Don't Look Up!

Listening to The Dogs "Rot And Roll" (Iowa), not to be confused with The Dogs (Detroit), The Dogs (Chicago) or Dogs (France).


The ceiling in our soon-to-be-finished office has been nagging me. This room has not been painted since we moved in and I noticed a few patches of ugly flaking paint here and there. I didn't worry about it too much thinking I would simply scrape the flakey paint off, spackle if needed, and paint as usual.





Those pesky mulitple layers of paint had finally been eradicated from the molding/doors/baseboards, and it was time to start painting. Of course, the ceiling of a room is the thing you paint first so it was time to prep and paint. A simple job. Loose paint should be totally removed before repainting. I climbed up the ladder with my trusty paint scraper and proceeded to remove all the flakey ceiling paint. I scraped and scraped and scraped some more and to my horror this flakiness stretched much farther across the ceiling than I had imagined. I ended up removing more than a couple of layers of ceiling, and about 1/4 of the entire ceiling span. My heart sunk as more and more of this crap scraped off and fell to floor. But the worst was discovering the drywall underneath was discolored and brown from water damage that happened who knows when. It looked like we were going to have to replace entire ceiling.



The drywall beneath had been damaged by water and painted over at some point before we bought the house. We have never had a water leak and the roof is only a couple of years old so obviously this damage happened awhile ago. The stained ugly drywall stared down at me. How depressing. But, hey, it seemed to be intact and strong. Then Dan and I went snooping around in the attic to see what was going on on the other side. Under the insulation we found water stained drywall, but it was bone dry, strong and intact. No mold, no dampness at all. And no evidence of recent leaks! This is good. We happily decided we wouldn't have to replace the drywall and we could salvage the office ceiling with a little patching and sanding.





I decided to patch the bald spots I had scraped into the ceiling with simple premixed spackle. Done, but not very fun while standing on a ladder, with your arms over your head and your head wrenched all the way back so you can see what your doing. Ouch, neck cramps. No wonder Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back on a scaffold.






After drying for 24 hours I tackled the sanding portion of this job. We have a hand held power sander, and with large grit sandpaper smoothing out the dry spackle wasn't too bad - with the exception of almost going into respiratory failure by breathing in all that dust. I should have worn a mask, but I am really lame sometime and I didn't. I also did not take pictures of myself covered in white powder.


Now with the new ceiling spackle all nice and smooth, I slapped on a couple of layers of Kilz primer.


And here is the ceiling after painting! Finally done! My ceiling is no Sistine Chapel, but it looks pretty great. Here, too, is a little sneak peek of the dark gray walls.

And here is a picture of my honey changing out the a/c outlets. He wasn't having too much fun but dang if he did get 'em all done!

Unhinged!

Anvil at Emo's next Monday! Heavy Metal heaven!

I am happy to announce more progress on our office overhaul. After Dan got 30 layers of paint off the doors, and after I got those same layers off the doorway moulding and baseboards it was time to think about re-hanging the doors. And what better to use than the original hinges? They are perfectly good, and original so already fit the existing screw holes and cuts. No need to patch or fill old holes!

However, and of course, there was a problem: just like the doors and moulding, the hinges were covered with 30 layers of paint. It had to come off. We could have bought new one's but we would rather reuse what we have, and at 10 bucks per new hinge why spend the money? Instead, we spent 8 bucks on a can of paint stripper, soaked the 4 hinges in the stuff, and scraped off all those old layers of paint.


Please note - a person should always wear rubber gloves when using paint stripper. If it can dissolve paint it can certainly dissolve skin, so be careful with this toxic chemical! I learned a little something about rubber gloves: when using paint stripper wear chemical resistant gloves! I am serious! The paint stripper totally ate holes in my regular rubber gloves which I painfully discovered when the gloves bubbled up and corroded in front of my eyes, while still on my hands, and I got that stinging, icy, burning sensation from the stripper. After removing the now useless gloves and washing my hands really well with soap and water I switched to chemical resistant gloves for the rest of the job. You do not want this crap on your skin.

The paint stripper worked really well to break down the paint. I scrubbed the hinges with a wire brush and hit them with a bit of steel wool leaving them clean and paint free. I did get new screws : 1 inch #10's, because even though I am pretty cheap thrifty and like to reuse stuff I was not about to strip the paint off all those old screws.


Now, this little project would never have had to happen if some previous occupant of our house had not painted over the hinges in the first place. Do yourself a favor: when painting a door don't paint the hinges! Take a couple of minutes and remove them first. Your welcome.

I like to paint doors while they're hanging because I can paint both sides at the same time. If you paint a door while it's laying on top of a table, for instance, you can only paint one side at a time, then you have to wait for it to dry, turn it over and paint the other side, and if you have to do 2 coats it takes even longer. When you paint a door while it's hanging you cut your paint time in half. But first, I always paint the door jam and the edge of the door where the hinges screw in so I can hang the door and not have to fool around with taping off the hinges and painting around them. See this picture, below, of the painted door edge before applying the hinges. Also notice how Dan got that door all the way down to bare wood (!!!) by stripping and sanding with a belt sander. The doors look great!




And here is a picture of the door jam hinge, all ready to go. Fits perfectly.


So, the doors are hung and ready to paint! Yippee!

Here are a few more pictures, below, of the paint stripper in action on the office windows. I removed as much paint with the heat gun as I could, but I didn't want to get too close to the glass with a 4 million degree heat gun blast (it would be just my luck that the windows would crack), so I used stripper on the sashes where the window glass sits.

Coming Up: The old leaky ceiling problem!

CAT-SICLES!

Hope the new year is treating everyone well so far. We are still working on the office re-vamp...I've mentioned before that Dan and I work reeeally slow, plus a few weird obstacles have arisen during the seemingly endless job to make it feel like we'll never get done....so, I haven't posted for 6 weeks, not that I've been sitting around doing nothing! We have been quite busy working on the office, and got through the holidays unscathed.

But anyway, today I want to address certain things we deal with as the lucky guardians to a few feral cats who live in our yard. It was freezing a few nights last week with really cold days in the 30's (weird for Texas), and now it's raining, so we have been more than slightly concerned about these homeless felines. These kitties are the less fortunate "outsiders", as we call them. They are all feral cats who came with the house when we bought it. Our neighborhood was jumping with feral cats so some of the neighbors and I systematically rounded them all up, got them spayed/neutered and in most cases adopted. Since these cats were already here when we moved in, and since this was their home before it was ours, here they stay, and here we are taking care of them to the extent that they let us.

We have been worried for awhile about how to keep them warm during the winter. We have tried baskets, boxes rigged with plastic and blankets, and tarps to keep wind off the porch (the porch seems to be a favorite hang out). Last year we discovered the Mylar pad. This thing radiates body heat so when a cat (or a cold human butt) sits on it it gets warm. It seems to work pretty well with a couple of blankets to make a little cat nest. There is usually some kitty sleeping here day and night when the weather gets cold. We also have a regular pet basket with a sheepskin pad in it, also usually occupied. But this year we decided to go higher tech and we found this amazing product:

This thing is called a Snuggle Safe. It kind of looks like a big hockey puck with some kind of goo inside it. Throw this baby in the microwave for 5 minutes, put it in the kitty nest, and you will have a warm and happy cat for up to 24 hours. Below, see it in it's flannel paw print cover with the kitty bed blankets that are on the porch love seat.

This certainly isn't as great as having a nice cozy indoor chair or bed to curl up on, but it seems to do the trick pretty well and I'm glad the cats are using it.

Now, without further ado, may I present the Outsiders:

This is Onions. His name used to be Balls, but after he was fixed he needed a name change. Dan named him Onions and the name just somehow stuck. Balls was a tough, beat-up street punk who is probably the sire of all the cats in Texas. Once mean, skinny, and miserable, he is doing much better by simply getting fixed and being fed regularly. He's probably about 10 years old but has had a pretty rough life leaving him blind in one eye and with bad teeth. We attempted to catch him and take him to the vet but that didn't get very far! He looks pretty happy on the Snuggle Safe in this picture:

This is Calpurnia. She is calico, hence the name, aren't we so clever. She is a small female, very sweet. She was probably someones pet at some point because she's pretty friendly, and is so cute I can't imagine someone not wanting her, let alone leaving her to fend for herself. She is probably around 8 years old. Someday we hope to lure her into the house and make an honest woman out of her.

Then there is this poor guy, the latest cat who appeared in the yard yowling like a siren, looking for food and a sponsor. We named him Carlo after the freeloading "artist" in the movie "Our Man Godfrey" (great movie..if you haven't seen it you should). He is some kind of weird Persian/Siamese mix, with crossed-eyes. I like Carlo but he doesn't trust people at all and keeps his distance at feeding time. His fur gets a little matted but there is no way in hell he'll let us near him, so sometimes he looks pretty ratty. Too bad, he could be quite handsome if he was cleaned up a little. You can see him hiding in the bushes if you look close.

So there you have them. Although these cats are not actual "pets" we do consider them to be part of the family. We are die hard cat lovers and really if we don't keep an eyeball on them I don't know who will, especially in our dog crazy neighborhood.

I love dogs, too, but I love cats more.