Caring for a toddler requires more attention than I remembered, so between feeding, playing, reading stories, & watching Daniel Tiger Im doing laundry & watching HGTV. Ive expressed before that I often get frustrated by some of the repairs Nicole Curtis makes in her project houses. While I appreciate her efforts to save old structures from demolition, I take issue with some of the DIY skills shes promoting to inexperienced homeowners. Many of the hardwood floors she refinishes look really blotchy afterward, & some appear to be pine subfloors instead of actual hardwood. Bare wood absorbs stain at different rates, depending on the type of wood & how it was milled. Applying a wood conditioner before the stain would produce better results, but shes in too big a hurry to do it the right way. Nicole often applies a new coat of paint over chipped paint after only slightly sanding the surface. From a distance its not terribly noticable, but up close the after doesnt look so good. The cameraman usually pans over her bad repairs very quickly. A few months ago Nicole filled in large areas in a deteriorated bathroom wall with grout, rather than replace the damaged tiles with salvaged tiles. Plain white subway tiles are much easier to find that decorative tiles, so even at $25/sf it wouldve cost roughly $100 to do it the right way. She made a similar fix on a rotted cabinet door with wood putty, without bothering to stain the patch to match the cabinets before finishing with a new coat of varnish. Paint would also have hidden the patch much better. A cracked panel in a stained glass window was left unrepaired, because she says such flaws add character to a house! Today she painted inset style drawers & doors of kitchen cabinets without removing either the doors or drawers--just painted over the fronts & cracks. One doesnt have to be a professional painter to know thats not the right technique. She later demonstrated using an aerosol stripper on the homes millwork, at least while wearing the proper PPE. Even though aerosol stripper is fine for small projects or hard to access areas, it would cost a mint to strip hundreds or thousands of square feet of woodwork with aerosol stripper. She should have mentioned that some types of liquid or semi-paste formulas can be applied with a spray bottle or a paint brush. We also take issue with ripping out all historic plaster & replacing it with drywall. Although thats cheaper & faster, its not always necessary. Nicole & other home improvement shows imply that drywall is superior to old plaster, which it is not. Unless walls or ceilings are badly damaged, they can be repaired with Big Wallys Plaster Magic. Another objection is about some of the strange kitchen or bathroom floor plans featured on the show. I appreciate how recycled cabinets & fixtures are used, but some of the layouts create strange gaps & wouldnt function as well as they could by using a little more time & money in the design. While I have little doubt that Nicole could finish our 5400 sf project in a few weeks or months, I also know many of her version of repairs would stand out like sore thumbs. Thats not good in the long run. I dont think Mike Holmes would approve of some of Nicoles ideas. End of my first rant of 2015. :-)
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 22:07:14 +0000
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