Making Progress... No, Really

I have three projects running at the rental house all at once, so here's about a week's worth of updates on all of them.

The Kitchen:

The window by the kitchen sink was in terrible condition when we bought the place. Both parts were rotting out, and were about at the point where you really wouldn't want to touch either of them for fear that it would all come apart. Long story short, I have a new window in. It was a pretty rough install because the window came sized just a hair larger than it was supposed to be, and because that corner of the house settled differently than the rest (translation: the window frame was slightly out of square). The old window is well... really old, but seems to have been put there in the 1980s. Enough talk, time for pictures.

The old...


The New...



The Bathroom:
I'm finally at the point where I get to build things, so in theory the place should look better when I leave at the end of the day than it did when I showed up. I think that's starting to happen anyway. Here's a shot looking towards where the vanity will go (on the right). You can see the 1970s tiles better. The wood flooring seems to have been painted once or twice, then linoleum put down, then the tile that's visible here, then two kinds of linoleum within the last 25 years or so. I'm installing Pergo because.




Looking towards where the vanity will be. I put up the framing for the new wall today. I'd like to do the electrical for an outlet and a light above the vanity tomorrow. It's starting to look a bit more like a room anyway.



The Wood

I finally took some "before" pictures of how bad this stuff was. They speak for themselves.


An untold number of layers of paint...


This is the piece that goes above the window to the left of the (new) vanity. It shows what the wood looks like after I remove the paint, but before I sand it.


Here's another shot of the same piece after I stripped the paint from the crown molding. The actual color of the wood can be seen, along with what color the wood was finished once upon a time ago. Wish I could've saved the finish (because I'd be done by now) but it was too far gone.



Every piece of wood trim has been stripped and sanded, and within the next few days I'll have it all refinished. I'm going with shellac, and a polyurethane topcoat over that on the larger window trim since it's more or less in the shower.

Plans tomorrow are to run the electrical in the bathroom and do the plumbing. Wish me luck...