Baby Steps.
I have posted many times about my patented Baby Step Method™ of getting things done.
In short: Every day, get a little done. Even if you work for just 15 minutes. What happens though is that, with a tiny bit of work daily, shit gets done.
It is quite miraculous.
RIGHT: This is a basement window to the carriage house. I removed it last year and have been working on it ever since. Slowly. Baby stepy. Now, it has been stripped of old paint, and its inside finished with 3-layers of orange shellac. Ditto for the Secret Bedroom sash to the left.
In 2014, I removed this adorable window from a 1920s addition to the carriage house. The sash is now restored (with just a bit of primer still to remove), and the frame is reassembled. I have the two vertical trim pieces now painted. I need to remake the top trim. But soon, soon, the window will be ready to install in the new first-floor bathroom.
In 2015, I discovered a north kitchen window in the carriage house. It had been covered over with sheetrock. Oh, the horror. But the sashes were missing. In 2021, when I resumed work on the house, I could not find the sashes. Sigh. But yesterday, while in the workroom of the Cross House, I found a sash pair. But they were not from the Cross House. So, I pondered, and thought: are these the missing north sashes to the carriage house? This proved correct, and the white paint on the insides came off easily. I am quite thrilled by this discovery.
Ta-da! All four drawers in the pantry in the Cross House are now restored and back in place. Obviously though something is amiss with the coloring. So, more baby steps are needed.
14 Comments
Leave a Reply Cancel Reply
Your email address will NEVER be made public or shared, and you may use a screen name if you wish.
Horray for getting shit done!
…15 min at at time…
I need to practice what you are preaching in my own life.
Congratz! They look great!
The wisdom of babes!
Remarkable progress!!
Both Cross House& carriage house are coming along!
What about the carriage house being an Airbnb with the ultimate goal of rental? However guests could have option of either place if available?
Back to your work with baby steps…small achievements and voila! All comes to fruition!!
Hm. The left top drawer appears to have come from elsewhere – honey colored finish & even the hardware is different. No doubt, it’s just a matter of time when that mystery is revealed.
The windows & sashes are becoming beautiful again and finding their proper places. 💜 Important & fantastic progress – Baby Step Method™ for the win!
I think you are making a mistake using Shellac on the windows. There are finishes today which will last much longer and protect the windows much better.
Shellac is easily repaired and removable whereas the modern finishes require extensive work to redo in the future. For a restorer it is a great choice.
I love working with shellac. I try to only acquire vintage pieces that are shellac specifically so that I can easily repair any problems with the finish. I bought a lovely coffee table and end tables with multi-veneer designs on the top. Scratched and a few faint rings. I read up and then got some denatured alcohol and took a few swipes. What a difference! So I read up on French Polishing and put some layers back on and they just glowed. I did the same thing with a vintage sewing table that was in even worse shape. It’s something a millennial would paint over for “shabby chic.” Instead I did the same thing I did with the coffee table and it is beautiful. I love the old waterfall veneered furniture pieces. I have a bedroom set in my guest room.
I am hoping my Dad’s old dresser will be just as stunning when I get through with it.
I think one of those pantry drawers is a replacement. The pull doesn’t match the others. Or was that the “restoration?” I don’t remember if there was a drawer missing. Shouldn’t be too hard to match the color and finish of the other three.
I *love* shellac. I would use it on everything. Well, everything indoors that isn’t exposed to moisture. I’m restoring my Dad’s childhood dresser and it was shellac. It is going to look awesome when I am done with it. It was practically black and I’ve done one drawer and the revealed oak is just beautiful. You just don’t see grain like that any more. I can’t wait to start on the rest of it. There is also a mirror, in pieces, that I am going to have to put back together, bring the wood back and then refinish. Thankfully the original glass is still in one piece.
Congrats on finding those original sashes. Less expensive and less of a pain fixing the originals than having to have new ones made. That 1920s window will be so cute in a bathroom.
I think you should patent your baby-step method. Or at least copyright it. I’m doing a bit of that myself. I used to think I was doing nothing but then when I started to write up things in my private blog, I found I was getting some things done, one baby step at a time.
Gadzooks, Mary! I think you’re right! I didn’t even notice the not-quite-right pull!
The other drawers are quite battered at their outer edges. But, not the “light” drawer.
So, yes, it must be a replacement. Now that I know this, I’ll leave it As Is. It’s a bit of history revealed.
Thanks!
Baby steps equal big progress. Yay, you have gotten so much done, even if you’ve worked on these a year. It all comes together quite nicely in the end.
I also need to do more baby steps – so hard as I like to get it all done at once and can’t. I think the drawers look neat that way! 🙂
I’m so glad to see how nice your sashes and drawers look…sounds like an old-fashioned underwear commercial, LOL… Seriously, I have had so many people ask me why I spent the time and effort restoring what remained of our 1886 windows; most people actually think that new windows are better. An elderly gentleman passed away a few months ago and his 1890s home a few blocks away from us sold recently; it was his family home for generations, and was amazingly original; the new owners are painting the original clapboard siding, but they have already ripped out all of the windows with the exception of the front parlor picture window, which has a beveled glass panel at the top. It made me sick to see what they had done; even sicker that I didn’t notice in time to rescue the windows they threw away…some of them looked to be the same size as mine, and I could have used them to replace some of the 80s windows that a previous owner installed on my second floor.
What is really a tragedy is that those old windows, when maintained, last and last. While the new stuff has a lifetime if you’re lucky of 20 years. Then they have to be replaced again. People don’t realize this, but window manufacturers do. That’s why the push to replace your windows.
My Mother had all of the original aluminum windows in their 1960 house replaced with some sort of vinyl. Maybe vinyl covered wood. I’m not sure. But one is already broken and it’s only been about 5 years. Those original windows were 55 years old and still worked fine. Not energy efficient but then the entire house doesn’t have an insulation except for the addition. She would have saved more money keeping the windows and insulating the crawlspace/attic.
Plus I think they look stupid.
Sure, you can’t make old windows totally as efficient as the newer ones, but you can improve them without replacing them.
I think it’s worth it paying a bit more for heating and AC to keep the original windows. I have all of mine. When I was house hunting I bypassed houses that had replaced the original windows with aluminum or vinyl, as well as redone the outside with aluminum, vinyl or stucco. I saw some pretty awful stuff. I was lucky in that my house had everything original except the bathroom and kitchen floors. It had gone from the original owners to a nephew in another state who rented it out for a few years to me. So pretty much nothing was done. It didn’t have the original 1922 light fixtures (except for one in the garage that was pristine on my walk through and then broken after the termite tenting.) It did have the light fixtures from the 1949 remodel, which I took down and replaced. But I still have them and the shades. I should probably sell them at this point. They’re not going back up and I have no use for them. The vintage lights I have now will also come down when I eventually turn my house into a rental. I will try to find contemporary “period” fixtures but no way I’m leaving my vintage stuff in the house with renters. Bad enough I would have to leave my beloved porcelain on cast iron 1949 tub. That’s what really sold me on the house. I love my tub.
I never imagined the pantry drawers could look so much better. That room seemed to have gobs of paint and crud from years of neglect, but you are bringing it back. I am a pantry fanatic, and this makes me ridiculously happy! Thanks Ross!