This morning, I picked up my moulding from Quick Strip – and he did a great job. For $80 and a week of patience, four fluted window casings, three cornices and one sill have been stripped of many layers of paint. Now, I have to wait for them to fully dry, then refinish them to look like they used to.

I tested some finish approaches last year on some moulding I’d sanded down to bare wood – a coat of garnet shellac, followed by walnut toner and another coat of shellac looked pretty close – we’ll see if that works out here…I’ll test it on the back, of course.

And on the way home from Quick Strip, I stopped by Building Value – a local, inexpensive re-use and salvage center, just to see what they had (as I do almost every Saturday – it’s only a mile from my house), and found a stack of soapstone slabs that had been removed from a chemistry lab at Cincinnati State Technical College. I was gobsmacked – I’ve been looking for salvaged soapstone for a year, now! So of course I immediately whipped out my check card. The 1″ x 25″ x 6′ slab I purchased for just $60 will become the vanity top in my bathroom. Some day.

While I’ll certainly have to fabricate a lot of the mouldings, stair parts, etc. as I work on this house, I love re-using salvage parts as much as possible, even though it means waiting until the right things show up. Like the chandeliers I need for the living room, dining room and front hall – which reminds me that I need to run down to the Wooden Nickel for a look-see…just as soon as I can find a kind neighbor to help me shift that soapstone out of my car and into the garage.