If you aren't a child of the 80s or a Ghostbusters fan that title may leave you thinking "wha?"...as mentioned in the previous post, T had to dress up like the StayPuft Marshmallow man to sand the ceiling in our soon to be bedroom due to possible lead paint on a bottom layer.
Job 1: Shiplap. 97 boards 16 feet long each. NINETY-SEVEN.
I feel I should first clarify, before you go thinking we've jumped on the Chip & Joanna Shiplap wagon...we liked it before it was cool.
You see, I began loving old homes when I was little. And in my early years, on one of our family trips to Arkansas, we stopped at Washington Historic State Park. I fell in LOVE with this one...
What you can't see is behind it was a short strip of rooms in the back with their own outside doors. I thought this was so great. I used to actually draw it, dreaming up my own someday home.
I also loved this one:
Flash forward to high school...T and I, while dating our senior year, took a few trips to Jefferson to antique and tour old homes. Yep.
Flash forward a few more years...we spent our First wedding anniversary in an old B&B in Jefferson and toured homes and did a little antique shopping.
See the theme? ;-)
Our first home in Silsbee was a 1913 Bungalow style home.
Underneath the wallboard in the hallway was shiplap. Old shiplap with the old wallpaper strings still attached in places. We just called it "old tongue and groove wood walls". Yea, we weren't up on the lingo at the time but still... That house had fantastic wood floors and built ins.
That dogtrot in Chireno (that I just know one day will by mine. B&B anyone?? T are you reading this? Ignore what I just said...)
...the entire dogtrot part was still all shiplap, just painted. We are pretty sure it was also still under the wallboard in the bedrooms.
(Hmmmmm...I'd forgotten how similar these were, I guess I have a "type")
Ok, I actually am not missing this house as much as I was at the beginning, but I do still think it's a great house. I'm actually very excited about our little farmhouse now :-)
So as you can see, we aren't just jumping on the shiplap bandwagon, we love anything old house.
Now, our current farmhouse is a 1950's home, a decade in which shiplap was not used much at all unless by necessity from an older homestead. However, we still really like the look and comfortable feel of it. It will break up the wallboard. AND...now that we are sure it was an old homestead at one time with an older home on it, we feel it's a nice nod to the past by adding it back in.
So...my first job was to prime 97 boards. We will be putting them in the kitchen and dining rooms and on one wall in the front room to tie all three together. Because I only really get a few hours a few days a week during the little one's nap time...it took around a week and a half. Since it was also raining here in Texas most of those days, I had to work in the barn, limiting space. I'm proud to say I only dropped a little on the dog. He is still mostly black and brown.
We primed the boards because as you may or may not know...wood will shrink as it dries and ages. It's not much, but since shiplap is tongue and groove, the shrinking will most likely cause a bit of a space between boards. Since most of the wood we are putting up will be painted a soft white, we primed with Kilz Original to soak into the wood before we paint later in the house. That way when any shrinking happens you won't see regular wood. If you are going to paint it a darker color, we suggest spraying the boards before hanging so any gaps will not show as easily.
Job 2: Sanding the laundry/pantry ceiling.
So, much like the master bedroom ceiling, we are fortunate to have old painted wood in good shape for this room as well. I didn't want to distress it a lot, mainly sand it down so there is no paint flaking and then I will put a coat of poly on it to preserve the look. Some of the wood already had a lot of paint gone but I love that look.
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| After sanding. You can sort of see the more distressed part of the ceiling in the upper center of this picture. The rest I just sanded the edges a bit to give some distressed appearance but mainly sanded to smooth out any flaking. |
We are also fortunate enough to be able to keep two of the walls with their old tongue and groove boards (as seen above), but I will be repainting those so I simply sanded the enough to help new paint stick. These two walls will be painted white much like all of the shiplap walls. The pantry shelves will be on the right wall. The other two walls in this room (the left wall where washer/dryer will be and the walls where the door will be) will be painted wallboard. Not sure on the color yet but leaning towards a pale yellow to keep it bright.
Wearing the Tyvek suit wasn't bad at all, the dust mask was nice and humid but I felt safe wearing it all. After sanding just that small space I was even more grateful for T sanding our entire master bed and bath! My arms were pretty sore!
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| Seriously this suit adds more pounds than being on TV. I'm not small but I'm not that round |
| These were my tools. The square (orbital) sander (seen in above photos) is my go to for sanding. It's easy to manage, powerful, lightweight and does a great job. You can also get any grain of sand paper to fit. I used 80 for most of this because it's what we had on hand and I wanted to remove a little of the paint, not just smooth. And goggles are a MUST. |
Here's my "brag on hubby" moment for this post...In our master bedroom was an access to the attic since it was originally the garage. We needed to keep that access so T made and distressed this nifty access panel to fit in with the rest of the distressed ceiling! I think it looks like it was always there built just like that :-)
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Here's a fun last find for you...we were looking at a few things around the house and as I was staring over where the kitchen cabinets would go, I noticed this for the first time:
"What am I looking at?" you might be asking yourself...look at the rectangle shape to the right where it's just wood. Yep, there used to be a door there! Which makes sense as it would have also lead out to the same back porch as the bedroom back door that is still there. It also makes sense since we discovered the concrete slab in the kitchen area that is right before the garage, making us think it was a porch at one time. Most likely yes, a front porch and then the garage was added later. T, after spending time in the attic, has discovered the old roof line which did not extend as far forward as the current one does. So we keep going back to the idea that this house was a bit more of a shotgun style home when first built. Not a true shotgun but close in style. Neither of us had noticed this at all until now. Once we are settled, T does plan to research the property more since online records only go so far back.
Stayed tuned...I thought in my next post I might share with you the actual plans of the house, created by our wonderful designer friend Melinda, before and after, to give you a better idea of what we are working with since it's hard room by room to get a good feel for the whole home.
I've also been told that because I'm a bit slow on the postings that I might have a guest blogger soon. He likes tractors, that much I can tell you...
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