1923 Bungalow

Stenciling the Dining Room

As promised, a bat free post!  A couple of months ago, I finally stenciled our dining room.  This is a project that has been in the works for awhile.  I was lucky enough to take a stenciling class at the Minneapolis Technical College taught by Amy Miller, the owner of Trimbelle Studios a couple of years ago.  A few months later, I bought Amy's book "Stenciling the Arts and Crafts Home".  I was inspired by a picture in that book that showed a gold stencil on a brick red wall.  I thought the gold would look lovely on our green walls.

We bought our main stencil from  www.crafthome.com - the 5 1/2" Rebecca.  We ended up trimming the stencil at the top to center the design in the area above our arch - otherwise, the design wouldn't have fit.  Amazingly enough, it was shipped to us from Trimbelle Studios.  We bought all our paints, brushes, and the spot stencil (the 18 1/2" panel lily) from Trimbelle Studios directly. 

In the class, we were told to use the paint sparingly.  I did that at first on the walls and the stencil seemed barely visable.  From that point, I applied the paint thickly, almost ending up with a gold leaf effect.  It worked for me.  The plan is to stencil curtains as well - I already have a supply of unbleached muslin.  Just a matter of finding a free weekend!

How Not to Refinish Your Hardwood Floors

One of the major contributions of the House-blog genre (and the Internet in general) is its ability to serve up cautionary tales.  I find much of the drama (and, to me, the interesting stuff) is in brave homeowners confronting their ignorance and learning by doing.  It is in that proud tradition that I share our experience refinishing our hardwood floors in Summer, 2005. 

Ah yes, those were the days.  Eight weeks living in our attic with all our worldly possessions.  Likely inhalation of asbestos dust and definite inhalation of lots and lots of wood dust.  Many, many, many trips to Reddy Rents, a place where every sales associate knew our names.  And oil based polyurethane applied over 1000 sf of space 6.5 times.   Yes, 6.5 times. 

So, what did we learn?  Here's a short list.

1.  Floor refinishing is all about dust management.  Obsessive dust management between every coat.  We finally took showers, restrained hair, and checked the bottoms of our shoes before applying polyurethane.  Well, later coats of polyurethane - it took three coats before we figured out this little gem.

2.  Lambswool application pads suck.  Or at least the one we initially used did.  It would leave little wool boogers in the finish and didn't apply smoothly.

3.  Rent one machine at a time.  Maybe two (the main sander and an edger, perhaps).  The chances you will use the sander and the buffer in the same night?   Not probable.

4.  Buy a great vacuum. And a Swiffer.  And mineral spirits.  Use all between coats to remove the dust from buffing.

5.  Don't open windows or vents until the polyurethane is at least dry to the touch.  Remember that dust thing?

6.  And marvel at the fact that we still managed to save money over hiring it out.  Of course, this assumes assigning no value to your own labor hours. 

7.  We discovered that the carpeting wasn't a contained atrocity.  The installation of the carpeting contributed to a companion crime that is a lot less reversible.  To accommodate the carpeting, the previous homeowner shaved an inch off the bottom of EVERY door.  Including our French doors.  And EVERY heat vent.  We are planning to replace the heat vents with uncut specimens from Bauer Salvage.  It would be quite expensive to replace all the doors.  Especially considering we have every original door (except for one from the kitchen to the basement) and all are otherwise in great shape with the original knobs.  Sigh.

That said, we are very proud of how our floors turned out.  Check out the pictures!