|| 9 September 2018

Stove Hood Project

Anne is back to painting, finishing up the stove hood restoration project that was interrupted by the events of her August-from-Hell.

For the past few days the weather here at Provence-sur-la-Prairie has been cooler than usual for this time of year. With temperatures mild enough to keep windows and doors open for ventilation, I am back to painting. This, the last part of the work on my stove hood restoration project for which I did most of the work before everything began to go awry in my August-From-Hell.

One reason I chose this particular property was the original stove hood that had been installed over the wood burning kitchen cooking stove when the house was built in 1929. The wood-burning stove long ago had been replaced by more modern cooking appliances. But the hood remained, its original silver-marbled black metal surface showing in a few places where cooking steam had peeled away both the stained aqua latex and the white oil-based paint beneath.

In the photo below you can see the state of the hood the morning I began work. The black areas are the spots where cooking steam had removed paint showing the original finish underneath. The white area lower center is a test spot for the paint stripper. It easily lifted the old latex, but did nothing for the underlying oil-based white paint. The dark circle upper center is the hole for the pipe that took away the smoke from the original wood-burning stove. There is a small chimney on the roof above it.

The stove hood in its unrestored condition was an eyesore. The reason I had not previously tackled the job, was that I believed it would be a tremendous amount of difficult work. It was. But at the end of four days of hard work, the old disfiguring paint was gone. I had the stove hood looking as it had 89 years ago when the house was new. (As soon as I move the cooking stove back into position, a cap will be installed to cover the hood's smoke exhaust hole.)

Unfortunately, despite working with doors and windows open for ventilation and wearing a dust mask (and of course safety goggles) I also had sinuses so unhappy about breathing the fumes of the paint stripper (and I had used CitriStrip reportedly the least harmful) that not just my head but my teeth ached. Sinus pressure on my ear canals affected my hearing. Standing on the ladder twisted to scrape the paint had strained my back until when I woke in the morning, for the first 10 or 15 minutes, I could not stand straight.

Happily, my sinuses, hearing and back have recovered. But once the stove hood was restored, the golden yellow wall immediately beneath the hood did not look right. Against the black metal hood it looked as if the color scheme for that corner of the kitchen had been inspired by a traffic caution sign. Oh, dear! Those two sections of the wall between stove and hood HAD to be repainted white.

Tuesday was prep work. Just getting the pot rack down without breaking off the screw heads took an hour and a half. Wednesday one coat of primer in the morning and another in the afternoon to cover the yellow wall and trim. Very tedious work that scalloped trim. Thursday morning I put on the first coat of white paint, the second in the afternoon. It required a third coat of white paint on Friday to get the glossy effect I wanted.

In the photo below, the white wall still looks bare. But as soon as I rehang my pot rack on the left and decide between a painting or other items for the right, it will look just as I imagine it.

Whether a decor project or finding the right accessories to make an outfit really chic, the effort to “get it right” pays off in our satisfaction with the results.

be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone

Recent Nouvelles

|| 30 August 2018 French Lesson on Enjoying Food

|| 27 August 2018 French Women on Dying

|| 13 August 2018 Living Dangerously