Kitchen and Porch Progress 10.19.13

You all surprised me with your love for black and brass.  I do like it too

but as some of you pointed out, it might be a little heavy.  But I love both

the white and black so no decisions have been made.  I'm still looking actually.

Some good progress has been made; in fact, I think the plumbing is done.

All the new outlets and switches have been roughed in.

The ceiling is furred out and ceiling fixtures have been wired.

I think there's just the ductwork for heating to go and we can insulate

and get the walls closed up so the fun can begin.

But it's a busy, busy weekend of getting as much outside painting

done as I can.  It's supposed to turn much colder next week so I'm not sure

how much more time I'll have before it gets too cold to paint.

I decided to tackle the hardest thing first.  Thirty panes on the French doors.

When I was painting the inside of my new windows are few years ago,

you may recall I discovered that Scotch makes blue tape corners for windows

and hinges.  I've never seen them in a store but I found them online.  These

rolls of 60 are $7 on Amazon and I'd need two rolls of them just for the doors.

Kind of expensive just to tape the corners.

So I went back to my little trick for taping the corners and refined it even more.

I was initially cutting very sharp, almost 45 degree angles in the tape but

I've discovered that cutting a much more oblique angle is actually much easier.

Overlapping the two pieces with the point in the corner makes a perfect fit.

Then just fill in the sides.

I got all the goobers scraped off last weekend and one side primed in dark gray.

I got the other side taped up and primed today and a final coat of

black on the first side so I'll be able to finish them up tomorrow.

Image from Houzz.com

I was thinking of going with dark colors on the back porch deck and

ceiling and this was inspiration for that idea.  I was concerned it

might read Craftsman or Bungalow and some of you pointed out

that the dark colors would really absorb heat from the sun.

Image:  Christie's Real Estate

So it seems like a better idea to keep things light not only to keep it cooler

but I'd like the porch to be an extension of the kitchen and these are more

like the colors I'll have in the house.

I chose a semi-transparent stain by Behr called Cape Cod Gray

and it seems to cover the orange tones of the fir decking while

still allowing some the grain to show.  I can always go more opaque

later but thought this would be a good place to start.

The outer edges of the decking that have gotten wet in the rain seem to

have mildewed so I was little concerned this might show through the stain.

So I tried a little wood bleach on the edge of the deck that will be

trimmed off and it very quickly removed all the mildew stains so Ill

give the whole deck a quick coat of wood bleach, and then wipe it down

with a solution of baking soda to neutralize it before I do the staining.

I'm not happy to extra steps but it's nice to know there's a way to fix the problem.

In the meantime, I'm gluing up some white oak samples so I can experiment with

stains and finishes for the kitchen floor.  I'll show you those next time.