Kitchen Stove Upgrade

When I first bought the house one of the first purchases was a 1936 Magic Chef gas stove for the kitchen. From there ended up going for a full retro 1930's kitchen. However the oven in this was kinda small and having to light with matches would get old.

So made a slight upgrade and found an early 1950's Magic Chef electric stove. This baby came from it's original home and everything still works. Has plenty of gadgets, including one burner that doubles as a deep well pot. The oven is larger and probably more accurate on temp as well. It's in great shape and even came with the original manual. So even though a little newer than the first plan - it's still plenty retro and will fit in great with the kitchen plan and be a bit more user friendly.

Prepping For A Floor Sanding

I've been knocking down the list of items needing attention before the floors finally get sanded. Who or when they will is still being debated. I'd rather do myself, but time is very limited until after Thanksgiving when it will be a bit chilly to open the house for a bunch of days. I have someone recommended by several people so I will probably have him take a look and price just a sand job and sanding/finishing. I solved the mystery of the oak floor on top of the original flooring - apparently the original floor is yellow pine, not oak, and at some point was faux painted to look like a stained red oak. It was hard to tell through the grime and paper until I started stripping a spot to see how stubborn the finish was going to be to remove. So I guess at some point the Hall's opted to make their pine floors look more upscale and had them painted to look like oak - then later still went with the real deal. This paint puts a wrench in the whole floor plan I think cause I may have to strip them with a heat gun or stripper to get the paint off before they can be sanded - another reason I may have the "expert" over to give me an idea of what needs to be done.

So first item to do was patching a section of flooring that had several holes drilled through in the foyer. This was where the wall was added to divide the house up and wires were run. I saved pretty much all usable flooring when it was removed in the back, and fortunately a section that was in the old back porch floor was a perfect match. So I cut a piece that would replace the bad section, then laid it on the floor and scribed lines. This gave me an exact measurement to cut out and fit the replacement piece. I then chiseled where I scribed and used a saw to cut the old section out. After cleaning up the removed section and removing the tongues on the replacement and the existing floor I was able to lay the new piece in. It fit like a glove and the ends were over joists, so just nailed the ends and forget about it.

fits like a glove

The other big project was removing the radiators once again so I could do finish work on the walls, mount baseboards, etc. where I couldn't get to. Also I needed to plug some holes from when the smaller radiators replaced the originals leaving lots of holes when I went back to orginal sizes again. These holes are in the radiator floor boards or pedestals (not sure what you would call these since I've never seen a house with them). The plugs came out so so and I sanded two of the three down some, but in the end they really were pretty much shot - holes, splits, stains, etc. So then I got smart and figured if I could come up with some material I'd make new ones.... and that's exactly what I did.

good luck fixing this!

There were two 12" yellow pine planks about 7 ft. long being used as original shelving in the 3rd floor closet. This closet will house the AC unit so these were coming down anyway. The third board came from the garage when I cleaned up the roof supports. A few runs in the planer, added the 45 degree edge with the jointer, drilled holes where I needed them and finally a coat of poly. As good as original and technically original wood too!

And here they are in their new homes......

foyer

dining room

parlor

Notice the little "L" piece coming off the parlor base encasing the two pipes that feed the second floor. This piece was long gone but the silhouette was in the floor, so I made this as well. Also I stripped the floor around the bases a few inches so when the floors are sanded the machine won't have a hard time trying to get these edges cleaned up - and there was a lot of crud and paint along here.

Baseboards Finished..... Almost

The baseboards are all mounted and stained now in the parlor, foyer, dining room, and staircase - needing only the toe piece and the caps. I cut and installed all the receptacles in the baseboards so can soon fire them up too. Check out the pics....

Boards are rough cut for each room ready to be milled

Foyer

Staircase Landing

Dining Room (note original curved section still in place)

Parlor

Bending Baseboard

I've been in the process of milling and installing 1x6 oak boards for the downstairs baseboards that were ripped out long ago. Fortunately there was enough evidence left to piece together the original design. Most of the install has been straight forward and one remaining original section survived on the curved wall of the dining room.... but the parlor curved wall didn't fare to well. It was ripped out and nailed above the dining room baseboard to serve as a nailer when the dining room window seat was ripped out and boxed in with panelling. It was too far messed up to be put back plus the ends were cut shorter so I would have to add pieces anyway.

So how do you get a 1 inch thick piece of oak that you can't even nail into to form into a curved wall and then actually stay there?? Well first of all I didn't have anything long enough (about 14 ft.) to do in one piece so I milled two 8 ft. long sections. Using the radial arm saw I made a series of kerf cuts about every inch or so half way through the board. This will give the board some place to compress and allow it to bend easier. It was still tough to bend now but at least doable. To form it to the wall I would need to use some bracing to hold in place and slowly work it into the curve. So I wouldn't have several hundred holes in the floor I screwed some boards in to the floors and then screwed my braces into these as I worked the baseboard - so all the holes would be in these and the floor would end up with just two holes at each brace.

Over two days I was able to get the board tight against the wall and then mist the board a few times a day for several days to help "warp" the board. Finally I was able to nail it which ended up being just as hard as bending itself because the walls are stone and there are no studs, just furring strips which don't have much meat to them for the nail to bite to. After this side was done I repeated the same procedure with the second section. After finish sanding and staining it came out pretty good - maybe not up to the quality of the one piece original that was once there - but I'm sure I'll be the only one to notice.

.... all I can say is thank goodness the other original curved section is still there!

Busy Times

Progress continues, but not much time to post lately. Was promoted to a tech position at work, which means no more shift work! But adjusting to working normal 5 days a week and new responsibilities.

Continued milling and installing baseboard on the first floor. I have two rooms and the stairs milled with one room to go. The foyer and stairs are installed and stained, presently working on the dining room and bending the pieces for the parlor curved wall. Finally installing the outlets which I'm mounting in the baseboards as original so hopefully will get to fire them up soon and stop using extension cords for the first floor. Will go into detail with pics next time.

Finally the tile arrived for the parlor fireplace and have it installed - just needs to be grouted and can check off that project too.....