The person who invented the flat bar

I want to personally thank the person who invented the flat bar. This has got to one of the best tools a person can own when redoing a house. I slammed through peeling off the baseboards and crown in about 45 mins. I cracked a few boards but nothing that will be any show stopper later on and when I reinstall the boards no one will ever know cept' me.

So being single and Sugar not being very talkative most of time, I usually have the TV on for white noise. Well tonight it was the SciFi channel and the show was called Apocalypse. Great movie, NOT! ok here is the premise, A large earth quake is going to split the country in half, from North Dakota (ah jezz) all the way to the Gulf. I suppose that is something that could be dealt with if just left alone, but oh no! there are two back stories that deal with rescues, and yes love. Just freaking great! But with all that going on and the country being split in half that just wasn't enough. There is a nuclear power plant in Texas that sits right in the middle of the path that the fault is splitting the ground towards. AND but wait! there is a large gas line that goes right by the Nuke plant that the "scientist" blowup just in time to cause the fault to go around. Success! yeah! they saved the nuke plant! But wait there is more drama, Houston was split right in half! I mean right down the center of downtown, that poor Enron building.

And oh yes, there is (cue your best Dr. Evil voice) hot magma in fault line. Once it hit the gulf it back filled with water all the way North the the Hudson bay. I am sure there were sharks with lasers on their heads that swam north to Canada and just devastated the entire Eskimo population while they hunted for seals. But they ran out of time to cover that part of the story.

So anyway, I hope I saved you from watching the reruns of that movie. You can thank me later.

Here is a picture of the trim I pulled off tonight. The baseboards are a full 7 1/4" wide, you can't buy that kind of wood anymore, and not in poplar.

I wish I had the money for a planner, it would save so much time stripping and sanding.

Here are a few pics of the before and afters:

And my last note for the night, I have been looking at programmable furnace thermostats, I was walking through Walmart and saw this Hunter brand for $26 dollars. It seems to be working so far, I set it for 64 degrees during the day and 70 at night. So we will see if it saves on the gas bill.

Cold

Well we got about 3-4 inches of snow yesterday and last night. Of course, being as though almost all the villages and municipalities blew their salt budgets last year for this year most of the roads are frozen over and pretty nasty right now. Funny I am watching the History Channel and they are talking about? salt? A whooping 95% of all salt in the US ends up on the roads and the rust it causes to cars? $115 million dollars a year, or $115 per car, and we as a society consume 15 lbs per person per year.

So I descended into the basement and got the first coat of poly on the door casings after dinner tonight, I grabbed a can of spray foam and filled in more holes and when I turned around the first coat was dry to the touch. So what I am saying is it is real dry in the house right now.

Ok so I needed to take a small wallpaper border off the wall, here is the tool that I used

What it does is score the paper (nice wallpaper huh?) Then you take liquid fabric softener, any brand you like but I prefer the cheap kind and spray it over the wallpaper. I use straight fabric softener, not diluted and let it sit for 5 -10 minutes then using a putty knife the wet wallpaper literaly falls off .

This is the final view after the paper is off.

Make sure you score the paper well with your tool, this allows the softener to penetrate more effectively and get behind the glue. If the paper is not totally wet when you go to scrape it off you need to spray more softener and let it sit. I will tell you that what ever you buy at the home improvement store that bills itself as wall paper remover is either fabric softener or has the same ingredients as fabric softener. So hit up Walmart and buy a generic bottle of fabric softener and save some time and money.