Karen is unable to make it down this weekend so I continue work on the woodwork and also start work on the second bedroom. The closet door is in good shape for final coats. It has shellac that I’ve rubbed out to a pretty good flatness. Luckily I didn’t put down any paste wax like the main door so I can move directly to the Waterlox. I do a final cleaning with mineral spirit and a tack cloth and then apply the Waterlox with a rag.

The main door I can’t quite get the repair looking good. I sand it down, but end up cutting through too much of the stain and it’s getting more blotchy rather than smoothing out. I end up giving up and do another coat of stain on the repair and start again. Since the stain takes forever to dry, this door is out of the rotation for the rest of the weekend.

I take the Waterlox upstairs to the bedroom and do a coat of Waterlox on all of the woodwork (after a similar wipe down with mineral spirits followed by tack cloth). Like the doors I apply Waterlox with a rag for the woodwork. The coats of Waterlox require 24 hours to cure, but I get a late start applying the varnish so I won’t be able to squeeze anymore coats in this weekend.

With nothing else to do in the bedroom we’re wallpapering, I start on the other bedroom to start getting that ready for restoration. This room will follow a similar process so I start with the plaster stripping. The room has the same setup with a few coats of modern latex paint over a calcimine layer. Luckily no lead appears when I test the various layers so I put on the dust mask and go to town scraping off the paint. For this step I rely on a sharp scraper blade and try to get all the easy stuff off before breaking out any heat or chemicals.

A lot of the paint is flaking so it definitely seems like the latex is not securely adhering to the calcimine under-layer. The good news is that the walls seem to be far less cracked compared to the other bedroom.