If It Doesn't Move, Paint It (Final)

After weeks of spackle, caulk and masking, we were finally ready to shoot the interior of NewOldHouse. We would have arrived here earlier had we not digressed outdoors, but when the rains come, you need to have already gotten your wet/dry solved, or you will be doing it in the rain while everything gets wet. Anyway, today's post covers the final adventure in paint, and a few other things that happened along the way because.. of course.

Just as I completed the work described in this post, I tested positive for CoViD. I am living proof that living a hermit lifestyle is not a guarantee that you won't get CoViD. I have been going to a pizza place in Hillsboro for an open jam on Wednesdays as my only outing, so at least I know where it happened. I've been down nearly 10 days with it now, so progress on cars, the house, even my job is, obviously, halted. Good times.

The Walls Came Down

thar's a furnace in thar

For some reason, when the prior owners installed the gas furnace, they put it into the main living space. I thought it was because of the proximity to the chimney, but from the garage, there is a straight path to the chimney as well, and popping an exhaust through the roof would not have been that difficult. Instead, they put it into the dining area, and then... built walls around it. The new walls were, probably, a foot away from the furnace while the furnace was located 6 inches or so from the original wall. We couldn't figure out the thinking, but we didn't like the furnace location, nor the walls. With a plan to eventually move the furnace into the garage, I tore down the walls around it.

I took the time to remove the baseboards, the door trim, door frames and the doors. I removed the trim nails and collected these reusable bits onto the garage rafters. I then went after the drywall with a rubber mallet. I didn't want to make a huge mess, I just wanted the walls down. So, I loosened the drywall from behind and then pulled sections off with gloved hands. The refuse went out to the dump pile, and I turned to the framing. This was fun. I smacked the inner wall framing a couple of times with the long-handle sledge until the bottom came free. Then, I wrenched the 2x4 back and forth to remove it from the upper. One by one the inner pieces were removed, leaving the corner and the door frames. For the door frame-framing (the 2x4's that create the rough door opening to which the door frame is attached), I removed the header first, and then the side pieces could remove in a similar fashion to the middle framing bits. Then, I took out the corner. Again, this was simply smashing with a sledge and prying with a wrecking bar until they gave way. Most of the corner came out in one large section. The ends nearest the original walls were next, and the top plate came down with those, leaving the footer. the footers were set into the original hardwood floor with 3-inch-long nails. To get to those, I carved out the top of the 2x4 with a screwdriver and then leveraged the top of the nail enough to fit the wrecking bar underneath. Some subtle pressure later and the nails were out, and the footer was out. The space seemed much larger.

 

More Masking

walls? what walls?

With the furnace now exposed, I could paint those original walls, but I did not want paint on the furnace or the nicely finished original wood floors around it. So, I spent a couple of hours with paper, plastic and tape covering everything except the venting on the front of the furnace and the exhaust to the chimney. I left those for actual paint-time because I want to keep running the furnace until then.  I know that the exhaust would meld or burn anything I wrapped it with and the front of the furnace needs to be open when in service. On paint day, I turned the furnace off for the shoot, and covered the exhaust with film, the front of the furnace with a sheet of waste cardboard.

Prime Time

Nemo at NewOldHouse

After the walls were washed and I had checked and rechecked that everything had been masked, I had considered priming everything. I decided that it was probably excessive, especially considering how clean the walls were once Boo was done with them. Still, there were some stains, so we got some some Kilz2 to cover them. The Kilz2 does not cover odors, and there were still some remaining cat smells. So, I thought about getting some original oil-based Kilz and shooting the lower 3 feet of all the walls to try to contain that. Again, overkill. I concluded that the cat urine smell was probably not in the plaster, it is probably coming from that space between the hardwood floor and the baseboards. So, I decided that after we stripped the masking out, I would shoot that space with some enzyme-based cleaner (like this).

While I did not prime everything, I did prime the popcorn ceilings in the "new addition" bedrooms (built in early 60's) out of concern for how much paint they would suck up. I shot the stains as well as the original pink paint that appeared where I removed the walls around the furnace, and the area in one of the addition bedrooms where a shelving unit had been removed. Most of these areas were reachable without having to move the sprayer. I needed to move it once, from the rear of the house to where the furnace is. Before I cleaned up the equipment and put everything away, though, I took the operation out to the now-clean future tool/parts shed and shot that entire interior with the Kilz2. It was bare wood, and I figured painting it white would help illuminate the space once filled with shelves and some lighting. The shed has a high shelf/storage area so unlike my spray adventures so far, I needed to work from a ladder to hit the shelf and ceiling well. Even still, this spray was fast, and since I had started early in the day, I felt confident that I could get most of the interior spray done.

Shooting for Good... Enough

tool shed primed

Our original plan was to buy really good white exterior paint. At $300US per 5 gallons, we changed our minds, and bought generic indoor/outdoor eggshell white paint. The house is still white, but we may need to paint again sooner. So what? There is quite a bit of siding that needs replacing, so little harm done. Fast-forward a few weeks and Boo and I got to a similar conversation about the interior paint. I painted our current house interior with an eggshell "Brazilian Tan", which is beautiful, but the house was already dark and even though the Brazilian Tan was lighter than the paint it went on top of, it's still pretty dark in there. Even in the summer. NewOldHouse is not in perma-shade like the current place it, but we decided we want it to be super bright.

We talked about painting the walls with some color, but the main rooms have coved ceilings, making it difficult to draw a line where the colored wall would meet a white ceiling. Many older houses have a picture rail that will draw that line for you. Since we don't, and we were not sure what to do color-wise AND draw-the-line-wise, we went with.... generic indoor/outdoor eggshell white paint. Sound familiar? Yep, it's the exact same paint. Why keep all these tins of touch-up paint when you can keep only one? LOL. I'm sure this paint will be acting as a primer for the next coat (that has a color), it's just a question of when. For now, white walls go with any decor... well... they will go with ours anyway.

Paint On!

furthest room shot

With the stains and popcorn ceilings primed, I switched over from the Kilz2 to the eggshell and grabbed a quick bite. My time shooting Zed taught me that once you start, you really can't stop unless there is a clear line where the painting can stop. I also remembered that ventilation is super important, so I set a box fan in the open front door (blowing out), and had the kitchen windows wide open. I wasn't sure how long the Kilz2 had been drying on the ceilings in the back bedrooms, so I started with the shed. This gave Boo the most time remaining to clean whatever walls or ceilings we had not yet cleaned. By doing the shed first, I also took advantage of the little daylight Oregon has at this time of year. The shed painted like it primed, though I fogged (light passes at a greater distance) some of the wood panels after I completed the shoot, trying to get consistent coverage. In the end, most of the walls will be covered with shelves, so the handiwork won't really show, but I have a hard time half-assing things.

Once the tool shed was painted, I moved the sprayer into the furthest new-addition bedroom, and shot it completely. I started with the closet and then the ceiling. Then, I shot the window frames and finally the walls and baseboard, working my way towards the doorway. This kept the paint hose from hitting freshly painted walls or trim, and the sprayer in one spot for the duration of that room. Once the rest of the room was done, I moved the sprayer into the next bedroom and shot the doorway and the door. Last, I cracked the large window to let some fresh air in.

 

front living room shot

I sprayed the next bedroom following the same pattern: closet, ceiling, window frames, walls and baseboards. Again, I backed my way out of the room, moved the sprayer and then shot the doorway and the door. I continued this pattern, backing down the rear hallway, shooting the ceiling, then walls before moving the sprayer into the one original bedroom. Unlike the other 2 bedrooms, I decided that shooting the window frames early effectively restricted the amount of light I had to work with. So, I shot the window frame after I did the baseboards. Similar to the other rooms, though, I left the space around the doorway for after I moved the sprayer, and shot that area last. After cracking the window, I hit the hallway, turned off the furnace, removed the thermostat and then shot the hallway, avoiding the cold air intake.

 

At this point, it was past 430PM, so twilight was setting in. Without meaningful light, my shoot was done for the day. So, I popped the thermostat back in, turned the furnace on and cleaned up the sprayer for the night.

 

Second Verse, Same as the First

main room, start of day 2

When I returned the following morning, I walked the area which needed to be painted. The furnace was not 100% covered yet and in the middle of the main space Boo and I had set out all of the built-in drawers and the pieces of my desk to get painted with the rest of the house. Navigating these items while shooting the ceiling was not a good idea. So, I moved the drawers, desk cabinets and shelving into the front bedroom to get shot. Next, I looked at the ceilings; we had not quite finished washing all of it, so I TSP'd a section. Last, the doorway into the partially demolished kitchen was unimpeded. Everything that had been setting in the main room for our workday comforts (camping chairs, snack cooler, etc) were in the kitchen too. So, I added overlapping plastic sheeting over the doorway, so overspray would not blow onto our creature comforts.

Ready for another shoot, I donned the old white overalls, wrapped my head with a white T-shirt, set up the sprayer and got after it. I started with the walls around the furnace, so I could unmask and re-start it at the earliest moment. I moved through the space anti-clockwise, shooting the eating nook first, then the main living space and finally the den-like area directly rear of the living room. Satisfied, I moved the sprayer into the front hall and shot the drawers, etc set up in the front bedroom, completing the spray. End-to-end, it was probably around 6 hours of shooting plus a few hours of cleaning / prep on the second shoot day.

 

Clean Your Tools

main living space complete

To clean the sprayer, I put about 2 gallons of water into a clean 5 gallon bucket. Before I dropped the sprayer pickup tune into it, I hosed the pickup tube off with the garden hose. Now somewhat clean, I put the pickup tube into the water and the priming hose back into the paint. I primed the machine until water was coming out the priming hose, and then I shifted that hose into a recently emptied 5 gallon now-slop bucket. I continued to prime until the priming hose was running clear. Then, I switched over to "sprayer" from "prime" and did the same thing: shot into the paint (reversed the tip) until it started to get watery, then switched over to the slop bucket. Once the gun was shooting mostly clear, I shut things down, released the pressure and took the pieces into the garage sink for cleaning. Since most of the paint was already run out, cleaning with running water and soap was relatively quick. Paint needs warm air, so I set the furnace to run the fan all night and I left the box fan running as well, to help speed the drying.

 

Strip, Lights

further room done

Boo and I returned the following day and started pulling the masking off. For me, the most important thing was that we didn't have many thin or bare spots. I only found one 2-foot by 3-foot bare spot on one ceiling, and I decided to fix it with a flat-nap roller rather than pull out the sprayer. Otherwise, the coverage looked good. Sure, there were some heavy spots, and I attribute that to the hard-to-see from lack of light. Regardless, we pulled the paper and film from the windows, light fixtures and floors, rolling it into a big puffy pile as we went. We discovered some spots where the tape did not hold, allowing for paint to get on the floors, but overall, the finished product looks really good. Once the paper was up, I cleaned each light fixture and mounted it, with bulbs.

This was a huge milestone. With the interior of both the house and the tool/parts shed painted, we can start moving non-essential things (like Nemo, the Audi A4 B5) over to the NewOldHouse. Nemo drove over with no issues, by the way. We need to source, paint, measure, cut and install 1-inch quarter round pretty much everywhere the new painted baseboard approaches the wood floor, though. If you look at these couple of pictures, you can see the gap. I expect we will be doing the 1/4-round a room at a time so it doesn't become a huge undertaking. Of course, at one room at a time, it could take quite a while to complete. Once we do it, I'll post on how we went after it.

 

Because moving is really only interesting to the person who is moving, I won't post on it. If something else happens that might actually be interesting, I'll post on it. Otherwise, until after the move, thanks, as always, for following along-

Vehicular Paperwork

We continue on NewOldHouse, of course, but there is little interesting to talk about. We have been preparing the interior for paint, and the exterior for the inevitable arrival of autumn rains. I'll describe some of these efforts, but today I renewed the license plates for Hapy, and I thought that might be more interesting. Yeah, like the difference between watching paint dry and watching grass grow....

Prepare for Paint

As with anything paint-related, it is all in the prep work. We started with laying paper on the refinished wood floors and then checking for nails, screws, picture mounts and holes in the walls. Before we got after repairing the holes, the walls and ceilings were washed and rinsed. Then, we solved the holes with spackle. Next, we masked the windows and caulked seams. After removing the light fixtures, I masked those, and the exposed electrical outlets and switches. This took all of 30 seconds to type, but it has taken many days. On the right, here, is the only picture I've taken inside in a while. This is not a terribly informative picture, but is what is.

Prepare for Rain

The seasonal rains are arguably late this year. I usually reference Columbus / Indigenous Peoples' Day as the normal start of rainy season in Northwestern Oregon. Today, it is still sunny and dry. This will not last and we have some things to solve quickly.

First, NewOldHouse has 4 foundation vents which are below grade (meaning the garden dirt is above the bottom of the vent). Recall we had the crawlspace cleared of debris and the vapor barrier replaced. These below-grade vents will allow water to drain into the crawlspace, upsetting that clean and dry space. To remedy, I started by digging out around the vents down a few inches below the concrete lip. I will add a sheet of clear Lexan to the outside to cover the bottom half of the vent opening and seal it with clear caulk. Unfortunately, some of the existing grates are not small enough to prevent mice from getting through... though they fortunately aren't. So, enter Orkin to chase the buggers and replace the grates. Fortunately, they solved all of the other possible access points when they diagnosed the problem; they just ran out of tight-mesh grate stuff. So, once Orkin solves for those grates, I will apply the Lexan to keep any water potential away.

Other than keeping rain out of the house, I needed to set up the carports so Zed stays dry. Recall, Zed still does not have glass installed, so weather can get right in. The car ports are easy to dis-assemble and reassemble, so moving them and getting them set up was not hard. I have discovered, though, that the plastic sheeting is not hardy enough to withstand year-over-year sun and rain battering. They are starting to split, so I will need to replace them more-than-likely before this winter reaches it's end. Still, for now, they are up and the one closest to the NewOldHouse is ready for Zed. Since Zed is not yet a driver, I may be towing him over with the lawn tractor Boo bought from the prior owner. I expect a full comedy of errors that will result in a future post. This picture on the right shows a few things. First, that post is from the carport and that boot is Boo crawling under the house through one of the foundation grates. This one is pretty much at ground level, so I may create a little berm at it's leading edge to keep water from trickling in. That grate is the only entry to the crawlspace.

Vehicle Registration

Now, for what I intended to write about: renewing the registration for Hapy. As has been well documented, I have a few cars. Only one of them is from before 1974 when motor vehicle emission testing became a thing. So, Hapy doesn't need a smog test, but like everyone else, we need to renew his plate stickers every other year. This year is that year. So, I went to OregonDMV.com to renew him and noted that my fee is based on his projected mpg, based on model year, etc. Apparently, the 1972 VW camperbus was expected to get 19mpg or lower. My fee was then driven off of that fact. truth-be-told, I was not getting 19mpg before I started the engine swap, so their assignment was fairly accurate. Curious to see if my fee would be measurably better if my mpg was better, I went looking for their schedule. It turned out that the better your mileage, the more you pay. I suppose this is to offset the loss in tax they get from you when you buy fuel. That just proves that the man will get you coming or going; either way they are gonna get theirs. I had thought about doing the paperwork to tell the state that Hapy was running 30+ mpg on diesel, but I have to pay a fee for that too. And then, I would be paying and extra $30 to register him every 2 years from then on. Clearly, there is a counter-incentive to be transparent.

Another thing worth noting is how low the fee is for car rental companies. They can register almost 2 cars to our one. That hardly seems fair. We individuals need transportation sometimes, for life conditions outside our control. Car rental companies are buying and renting out cars as a business, and the person renting the car is paying the fuel taxes when s/he fills up. I suppose the rental car companies get the sweetheart deal because they can influence our representation in Salem better than we individuals can. Anyway, enough soapbox, it just seems like we are underwriting the rental car companies in the form of a corporate handout. Must be nice.

I meant to publish this last week, and time got away from me. We had a bunch of adventures over this past weekend. I will write them up for sharing in the next few days. thanks, as always, for following along-

Rear Bumper Clean-up

On the drive to the coast for the family gathering for Independence Day, I realized that something in the drive-train was leaking oil.  Drips would hit the air turbulence under the bus, atomize, and the resulting mist would get caught in the vacuum behind the moving bus.  Within the vacuum, it would splatter against the rear of the bus; especially the rear bumper.  Over the last few posts, I explained how I solved the leaking oil (it was a bad input shaft seal, damaged by a faulty oil slinger, which was either damaged because I didn't have a pilot bearing in my flywheel or because AA transaxle used an old bell-housing).  Now that the oil leak is solved, I can focus on the last thing I wanted done before the Fall (see Setting and Re-setting Expectations): cleaned up and painted rear bumper.  Today's post covers the start of that journey.

The Missing and the Modesty Skirt

scrub clean first

Like the bolts holding the front bumper on, the square-lock bolts holding the rear bumper are in pretty bad shape.  Rusty.  Painted over with what looks like interior paint.  Missing.  I'll need at least 3 replacements when I'm all done.  At some point during the engine swap project, I removed the splash pans from either end of the rear bumper.  I'm sure that was a good idea at the time, and it gave me the opportunity to troll through my garage looking for them in my boxes of parts.  Like a trip down memory lane, it took longer than it should have, but I found them.  I set them aside and removed the modesty skirt from the bottom of the bumper.  I don't know why the bus has one of these; and I don't see any on the handful of buses I regularly see.  Maybe 1972 was an especially shy year for cars.  Anyway, I hammered it semi-straight-ish.  Then, I taped the front, bottom and sides and put it with the splash pans.  On a sunny day, I spray painted the pans and the unmasked front of the modesty skirt with rubberized undercoating.  Once dry, I removed the tape from the modesty skirt so rest of it could be painted white like the main bumper.

Sanding and Banging
Unlike the front bumper which had 3 distinct pieces, the rear bumper is a long stretch of curved steel.  The curves run top to bottom as well as curl in on the ends.  This made banging it straight more challenging.  Again, like with the front bumper, I aimed for 'good enough for camping kwality' in my bodywork.  Unlike the front bumper, the rear had a couple of very old bumper stickers on it and when they were removed, they took a couple coats of crappy paint with them.  This led to some unwelcome contours I tried to solve with 150-grit sand paper.  I learned along the way that the sand paper could help me identify minor dings by bringing up a lower level of paint around an area.  It was with this technique that I discovered that the bolt holes were centered on dimples the size of US quarters.  Some more banging with the hammer got them flat.

Paint, Wet Sand

undercoated

Once I declared "good enough" on the cyclical sand, hammer, sand process, I pulled out the white Rustoleum I used on the front bumper.  It's been about a year since I did that front bumper, so its time to review how it is holding up.  To be fair, the bus hasn't seen many miles (probably less than a thousand) since it was done, but it has been outside in my driveway where the kids are playing when it wasn't driving to music festivals.  The bumper looks good, and I mean really good.  No rust staining, no blemishes, no cracks or chips.  I applied straight Rustoleum with a foam brush inside and out and set it to dry.  The next morning, it was totally dry.  Total drying time was over 12 hours, but some ranters on the interweb claim it takes forever for this paint to dry.  False.  Just apply it properly: spread a thin coat always keeping a wet edge by brushing into the already painted surface.

Spackle?
After the paint set up, I could see large sections where the paint underneath had been pulled away by bumper stickers.  In a real body shop, they'd probably strip the whole bumper down.  I thought about that.  In a cheap-o body shop, they'd fill with Bondo.  I thought I could experiment with spackle, since that was what I had, and see how it behaves over time.  Worst case, it looks like crap and I strip the bumper down later.  Big deal.  First, I wet-sanded the paint.  I needed to do it anyway, and I figured that would give some teeth for the spackle.  So, with a basic putty knife and a small tub of spackle, I smeared paste over the bigger spots, and some small ones.  I slipped inside and watched some football for a couple hours while it dried and then cuffed the spackle down with 150-grit sandpaper.

More Paint
Once smooth, I wiped the bumper down with a damp paper towel and applied a second coat of white Rustoleum.  Same method, similar results.  This time, though, you could tell where the spackle spots were because the white paint wasn't shiny in those spots.  At this point, I figured I probably should have done something else, but I just plowed ahead: wet sand with 320 grit, another coat of paint, more 320 grit wet sanding.  This time, you really can't tell where the spackle is, but I wasn't 100% sold.  SO, I decided to wait a week and look again next weekend to see if another coat of paint would be needed, would help, or if I'd just be throwing product at a bad idea.