Back to patching the hole in the closet. I cut out a piece of drywall to fit the hole and attach that to the studs. Luckily the two studs are easily accessed so nothing tricky with getting that installed. I coat the drywall with PlasterWeld because I’m going to use Structolite for the basecoat. Structolite requires PlasterWeld when going over drywall. While the PlasterWeld sits for a little bit, off to the door.

The stain on the door is in decent shape, but it needs a little more rubbing out to get a smooth surface. There’s slight bumps and brush strokes in it that I want to work out. It’s such a give and take because the more you buff out, the lighter it gets which then requires another coat of stain. It’s never-ending.

Inside the closet, the walls and ceiling have their skimcoat so I start applying Waterlox as the varnish top coat. This is applied with a rag and doesn’t give me any major difficulties.

For the patch I apply the Structolite and get that leveled out. It’s a little tricky to work in the tight confines with the pipe in place. Speaking of the pipe, with that completely stripped, I apply two coats of boiled linseed oil to prevent rust. The linseed oil seems to be doing a good job of protecting metal against the massive amount of rust we get down here.

Last up, I start taping off the woodwork near the chimney and do a skimcoat using joint compound on the chimney. I don’t really know what they finished the chimney with and I don’t want to tinker with it too much so I just go with plain old joint compound to even out any imperfections.