Meet Kathy.

Kathy is removing ceramic floor tile.

It's difficult to remove. Kathy is working hard.

This is Kathy working hard.

Kathy doesn't like to have her picture taken.

Go back to work, Kathy. There are more tiles still to go.

A Lath a Minute

Imagine coming home from work to find that your non-English-speaking contractors have finished demolishing your kitchen. Except you wanted them to do the bathroom.

Okay, so that didn't happen. We really did want to demo the kitchen, and by golly, it's demolished. We took out the cabinets earlier and now it's just down to stripping the walls down to bare studs. Here's what it looks like in progress.

I worked on the plaster walls while Kathy removed green ceramic tiles from the floor. Honestly, I had the easy part. Those tiles are stuck on there, and prying them off one by one with a crowbar is a recipe for backache.

The walls are almost all original plaster and lath, as you can see. It's surprisingly easy -- and therapeutic -- to remove. First, you hit the plaster several times with any handy, massive object. A sledgehammer works well, but a crowbar, claw hammer, or fist can be used in a pinch. Then just scrape the cracked plaster off. Now you're ready to remove the lath work, which is also easy and fun. Grab one and yank. Repeat several hundred times. You get the idea.

The only downside is the dust. A lot of dust. I mean, really, a lot of dust. Lots of dust.

Time Capsule!

How cool. Someone left us a time capsule!

Removing the last bits of rotted wood in the corner of the kitchen, I came across this: a short little platform with the top boards painted green. There's no good reason for it to be there, unless maybe the builders had planned to construct all the base cabinets this way but changed their minds.

Prying off one of the boards, I saw something underneath.

It's a magazine! Carefully placed face-down and square to the cabinet was this February 7, 1967 issue of Look magazine. The address label on the front cover says Steven Radke, with this address. So we know these cabinets weren't built before that date.

How cool. We haven't opened the magazine yet. We just set it aside, in a safe place.

Thanks, Steven.

Oops. My Kitchen Fell Down.

Here's the detritus from the kitchen, doing its best to cling to the ground. Gravity is my friend. As I pry stuff off the ceiling, floor, walls, neighboring rooms, etc. I just lob it over the second-floor stairs and watch it sail ever-so-not-gracefully downward, to land with a satisfying WHANG!

One kitchen, in kit form.

Architect of Destruction

Boy, this is fun!

How often do you get to swing a sledgehammer in your own house? There's almost nothing in this kitchen that we're saving (I already removed the hand-painted doors and the stained-glass cabinet), so it really doesn't matter what I hit or how hard. Wheeee!

My first victim was the ugly wet bar. Here's its hole. I never did like that thing, although we are saving its brass handles, as well as all the other drawer pulls. We'll reuse them on the new kitchen cabinets.

Looks like there was green/white checked linoleum on the floor. That's before it was re-tiled in green ceramic. I've popped off a few of the ceramic tiles already, and I'm not looking forward to doing the rest of the floor. Those suckers are on there.

The row of hanging center cabinets went next. Oddly, they're constructed mostly of Sheetrock, with a layer of painted wood on the outside. The base cabinets are mostly wallboard, too. This seems like a weird (and heavy) way to make cabinets. Whatever.

Demolishing the center bar was fun. I ate away at the cabinets supporting it, and let gravity ease the tile downward. I finally took a swing with the sledgehammer and removed the last support. Wham! I live for this stuff.

Kitchen: Before

Okay, kids. Take a last look, 'cause it's all coming' down.

Today we start on a total demolition and remodel of the main/upstairs kitchen. (Yes, we've got permits. You never know who's reading.)


We think this kitchen was built around 1939. It's not original to the house; we know that. And judging from the color of the tiles and the, uh, quaint appliances, the kitchen was remodeled in the 1960s. (More on this in another post.) Either way, it's all coming out, to be replaced with all mod cons.

It's not a terrible kitchen, really. Several families must have used it day in and day out. It even has its own built-in breakfast bar. I wonder how many little kids sat there and ate their oatmeal before going off to Pacific Grove Middle School or PGHS. There's what appears to be a cat door under the last cabinet.


On the other hand, said bar effectively cuts the room in half, making it more claustrophobic than it needs to be. The hanging center cabinets also block sunlight coming through the stained-glass window, which seems a shame.

The sink is old (but surprisingly un-rusty) and the wood under and behind it is... ick. The drawers stick. There's too many layers of paint on everything. Digging down, it looks like everything was originally painted light green, then later white. The green matches the tiles, and the white is, well, white.


The hanging cabinets all have hand-painted doors, which we're saving. Anyone know who "Bernadette" was? When the green cabinets were repainted white, at least someone took care not to blemish Bernadette's work.

Anyway, it's all coming out, starting today. Wish me luck.

Fuzzy Bathroom B-Gone

Kathy took on the bathroom all by herself.

It, like most of the second floor, was covered in wall-to-wall red carpet. It was in okay condition, but... carpet in a bathroom? That just seems like a bad idea. And it was.

Kathy ripped the carpet out, rolled it up, and stashed it in the kitchen, whereupon it was tossed overboard into the backyard. (This will later become a theme.)

After the carpet came the carpet tack strips, including about 639 of them behind the toilet. Better her than me, I say.

Thus prepared, the floor now consisted of icky old linoleum. And under that, particleboard underlayment. She stopped there, figuring three strata worth of excavation was enough for one day.

Behold the glory.



We got the cheapest stick-on tile that Home Depot could provide, and Kathy stuck 'em all over the cruddy particleboard. They even kind of stick.

I have to say, the floor is better than it was. It's lower, for one. We can now shut the bathroom door, which we couldn't really do with the thick carpeting and all its underlying layers. I feel like I've gotten an inch shorter.

Oh, Waiter!

This place was the waiters' station when the house was a restaurant. It's about the size of a phone booth (a tall phone booth; the ceiling is 12 feet high) and had a pass-through to the commercial kitchen. At one time there was a filtered-water supply for refilling customers' water glasses. Oh, and six electrical outlets -- each one on a different circuit breaker. Weird.

The room was painted dark brown from floor to ceiling and had homemade shelves on all four walls. The effect was very claustrophobic. The shelves came down after the first month, which only exposed a second weirdness: two of the walls had been skimmed with plywood over the original plaster, probably to support the shelves. Or maybe not...

Anyway, today the plywood started coming off. Harder than it sounds, when you don't want to damage the underlying plaster or lath. There's really nothing to lean on for leverage, so I sort of eased the wood away from the plaster and then pushed it back to expose the nail heads. Tedious, but it seems to work.

I'm not sure the result is any better. The plaster is still damaged, and I count at least four colors/layers of paint. The wainscoting has been painted and, in some cases, cut away. We'll have to strip the paint and repair the wood. Somehow.

Our hope is to repaint this little room white by the weekend. We'll let you know how it goes.

Voila!

The big finish.

We finally finished the bedroom floor and it looks pretty darned good, if I do say so myself. We made plenty of mistakes along the way, but now we know better for next time. Today, the bedroom. Tomorrow, the world!

Here are the steps we followed:
1. Cut and remove carpet
2. Cut and remove carpet padding
3. Remove tack strips from around perimeter of room
4. Pull ~100 small nails from all over the floor
5. Scrape off largest paint spills
6. Spread paint stripper ("orange goo")
7. Remove paint stripper
8. Apply second coat of paint stripper
9. Remove second coat of paint stripper
10. Apply post-stripper "wash" (actually pretty caustic)
11. Rent floor sander; sand entire floor with 80-grit sandpaper
12. Repeat with 120-grit
13. Repeat with 180-grit
14. Remove dust with vacuum and tack cloths
15. Apply wood pre-treatment
16. Apply stain; wipe off after 7 minutes
17. Despair over condition of stain, sanding, life, etc.
18. Apply second coat of stain; wipe off after 3 minutes
19. Clean entire floor with tack cloths again
20. Apply first clear finish coat
21. Apply second clear finish coat
22. Open windows, leave house, breathe deeply
23. Wait one week...
24. Admire handiwork; find faults; drink heavily
25. Replace bedroom furniture. Done!