Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Painting the Living Room



Bill drove us through a blizzard this holiday weekend... to experience a big blizzard at Old Farm and paint the living room floor while sequestered there. This original floor was the last of the living room to be painted, but needed a very wide board patched first.


We used an original old floor board from upstairs (which was removed to create the stairs cathedral ceiling), for the patch. It was ship-lapped on all four sides for a tight fit. Luckily the floor here had been reinforced with sub-floor boards, although they needed much chiseling and disc-sanding for installation. This patch is in one of three prominent boards near the hearth which measure about 22" wide. On a colonial house first floor, boards this wide were a status symbol and taxed by the English.


Bill meticulously cleaned the floor board joints with a puddy knife's edge and vacuum nozzle before disc sanding and priming them. This room faces South and is sunlit nearly all day. It is also 12' square, so painting it all white and adding a large mirror was an easy decision.


With temperatures in the single digits, we ran our wood stove and fans all night to finish the painting and leave just before the next heavy snowstorm hit. The walls in this room were painted Benjamin Moore's Eggshell White, the trim and wood wall boards are Benjamin Moore's Satin White, and the floor has two coats of an oil based white after white primer.


Above the fireplace looks to have original paneling around our third new flu and rebuilt chimney.


 A parting snow shot...




Monday, February 9, 2015

Snowed In





While restoring Old Farm making monthly visits from New Jersey, there have been times when we have been snowed in here or there. Here we are snowed in New Jersey and then plowed...


We have missed getting to Old Farm this year because of severe snowstorms there and cold everywhere. The winter we bought Old Farm, we managed to gut the upstairs in an 18" snowstorm with the boys help - whew.