That Southern Style

Has Come to Dayton!

Once again, minding my own business trying to reduce the amount of water that gets to the 2nd floor when it rains, I took a look out of one of our windows on the 3rd floor. One of the nearby houses was in foreclosure recently and has been acquired by someone who has been doing some work to it. I think they have been reading the "Devil Queen" blog about roofing. Either that or they have the same supplier of shingle! I counted 7 colors, Red, blue, green, grey, black, tan and brown. Some ridges are grey, some are black. I'm sure they didn't pay a lot of money for this roof! The multi-colored concept is fine but no thought went into placement of color or pattern. The ridges look really bad and the place looks worse than this picture shows because you can't make out all the variations in color. Unfortunately there are no penalties for having an ugly house here!

More Basement Archaeology

There I was putzing around in the basement of the "Crackhouse" once again. Actually I was doing some more plaster repair work when I got myself distracted as usual. I have a spot where we get water entering in one of the rooms when it rains, I decided to pack mortar into the gaps between some of the stones to see if that would reduce or eliminate the leakage. Some old plaster and flaking whitewash was falling off the wall so I took a scraper and then a brush to it then I had to sweep up the mess it made. Where is all this leading? Well, I'm getting there.

There is a door placed between two of the rooms with a 10 inch wide wooden threshold that had been embedded in concrete. I decided to pull this up to discover that it was rotten and that the wood had converted into soil which in turn had roots and assorted bugs growing in it! So I cut the roots (ripped them out really) and took a brush to the inch of soil and what did I find? Bricks! All nicely packed and laid out as a floor. I suspected that my basement had a brick floor under the concrete and now I have found it. So now I know that I can readily lower my floor down there by several inches should I want to. It's not something I'm chomping at the bit to do....

Another One Bites The Dust!

Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, Im gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust

Who Ya Gonna Call?

The scenario this very evening: There I was standing in the basement minding my own business among the cat litter boxes, the aniline dye stains and the boxes full of crapola that have been there for years. I was actually attacking an old gas fire appliance that we have absolutely no use for with a wire brush (coz that's the kind of guy I am. I always have to be doing something worthless!) The wife is giving your favorite little munchkin a bath and world is our oyster!

Then I hear "gurgle, gurgle" and water is rising out of the basement drain. This tells me two things. The obvious one being that Elizabeth is finished with her bath. The second thing it tells me is that I should really lay off the high fiber foods! Within a minute the water subsides and I go back to scraping with my wire brush figuring that I will have to deal with the situation within the hour or else I will be dealing with a worse situation in the morning!

Then one minute goes by and I see water rising out of the drain again only faster and it is pouring all over the floor! This tells me two more things. The obvious one being that the wife is in the shower and that I REALLY need to lay off the high fiber foods. So I run up the stairs shouting "Stop running the water! Turn off the taps and whatever you do, DON'T FLUSH!"

Now anyone with an old house that has an 80 year old maple tree in their front yard knows what the problem is here. In fact, it is one of those recurring ones that comes back every year like clockwork. The bad part is, when it happens at 9 PM you know you are screwed until the morning unless you know the secret to temporarily cleaning your sewer line quickly 95% of the time. This fix won't work forever because mother nature ultimately wins. Tree roots have a thing for real, bonafide, genuine crap and when the two become entwined, the sh*t has really hit the fan! At that point you have only two options and you may as well eat fiber until a bush grows out of your *ss because it doesn't matter one bit any more! The two options are A) Rent a ginormous drain snake and hope you know what you are doing or B) Pay someone else to snake your drain at $100 a pop and hope they know what they are doing! If you elect option A) make sure you wear leather gloves that you can afford to throw away unless like us you have another house where you can stash them until they dry out and the smell won't get to you every day!

So. Who wants to know what the quick fix was that allowed my dear wife to finish her shower within 5 minutes and not have to stand around drip drying until morning? I've divulged this secret in a previous post and it is answered within this post for those of you who absolutely must know this little trick. For a clue, let me add that the trick didn't work for me LAST YEAR.

No, I didn't go out and cut down the tree.......

The Mice are Scared!

I ventured up to the third floor today and noticed a great reduction in the quantity of mouse poop around the center of the floor near the traps. The traps haven't caught anything in a while. The mice must have been scared off! They must have heard about the mummified remains of their great ancester that I found. Maybe it was the sight of the mummified head mounted on a toothpick and posted near the entrance to their nest as a warning!

The Shellac Chronicles Part 4 (Coloring Shellac)

Shellac can be colored with anything that dissolves in alcohol. Aniline dye is the most likely candidate. These are the dyes that are used to make inks. They are often used in permanent markers and come in all colors. They can be purchased from THESE PEOPLE. You really don't need a lot of dye. I bought an 8 oz. can of Walnut Dye and after using it on my floor, stairs, metal locks and fixtures and sending about 2 oz. to Greg I still have half of it left and a jar full of dark alcohol still to use up.

Before you add it to shellac you are supposed to dissolve some in alcohol. Then you filter it to remove the undissolved bits so they don't end up as specks on your finished wood work. I tried this once. Fortunatly it was in the basement. I had some old PVC plumbing left over from the "Placebo" incedent and made a makeshift funnel and used a coffee filter slapped over the end attached with a rubber band. I poured the walnut colored alcohol/dye solution into the pipe and waited for it to trickle into an old jam jar. I waited and waited and waited and waited as it slowly drip, drip, dripped into the jar. "There has to be a quicker way" I thought! I know what to do, I'll blow down the tube. So, I removed the reducing coupling "funnel" and clasped my hands around the piece of 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe which had the filter attached to it. I stood directly over the jar and I blew slowly and the solution began to flow faster. So I blew harder. The solution flowed a little faster than before. So I blew harder and PLOP! The filter had blown off into the jar with considerable force followed by the remaining solution in the pipe. Well, in that split second I remembered my physics classes about force and how energy is not lost but converted, just as the solution was rising out of the top of the jar heading straight for my face! So I did the only thing I could. I closed my eyes and thought of England.

Now I was covered in dark walnut aniline dye solution. It was all over my hands, face and the floor. I tried to get it off the floor but it wasn't happening. Then I thought "CRAP! I have to filter this stuff AGAIN because now it was all in the same jar" and decided to go upstairs to look in the mirror. Standing in front of the mirror looking at my face I started singing minstrel tunes which alerted Deborah to my plight who's reaction was simply "OH!"

Since this is the stuff they put in permanent markers you may have guessed that the shower taken to remove the stuff was a long one, but I do a lot of thinking in the shower. This time I remembered why we used "funnel filters" in chemistry class and that we folded the filter papers into cones. Afterwards I applied my memory to the task at hand and it seemed to work just fine. Blow jobs are definately not in my future! I mean, look at the mess it made and I can't get rid of the stain......

Remembering That Special Moment

Well folks, I didn't spill the shellac over the floor. I'm sure some of you were hoping that I would so you could enjoy the moment. It's OK. You can admit it. As of tonight the floor has 5 coats of shellac and one very thin one of semi-gloss polyurethane. One more thin coat of poly and I can finish painting the door frame and inside trim. Here is a picture of the floor before the polyurethane went on.




Once done I will wax the floor and after a few months the poly will yellow and it will be incredibly dusty so it will look like it has been there forever.

In case you already forgot, here is how it looked on Monday.

The Shellac Chronicles Part 3 (Experiments with shellac)

I've been struggling with "Blogger" for two days trying to upload pictures! Let's hope these ones post....

Well, lets see, where was I? Oh, I bought some shellac from Home Depot and was eager to see what it did. So, I applied it to some wood display bases that I had. You all knew I painted these miniatures, right?



Then I dipped some miniatures in the stuff.



I applied it to some paper and then used it on these two model buildings that I had laying unmade in a drawer.







I used it on this "Gumball Machine".



I coated some ceramic tiles with the stuff.





I tried adding alcohol to it to thin it down. I tried some on glass. I even experimented with scraps of wood which had been painted with various colors. Here is one sample I still have laying around the place.



So now I was READY to do some real damage!
I actually recall using it on some window sashes first. I figured that if I didn't like them I could always paint them. Of course they came out fine. I think the next thing I did was restore these stairs.



In this case I rubbed down the original finish with coarse steel wool and denatured alcohol. Wiped up the slop and allowed to dry. Sanded with a palm sander and 150 grit paper then applied some new shellac.

The rest folks is history! If you want to see the stuff I have done with shellac at the house then use the search feature from the home page of this blog and type the word shellac. There are some 45 entries that will come up where I have mentioned the word. The search scans 250 of my pages but since I have actually produced nearly 400 between the web page and the blog you won't necessarily find all the shellac posts.

So, unless you folks have more questions that need to be answered, my final post on the subject will cover aniline dye, tinting and why you shouldn't blow down a tube of the stuff in an effort to speed up the filtering process!

WARNING: We Interrupt This Blog for an Upcoming Shellac Moment.

On Sunday I got the new oak floor laid in the 1st floor powder room and put the stain on it (Minwax Golden Oak). The stain has been sitting around the place for two years and was quite lumpy. It needed a good stir before putting globs onto the wood and rubbing them around with a cloth. Any lumps of pigment got thrown back into the can in the hope that they will be smaller lumps in another couple of years. There is nothing like recycling! I tell you this because I see some people are very particular about the stain they use. Stain is basically pigment suspended in solution. Some solutions are supposed to penetrate the wood while others rest on the surface for a layer of translucent color. The latter are called topical stains. Most people are happy staining their wood and then putting polyurethane over it. Not me. This house is old. The floors should look like they belong here. Right now, this one doesn't! Take a look for yourself....



If I put polyurethane over it it will look like this only more glossy. This floor looks good but not in this house. It looks too new. This is the floor you would expect to see in a new home or a rehabbed one in a historic district where they advertise "beautiful" hardwood floors. I could do what many people do, buy another stain color or two and mix it until the wood is the proper color and then cover it with the "plastic" layer of poly. That doesn't solve the problem though. The floor would still look new and I want it to look like it has always been there. How will I do that? Amber shellac! I will still use polyurethane as the final coat because this is a bathroom but I am going to use the poly to protect the shellac. I am using the shellac like it is a topical stain.

I am posting this now because the timing is appropriate and because I haven't done the work yet so there is no "after" picture to show off. I can't tell you how great my floor looks after messing with it a gazillion times until it came out right. You see, I already know how the floor will turn out. I did one just like it last year in the hallway upstairs. I will be applying three or four coats of shellac and two coats of semi-gloss polyurethane. Then I do the super fine steel wool and beeswax treatment. When done, I predict this floor will look like it has been here 50 years, without the dings of course. So, unless I spill the can of shellac, I will post a picture of this floor again within a week when it is done. If I spill the shellac I will post a picture sooner and post about how not to refinish a floor and put in a paragraph about how to remove shellac stains from your clothes!

The Shellac Chronicles Part 2 (What you can do with the stuff)

OK, so you know how I discovered shellac, now I can tell you what it is and where it can be used. It seems that most shellac comes from NE India where lac bugs live. They eat sap from trees and then secrete a resinous substance that is soluble in alcohol. You use denatured alcohol or methylated spirits if you live in Europe though I am sure Vodka or Everclear would work fine. The alcohol is "denatured" so you won't drink it! If you are that interested you can read what Wikepedia has to say about shellac HERE.

I looked in every decorator book that I had and then my 1909 copy of Household Discoveries to see what shellac was used for. Here is what I found.

Besides being used as a varnish for wood, shellac is the main ingredient in sealing wax. Shellac is also used in certain types of paint and as a sealer for wood to prevent discoloration when painted. If you mix it with turmeric it can be used as a gold finish on brass. It can be used as a glue for china and is used to stiffen stencil card. It is edible and used to coat pills and apples. It used to be used to make records before vinyl was invented. You can seal plaster walls with it prior to painting, you can seal the knots in pine boards to prevent them from bleeding.

Shellac ranges in color from clear (which is bleached) through yellow to dark brown and the color is determined by the type of sap coming out of the trees that the bugs feed on. The color determination is seasonal also. The common colors are yellow, orange, garnet and brown. The darker colors are traditionally used on woods like cherry and walnut or for antiques. Shellac can be colored with any type of dye that dissolves in alcohol and the discovery of aniline dyes (coal tar) in the mid 19th century allowed furniture to appear to be made of different wood than it was. It also made colored shellac useful for painting on stained glass windows. (Think church windows here)

Shellac is "cut" with alcohol. A mix of 1 lb. of shellac in 1 gallon of alcohol is a 1# cut and is good for sealing wood. A 2# cut is 2 lbs. of shellac in one gallon of alcohol. This is good for novice shellackers to use on wood floors or trim. The cans of pre-mixed shellac are 3# cut and are easy to use after you know what to expect. You can actually buy cans of 5# cut which can be used on floors but I've never tried it.

Now that I knew all this there was one thing left to do, buy some, but where? I found THESE PEOPLE and ordered some in various colors. I bought a gallon of denatured alcohol at Home Depot and at the same time saw that they sold quarts of Zinsser amber shellac which cost $6.50 at that time (now its $10 in a post Katrina/tsunami/Florida hurricanes world) so I bought a quart and decided to play with it!

In the next post I will show you some of the things I did during my experimental stage. I wasn't prepared to ruin my woodwork unless I knew what I was ruining it with!