I finished the baseboards near the front of the stairs and moved to the wall under the stairs. I had already refinished these baseboards but I’m refinishing the floors and decided to take them off to make sure I get under the molding when I’m sanding and it is easier to finish the baseboards up on a table. As I pried the boards away from the wall (which took all my strength and pulled a muscle) I noticed something down there. I slid my fingers in the gap and pulled out this insurance card. Then came a bunch of postcards. Not much but really fun to find. There was a small gap, only large enogh for a thin putty knife to fit in, between the wall and the boards in a few places. The previous owner (the only owners before us) must have had a table or buffet up against that wall and things would fall off behind. We found things like that behind our mantle too. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I would find anything behind the baseboards or they would have been taken off a long time ago. Now I’m anxious to get going on more of the baseboards. These items must have been dropped there 26 years after the house was built and has been in there for 65 years.

Front of the plastic card . WWII was still going on!

Back of the plastic card.

These postcards got stained from the wallpaper removal process I’m quite sure. I had to remove layers and layers of wallpaper from that wall and there was a lot of water used. What a shame. I don’t know how to date these but the postage on the front says 1 cent.

(Yeah, I know. I’m still working on the baseboards. With the humid weather each coat of finish takes so long to dry.)

Plus…I’m still spending hours with the family genealogy searching old newspapers from different states. I came across this entry from the June 24, 1882 Marshfield Times newspaper (Wisconsin.) I’m trying to picture this, bright red roof and blinds. I’m assuming the body color of the house would be white as it isn’t stated.

• The latest craze in house painting
is as follows, bright red roof, and
blinds, dark green cornice and corner
boards, with fence painted after,
the same style. Some of the Marshfield
houses would look better painted
in this way. . •

I just can’t get down on my knees and work like I used to so I decided I would take off all the 7-inch oak baseboards and refinish them on the table instead of working on the floor. I hesitated doing this because when I removed a baseboard a few years ago, the plaster came with it and it required a lot of fixing.

So this time I was very careful, slowly working the nails out with spatula first then crowbar making sure I put pressure where the nail was in a stud as not to break the plaster. They don’t make nails like they used to. These are the strongest nails I’ve ever encountered. I don’t see why they thought they had to put such big nails in just holding up the baseboards. I took two sections off which resulted in only one night of back agony. (better than 6 months of a bad knee.)

As you can see in the above photo, under the baseboard the plaster doesn’t go all the way to the floor. I’ll fill that in before reinstalling the baseboards to be sure there aren’t any drafts as that is an outside wall.

On the backside of the baseboards are two grooves cut into the wood. They put them in on the backsides of large pieces to keep them from warping. Never hammer the nails back out as you’ll splinter the wood on the front side (especially on oak.) With these big nails it was impossible for me to pull them through from the backside (recommended if possible) without some kind of specialty tool so I’m cutting them off flush to the wood with my Dremel and a diamond cutting blade. It takes too long on big nails to cut all the way through them so I just score them on one side flush with the wood and then bend the nail back and forth towards the score mark and they break off at the weakest point, the score mark. Newer nails break easily, older nails are much stronger and take just a bit more bending back and forth. After they break off, I lightly file the end if there is a sharp edge. For the 8 nails on this 4-ft length it only took about 2 minutes for all of them. See method in short video clip below.

Click to play

I used a card scraper (flat metal piece shown above) to get as much finish as I could off before using the sander. The old shellac is hard to sand off because the friction heat causes the shellac to ball-up (or corn) your sandpaper. I use less sandpaper by using the card scraper first. I didn’t want to use stripper this time because it is just more work and takes longer and most of the time leaves a residue that is hard to get out of the pores. Stripper is good for intricate moldings, though. Some people will take the woodwork off and run it through a planer to get all the old finish off. You’d have to make really sure there isn’t any nails left in the wood doing it that way. I think it would take too much wood off and change the look of the piece. If I had a planer, maybe I’d give it a try, though.

In the next few days I’ll finish the two baseboards I took off and reinstall them. I’ll post photos in my next entry.

Last winter’s ice storm and then downpour of rain did our roof in. It was past its guarantee (paperwork from previous owners) and the edges of the composite shingles were curling up. Two months ago we called in some estimates.

One guy came out and just looked for a minute in the front of the house and walked around the back. Did a little math and gave us an estimate. Yes, it was a nice, low estimate but it had a lot of fine print how they aren’t responsible for any damage they may do inside or outside of the house and/or landscape. The price was basic and would be more as they ran across problems and/or replaced wood. But we didn’t know what problems they might run into because he didn’t check it out. He also wanted up-front money of half the cost before he even started. I know smaller outfits do that so they can buy materials.

Another guy (that we decided to go with) did a thorough inspection and didn’t want any up-front money but would demand payment on the day of completion. He went into the attic and played investigator. He looked at the under layment wood to see its condition, checked the gutters and saw a big problem where the sleeping porch (shed dormer) is attached to the roof. The aluminum siding was put on after there was layers and layers of roofing. (The other guy didn’t see that and who knows what he was going to do about it.) When they take the layers off, there will be gap between the siding and the roof. In order to put flashing up high enough to prevent ice dams from doing damage again, they need to take the aluminum siding off of the sides of the dormer and they have to be taken off from the top down,(that’s the way they are installed.) It would be too hard to remove and keep those long aluminum siding pieces intact. We will have to remove them, insulate the sides and add flashing and water and ice shield fairly high up and then replace them with vinyl siding. He’s also using a better grade of flashing around the chimney and is adding a vent pipe for the bathroom vent fan we will install at a later date.

I hope the color looks OK against the aluminum. It’s up high so maybe it won’t be noticeable after we paint the aluminum siding one of these years. His price also included ice and water shield all the way around higher up around the edges than the first guy was going to do it. And he would completely cover the add-on area in the back with ice and water shield.

He found out that we have the original slate from 1917 (that he identified as Pennsylvania slate by the color) that runs about 3 foot in around the perimeter of the roof. We can’t understand why the previous owners left that there and just went over the top of it instead of removing it like the rest. That has to be removed with the other shingles and that causes a bigger disposal fee. They will also lay tarps down to protect landscaping and the neighbor’s driveway.

Even though the guy we are going with had an estimate almost double the first roofer’s, I’m sure the first guy would have handed us a similar bill at the end when he discovered all the problems (unless he Mickey-Moused the fix and we didn’t want that.) The guy we went with was just more knowledgeable. I hope it works out well, you never know for sure ahead of time, though.

We have to wait until the end of August before we get our turn in the waiting line to have our roof done. I (with the help of my husband) have to remove part of the pergola that overhangs the roof in one section before they begin reroofing. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that. It’s only a few years old. I hope it was put together with deck screws so I can just unscrew them. But I have a feeling that Murphy’s Law will come into play. I still have a few weeks to think about it.

I can’t wait until they pull that siding off the dormer.  I suspect there is old cedar shakes underneath.  I wonder what color.