Re-Glazing a Funky Old Sink

Years and years of a slowly dripping faucet has left its mark via a giant rust divot. The water eroded through the porcelain and began to attack the cast iron. Thread loves the sink, but Butter isn't so sure, mostly because she thinks she can find another one floating around in a back alley or the Amish junk pile. But then again we like to let sleeping dogs lie around here. To re- do the plumbing would be a nightmare, and not in the budget as of yet. So reglazing here we come.



Step one seal off the rust. Brush all of the loose stuff off and clean it as best you can, next get some Bondo, and start patching the hole. A few thin layers later, start sanding with a bit of water and 220 grit wet/dry sandpaper till smooth. Bondo is pretty great to sand, but stinky! So wear a respirator and keep those windows open.






After smooth, its time for the re-glazing kit. Following the direction of cleaning cleaning, and letting dry completely!!! Here's the problem the faucet still drips. ( we haven't quite mastered plumbing yet) So Butter got all McGyver and came up with this:

The tubing attached with hose clamps diverts the water allowing for a completely dry surface.




Then the Re-Glazing starts. Thin layer after thin layer of this super stinky epoxy stuff. I hate to admit, but I don't think this really solved the problem the way I thought it would. That's ok right? Its a sink that works without rust, that one day will most likely be professionally re-glazed or replaced.

Plaster buttons...

...are amazing, and elusive. Apparently they are the bees' knees when it comes to repairing old plaster walls. The Royal still has all of its original horse hair and plaster walls with the exception of the bathrooms.

Remember the ceiling Butter was afraid might fall down on her?


Well we got back to The Royal on Saturday and it was still in place, but the plaster did need to be re-secured to the lath or stud behind the surface.
Last Saturday night we walked into the local Home Depot (which we like to call "d'po") with a list a mile long, but what we were most anxious to get were these plaster buttons, or washers, that our contractor friends and dads had been telling us about and that we then read up on. We figured it would be easy -- there are a LOT of houses as old as ours in the area, so we figured everyone knew about these things. It seems we were wrong, or we were asking the wrong people. We had plenty of men in d'po looking at and talking to us like we were silly little city girls who had no idea what we were talking about. The same thing happened at the local hardware store. Butter was beginning to think that they were made up, so she went back to the information super highway and googled "plaster buttons" and the first place they popped up was at a hardware store in Philadelphia -- one neighborhood over from where her mom lives. Mama Butter scooped them up and brought them to us on Saturday morning.


These little washer things full of holes are miracle workers! They pulled the loose plaster to the lath and secured the walls -- genius! Spackling over them was a cinch and now the ceiling is good to go -- no more fear of a Chicken Little falling sky.

We have lots of places to use these throughout the house -- many areas where the plaster is pulling away from the lath. But these plaster washers are the way to go -- they're saving us a ton of money and time, allowing us to keep the plaster walls and not have to go through the process of tearing out the plaster and replacing it with drywall. Yeah!

lesson #1 -- wallpaper removal

wallpaper, oh wallpaper, come off those walls! well, we have A LOT of wallpaper - not only on the walls, but on the ceilings, too - maybe two-three-eight layers! this is bringing back memories for butter -- when she was a kid the family moved into an old house in philadelphia that had a lot of wall paper, paneling over said wallpaper, and a bullet lodged into the french doors. (she loved that detail!) but anyhow, momma insisted that all of the wallpaper be stripped before the family moved in....so off it came from both ceilings and walls. and then one night maybe a few days after they moved in, the ceiling came crashing down in butter's bedroom, giving the sleeping girls quite a start -- and giving grown up butter plenty of reason for caution this time around.




so after some research on the information super highway we've found that fabric softener and water is the way to go. experience this weekend has taught us that the water needs to be HOT HOT HOT and one needs to use LOTS of it. butter went in there double fisted -- two spray bottles blasting the walls like in an old western. then, after soaking the walls and waiting (waiting is the most important part)the scraping began, and off came the wall paper -- from both the walls and the ceilings.





the walls need one final scrub to remove the glue residue, some spackle, and some plaster buttons* to secure one part of the ceiling that butter left a piece of wall paper tacked on because we are pretty sure that part will probably be on the floor when we go back.

*plaster buttons! more on those later