Stripping and staining wood
With the plastering done last weekend, this week I can’t really do much with the walls until they cure. Next up for the walls is 2 coats of limewash, but reading the instructions it seems that you want to wait a few weeks before applying limewash. This weekend would only be 1 week so I will focus on woodwork instead of plaster.
First up is just knocking off all of the plaster on the woodwork and wiping down with turpentine to try and remove any remaining loose paint. Most of the woodwork is stripped, but there are still some spots of white buried in nail holes or corners. A good amount of time is spent just digging out the remaining paint and after I reach a point where nothing more is removable I start dabbing acrylic artist paints on the spots to hide the remaining white flecks.
My artist palette
It’s not the best approach because up close you can definitely see the touch-ups, but I’ve visited a lot of historic houses and it’s surprising how much they would fake grain woods. So I tell myself I’m in line with old techniques by doing the touch-ups.
After I hit all of the touch-ups I then start applying the stain to the woodwork. It goes as expected and it’s good to get this out of the way before the floors are refinished because I’m not free to drip stain on the VCT tile that will be removed.
Stained door molding with lots of paint touch-ups.
Stained molding on the right and unstained on the left.
The woodwork takes up most of the time. I also start limewashing the wood inside of a small closet and also try to secure some of the loose plywood used for that. The closet is a bit thrown together, but I’m not going to deal with that too much. I do peel back the loose plywood to take a peek at the interior and it’s a remnant of the old chimney that was removed in the past. I can see a hole where they probably had a stove in the other bedroom?
Peeling back the plywood in the closet.
I’m assuming this is where a stove pipe went into the adjacent bedroom.
Last weekend I experiemented with milk paint for the shiplap that will go in the updated bathroom. It felt very chalky and after emailing the company, it doesn’t seem that milk paint would be the best option for a moist bathroom. I would have to apply some sealer to the milk paint which would defeat the breathability I was looking for in a natural finish. I turn my attention to linseed oil paint which is sold out of Philadelphia by Earth + Flax. I email the owner and she’s really responsive to my questions. It seems that linseed oil gets a bad rap for going rancid and molding, but also seems like their product has been purified to avoid that. I get a sample of that and try it out on the shiplap and I like the feel of this paint a lot more. The only problem is that the color is a bit dark so I will try ordering a more blue color.
Milk paint on the left and linseed oil paint on the right.
