See - I DO love you, little house!

With major school projects behind me now, this weekend I finally got to spend some quality time scraping paint and tearing off boards.... ahhh - feels so good!

Baluster Update: 46 cut. 8 full ones and 2 partials to go.

I finished scraping all the turned posts. Which I'm really happy about because scraping turned posts is miserable work. This is partly why (and I'm sure you have all been wondering) I have chosen to replace my turned balusters with sawn balusters - tedious though the scroll saw cutting may seem, it is far less tedious than removing paint from the existing balusters. And since I don't have a lathe & it seems much harder to learn than scroll sawing, the paper-doll-like version seems more appropriate.



I also lasso-ed Jim to come out and scrape where I have been unable to scrape - that tricky spot over the entry...




Yes - I'll admit it, I was very happy to have some of Jim's man-help!



Then somehow I convinced Jim that at 6:30 it was still early, and we had time to tear down the ceiling. That's right - 6:30 is early for summer light. I did a little bit of the demo, but I was not nearly as fast as Jim, so he ended up doing most of it.




Some who read this may be thinking what a shame it is that I tore out the existing bead board... But even more miserable than scraping paint off of turned balusters, is the thought of scraping paint off of bead board hanging on the ceiling. I promise I'll put new bead boards up - I just can't take the tediousness and neck aches that would result! - not to mention the little scraped bits that would fall through safety glasses and into my eyes. So those old board are going into a dumpster. Sorry for the restoration sacrilege!



With the ceiling out, there's just a little bit more paint to scrape, and then we can brace the roof and tear out the floor. I mean floors, as there are 2 layers - why take off a rotted floor when you can just cover it up? And we're contemplating lighting - I'm thinking about adding a few can lights to the porch, to light it all up, instead of just the area above the front door. So maybe a nice decorative light above the door, and a couple of canned/recessed lights along the side. I'll have to do a little bit of research on that...