New Method Discovered For Winterizing Window Air Conditioner

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How to replicate antique wood moldings

We haven't written much on "home improvement" lately, mainly because there hasn't been anything to say that would be remotely helpful. But I just finished a project that probably fits the bill: duplicating antique wood carvings (or plaster, for that matter).

Our house was missing two pieces of an ornate carving when we moved in. It'd be all-but-impossible to find an identical replacement, short of stealing one from a neighbor. So I called Van Dyke's Restorers and asked if they sold anything I could use to create a mold. Yes. Yes, they did.

I needed two products: Silputty, which allows you to make a (negative) mold of the wood piece. And Por-A-Kast, the stuff you pour into the mold to make a (positive) replica.

MAKING THE MOLD

Step one is to clean the original piece, removing any dust or debris. Next, you coat it with cooking oil or vaseline (spray oil is easiest) so that the molding agent doesn't stick to it. Silputty consists of two clay-like balls that you need to mix together quickly because it cures in a matter of minutes. We needed two kits in order to make a mold large enough for our piece, so I enlisted Charles' help. We put on rubber gloves and each started mixing a kit at the same time. Doing so was harder than I thought - I'm a weakling - so as I soon as Charles finished mixing his batch, I handed him mine to finish, then we combined the two and stretched the green blob out onto a greased sheet of glass (any flat surface will do). Kinda like making pizza dough. As soon as we had it stretched to the right size, I pressed the wood piece into it and left it there to cure.

Bathroom renovation ideas, sources

This is what our bathroom looked like for about 9 months, pre-renovation

When people say that the most important rooms of any house are the kitchen and bathroom, I have no idea what they're talking about. The kitchen, sure. But what are these people doing with all that time in the bathroom?

Nevermind. My point is that our bathrooms are small (5' x 8'), but who cares. We're not making babies in them, working out in them, or using them to store heavy appliances. All we want in a bathroom is a well-designed, functional space that serves its purpose.

When we bought our house, all 3 bathrooms needed new shower walls and new tile. The one I'm going to focus on here is on our parlor floor. We had initially planned to merely regrout the tile, but upon sawing off the old grout we discovered the entire wall was shot. So the first thing we did was removed the glass shower walls and demo'd the tile. Doing your own demo is probably the easiest way to save money. One itemized quote I got from a contractor charged $2,500 for work that took me 3 hours! Just make sure you wear gloves and a dust mask (I like 3M's N100 respirator). We had drywall behind the tile and that stuff is nasty when it breaks up.

SHOWER WALLS, TILE, AND SHOWER BASE. Our contractor, Alex Seaton, built the shower walls and base. Alex is a regular on the John Bridge tile forums (which is how I found him) and used the Kerdi system for the foundation (which all of tile pros on the forum seem to agree is the best, most waterproof method). After several days of tile shopping, I selected off-white subway tile for the walls and 1" hex for the floor. I got the subway tile at Home Despot and the 1" hex at Bergen Tile (gmap). The stuff was super cheap but you'd never know it; it looks awesome. Glass tile, my original choice, turned out to be insanely expensive and more difficult to install. After visiting a friend's apartment whose glass tiles were falling out all over the place, I knew for sure we made the right choice. Alex also did the plumbing. He rules but, alas, he hates working in Brooklyn. (I'm sure he'd be up for jobs in Long Island or Queens, though.)

BATHROOM WALLS. On the rest of the bathroom walls, Alex put in wainscotting with a little chair rail. That took about a day. I painted it, along with the rest of the walls. Looks great. Visitors usually think the wainscotting is original to the house.

FIXTURES. I chose fixtures by Watermark Designs, a Brooklyn-based company (though they don't have a retail store; I ordered online). They're more expensive than what you'll find in a big box store (about $350-$450 per faucet setting) but worth the cost if you want old-fashioned, two-handed shower fixtures instead of a modern dial. (The two-handed fixtures are hard to find in New York because they're no longer code.)

Everything is highly customizable. The various designs come in every finish imaginable. You also have a dizzying choice of handle trim. Mine are Stratford 321 in pewter. When I didn't like the white-tipped middle piece (that opens and closes the drain) for the sink, I was able to order a solid pewter version for about $20.

SHOWER DOORS. After a month of painful experimentation, we hired ABC Shower and Glass to build and install custom glass shower doors. For $2,000, this was a lot more expensive than using a pre-made shower kit, our original plan. But those shower kits just don't work in old houses: the two we tried were poorly designed (one didn't have a lip) and were likely to cause water damage. Also, the walls in our bathroom are, like most old house walls, slightly skewed so that standard-cut glass won't fit right. We were very happy with ABC. Their customer service is excellent and the job comes with a lifetime guarantee for parts and labor. They did make a mistake on the install: the door didn't stay shut. I called and they promptly came out and fixed it. I called several other shower door places and ABC is priced competitively.

TOILET: American Standard "Champion." We chose this one because it topped Consumer Reports' list for flushability, easy cleaning, and efficiency. It's not the most beautiful toilet in the world but, hey, it's a toilet.  I'll never understand why so many yuppies buy Kohler. Surely any gain in aesthetics is lost when your poop won't stay down.

How to strip paint from brownstone woodwork

I've spent a good chunk of the past year stripping the woodwork in our old house, so I thought I'd share some observations for those inclined to do it themselves.

Point #1: stripping several decades of paint off of woodwork makes almost no rational sense whatsoever. The job is so insanely time-consuming, it would have made more financial sense to rip all all the old mouldings, buy replicas at Dyke's, and spend my time bartending instead (not that I know how to bartend). That said, I'm compelled not only to keep stripping but to show you people how to do the same, because, as they say, misery loves company.

My stripping began in the kitchen, with some window trim that had been painted brown. Fortunately, there was only one layer of latex paint, so it was easy to remove with a chemical stripper. (After experimenting with a bunch of different brands, I stuck with PeelAway 7. ) It took maybe 6 to 8 so hours to strip and clean one layer of latex paint off casings for a tall window on the parlor floor.

In contrast, the woodwork upstairs has taken approximately forever. The paint upstairs dates to around the 1920s, is loaded with lead, and thick as hell. I tried all methods of stripping to figure out what would be fastest (including the silent paint remover) and found the easiest way was to manually pull off as much paint as possible with a 6-in-1 scraper.

Because the wood was finished with shellac in its earlier life, much of the paint on flat surfaces lifted right off. I noticed that winter is the best time to scrape because the woodwork shrinks a bit in dry weather, making it easier to pull off the paint. In scattered sections, I poked a hole through the paint down to the original finish, which often made it easier to lift a few days later.

For detailed areas, I used the PeelAway. While it worked on the most recent layers of paint (latex) within minutes, I ended up leaving the stuff on for 24 hour periods because the older paint was a real bitch. Through trial and error, I found two treatments of PeelAway (with at least a day or two inbetween) worked best. When I did more than that, it tended to discolor the wood underneath.

To avoid safety problems with lead dust, I wore respirators that I bought online and hung light plastic dropcloths from the ceiling, enclosing the immediate area around the mouldings. The rest of the room was also covered in plastic dropcloths, which I frequently replaced.

Here's what the corner detail looked like after a 24 session of PeelAway. The gummy mess just beneath the corner moulding is residue from the chemical, which I should have cleaned better. The only way to get that stuff off after it dries is to put more PeelAway on it (you can wipe it off a few minutes later). The lesson here: for the final round of stripping, carefully clean off PeelAway, using denatured alcohol.