Monday, February 2nd, 2009
That’s two down and a bunch more to go.
I really don’t like painting. It’s not that bad once I get into it, but getting into it is the problem. I have found that doing short bursts throughout the day helps. If I put it off for a few days, I am in trouble. I won’t want to start again.
So everyone knows that pretty much the first thing to do when you move into a house is paint. In our last house, we had to paint over the smoke stained walls. That was nice. There were also many problems beyond that. It took me weeks just to prep one room. Everything came out nice in the end, but the whole project took longer than I would have liked it too. Just as I finished every last thing I could have done to that house, we moved.
This time, there really is no prepping. In this last room, I had to spackle 4 tack hole that I put there. It’s refreshing when people don’t smoke, have holes in the walls or wallpaper on the ceiling. Oh, the good ol’ days. I remember laying in bed a few years ago saying, “Pumpkin, we have wallpaper on the ceiling.”
Painting the red room didn’t take long at all. In just a few weeks, it was done. Most of that time was my procrastination. We closed out the era of the dark red and painted on a brighter blue/gray. Again, this is one of those paint colors that changes color throughout the day. I am sure all paint does that.
The dark red was okay, but we wanted to change up the wood grain trim and make it white. We also wanted to room to appear slightly larger. Brighter paint will do that.
I have said many times before, I love white trim. It’s bright and cheery and easily repaired when damaged. Just touch it up. My heart breaks when I paint over this nice wood, but it’s something that I have to do.
Here are some before and after pictures:
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Red room – before it was painted
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Red room – after it was painted
I think the toughest part was all the taping around the windows. I wanted to maintain the wood window frames, but paint all the trim around it. That way, they don’t get painted shut and they will look more natural. Also, taking the door off the hinges and closet doors down (and painting them) took a while. Other than that, everything went well.
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Friday, December 7th, 2007
Today, after I brought the cat to the vet, I ran down to Lowe’s for a few things. I had to get some outlets, switches and face plates. I also had to get some joint compound. When I was leaving, it started to snow. For a while, it was coming down pretty good.
I thought I would get a picture of the front of the Lowe’s in Middletown that I always go to…
The snow got worse on my ride home. I took the opportunity to grab a nice shot on one of the back roads pretty close to the house.
I got a little further with the kitchen walls. Now I have two walls done. Well, they have the first layer of joint compound on them. They still need to be sanded and then another layer. I can’t wait to get them all done and painted.
Just a few minutes ago, I brought the floor cabinets out to the front porch for Paul to take in the morning. He wants to use them in his basement for a workshop. I then took the last wall cabinet down. Things are pretty messy upstairs right now. I brought that cabinet downstairs to use for my stuff. Now, I have a nice wall’s worth of cabinets down there, hanging from the ceiling. It’s good to keep things off the floor.
There is only one more cabinet in the kitchen and that’s the one with the sink in it. It’s a long sonofabitch, so I am not sure of my plan yet. I have to move it out to get to the wall. Maybe tomorrow, I will move it out, do the wall and then move it back.
Just for giggles, I thought I would show you the wallpaper that one of the previous owners decided to put on the walls.
Can you say, “crack head?”
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Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
Well, this has just turned into a happy little project.
I was all excited about my new belt sander and how I was going to show everyone in the world how I can make gold out of coal. Well, I ran into a little unexpected snag.
This morning’s task was to sand one part of the wall that goes along the hallway. I was going to sand it, put a skim coat of joint compound on it, sand it, skim coat it, sand it and then paint it. I was hoping to have a photo for tomorrow’s post. Well, tomorrow’s post will have a photo, but not of my handiwork.
This is how nicely I sanded the wall this morning. It’s nice, right? I did a great job. I ran that brand new belt sander all over the place and made things nice and smooth. It was like a baby’s bottom. With the utmost confidence, I put a nice thin layer of joint compound on the wall. It came out really nice.
I did that and then walked into the other room to get some work done. I was going to start sanding in a while, after it all dried. At this point, I think I had a little macho in my walk (I can get like that). After a little while, I came back in to look at the wall. I noticed that many parts of the paper underneath (I think the wallpaper) were bubbling. The moisture of the joint compound had made the wallpaper wet and separate from whatever it was holding onto. I thought to myself that it would dry and stretch back out, which it probably would. Then, I thought of myself not sleeping because I would know that I did a crappy job.
To make a long story short, I have a delivery of twelve sheets of half inch sheetrock coming tomorrow. I am taking the whole room apart and putting it back together the right way. I should’ve done that from the beginning, but then what fun would I have had?
It I ever become a politician, my first order of business is going to be outlawing wallpaper.
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Friday, November 30th, 2007
As you may be aware, we are starting to remodel the kitchen. Yesterday, I removed most of the floor and moulding around the doorways. As I was removing one piece of moulding, I noticed some 60s looking wallpaper underneath. I immediately put my hand up to my forehead and slid it down my face. I am not sure why it’s 60s looking wallpaper, since the house was built in 2000.
This is what pisses me off. Let me get this out in the open. If you are going to do something to your house, please do it the right way. There is no reason in the world why you can’t remove wallpaper from the walls before you paint them. I just removed the top piece of wallpaper (not painted over) that went around the entire room. It took about an hour. All I did was to pull the shiny coating off and then squirt the paper part with some water. I waited for it to soak in and then pulled that part off. Again, it took about an hour. We removed an entire bedroom worth of wallpaper in less than a day. That included the ceiling…yes, the ceiling.
I have always wondered why the kitchen walls were so lumpy. Now, I have to spend about a week scratching and removing, scratching and removing and scratching and removing. It doesn’t help that the paint these people decided to put on is as thick as plastic. It’s like pulling taffy.
So thank you. Yes, thank you to the people who owned this house before us. Thank you for taking the ten minutes out of your lives to paint the kitchen a beautiful gray. You could’ve saved me a lot of time if you had just left the kitchen the way it was…with the wallpaper.
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