Day 7: House of Creme Brulee

Enter freely and of you own will... and you will do so through THIS FOYER WHICH IS NOW FINISHED!!



(and the crowd goes wild)

That paint color - 'creme brulee' - is also the color we're going to use for the base boards and molding in the living room. The rest of the house's moulding will be white.

Meanwhile, back to the wallpaper:



Here's what you're looking at. The blue is the base coat of paint in the room. The off-white is the paper backing of the wallpaper that would not peel off. Here's what you do with that:

1. Sand down the edges of the wallpaper.

2. Apply 'Liquid Nails' industrial strength adhesive over the edges to keep them from peeling up. (That's the brown stuff in the picture.)

3. Wait for it to dry.

4. Apply primer to the whole damn mess.

Oh, and that blue paint? Guess what we found underneath. You got it: another f%#!ing layer of wallpaper!!!

Please remember, kids - Just Say No to Wallpaper.

Day 6: House of the Vanities

Today I worked the late shift, so Lea was pretty much on her own this evening. I taped some stuff off this morning, but she had the unenviable task of painting the multitude of complicated and inconveniently arranged flat surfaces of the Master Vanity. It turned out looking great:



That color is called 'Feldspar'. It's a slightly lighter green than what we used in the bedroom, and Lea will be quick to point out that it does not in any way resemble the actual color of the mineral of the same name.

She then took on the even more horrific task of removing the tattered wallpaper from around the kitchen window. Here's what it looks like now:





That actually looks better than it did before. Someone else who'd lived here had also had the idea to remove the wallpaper, started the job, then gave up in frustration and just left it. And no wonder: apparently there were four layers of wallpaper around the window.

Let me go on record with this: whatever the design problem you may have in your house, Wallpaper is never the solution. It's all ugly. All of it. There has never been an attractive wallpaper in the history of wallpaper.

To finish today's post, let me leave you with better pictures of two of the previously posted rooms:

Master Bedroom


Guest Bedroom

Day 5: House of Blues

Lea got back in town a little early, so we tackled stage 2 of the guest room:



We're going to drag a glaze over the paint on the top and bottom stripes in the room.

Once again, apologies for the poor lighting.

Day 4: House of Incremental Progress

Not much today to show. Lots of little things, such as more taping and spackling. (I swear, after we're done with this I never want to see another piece of blue tape as long as I live.) Also, I went and picked up 64 feet of chair railing from 84 Lumber for the Hobby Room. We've got to let it sit in the house for a few days to adjust to the temperature/humidity before putting it up on the wall. We also have to wait for Lea's step-father, who actually knows what the hell he's doing.

It occurs to me, though, that I haven't put up any photos of the outside of the house. Here they are:





Here's the view from the back porch:



Does it get any better than that? I think not.

Just to prove I did some work today, here it is:



That color on the bottom left is called 'Scotland Road'. It's purrdy.

Day 3: House of Definite Progress

Too.. tired.. to.. type..

Here's what we got done:

Dining Room - metallic finish

Brush and roller marks everywhere. Tiny tiny small print on paint can: make sure to use the special 'metallic finish roller cover'. Dammit. 2nd layer later in the week I guess.

Hobby Room - Finished!!

Look! It's yellow!

Guest Room - Middle stripe, 2nd coat

Finally, a smooth finish. And look at that straight line at the top! Sometimes, we even impress ourselves.

Foyer - 1st coat

Thanks to my brother Joel for lending a hand when ours were about to fall off.

And finally...

Master Bedroom - Finished!!

Pardon the poor lighting for the picture. Those walls are actually a bright, springy green.

Tomorrow Lea's out of town. I'm on my own. Wish me luck!

Day 2: House of the Learning Curve

I mentioned yesterday that we had a plan. Here it is:



Got that? Good.

A key part of this plan was that we were going to use a paint sprayer to spray all the rooms quickly and easily.

Yeah, right. I'm sure any of you who have actually tried to use a paint sprayer is shaking your head right now. Anyway, here is the offending implement:



And here is what it does to you:



It doesn't save you any time either, because before you can use it you have to do this:



Which takes just about as long as painting by hand would have, and it sprays you and the ceiling anyway and does not spray the walls evenly, quickly or easily.

Anyway, after chucking the damn thing outside, we picked up our paint pans and rollers and did some work the honest way. Here's what we got accomplished:

The Hobby Room - yellow paint, coat 1


Dining room wall - Cactus green undercoat


Guest Bedroom - solid blue middle strip, coat 1


Hallway - Castle Rock (tan/yellow)


Special thanks to Mom, who helped us tape down tons of stuff today!

Day 1: House of Tape and Spackle

Here's the raw house, as we got it.

The Kitchen

The Dining Room

The Living Room

The Guest Bath

The Guest Bedroom

The Hobby Room

The Master Bedroom

The Master Vanity

The Basement


As you can see, every flat surface in the entire house is painted the exact same shade of 'renter's beige', or whatever that color is. We'll be doing something about that: We bought about 26 gallons of paint the other night. We have a plan. (really)

In addition to painting, we're going to rip up and replace the carpets in the three upstairs bedrooms right away, and do something about the rest of the flooring later. The first big thing we got accomplished was to have the garage door fixed. It only cost about $100 and the previous owners hadn't bothered to have it done the entire time they lived there.

Not to mention that they didn't bother to clean anything, and threw a screaming full-on raging hissyfit when it was suggested they should. There's dust caked up in this house you wouldn't believe. Also, it seems that no tenant in the entire 25 years of this house's existence has ever spackled over a nail hole in the wall. EVER. There's about a dozen holes around the top of every single window where each person who lived here hung curtain rods up in a different place and tried to hide the holes of the previous people.

So guess how the morning started? Unfortunately, I had to go to work today, which left Lea to finish cleaning and start taping baseboards, doors, windows, floors, and vents to prep for painting.

See:

and


More to come tomorrow!

Day 0: Well, here we go.

Pictures will follow later.

According to our contract, we had possession officially at midnight. As of today, the previous owners who have known for two months that they were moving out still haven't moved all their stuff out. More bitching will follow...

This blog will document our home improvement projects on our new house. We begin with the cleaning, to be followed by a complete re-painting. We want to have enough of the house painted by Labor Day to work on putting up some new molding. Carpet will be installed on September 15th, and the movers bring our STUFF on Monday the 18th.

At least, that's the plan.