I had my cabinets and some appliances shipped to a friend's house in Delaware to avoid the 900.00 in sales tax I would have had to pay here in MD.  This felt morally ambiguous at first, but then I decided it's the same as shopping at the outlet malls in DE, and then I felt fine about it.   And so then I spent that 900.00 on a trailer to pull the cabinets and appliances home with.  My brother volunteered was coerced into coming along to help, and off we went.  The FedEx guy met us about an hour after we got there.  We unloaded from his truck and off he went, leaving us to try to figure out how the heck to load all these things up onto my 6x12 trailer and the back of the minvan I borrowed to pull it with.  Our faithful little Wrangler doesn't have the towing capacity to pull this thing fully loaded because of its short wheel base.  We decided to un-palletize most of the cabinets and play a little Tetris with them.  When we finally got all the cabinets and appliances onto the trailer and into the van, I graduall started raising the trailer tongue support and watched as the shocks of the van bottomed out.  It was clear this was not going to work.  We borrowed an F-150 from a friend out there, and pulled it home with that.  This was what it looked like shortly before hitting the road.

12ft high!

It was a bit scary.  And stupid.  But hey, I was committed at this point; no turning back.  Just to make it more interesting, the Bay Bridge had high-wind warnings, so we opted to go the long way north.  Once we made it home, all the cabinets were unloaded into the garage and then I turned back around and drove the 3 hrs back to Delaware to return the truck and bring back the van.  A LONG day.

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When we were going through the house w/ the home inspector, I asked him if I'd need a chimney specialist to determine if there was any degredation.  He looked up with the flashlight and said it looks remarkably clean.  Later, the owner told us that they had never used it.  Not once.  And they moved in in 1963.  Further, she said, the owners before them had never used it either!  Apparently, the house has cedar shingles at the time, and they were afraid some ember would start the house on fire.  Well, we'll be breaking that trend.

First, though, we've got to do something about that look.  White walls, white brick.  Who paints brick? 

After some online research (of course) I determined that sandblasting might be overkill for this, and it could damage the brick.  We wanted to avoid any harsh chemicals, as we don't like using them on principle.  We bought some citrus-based stripping gel and started with that. 



The citrus-based stripper



The carbon brush wheel



After brushing it on and letting it sit overnight, I attacked it with a scraper.  I got some chunks off, but obviously this was not going to get it out of the grit of the brick to the level we wanted.  So I bought one of these carbon steel brush wheels and a new Dewalt corded 1/2" drill to turn it with.  Oh, and a dual-filtered breathing mask, because this was going to put a lot of paint dust and brick residue in the air, and I don't want me or the wife breathing that in.  Oh, speaking of dust in the air...



I put a sheet of plastic from floor to ceiling to encase the living room.  It has a very ET feel to it.  "Elllll--eeeeee--ooooot?"

This was a good move.  There was a LOT of dust.

Stopped for a progress shot.  You can see where the citrus stripper has removed chunks of paint where the brush wheel hasn't been yet.  But the best part is, of course, that the wheel is getting the brick to the distressed look we are after.  Unfortunately, it's also wearing out that brush incredibly quickly.  We ended up going through 5 or 6 of them in total.  Once I had the technique down, I showed it to the wife, who is always sometimes willing to jump in on our ongoing projects. 

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