Home Improvement Today?

Yeah, the natural gas/heat pump combos seem to be a newer solution for colder climates. Electric resistance heating would be cost prohibitive with our electricity prices.

 

Took a break on painting this weekend, so decided to something simple today. My compressor is in the closet in the garage to deaden the noise. Well now that I have the snow blower in front of the door it's a PITA to move everything back and turn it on with a vehicle in the garage.



Then it hit me yesterday to just pick up a 20amp switch a new handy box to switch that outlet. $15 later and we're in business! Just leave the switch on the compressor itself on and control it from here.

 

Now you need to wire an indicator light so you know it is on.
Mine is a red LED I got on clearance at Lowe's for $2.99.

 

I need to do this. Nothing worse then hearing the compressor charge up at 1AM. lol

 

Dunno, that kind of reminds me of the signal of some bath houses in the area... Anyways...

 

And how do you know this?

 

...Bath houses...

 

Dang this is brilliant.

The amount of times my wife has gotten pissed at me for this...

 

So, i'm redoing a lot of stuff on the first floor of our house this year. A little background, our house was built circa 1905-1910 and a good bit of the original woodwork is still in place. My wife has convinced me to at least look into refinishing the wood vs painting it. The problem is, it hasn't been taken care of by previous owners. Its been stained, painted, and painted over again it looks like (did test for lead already). What do you think my best approach is to getting the wood back to something can possibly stain instead of painting over again? Should i look at something like citrus strip? Or should i go to town with an orbital sander or something?

Pics of some of the woodwork and its current condition:



This one is a good example of stain, paint, and paint lol




This is pretty typical of all of the baseboards, door trim, and window trims.

 

It might be less work to remove the trim and install new. The ‘eco friendly’ strippers aren’t near as effective as the ‘toxic’.

 

Lots of work but strip to bare wood, sand out the nicks, 320grit, wipe with water/damp cloth, let dry sand again with 400, wipe with tack cloth then stain

 

On the paint, you can use a heat gun carefully to remove it. Works pretty good once you get the hang of it. I remember stripping several doors this way at my old house. Pretty labor intensive though.

 

Thats mainly why i was a fan of painting them lol. If this trim was installed like any of the other stuff the last homeowner did, its liquid nailed to something. I'd like to keep the original woodwork if i can, but maybe painting is the way to go. Or, try a section that looks pretty bad to see what i'm getting into.

 

Usually old houses were using trim nails, ive rarely seen liquid nails or sealant in old houses

 

i would agree if the previous owner didnt mess with everything. I had to remove a small section of baseboard to fix something else, and it was liquid nailed to the wall.

The house was a single family house forever until it was split into an upstairs and downstairs apartment unit, then the previous owner bought it and converted it back to a single family house (luckily keeping a good bit of the original wood work). Unfortunately as i'm finding out, this guy didnt do anything correct. Hence the liquid nail instead of real nails in a lot of places where it shouldnt be.

 

Here's another good example - instead of repointing the foundation, he sprayed a bunch of spray foam in between the foundation stones. And I had to replace one of the main supports of the porch because of previous carpenter ant or termite damage. The ate a huge portion of the beam, so he filled it with liquid nail and covered it with another board. This guy LOVED liquid nail.

 

You sure I didn't work on that house before?

 

I would strip and stain BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT that really depends on what kind of wood it is.

Any idea of the wood species?

 

That is a fantastic question....