Stairs, a window, and plaster

Half painted stairs. They are completed now.

A decent amount has been accomplished since my last post, mainly due to a week off work and a decision to not to travel but to devote the time to projects. First on the list was to complete the stairwell painting. I had two readers suggest that I paint half the stairs (side to side) allowing access to the basement by us and the cats, kind of like a construction zone reduced to one lane (normal summer driving in Pennsylvania). I liked that advice and moved ahead. Now, I expected that Cindy and I would not walk through the wet paint, and for the most part , this was a correct assumption. It was however, a leap of faith to depend on Katia and Natasha to use their kitty smarts and stay off the wet paint, with a bit of guidance in the form of large objects placed blocking the "closed" section. Katia, whom I alternately call "smarty pants" and "Klutzia" because she is both smart and clumsy, turned out to be both. As I was working, she started down the stairs, carefully avoiding the wet paint (smart). As she passed me she cut over to the wet side, prompting me to yell her name. She stopped (smart), then sat in the wet paint awaiting further instructions (clumsy). I followed her down to the basement and she allowed me to inspect her feet, which were remarkably dry. Her cat butt, however, was a bit gray, so she was confined to the basement for a few hours, which she really didn't seem to mind. Natasha decided to simply avoid the staircase altogether and slept through the process, demonstrating her ability to "hold it" for several hours.

I finally installed (with Cindy's help of course), the final window on the first floor. In this blog I wrote about installing the windows, while also somehow forgetting to order one for the kitchen. I ordered the forgotten window back in the Spring and we installed it last week. If you remember, or re-read the blog, I was very proud of myself for measuring every window correctly, even allowing for "slop" since none of the old windows were perfectly square. Heh heh. Well, confidence is a dangerous thing and I ordered one window to complete the job, and it was wrong. Technically, I measured correctly but forgot to allow for a window frame that was off by a quarter inch. Rather than re-order and have a useless window, I decided to "fix" the old window. Cindy was notably impressed as I shaved down the inside of the crooked frame, smoothed and filled my work, and repainted. This essentially "squared" the frame and allowed the window to fit.

The offending wall.

Cindy proclaimed herself to be tired of looking at our ugly upstairs hallway and so that has become the next interior "room" to be repaired. Unfortunately, there are some special issues that need to be addressed in the hallway. First, on one wall, the plaster has pulled away from the lathe.  This gives the wall a spongy feel as the plaster moves. If left like this, the plaster will eventually crack and fall away. The thought of removing around 9 square feet of plaster was not comforting, so I did some research. I found a video detailing repair of such a wall at the This Old House website. Essentially, you drill multiple holes through the plaster (not into the lathe), inject plaster bonder, followed by construction adhesive. Then, you install several dry wall screws with large washers through the plaster into the lathe to pull the plaster back to the lathe. After 24 hours, you remove the dry wall screws, fill the holes, and remove the excess glue that has oozed from the holes. Then sand, skim, and sand the wall and your done. Sounds easy, right? Wish me luck.

Ugly, poorly installed molding. I plan to replace it with
prettier, poorly installed molding.

The other problem is common through the house. There is a large gap between the wall and the ceiling that had been covered by cheap molding. I removed the molding and will fill the gap with spray foam insulation and replace with a better quality molding. That is rather tedious and although I'm getting better at mitering and installing molding, the additional difficulty of nailing the molding to exterior walls, which are masonry, will cause me to take more time. I will not be installing the fancy crown molding that we have downstairs, perhaps something closer to what I installed in the vestibule.