Stripping Down

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  We sure did.  We also have been using the long weekend to work on the house.  We have been a little burnt out again on the kitchen so we have been focusing our efforts of the kid's room.

I removed all of the carpet in the room.  I did it myself and it went quite smoothly.  I used the technique that I perfected when removing the carpet in the dining room several months ago.  I pulled the carpet up 3 foot at a time, cut the backing, and then rolled it up into little bundles.  Each bundle was tied with twine which will make it easy to put it out for trash day. Under the carpet (1993 vintage) was a layer of Masonite.  I pulled up a piece of it to take a peek at the original 1x5 pine plank floor underneath.  From the small section I looked at it looked in pretty good condition.  We strongly considered ripping out all the Masonite and restoring the floor.  Instead, Celia talked me into keeping carpet in this room.  It will be the kids room and wall-to-wall carpet will be a little more comfortable for them.  I am excited to try restoring the original floors in some of the other 2nd story rooms though...

Notice all the staples?  The perimeter of the Masonite is stapled every 2 inches.

We also finished demo on a false wall that concealed an old radiator pipe that ran from the basement to the attic.  Once the wall was down, I sawzalled the pipe and removed it.  Here is the wallpaper we found trapped inside the little wall.

Celia and I also attacked the molding in this room.  If you remember, this molding is all pine.  It has been covered in lots of paint over the years.  The original coat was a faux wood graining called faux bois, which  I blogged about last year. The molding in this room is quite nice.  Lots of bumps and ridges, and curves.  I am going to make sure my next house has the plainest, squarest molding possible because picking paint out of all the grooves REALLY SUCKS!

Mostly stripped.  This shot was taken after Celia worked with a dental pick type scraper to remove the bits of paint in the ribbed area.

Some of our friends and family have questioned our decision to strip all this molding since it is "just pine".  I understand that staining today's modern pine wood is usually not done because of its' inferior qualities regarding grain and stain absorption.  However, I have seen pictures of old-growth pine  that have finished up beautifully.
Examples from around the internet: