Room Craziness

It's been a rough week.  Whew.  Poor K is wiped out...  I can't keep up, either!  We've been working on the walls and ceilings in our rooms with hardwood floors, in order to get those walls before the floor guys come in to do the refinishing on Monday.

So, patching, mudding, sanding, painting our plaster & lathe walls.  Trying to repair years of damage and neglect.  It's totally working-- the walls look 100 times better!  It's just a LOT of work.

K used a sprayer to paint all our doors and windows, which were previously all a very industrial-looking tan (which we're SO sick of!)  We figured this would be a big improvement until we replace the windows, and visually, it is definitely much better!

Newspaper & painter's tape = cheap stained glass

Living room window, mid-taping

Post-spraying

She also sprayed all our vent covers, just so we didn't have to go out and buy all new ones right now, on top of all our other expenses.  Some of them were painted weird, just like our trim, and some were just old-looking.  Now, they may not all look perfect when you look closely, but they sure look better. 

Repairing progress in Baby's room

Above, the baby's room now has a smooth painted ceiling, painted windows and doors, and wall repair is mostly complete.  This room will have painted white trim around the windows and doors.  The other rooms will have stained wood trim.

Our room has a newly painted ceiling, painted walls, painted windows and closet doors.  The door to our room was too damaged, so we'll need to get a new one.  We decided not to mess with the texture on our ceiling.  I guess the look of it grew on us over these last couple years. But it was so much dingier than we had realized-- once K got painting it with the bright white paint, it was like, "WOW!"  It looks so clean and crisp, and the chandelier looks even nicer now.  Yay!

And ohhhhh, the living room.  I'm in love.  Seriously... we've never had a usable living room, in all the time we've owned the house.  For a few days, here and there, we've set up a sitting area when we needed to, but it was always on top of a big sisal rug, on top of the ram board from when we were working on the ceiling.  And there was always wrapped-up bookshelves in the corner, and storage stuff against the wall.  So, just never an actual "living room."
But it's already so pretty.
I'm so excited!

Living room, in progress

The ceiling and coves are smooth, painted, and gorgeous.  The windows are sprayed, which is a huge improvement.  K had to do some major repairs on the entryways to the room because the plaster had gotten nicked away over the years.  She built them back up, so now the corners are sharp and crisp once again.  And the walls, though still in progress, already look sooo much better.  :-)

Rough week, true, but it's so fantastic to see this progress and know we'll have actual finished rooms SOON!

Laundry Room Part 2

It's official--  the laundry room is now one of the nicest rooms in our house.

We've got big changes in the works, right now-- K will be starting her own contractor business, like... right now.  She'll have her license at the end of the week and already has a couple jobs lined up.  So that means we really, really need to get things in order here.  #1: She needs a GARAGE!  In order to do this well, she needs space for all her tools and stuff to be organized.  It's not just about our house rehab anymore.

For the last couple days, she worked on going through all her stuff that was stored in the basement and got rid of a lot of stuff, organized all the rest.  And yesterday she cleaned out and painted almost the entire laundry room!

New paint on the walls, new paint on the floor.  And she used some left over turquoise paint on our little storage room door and the shelves above the washer.  

For reference, here's what the room looked like before:

BEFORE

BEFORE

Office Ceiling - Part 4

Took a couple pictures of the office ceiling because it is sunny today!  It's so nice in here -- I have the ceiling light on, out of habit, but I hardly need to because the sunlight carries all through the room.

To the East...

To the West...

Lovely, sunny room! 

Office Ceiling - Part 3

Since I didn't post these last weekend, here are my last "progress" pictures and the finished product.

First, here's the scary scaffolding contraption that K put up over the staircase...  It was really stable, since it was resting on a wall, but it was scary to look down!

What a great girl I have!  She's almost finished... 

And now.... the finished ceiling.  I did take these pictures at night, so I'll need to take some during the day, too, because it looks totally different.  The light really shines off of the paint and reflects all over.

To the East...

And to the West...

I'm really happy with it, and I'm so glad I did it.  It's much easier to work on anything in this room, even in the dark evening winter hours.  And during the day it's just beautiful.

Big, Big Weekend!!

A couple big things happened this weekend...

#1 - K got the ceiling above my stairs painted, with the scaffolding on a ladder, high above the stairs.  So that means...  my office ceiling is officially done!!  Photos to follow, but I need to clean up the room first. 

#2 - K and I got ENGAGED!!!  We've been together for more than 6 years and have been discussing marriage for a while, but even more so once it became legal for us to marry in Minnesota!  K wanted to do formal proposal, and boy, did she...  Huge deal, public, friends and family involved, lots of secret planning, the whole deal.  I was surprised and thrilled!

As excited as we are to legally tie the knot, we would really like to have our celebration in Wisconsin with our families.  We have big families, and we are so incredibly blessed, because we have the support of almost every person in our families.  And a party of that size is going to take some planning, so we will need some more time.  And anyway, everyone is telling us to just enjoy being engaged for a while.  So that's what I'm hoping to do!

Here's my ring!  Vintage, 1920s...

Painting My Office Ceiling - Part 2

Got quite a bit of progress done lately on painting my office ceiling...  Which is good because I can't wait to get my office back-- it's a mess!

Here's one photo of the result.  I'm really glad that I left the strips of trim unpainted.  They tie in with the walls really nicely, I think. 

Painting My Office Ceiling - Part 1

Here's the thing with this office--  The wood in here is beautiful.  Even with a thousand staples and nails in the walls and ceiling, it's still so pretty.  The color is warm, golden, and I love how the sunlight looks in here.  But the wood just sucks up any bit of light.  The one ceiling fixture only illuminates the middle of the room, even though it has three bulbs.  I have two other lamps and two other hanging lights elsewhere in the room, and when they're all on it's OK in here.  But it's still difficult to do any art or sewing projects with the light that's here, and I want this room to be more functional.

I have gone back and forth a hundred times on whether or not to paint the ceiling in here.  And if so, which parts?  Just the middle, or the sides, too?  Or leave it as it is-- pretty honey-colored paneling that matches the knotty pine walls...   Once daylight-savings came this fall, I really got my answer.  There is NEVER enough light in here.  If I want there to be more light, I need to paint the ceiling.  I won't touch the knotty pine walls, but I need some white on the ceiling to help the light reflect through the room better.

Since the test primer stuck really well, I got started on painting the ceiling today.  It's late and I'm too tired to continue, and... I'm almost done.  There are a couple areas that are tough to get to, because I didn't move my stuff far enough away.  And the ceiling over the staircase is going to require some creative ladder-ing.  K will get some ladders set up for me later so that I can do that part.

Taping and plastic everywhere, and lots of painting by hand....  I'm trying to leave the two strips of trim unpainted, so there are all those edges to paint carefully. 

There were also quite a few things that needed to be removed from the ceiling before I could paint...
The first thing I did right away last year after we got the house -- there were about a thousand staples and pushpins and nails that needed to be removed from the walls and ceiling.  The previous tenants had obviously papered every surface in here.

Staples with tiny bits of paper...  Everywhere.

Then there were the letter stickers on the wall and ceiling.  Brilliant gems such as "Jazzer Size," "Fun Wasp Life," "Oops I Pooped," and "Golly G."  Actually, I think it's funny that I didn't take those off until now!  I guess I just got used to seeing them.

And the last thing were these mirror circles, stuck on the slope of the wall.  I didn't mind seeing them, and they actually reflected light from one of my lamps.  But after prying them off the wall, I want to kill whoever put them up there!  The adhesive has gotten SUPER sticky, and I'm pretty sure I've lost a layer of skin to the back of these things.  And I sliced my index finger with my razor scraper when I was trying to pry off a circle.  Not all of the glue came off the wall, but luckily the primer covered it up pretty well.

EVIL glue behind those mirrors!

The priming went really well, though.  I'm using a low-VOC oil-based primer, some that K had in the house already.  It's sticking very well, and covering everything I hoped it would -- there were random paint and marks in quite a few places.

I can't wait to be done with this project, because my room is a mess.  And I'm anxious to see what it will look like.  With just the flat primer, there's already a huge improvement in the light in here!

And K's been working all evening on shelving in the basement storage room.  She's re-using a bunch of the wood from the old work-bench.  I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Basement Storage Room - Part 1

Four-day Thanksgiving weekend seemed like the perfect time to get a project done...  Or at least started.   K got the idea that she could work on organizing the storage room in the basement -- getting rid of some things, organizing her tools.  And that turned into an all-out demo, cleaning and painting of the room!

This is how the room looked when we walked through the house the first time.  The tenants took the dresser with them, but the workbench was built in.  The carpet, the posters over the windows, and all the paint cans stayed and waited for us, too.  And once we moved in, we just put more stuff in there -- air conditioners, cabinets, tools...  Since it's out of the way, it was an easy place to stash things.

Workbench mid-demo

K was going to keep the workbench, because it was a nice size and she could either use it as a workbench or for storage.  But it was built right next to the walls and at some point there was moisture down there, so the wood had gotten a little rotten and weak.  It seemed like it would be better to start over, plus we could really clean the wall behind it and the floor beneath it.  Surprisingly, there wasn't much underneath the workbench-- just a lone flip flop and an empty condom box.  

First came vacuuming all the dirt and old spiderwebs, and then we did a good scrubbing with bleach & water.  The walls did have water-barrier paint on them, already, but it was dirty and the bottom had old mold on it.  The floor was mostly painted at some point, too.

We put new water-barrier paint on the walls, and caulked around the windows to keep spiders from crawling into the house that way (we can see lots of old nests on the other side of the window!)  And since the windows aren't functional right now --they are covered with insulation and siding-- we decided to paint over them, to cover the caulk and so we don't have to stare at the insulation.  Someday, when we replace the siding, maybe we will replace the windows with some that seal and insulate better.

The floor, as it was drying

Painting the floor was as big an improvement as painting the walls, I think!  The room is brighter and doesn't feel gross and dirty anymore.  We'll be putting some shelves and cabinets in there for storage. 

Our Kitchen Mural

Welcome to our kitchen!  Isn't it pretty?
We're pretty sure this kitchen scared away other potential buyers.  And of course, we're glad about it now!  But once we'd been in the house for a couple days, K said she couldn't stand it anymore -- it always feels like those 10 eyes are watching her...

Oh, and parts of it GLOW IN THE DARK!!  Parts of the eyes and teeth, and other various marks and spots are painted on in glow-in-the-dark paint.  No wonder K feels the eyes watching her.

Since I had the day off on a Tuesday, I decided to prime over it for her, so she wouldn't have to look at it anymore.

I took some time-lapse photos and turned them into a short video to document the covering-up of this masterpiece.
(For those of you with SLR experience, you might notice the video gets darker because I forgot to set my manual metering.  Oops.  Oh, well -- can't do it over!)