Finished at Last!

Well, It's been an amazingly long time since my last post. I've actually moved on to another project but here are a couple final pics of the building interior. The floor was stained with an acetone based dye and top coated with an industrial chemical resistant sealer. I went with a dye rather than an acid stain because I wasn't sure if the old concrete would react well with the stain. The acetone dye is a bit difficult to work with, but the fast dry time makes it worth the extra hassle and prevents puddling.

Coming Home

This is the video Monica and I shot last summer for the "Come Home to Kansas" campaign. The program is designed to attract former Kansas residence back home.

HodgePodge

This is a photo in the bathroom. We decided to leave this architectural feature exposed. I will trim around the framed in area, but the old cast iron will be left intact otherwise.



This is the dividing wall between the front and back sections of the building. The double doors were purchased from "Resource" in boulder and were originally blue. After four coats of paint they're looking pretty good again.





The east entry was incredibly rough and had been patched and repatched for years. I had the failing concrete cut out and new concrete poured. It will be great to finally get sweeps on the doors and for the fist time in decades, have a weather tight building!

Trim Work

The last couple weeks I've been splitting my time between trimming out the building and restoring the facade of another Victorian building up the street.


These are the brackets that we put on the front of our building. Monica spent a good deal of time painting these. The columns are new as well. A picture of the finished facade is coming, but probably at the end of the project. :)




We decided to trim the doors out using 1x6 pine. The corner blocks are "Bullseye" rosettes which are a traditional Victorian style. I had to custom order the blocks because of the trim size, but I think they're worth it.




This is a shot of the windows along the stairs. They aren't quite there yet, but with a couple coats of paint they'll be good to go. The trim work actually takes a good bit of time to prepare for paint. The knot holes must be sanded, then covered with shellac so that they don't bleed, then sanded, then filled with wood filler, then sanded, then spot filled with wood filler, then primed with shellac, then sanded, then primed with PVA, then sanded, and finally painted. When you're finished you have a board that is super flat and clean looking.

All Jacked Up!

Well, Monica and I spent a long day hanging plywood up in the rebuilt section beside the stairs (see postings from Nov. 2008). We rented a drywall jack which was invaluable. The lift had a ratcheting system which allowed us to crank the plywood up into position and then pin it against the ceiling. The only problem with our situation was that the lift was made for an 8' rather than a 12' ceiling. I went back to the handy dandy scrap pile and made an extender out of a piece of 1" tubing. It worked great! I'd dreaded this project because several of the old ceiling joists stuck down about an inch below the new joists. I could just see myself sawing off ceiling joists with dirt falling in my face for hours on end. I ended up taking my hatchet and beveling it to a very sharp edge with a grinder. I then took a 3 lb hammer and whacked the ends off. I would say the old joist ends cut in under 20 minutes! It just goes to show that worrying is pretty much a waste of time when it comes to construction. Things that seem easy are often hard and things that seem hard are often easy. You just never know until you dig in. Anyway, the job is completed now and ready for ceiling tile installation. Back to the vacuum former!

Drywall Installation Completed

The drywall installation went pretty much as planned. The guys hung the rock in two days, taped on the third, and finished out on the fourth and fifth day. It was honestly pretty uneventful. Just experienced guys doing what they do. Painting will begin in two days.


Tomorrow will be spent in Kansas City picking up a retail check out counter that I bought at auction.

The building is really starting to come along!

Ceiling Tile Installation

The ceiling tile installation went better and worse than I expected. I expected the layout to be easy and the installation to be hard, but it was actually the opposite. The old tiles were installed a bit crooked (sorry 120 year old dead installer guy). I can't blame him actually, because the building doesn't have any square edges to start from so getting a perfect grid would be a bit difficult. Anyway, the edges of the tiles where rusted away in some spots and the tiles didn't meet up correctly, so the layout of each tile was very tedious and involved making patch pieces to cover the layout problems. On the bright side, the installation itself was very easy. I ended up finding the perfect adhesive which is Loctite instant grab shower surround adhesive. The adhesive adheres immediately, but allows you to adjust the tiles for up to 20 minutes. What else could you ask for? After the tile adhesive dried I nailed the tiles into place using 1" galvanized brads.



Some of the tiles had holes in them from the old light fixtures. Instead of removing these tiles I made patch pieces cutting along the details of the tile. This masked the repair, cut down on unnecessary work, and saved the historic fabric of the original panels.



One fairly unpleasant activity was scraping the lead paint off of the old ceiling. The tiles simply wouldn't stick with it in place so I spent about a day and a half with a scraper and a respirator on. Overhead work is never easy. Just about the time your muscles adapt.......your finished.





This is just a photo that I took of the new tiles mixed with the old. The tiles will all be sprayed the same color, and should basically blend into a seamless ceiling. I can't wait!