The greenhouse is back in business!

Our little greenhouse is a last-century addition. It was built in the late 1990s when my ex-husband got hold of a bunch of 1940s-era fir casement windows that a friend was surplussing. He set about building a greenhouse, appending it to the rear of the Model-T-sized garage. It’s about 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep. Some 20 years later, the greenhouse was needing serious TLC.

Here’s how the greenhouse looked a year ago, just before our new back fence was installed.

But wait! I had this post half-written when I collected some photos from Eric. He supplied me with several from 2008, and reminded me that he did the first major rebuild back then! My spotty memory skipped right past that era. He claims that he should have taken the whole thing down then and rebuilt it from scratch. If you ask me, he nearly did.

Let’s go back to 2008 … We had not yet created our Japanese garden, and a little lean-to (built to cover a golf cart) was still attached to the garage. Our veggie garden had yet to be conceived. And we had a LOT more grass. At that point, Eric removed the fiberglass wiggleboard roofing, the rotten roof framing, the windows, and the south wall framing. Only the east and west walls still exist in this photo. (The north wall is the garage itself.)

2008. Ah, memories …

2008: The greenhouse seems to be a magnet for junk we don’t know what to do with … including the kitchen sink (far right under the gray planter)!

For the new south wall, Eric created a knee wall of concrete block (which serves as one wall of our raised veggie plot), rebuilt the window wall framing, and reinstalled the windows. He also installed new rafters and new fiberglass roofing. And that was how the greenhouse survived for the next 10 years.

Fast forward to 2017 …

Summer of 2017: Siding has been removed. Here you can see the concrete block foundation.

Eric started the 2017 renovation by installing a new, mo-bettah roof and new siding. We looked at UV-resistant polycarbonate panels at the Home Show and Garden Show (the kind greenhouse kits are made of) and knew that was the way to go. Eric ripped off the sun-brittled fiberglass wiggle-board roof (again), replaced the rafters (again), and installed half-inch twin-wall 8 mm polycarb panels. Already the greenhouse looked more substantial, and it was so much warmer. We successfully over-wintered all of our succulents and a friend’s young fig tree.

September, 2017: Eric installs the polycarb roofing. New siding is temporarily tacked onto the south side.

After the new roof was installed. Siding has been removed for painting.

Lots more light … and UV resistant!

This spring, while I was busy relandscaping half of the backyard, Eric continued on the greenhouse. The vintage window frames originally had been varnished, but never painted. By now, the varnish was long gone and the window glazing was dried up and falling out. Eric reglazed the windows, replaced all the window framing (again!), installed trim, and painted the whole thing to match the house. What an improvement!

The casement windows are painted to match the house. (That’s our weather station on the pole.)

That left the west side—the end with the door—or in this case, a frame where a door should go. For the life of this greenhouse, a succession of roll-up bamboo blinds have served as the door. They blew around in storms, their ropes hopelessly tangled, and eventually, each blind rotted in the soggy Northwest winters. Unfortunately, the door frame wasn’t quite tall enough to accept a standard door. It’s never simple, is it?

West wall before rebuild.

West wall with windows removed. The greenhouse is still full of junk.

It doesn’t look any better in a closeup.

Just a little rotten.

As you can see, Eric had his hands full removing the rotten wood and reframing the walls. One of the old window panes broke, so instead of glass, he replaced the lower two windows with spare polycarbonate material. I like the look.

I would have liked polycarb in all the side windows, but we didn’t have enough.

Our gargoyle guards the door. He (she?) needs a name.

Almost finished!

The door opening, which was just a couple of inches too short to accept a standard storm door, could not be raised. So, Eric cleverly built out the frame and installed the door against the exterior wall instead of inside the door opening. Hey, this is just a greenhouse … what code?

This should really be Eric’s blog, huh?

An easy fix–apply the door to the outside of the building!

Only when the exterior was done did we tackled the mess within. I was always frustrated by the collection of odds and ends that somehow migrated into this small space. I literally could not step more than three feet inside the door, and even that was challenging. Too bad if I wanted something in the back (besides, I didn’t really know what was in the back). And the tangle of garden tools? Impossible! ARRGGHH!!!

We pulled the entire mess out onto the lawn and sorted it: dump, garage, or greenhouse. For once, only select gardening-related objects were allowed to be stored in the greenhouse.

Everybody out!

The north wall.

The south wall and bench.

We had fun putting things back in an organized fashion. First, we hung an additional tool rack on the back wall, which I can walk straight up to now! Eric cleared weeds from the Saltillo tile floor. (The tiles are a bit broken, but still suffice and look cool.)

A place for everything …

Finally, Eric built a step in the gravel in front of the door, and paved the area with flagstones. Sweet! That green table inside? It was in the basement when I bought the house. It’s the base of a Hoosier-type kitchen cabinet. In rough shape, but perfect for a greenhouse.

Complete with human door and cat door.

However … it’s been a very hot and dry summer here in the Northwest. Endless sunny days really up the temperature in the greenhouse, and I couldn’t last in there for very long under the direct sun. So, I bought some canvas and made a couple of grommeted shades, which we hung from hooks. Frank Lloyd Wright taught us that trick. The shades don’t lower the temperature much, but standing in shade is preferable to standing in sun. We’ll remove them in the winter, of course.

Temp creeping toward 100.

 

Under the big top.

I added some solar-powered landscape lights to the window shelf. They make a nice glow in the evening.

I love puttering in my greenhouse now. I’m out there every day, sometimes just to enjoy looking at tools that I can actually reach!

That’s a wrap on another project!

The greenhouse at dusk.

Lucy and Ethel have some work done

I met identical twins Lucy and Ethel last summer at my neighbor’s yard sale. We hit it off immediately and they came to live with us that very afternoon. After spending the winter holed up in the garage, the ladies shyly emerged and have sat for some weeks now in the shade of the Chinese windmill palm. You see, Lucy and Ethel don’t feel quite up to going out in public. Being of a certain age, they want to have a little work done first.

Lucy and Ethel in their shabby dresses.

Normally, I would assure them that the patina of their years is a beautiful thing, and advise them to wear it with pride … but in this case, I find myself agreeing that improvement is warranted, and even necessary. There’s just too much weather damage and discoloration. Too many years without sunscreen, and I want them to be around for a long time.

The ravages of time …

Lucy (or is it Ethel?) even has a couple of crude tattoos: “Jean” and “Jim.” Jean was my mom’s name, and it doesn’t belong scrawled across the poor chair’s face. Can you make them out?

Jean and Jim

At some point, the girls tried a cheap cosmetic solution of bright red paint. Whoever applied it did a lousy job, and their makeup smeared and ran. If this isn’t proof that a bad makeup job can age you, I don’t know what is.

A careless paint job.

My plan is to give Lucy and Ethel a place of honor on the new side porch, so it’s time to take action. Their previous owner (who moved away) gave me a business card of a friend who does walnut blasting … which of course I’ve mislaid. But having their paint professionally removed wouldn’t be very DIY, would it? Why not go the more difficult, messy, and time-consuming route of grinding it off myself?  After all, I have nothing better to do.

Don’t worry, girls … I have a plan.

The thing is—and I haven’t shared this with L&E—I have no experience refinishing metal, and I don’t really know where to start. It seems reasonable to grind the paint off with a wire brush, so at Lowe’s we bought a wire complexion brush for my friends. Looks mean, doesn’t it?

Dermabrasion.

I don’t think I need to take them completely down to bare metal, but I do need to smooth them out before giving them a fresh coat of glossy Rustoleum. That’s the plan.

Hold still, Ethel (or are you Lucy ?) … this will sting a little. After a good ten minutes of exfoliating on her arm, this was the result.

Ouch.

It’s down to bare metal, all right. The paint did come off with some pressure, but the drill was unwieldy and Ethel danced around in pain the whole time. I can’t see how I could keep this up long enough to get all the paint off both chairs, including their backsides and underarms. Maybe it was the 90-degree heat on the back deck that made me feel like quitting.

Maybe a chemical peel would work better? (Please don’t call it paint stripper.)

THREE YEARS later…

That’s right, I wrote that post three years ago, almost to the day! Someone must have leaked the paint stripper idea to Lucy and Ethel, because they beat feet back into the garage, not to be seen for three years. It seemed obvious that the sand blasting or walnut blasting idea just wasn’t going to happen, so I scaled back my expectations and decided that elbow grease, sandpaper, and spray paint would be better than nothing. L&E agreed, as they weren’t getting any younger. I wanted the pair to be front and center for a party we were about to host.

Some WD40 helped loosen bolts that probably hadn’t budged for decades, and soon the ladies lay in pieces. I figured I’d use my Mouse sander on most of the flatter areas (although nothing on these gals is truly flat) but I also bought a shaped foam hand sander to get into smaller areas. Turned out, I didn’t use the Mouse at all because the hand sander did the trick.

“Is that a cat toy?”

Sanding created lots of red paint dust. I was glad it didn’t blow around, because I detest wearing a dust mask (bad, I know).

Tomato-red paint and rust dust.

After sanding each piece, I wiped it down with a damp cloth, let it dry, and carried it to my paint booth (a plastic tarp on the grass, with concrete blocks to lift the pieces off the surface). Every single time I set pieces on the blocks to be painted, the breeze came up. Every. Single. Time. I sprayed anyway. Spraying is not the most economical way to apply paint.

The arm and leg tubes are Krylon Fusion Gloss White, and the armrests, seats, and backs are Krylon Fusion Gloss Red Pepper.

Paint booth — a tarp on the grass.

Each piece required at least three coats. After painting, I’d wait about 30 minutes, then spray another coat. According to the instructions on the can, you can recoat up to one hour later, but after that you have to wait for 48 hours, otherwise the coat won’t adhere or can develop orange peel. Lucy and Ethel couldn’t risk that.

The actual painting was so much fun—watching the faded, beat-up chairs come to life with color and shine. Except when the skies began spitting. Oh, NOOOOOO!! I tried to sand out the fisheyes, but I was only moderately successful.

Wet paint + raindrops = fisheyes.

This seat was the worst of the pieces.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Assembly day! We attached L&E’s bodices to their skirts with new stainless steel bolts (a gift from Eric). Their bolts will never rust again. We slipped their white arms into the red sleeves, then bolted their arms and legs into their bodies.

Body ready to attach to arms.

Eric tightens the new bolts.

And there they were, resplendent! Don’t their petal-topped outfits remind you of 1950s kitchen aprons?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Lucy and Ethel hopped right into position on the deck, ready to party. I’m so proud of them! They’re not perfect, but I assured them that if you were born in the 1950s, no one expects you to be perfect 65 years later.

As I went back in the house, I heard Lucy giggling—something about all the backsides they were about to meet. Or maybe it was Ethel.

Epilogue … and almost tragedy.

After Eric and I put the chairs together, he suggested adding a clear coat to protect the finish, which hadn’t crossed my mind. I was glad we didn’t have to take the girls apart again. I simply sprayed them intact, using Krylon Crystal Clear Gloss.

But wait—WTF?—the gloss coat didn’t appear glossy, especially on the seat and back. In fact, it dried decidedly UNglossy and changed the texture of the metal from fairly smooth to sandpapery! I have no idea why the gloss coat reacted adversely with the red paint. You’d think paints of the same brand would be compatible. I wonder if the can was spraying propellant instead of paint? Has anyone else had this experience?

I was so mad that I didn’t even think about taking photos. I slipped some white garbage bags over the chair arms to protect them, then recoated the seats and backs with gloss red. It helped a lot, but I don’t think the seats are quite as glossy and smooth as they were before the clear coat. But, disaster averted—whew!

Lucy and Ethel exude confidence now and look amazingly bright and cheery on the deck. They’re my new favorite garden accessories!

Lucy and Ethel are ready to party!

Season’s Greetings from OB2C!

A Bungalow Christmas Eve

Hi, everyone in blogland! We’re enjoying a rare White Christmas here in the Pacific Northwest! Eric and I took a walk down the street to enjoy the crunchy, squeaky snow. I hope you are having a peaceful, magical holiday season, doing all the things you love best. See you in the new year!

D’Arcy and Eric
Our Bungalow’s 2nd Century

The garage catches up

Last summer, you might recall, we painted the exterior of the house.  We ran out of summer before we could finish some of the details, like painting our garage (if an entire building can be considered a detail). So naturally, we waited until we were pressing up against rainy season 2017 to start this painting project. But, look at this little bitty garage! It’s only Model T size, so it can’t take long to throw a coat of paint on it, now, can it? Let’s see how many side projects can derail our progress.

Our Model T garage

1.  Power wash.

Washing is really just a starting point for any paint job, not a side project, but it takes time and effort, so it’s on this list. Bonus—it’s always fun to play with water when the weather’s hot. Eric attacked the alley side first, which was caked with years of dust.

Playing with water on a hot day

After pressure washing. The corner shingles have been crunched, probably hit by the garbage truck.

2. Hack back the Japanese garden.

Meanwhile, things were out of control on the garden side of the garage. We needed to be able to throw a tarp over the plants to protect them from paint spray, but first we had to be able to get to the plants. We didn’t do much garden maintenance this summer, and it shows. I’ll use my tweaky back as my excuse, and—oh yeah—the un-Seattle-like hot weather. It’s no fun gardening in 90+ degree  sun. Yep, old war horse excuses trotted out one more time.

An overgrown mess.

Checkers says, “Don’t mess with my secret sleeping spot!”

Garden side before paint

As I trimmed and weeded my way down the narrow garden path, I discovered that Digger O’Dell* (as my mom would have called Duke) had extended his excavation hobby to the Japanese garden, which I had feared was inevitable. I found a pit at the corner of the fence, and a trough all along the side of the garage foundation. Eighty-three-pound Duke, with his dig-or-be-damned determination, managed to wedge himself behind the spikey blue Atlas cedar and the bushy spirea, a tight fit even for a cat. Look what he did to my black mondo grass!

I’m trying to save some of it in water until I can replant.

3.  Install a drain pipe along the alley.

Eric plans to bury a drain pipe next to the garage to handle winter runoff from the alley. While digging the trench, he dug up hundreds of day lily bulbs, which we gave away to neighbors. I don’t know why he didn’t subcontract with Duke to do this work.

Looking down the alley side of the garage where the drain pipe will go.

Day lilies, anyone?

4.  Renovate the greenhouse.

Then, there’s our little greenhouse, which was built 20 years ago from salvaged windows. It was desperate for attention. The window glazing was falling out, the shingle siding was rotting, and the fiberglass wiggle board roof was oxidized, brittle, and leaking. We couldn’t very well paint the garage without upgrading the greenhouse! That’s where this project really exploded: Eric is applying narrow T-1-11 plywood siding … nothing fancy, but it’ll keep the wasps and rain out. Also, it’s getting a new roof of UV-resistant polycarbonate panels, which we saw on the catio tour this summer. I’ll reglaze the windows and we’ll paint the greenhouse to match the house. This will be the old windows’ first experience with paint. They’re due.

Sad!

Such potential!

Crispy roof.

Blue tarp. Yep, we’re those people.

Before he could begin installing the new greenhouse roof, Eric painted the garage gable, which would be inaccessible once the new roof went on. Our weather was still summer-hot.

Painting the gable.

5. Straighten up the saggy garage door.

Yes, the garage leans a little. So will you when you are 104 years old. The left door, in particular, is sagging. (We don’t park in the garage. We use it as storage for … stuff.)

A little crooked, but cute as ever.

Eric filled screw holes and moved the top hinge on the left door back up to its original position so it could get a better bite. This helped raise the door a tiny bit, but not enough. Eric has other methods up his sleeve for later.

I kept running into green paint on the garage. The house would have turned green in the 1940s or 50s when the asbestos siding was applied (as did the house next door, which remained green into the mid-90s), because the asbestos tiles were originally green. The garage didn’t get the asbestos siding treatment and has always been sided in the original shingles.

Underneath–green?

How did we do?

We’re still working on it! We’re not finished (with anything), but we’ve made lots of progress, and the autumn rain has held off—so far—no guarantees about tomorrow. Here are some before-and-afters.

Painting the garage doors was my project. It seemed to take forever, and it’s still not quite finished. The center strip needs replacing.

Before

After

The greenhouse roof. Nearly finished, but it still needs blocking between the rafters, trimming, and a gutter.

Before.

After. The new roof even makes the sun shine!

Greenhouse siding. Since the “after” shot, I’ve primed and pre-painted the siding panels, and they’re ready to be installed. Next will be trim and reglazing those windows. We haven’t started the door end yet.

Before.

Much has been done since this shot, but Duke looks too cute not to include it!

The garden side of the garage. Both the garden and the garage look better. I really like how the plants look against the new color.

Before

After

I got on a roll and weeded and trimmed up the whole garden.

The alley side of the garage. So much better!

Before.

After.

Wait—what’s that, just past the greenhouse? My next post, that’s what! Stay tuned …

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Digger O’Dell was the “friendly undertaker” in the 1940s radio show, The Life of Riley.

Just in time for fall, another screen door

“Little and often make much.”

So says a Chinese fortune paper that I keep on my desk at work. This summer, I have done as little as I can, as often as possible, and I can’t figure out why I haven’t accomplished much! Maybe my pace will pick up once our scorching-hot summer is over.

One of my summer projects was to paint the back screen door, which still matched the previous color scheme. How hard can that be?

The lower right screen is bound with duct tape and hangs free for pet access.

We often leave the back door open for air.

Half the summer slipped by before I laid the door out for rejuvenation in my side-porch paint lab. I had barely gotten busy sanding its grubby surface when I noticed that the glue joint above the handle had separated. We decided that the old door had come to the end of its useful life. Time for a fresh start.

The door was dirty and rough.

Uh-oh …

At Lowe’s we chose a new pine screen door in the same style as the old one. This time, though, Eric wanted to install a real dog door instead of cutting a flap of screen fabric. We need to keep the fur kids in, yet still ventilate the house. Additionally, he wanted to upgrade the standard screen fabric to pet screen, which is a strong, coarser, vinyl-coated polyester mesh that resists claws. (I highly recommend it.)

Now—watch as a seemingly simple project (paint a freakin’ door!) balloons into a whole summer’s worth of mini projects!

On our old door, the screen was attached with a spline in a groove, making the screen impossible to removable without ruining it. The new door features a routered channel that holds a metal frame, into which the screen and spline is inserted. The whole framework and screen can be removed for painting the door, then reinstalled with screws. Eric says this system has been around for a long time … but what do I know? I was just glad I wouldn’t have to tape the screens when I painted. I hate taping!

The door with the metal frame and screen removed.

In his basement shop, Eric customized the door to hold a large dog door, the same kind we have in the back door. He filled the space above the dog door with wood. (In the photos below, the wood door is laying on a plywood surface, making it hard to see details.)

Top section of the door with the new metal frame.

The dog door opening (bottom) framed in.

He also had to buy new, larger metal framing for the screen, because the frame that came with the door was too small to accept the heavier pet screen fabric. The larger frame required routering a wider channel in the door. All that gluing, screwing, and tattooing took longer than I’d hoped, but finally our new, custom door made its way back upstairs to the paint lab.

My turn. Notice, I seldom paint alone. If Eric took a long time to customize the door, I probably took just as long to finish painting. I could only do one coat per day, and I didn’t paint every day.

The unpainted door

With primer …

“You missed a spot.”

Quality inspectors confer

Interior side done

We pin the door back against the house when it’s not in use because there’s only a top step to stand on—no landing and no place to get out of the way of an outward-opening door. When it’s pinned back, the inside of the door is visible from the street, so I painted it the trim color to help it blend with the trim around the back porch window. Initially I thought to paint it the gray-green siding color, but people only see the top of the door from the street, and the pale taupe looks better from the inside when the door’s closed.

At last, the door was cured and ready to be fitted out with the new screen and pet door. Eric did the work on the kitchen floor.

Ready for screens and pet door.

Quality inspector lurks in background.

Detail of screen frame.

Finally—ready to install! But wait—let’s do some additional fiddling around. When Eric removed the old door, we found that the hinges had been screwed into a piece of shim inside the door jamb. No wonder it never fit right. Eric cut a new trim piece for the door jamb, and I, of course, painted it. Now we could proceed with measuring and jiggling it around until it fit just so, at the right height and depth … are we done yet? No!

To make the door fit flush with the exterior door frame, Eric added some clever bumpers. Can you tell what these are really for? (Hint: They are not rubber baby buggy bumpers.) If you can’t figure it out, go lift up your toilet seat …

The door always closes quietly.

Interior hardware

Duke quivers with excitement as Eric encourages him to try his new door.

The leafy view from inside.

Tara investigates the new door.

The door standing open.

What people see from the sidewalk. Go ahead–stick your foot under the gate!

We started this easy project on July 7. We hung the screen door on August 28 … our normal, do-little-often pace. (But we’ve had a hot, fun summer!) Duke is still figuring out how to heft his hind legs through the new door, which is a higher step than the other door. Some of the cats are confused that the screen panel isn’t the way in anymore. Eric and I are on to our next project. We’ll all figure it out …

The skeeters are coming! The skeeters are coming!

In fact, they’ve been here for weeks, early this year, and BIG. Our record-breakingly wet spring might have had something to do with that. Bugs sent us scrambling to get screens on our doors and windows, but dang it, it’s never that easy, is it?

We’ve had the screen on the front door all winter. I finished painting that one last fall. But the screens for the French doors, which we often open for air (and to let cats inside—they have us trained) have been leaning wearily against the wall in the foyer all winter, waiting for their turn. Their red exteriors were already done, but the interior side needed to be painted Chef White to match our trim, which I’m still laboriously picking away at in between long breaks.

Poor little Checkers stuck outside!

When I bought the house in 1984, I found screens for all the house’s windows stacked in the basement. Ironically, nearly all the windows in the house had been painted shut. By the time Eric came along, the wood frames were falling apart, but he saved the hardware. Fortunately, the original French screen doors were intact. We rescreened them with “pet proof” fiberglass screen fabric, which is coarse and black. It really works! Our cats abuse it regularly, and it’s held up for years.

Mosquitoes were entering through the bathroom window, too. Eric made  a screen for one of the bathroom windows a couple of years ago, and I still had to paint its interior.

Our home-grown bathroom window screen

The old hardware works just fine (interior view of bathroom window screen).

Lastly, the kitchen screen door is still spruce green. I tend to forget about that one because we pin it back against the house when we’re not using it (an odd configuration), and when we are using it, it looks so familiar that I don’t see it. Put it on my list …

I set up my paint shop on the side porch, balancing the long French door screens on our rocky bistro table. Usually I don’t bother to tape, but I couldn’t risk slopping paint on the screen. (I dripped some on one screen despite my best efforts.)

Security is present whenever the queen is in residence.

It took several days and a couple of weekends to paint the doors and give them a good chance to cure before hanging them. I spent a bit of time sanding the crud off of this brass sliding bolt that secures the bottom of the doors on the inside. I quit because A) I got bored real quickly with this fussy job, or B) We decided to upgrade to new black hinges and hardware … take your pick.

The original brass sliding bolt. We’ll use it somewhere …

One of four new black hinges

We replaced the sliding bolt with a new black one.

The sliding bolt secures the screen doors at the bottom.

But we retained the original high-tech latch.

Refection off the French doors makes the screen interiors appear red. They’re actually white.

I added some colorful flowers to the deck planters and brought out the porch pillows. Ah … it looks so inviting! The side porch is my favorite room of the house in summertime.

Summer flowers

This porch always beckons me.

Now the bugs stay out.

A finished project! Woo-hoo!!

The porch viewed from the sidewalk.

The big paint reveal!

Last week I looked out my office window at a hillside covered in red and gold and green foliage. Just above the hill was a slice of silvery sky and scudding clouds. Above that hung a dense gray curtain, pushing to the east. This was an improvement over the buckets of rain that fell all morning. Such was October in the Pacific Northwest … our wettest on record.

A view to the southeast

Your question: Did we get the house painted?  Yes, we did. Mostly. Enough for passers-by to convincingly say, “Look, they painted their house!” It still needs some touch-up. The attic dormer, the basement window casings, the garage, and the front porch floor will be painted next spring. The cedar shingles on the porches will be stained next spring. The chimney will be repointed and painted next spring. Let’s hope we have an early, dry spring.

I have accepted that I won’t find enough days over 50 degrees this fall to paint the three remaining screen doors, which I intended to paint under the cover of our front porch. But just to look at the house, you might think it’s done. I did get the front screen door finished, but it took forever to dry.

Considering the gloom of this November day, and all the identical days in the long-range forecast, the too-hot-to-paint days of summer seem far behind us. Eric thought he’d get this project done in a couple of months, but the prep work alone took longer than that. The painting itself was the “easy” part, he said, although setting up the ladder, climbing up, painting, climbing down, moving the ladder, and climbing up again doesn’t sound easy.

Crosby keeps an eye on daddy high on the ladder, while Tara frowns at Duke, who’s cavorting on the deck.

This is what our normally tidy deck looked like after weeks of painting. The dried paint buckets eventually filled with rainwater.

Chaos

How many do you need?

Eric made successive circuits around the house, painting first Subtle Taupe eaves, then the Falcon’s Aura siding, followed by the Subtle Taupe trim, and I followed behind with the Chocolate Cherry accent color. Eric taped a few windows for me, but soon saw it was a waste of time. “You’re on your own,” he told me.

Getting the ladder behind the rhodies was hard.

Bruce Springsteen was born to run. Steppenwolf was born to be wild. Ray Charles was born to lose. And me? I was born to cut in. It is my one true talent. I can think of a lot of other talents that would be more interesting, not to mention more lucrative … but when you’re painting your house, the ability to paint a straight line is a handy trait. I can even do it ambidextrously, and believe me, I’m not ambidextrous at anything else.

I do cutting in, but I don’t do heights. Eric had to paint the attic windows, high on the back gable. I had the temerity to send him back up for a do-over. On some of these windows, I admit, a straight line was out of the question.

An example of how not to apply glazing compound.

My parents would surely be proud that a five-year university fine arts degree produced a capable trim painter. I painted the mullions of one hundred ninety-eight 4 x 4-inch panes of glass. That’s a lot of cutting in. Painting the panes was a slow-moving, neck-craning, cramp-inducing meditation on what makes this house special.

Toward the end of 1983, I got a strong nesting urge to buy a house on my ridiculous shoe-string budget. As I perused the MLS book in a real estate office, I saw a picture of an old house with French doors flanked by high, small, multipaned windows, forming a bold T-shape. That house–I want to see that house.

And here I am, thirty-three years later, so I painted these panes with reverence, even though standing on a ladder for hours makes my body scream. Special thanks to Eric, for all the hours that he put in on this project over the summer, wrestling ladders and equipment by himself while I was at work.

This is my favorite photo of the whole “painful” process. I asked Eric to get a shot of Lacy supervising my technique from the windowsill inside, and he instructed me to hold the paint can in a specific spot.

Supervisor cat mirage

But enough reminiscing—let’s get to those before-and-after pix!

We’ll start on the south side, which faces the neighboring house. This side’s trim was never painted in 1995 (tsk, tsk), and needed the most TLC.

South side before

South side after

As bad as it gets

MUCH better!

Library windows with old brown trim paint

After trim paint

Complete

Around the corner we go, to the east side, facing the backyard. The yellow bicycle is not flying by in a tornado; it’s a whirligig in our garden. Oh, that blue sky …

East side before

East side with siding painted

East side complete

Stairwell window before

Stairwell window after

Next, the north side, which faces our side street. This is the most visible side of our house.

North side before

North side after

Dining room windows before

Dining room windows after

Side porch before (with paint samples!)

Side porch after

And finally, the west side, the front of our house. All of our time and energy went into painting … now I can see how our gardens suffered and overgrew.

West side before

West side after

West side entry after

One of three sets of old house numbers we removed … been there a while

Front porch detail–and new copper house numbers

What do you think? We’re really pleased with the new look, although I still wince at how “white” the Subtle Taupe reads (it’s especially white in photos). It’s not quite my original vision, but everyone seems to like it. It’s a pleasure to drive up and see our house in its fresh new coat. Maybe our favorite thing about it is that it’s done. Mostly.

Chromatic angst

Wasn’t it just a couple of weeks ago that I was admiring our blooming gardens and looking forward to a long stretch of approaching summer? Now, Labor Day weekend has come and gone, the roses are finishing their second bloom, hydrangeas are fading into autumn colors, and everything looks overblown and weedy. Why does summer pass so quickly, but winter drags its feet?

Checkers, roses, and crabgrass

Eric’s paid summer off has ended and he’s seeking employment again, figuring he might as well work as long as I still have to. He had such an ambitious to-do list back in June, when summer loomed long and full of promise: prep and paint the house, finish the basement reorg, clear out the storage units, clear out the attic, replace the backyard fence.

He soon learned what a laborious process it is to prep an old house for paint. It’s taken much, much, much longer than he anticipated, and he says he could work months more just on prep. But we don’t have months more. The paint must go on while we have good weather. By October, we’ll be heading into storm season and outdoor painting will be impossible.

After weeks of pressure-washing, scraping, stripping, filling, and sanding, the trim was ready for primer. I don’t know how to spell the sound that 103-year-old wood makes when it sucks up primer; you’ll have to use your imagination.

One day I came home from work and stepped out onto the front porch. The underside of the eave looked uncharacteristically bright and clean. “I may have to give it a second coat,” said Eric. “Of primer?” I asked, puzzled. “No—that’s the trim color,” he replied. WHAAAAT?? It looked—oh no!—white! Well, not stark white … more like cream white, and definitely NOT what I had envisioned. The Valspar “Oatlands Subtle Taupe” was too subtle.

Is it white, or …?

But, by now we had already consumed a $170 five-gallon bucket of the stuff,  and I wasn’t about to ask Eric to repaint with another color. “I’ll learn to love it,” I declared. So far, I love it not, but it’s serviceable and it will stay. Before we committed to the color, I was vascillating. Should I go with something a little darker? My gut told me I should, but I decided to trust the test patch that I’d painted. So, Subtle Taupe it was. Damn—I should have listened to my gut. I am still trying to make peace with what I’m sure people will refer to as “white trim.” The fault is entirely mine … but it will be okay.

Weeks of weather too hot and breezy for painting followed, and Eric was limited as to what he could accomplish. Tick-tock, the summer clock counted down.

On another afternoon, Eric led me to our side porch paint testing lab and pointed to a patch of fresh olive green paint. It was the Mossy Aura from the five-gallon bucket … but it didn’t look like the sample I’d applied. It looked … kinda weak, more like split pea soup. No, no, this would never do! We were both disappointed. What, the paint crew at Lowe’s can’t mix the correct shade even with a computer??

You can see the problem.

We began to think that maybe we should go with Falcon’s Plume, the darker green, after all. I painted a test patch next to the Subtle Taupe trim. It would look beautiful, although the contrast between field and trim would be even greater than before—the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. Still, the combination would be stunning. And after all, hadn’t we initially decided to go bravely dark?

Original Falcon’s Plume test patch

So back to Lowe’s went the Mossy Aura. The guy in the paint lab agreed that something wasn’t right. That’s when Eric discovered that when you return five gallons of $170 mistint paint, not only do you get your money back, you get the replacement five gallons for $99! Woo-hoo!

The next day when I came home from work, I found this:

Eric called this color “Boy Scout Pants”

Wow, that is … really dramatic! Keep in mind, you’re looking at a lot of competing colors here—not just our three new paint colors, but the current house colors and the colorful mums and chair pillows, too. Try to focus on the dark green, the taupe trim, and the dark red accent. Still … wow. It’s dramatic, yes … but, paradoxically, it makes the house disappear. The windows seem to float free. Well … okay, let’s do it!

Later that evening I blurted out, “I think it’s too dark.” Eric didn’t disagree. But could the paint mixer remix an accurate match of Mossy Aura? And if we need more than five gallons (which was likely), what would be the chances that we could get the same shade twice? It seemed that the perfectly matched Falcon’s Plume was the safer bet.

Lying in bed that night, I had a brilliant idea: The next day I would go back to Lowe’s, where surely our five gallons of Mossy Aura mistint would be on sale for a ridiculously low price. I’d buy the bucket, then we’d mix the Mossy Aura and the Falcon’s Plume and come up with the potentially perfect intermediate shade. Genius!

However, in the morning, the DIY gods punished my money-saving plan by killing our stove. I didn’t intend to go stove shopping that day, but the retail gods came to our rescue and put all the appliances at Lowe’s on sale. Score!

Welcome to the family, Samsung!

We snuck into the paint department, hoping the staff wouldn’t recognize Eric as the original owner of the Mossy Aura. Of course, they didn’t care and they weren’t paying a lick of attention to us. We snatched up our own paint for $30! In other words, we now had ten gallons of paint, which would have cost $340, for $130! But wait, there’s more! At the check out stand the cashier presented us with a coupon for a $30 rebate, which we can use on the Falcon’s Plume paint. Make that ten gallons of paint for $100.

That is, if the two mixed together resulted in the perfect shade. I’m sure some folks are thinking, “Why don’t they just paint the house, already!” Yes, maybe we are a little bit obsessive about our paint colors. In fact, we are the Goldilocks of pickiness. At the other end of the spectrum is my friend Cathy, who wrote about me in her blog:

She made a potentially boring topic about picking paint colors quite interesting to someone who let the next door neighbor pick the paint color for her house (I said “surprise me” and went on a trip).

Wait—paint color  is potentially boring? Not endlessly fascinating? Our eyeballs are pretty calibrated when it comes to color. We want what we want.

Now, to test our custom blend. We carefully measured a 1:1 mixture of Mossy Aura and Falcon’s Plume, and applied a generous test patch to the wall. BINGO!! That’s our perfect color! We christened it “Falcon’s Aura.”

Not too dark, not too light–just right!

Falcon’s Aura vs Boy Scout Pants

Every time I go out to look at it, I’m happy. Yes, I’m absolutely, positively certain. Did I mention we got ten gallons of paint for only $100?

Falcon’s Aura on the side porch

Falcon’s Aura on the front porch

 

Preppin’

The pace has been a little different at the bungalow this summer. Eric has been working hard to prep the house for painting during the week, while I, of course, bring the bacon home from the cube farm. By the time the weekend rolls around, we both want a break. It’s summer after all, and we in the damp, gray Pacific Northwest cherish our summers, which traditionally begin on July 5th and sometimes, if we’re lucky, blaze gloriously into early October.

Who can blame us for packing in all the summer activities we can? It’s time for art fairs, ferry rides, farmers markets, architectural tours, dinner with a view. You may have noticed that I’ve slacked off on blog posts. No apologies! I’ve also, um, slacked off on my living room replastering project. What can I say? By the time I get home from work in the evening, plastering doesn’t sound appealing… and come the weekend, I want to play outdoors. And I don’t mean hunting crabgrass, either! Our crabgrass is alive and well!

Mt. Rainier

Watching the marine traffic on Lake Union

Lunch on the deck, Coupeville, Wash.

Heading home on the ferry Kittitas

Coupeville Arts Fair

Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad

Pike Place Market, Seattle, Wash.

Okay, break’s over. I have some gnarly before-and-durings for you (no afters, yet). A house does not get to be 103 years old without experiencing some decrepitude. Years of deferred maintenance cause spots and wrinkles, as surely as years without sunscreen cause spots and wrinkles on us. These photos are tantamount to a confession.

Eric started the prep work on the south side of our house, which bakes in the summer sun and soaks in the winter rain. I may have mentioned that whoever painted the trim back in 1995 never got around to trimming out the south side. That person should be thrashed!

In her defense, I recall our 2007 trip to New England, when we visited the Olson house in Cushing, Maine, inspiration for many of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings (most famously, Christina’s World). We were free to crawl all over its shabby, faded austerity—a religious experience for me. It made me think: If this house can stand on this windswept hill since the late 1700s with, apparently, no paint, then … what, me worry? But, I digress. That’s a topic for another travel blog.

Christina’s World – Andrew Wyeth [Wikipedia]

Olson Farmhouse, Cushing, ME

It is with humility that I reveal to you … our bungalow’s south side. This is my bedroom closet window. (Craftsman houses often have windows in their tiny closets so that one might air out one’s few clothes.) The upper pane is cracked. The checked and peeling brown paint has a tenuous grip on the oversprayed trim boards. The window glazing is mottled but still there. That’s more than some windows can say. Eric used a combination of scraper, power washer, and heat gun to get all the paint off that would come off.

Bedroom closet window – before

Chipping paint

More peeling

After sanding, sealing, new glass and glazing – hello, plaid jacket!

Here’s the south foyer window. Same condition. No hate mail, please.

The south foyer window

More of the same

Are you tired of looking at these depressing photos? I am. I’m sure you get the idea. But wait, there’s more!

Some places are going to be hard to paint, like this oddly shaped cubbyhole formed by a shed roof under the gable over the south foyer window, where pigeons like to roost. In the spring we can hear the chicks peeping and the adults cooing. Eric used the power washer to blast out the remnants of nest and lots of pigeon poop. Yes, he wore a face shield. Then he covered the area with net to keep the birds out. The net will be neatly attached to permanently deter the birds after we paint. Our bird-watching cats will be disappointed. (They do not catch pigeons.)

A complicated construction

Pigeon poop is not the only hazardous waste Eric encountered. On the porch roof he discovered a disgusting pile of what we think was raccoon poop, loaded with cherry pits. You know what happens when you eat too many cherries … that raccoon must have had a bad bellyache.

Yuck

Back to the window frames … After Eric removed as much old paint as possible, all window frames got one or two coats of Zinsser Peel Stop, a treatment that soaks into punky, dry wood and dries hard as rock, at the same time bonding any remaining paint to the wood. Then, a coat of Kilz Klear, a primer that goes on translucent white and dries clear (I mean, klear), like Elmer’s Glue. The new paint won’t dare to come off.

Zinsser Peel Stop and Kilz Klear

In contrast to the south side, this is our east-facing attic stairwell window. Looks much better, right? But up close, its paint is also checked and brittle, not to mention filthy from pollution.

East-facing attic stairwell window

Pretty beat

After scraping and sanding

The most dramatic weather damage is on the parts you can’t see from the ground—the knee braces, for instance. What would your knees look like if they’d been propping up the eaves day in, day out, for 103 years? This is not a log on the beach. It’s the top of one of the knee braces.

Shockingly bad!

You might be surprised to learn that rotten wood like this can be salvaged with good old Bondo. Yes, the same stuff used at body shops. Eric tells me it’s rather tricky to mix the two-part goop, race to the top of the ladder, and schmear it on while it’s still malleable. Bondo is a lot stronger than wood. Real restorers would replace all of these parts with new wood, of course … but we’re not doing that. Our goal is to stabilize the existing wood, paint it, and move on.

Tired old knees

In all, Eric replaced eight window panes and reglazed several more. Both of our bathroom windows had cracked panes, so we took the opportunity to replace the clear glass (which we had covered with patterned adhesive privacy film) with new, obscure glass. Wow, what a difference in the bathroom—almost too bright. I can see my own spots and wrinkles too well.

Bath windows before

New frosted bath windows

Yesterday, after our spate of too-hot-and-windy-to-paint weather ended, Eric and I applied two coats of “haint blue” paint (Valspar “Gossamer Sky”) to the front porch ceiling. Here’s a teaser for my next post: Woo-hoo—it’s time for COLOR!

The painting begins!

Auditions

Big changes are afoot at the bungalow this summer: Eric got caught in a round of layoffs at the company where we both work. (So far, I’m still employed.) While not in our plan, this is not a bad thing. He parted with a few months severance pay, and after 60 days hiatus (required by law), he potentially could return as a contractor.  He’ll officially retire at the end of the year. We say he’s “pretired.” Me? I’m just tired.

Having the summer off with pay sounds like heaven to me … but Eric is saddled with a mile-long honey-do list, his penance for being home and hanging out with Duke and the cats while I continue to toil at the cube farm. You know, little stuff like muck out the attic, build a new fence, paint the house. Yes, folks, it’s time … long past time. The house was last painted back in 1995, best I can remember, and that paint job never was quite finished on the south side, which faces our neighbor. That fact doesn’t sufficiently bother me because I never see our house from that side … out of sight, out of mind—I’m such a lazy bum.

Painting any house is a big job, but painting an old house with intricate trim and peeling paint, weather-beaten wood and petrified glazing is truly daunting. I’ll be giving you a play-by-play description over the summer as things progress.

First, of course, comes a ton of not-so-fun prep work—the key to success if you can force yourself through it—which you must. Yes, I will be helping. You know that painting is my thing. I’ll be painting most of the trim because it’s all brushwork. The body of the house, which, regrettably, is covered in asbestos shingles (along with much of the neighborhood, since some convincing salesman came through in the 1950s) will be sprayed.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We can’t paint without picking our new colors, and that’s where the auditions come in. The house is currently a light taupe called Tooley Fog (is that a great color name, or what?) with white trim and spruce-green accent on the window mullions and doors.

Our current color scheme. Pretty tame.

I’ve long been imagining the house painted a darker, more traditionally Craftsman scheme of dusty olive, with paler olive trim and burnt red accent. Time for paint auditions!

Eric and I have a routine that we go through every time we pick paint. I’ll pick a color, and Eric will claim, “It’s too dark.” Every. Single. Time. So this time, I picked out the Valspar paint chip cards and, instead of going for the darkest shades, I chose the middle ones, Mossy Aura and Wild Hawk. I moved two cards to the left in the same row and picked lighter shades for the trim, Oatlands Subtle Taupe (which was also a contender for living room paint), and Oatbran. For the red accent, I chose Jekyll Club Cherokee Rust, which reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s signature red.

Although the two schemes look almost identical and not quite true to life on my monitor, here they are.

I fell in love with Mossy Aura the moment I applied it. It’s, well … mossy. A great backdrop for plants, and very Craftsman. Subtle Taupe is its perfect trim color: light and slightly green-tinted, but with lots more character than white. I eliminated the Wild Hawk/Oatbran combo, although good colors, as too brown. (When I bought the house in 1983 it was vanilla with mud brown trim. Yech! I want to stay away from brown.)

But the Cherokee Rust—oh dear! It screamed – and completely overpowered the moss and taupe. No, no, no!

Yikes! Too red!

Back to Lowe’s for a do-over, not so orangey this time … a little darker. How about Olympic’s Brick Dust?

Still not quite right, but closer.

Still too intense. Where was I going wrong? I shuffled my paint chips and even thought about abandoning the red accent and going to a dark teal, which would be beautiful … but it didn’t look like the picture I’ve had in my head for so long, and I didn’t know how it would look with the red porch floor (which could be repainted) and the fireplace chimney.

What to do, what to do …

Time for some field research. Eric, Duke, and I drove up to Seattle’s Ravenna district, a bungalow neighborhood where our house would be worth three times as much as it is in Auburn. (Especially now, when Seattle real estate prices are going through the roof … the median price for a house is $666,000. Alas, Auburn prices lag far behind.) Sigh …

As usual, click to enlarge.

I noticed three things:

1. We have the most heavily landscaped and planted yard in our neighborhood. It kind of sticks out compared to our horticulturally challenged neighbors, and we get lots of compliments. But almost everyone in Seattle has plantings like this—and more so. Many front yards have no grass at all. Parking strips aren’t grass, but gardens. Flowers are bursting out everywhere, spilling through fences and onto the sidewalks. It’s gorgeous.
2. No one in Ravenna says, “It’s too dark.” They are not afraid to paint their houses deep shades of gray, olive, teal, even dusky purple (the nearby University of Washington’s colors are purple and gold).
3. Lots of people use the very type of red accent that I was trying to find, only it’s more brownish and rusty. In combination with other colors, it reads as almost red. Got it! Back to Lowe’s!

This time, I got a sample of the darker olive shade, Falcon’s Plume, with Filoli Carriage House (which in person looks a little like guacamole) for trim and Chocolate Cherry for accent. (I wish I could get a job as color namer instead of a technical writer.) The darker, richer field and trim shades finally held their own against the rusty red. Success! Even Eric had to admit that darker worked. We had our color scheme!

Or did we? As I slept that night, colors swirled in my head, shifting hues and intensities. In the morning, I knew I had to try the Chocolate Cherry with the Mossy Aura combo. Bingo, it worked! Now we had two equally successful color schemes, one of medium intensity and one deeper. Which to pick?

Falcon’s Plume

Mossy Aura

We had agreed to go dark, but my heart was still with Mossy Aura. Our neighbors Art and Mari wandered by, and we stood on the sidewalk and pondered. We realized that the darker Falcon’s Plume was almost the same color as our dark green roof. Too much of the same value. The house needs the contrast of a medium green under the dark roof. Mossy Aura it is! Woo-hoo—we have a winner!

I see you!

Or do we? I came across this photo.

Ooh–ooh!!

This house is painted a green similar to our Mossy Aura, but the trim is darker, and a little bluer. If you look closely, you can see reddish brown knee braces. I like how those colors echo what I like to do with plants: play shades of moss against shades of blue-green. Hmm … maybe we’re not done, after all.

After sleeping on it, I decided that although I love this combination, I can’t picture our porch railings painted blue-green. I may try the Filoli Carriage House (guacamole) with Mossy Aura, though.

In between paint tests I’ve consulted numerous websites and some of my own books (Powell and Svendsen’s Bungalow Details: Exterior, while it doesn’t specifically address paint, has inspirational photos). Along the way I’ve picked up a few tips. The older I get, the more I learn how many well-intentioned mistakes I’ve made.

• Don’t paint the trim white! Many people do to make it pop, but it’s not Craftsman. My bad.
• If you have some shingle trim, as we do on our porches, stain it a natural color or at least a slightly different color than the field. We’ll definitely do this to our two shingled porches.
• Paint the eaves the trim color, not the field color. Oops … our eaves are Tooley Fog.
• Leave your masonry natural! Too late … our fireplace has been painted for decades.

So, is my mind finally made up? Don’t worry, Eric has lots of trim to scrape and windows to repair, which means I have plenty of time to audition all of my color whims before we commit.  What do you think of our current fave? Is Auburn ready for some real Seattle Craftsman colors? Stay tuned!