Scrubbing Hinges, Plaster, and Wood

Right after I broke the two hinges trying to pry the pins out, I ordered a pair of replacements from Etsy. They ended up being $15 but they are caked in paint so I’ll need to strip them myself. The design is pretty close, although the butt ends are decorative compared to the original hinges which is just flat. I throw the hinges into the crockpot and start scraping off the white paint. I run into a little bit of a scare because one of the hinges has a jammed hinge pin similar to what I was dealing with last time. Luckily after I throw the hinges in for a second simmer and then applying some Liquid Wrench, I’m able to get the pin out without destroying the metal.

Before stripping.

First pass of stripping.

I end up doing three passes in the crockpot followed by scrubbing with dish detergent and baking soda to get the hinges completely clean. I then degrease them and then dye the hinges. The rest of the lock pieces are already dyed so they get three coats of clear coat.

Using the dental pick to get little bits of white paint out.

Completely stripped and ready for dye.

Clear-coating the rimlock.

Most of the wooden door knobs are stripped, but they can use a quick final pass of chemical stripper just to clean up a few last bits of white paint haze. After the stripping, I clean the wood with TSP and then linseed oil soap. I then give it a light sanding and apply a few coats of BLO and turpentine mixed at 50-50.

Stripped knobs.

After applying BLO.

During the summer I rent out the rear cottage, so I try to a little bit of landscaping to make it a friendly vacation rental. In front of the cottage I put down some white river stones and seashell fragments that I collect from the beach. I have a few planters that I’ve experimented with different flowers and I finally found some success using begonias and mums. The begonias are pretty hardy and have been blooming all year. Originally I had marigolds but they died off pretty quickly so I swapped them out with mums.

Flowers in front of the cottage.

I can’t remember the name of this plant, but it’s also been thriving.

Behind the main house I have a garden that I planted a bunch of different things like lavender, marigolds, citronella. There was a single Canna Lilly that now has taken over the entire garden. I read that these plants love to spread and now I have a bed full of them without even trying.

Canna Lillies spreading.

Back in the house, I do a little bit of work in the dining room with trying to scrape off more paint from the walls, but it’s very slow going. I can’t quite get into a good groove with removing the paint on various walls and I’m trying at the moment with just dry scraping. At some point I may need to switch to heat because the paint in this room is a bit stubborn. I also do some more scrubbing of the ceiling, but that is also slow going. There is a patch of white paint on the plaster that I apply a few coats of CitriStrip to remove and then wash down with TSP.

Trying to find a good spot to scrape.

A chunk of white paint that was removed with CitriStrip.

Most of my scrubbing and stripping takes place on the 2nd floor landing. I got all the wood here stripped but I do need to make a final pass on both the wood and plaster with TSP. Then a good rinse with clean water. For the wood, I’m trying to get any remaining white paint haze off and for the plaster, I’m getting the last of the calcimine off. With the plaster I squeegee the rinse off until I get a fairly clean wipe on the squeegee. You can see the progress because on the first few wipes, the squeegee pulls off milky water, but as you keep rinsing, the water wiped off gets cleaner and cleaner. I only get a portion of the landing done, and then after rinsing, I give the wood a final wash with linseed oil soap.

This section has clean plaster and wood.

This area will need to be scrubbed next weekend. You can see some remaining blue calcimine on the plaster that needs to go.

The bathroom wood also gets a final round of chemical stripper, followed by the TSP and linseed oil washes. That gets all the paint off, but the heavy washing does end up messing with the grain of the wood. I had this happen on some of the wood on the landing too. Before I apply BLO, I’ll try sanding these blotches out and see if that helps. Not sure whey sometimes I get these imperfections and not sure if it’s the stripper, TSP, or linseed oil causing it. Scraping the texture in the bathroom is very slow going and each scrape requires a good heating with the SpeedHeater to soften things up. It’s very time consuming because I need two hands on the scraper so it’s a lot of heating, putting the SpeedHeater down, grabbing the scraper, scraping, then picking up the SpeedHeater again. Definitely a job that would benefit from a second person, but alas I am alone in my renovations.

Cleaned wood.

Slow and steady progress scraping the texture off.