The Living Room is livable!

Had to publish this picture so I could show off my floors again...

Once again my friends were a HUGE help! I was able to get the dining room and living room painted and organized. My friends even made it extra happy with a smiley face on the door (which will be replaced next Monday).
One friend and I were able to put one coat of paint on the two rooms in a little over an hour, thanks to a handy edging tool I got from Sherwin Williams and my friend's fast handy work with the roller. However, when we were done with the first coat, I decided it was too dark, so I took another trip to Sherwin Williams to get a small can of base white paint to lighten the paint for a 2nd coat. It's important to make sure you measure the same way each time you mix paint... which is just what I did and my 2 batches turned out just right (Goldilocks would approve).

After letting the 2nd coat dry for a little while, we ended up removing the paper/drop clothes from the floors and cleaning up the dust that had accumulated from all of the touch-up sanding jobs. By the end of the night we had placed the area rug in the living room, which took a lot of furniture maneuvering and measuring/cutting of the carpet pad to get it right. Once that was done we arranged the furniture and were exhausted, but extremely happy to have a comfortable place to relax. My friends were determined to make my living room livable... and I think it's appropriate that the orange paint on the walls is called "Determined Orange." It sets the mood for this whole fixer-upper project.

SLIDESHOW - - What a coat of paint can do...

Paint Progression of dining room and living room
primed dining room painted dining room painted dining room with orange wall McDuplex living room scraped living room wall painted living room with smiley door

How NOT to fix a hole in the wall.

When I took the baseboards off of the the walls in my dining room, I was able to figure out how the former owners tried to fix a hole in the wall. First, I came across a fistful of caulk. Caulk is NOT the answer to everything, but some people seem to think so. Secondly, I figured out that in order to keep the caulk somewhat in place, they filled a plastic grocery bag with paper towels and shoved it in the wall before covering it with caulk.

How I think you should fix a hole in the wall - - I removed the caulk-grocery bag-paper towel combo, got a wall patch, and used joint compound to cover the mesh/metal wall patch. Fancy that... hardware stores actually carry products MADE for repairing walls.

Bye McDuplex

It’s time to say goodbye to the McDuplex and paint over the red paint. In order to paint over such a dark color, we (some friends and I), first, had to prime the walls. A coat of pure white made such a difference. The whole room opened up and looked much more inhabitable. We hit a couple of snags in the priming process though. First of all we noticed some bubbling of the paint after putting the primer on it. I decided to start scraping those areas and the paint just kept peeling. We weren’t able to finish the priming because once the paint was scraped it needed to be sanded and smoothed with wallboard/joint compound before being primed. The pictures show what the walls looked like with the red paint and after being primed and scraped. Another snag was that someone had made some marks with a blue marker that refused to be primed over. It’s best not to write on walls at all… but if you are going to, please don’t use marker! It will either require sanding off or multiple coats of primer letting each coat dry fully (which takes at least an hour).

I wasn’t planning to do anything more than prime the walls this weekend, but my friends who were helping me were also willing to paint the ceilings. By the time they were done with that, I realized that the walls that I wanted to be my accent walls were done drying and could be painted my non-neutral color. Some people will baulk at such a bold color, but after initial apprehension we applied the orange paint, it dried slightly darker than it was in the paint can, and really does look good. It actually really makes me happy. We even painted a lot of the kitchen, which needed some sort of pick-me-up. Moral of this story, don’t be afraid of color. After all, it’s just paint. Unfortunately the yellow is still around and the horrid red door so my main level now looks like the warm half of the color wheel.

Windows are in and priming commences!

It only took the contractors a day to install the windows and they look MUCH better than the previous ones and they work really well. Hopefully they'll decrease utility costs too. Nonetheless, they increase the value of the house. The metal casing is gone and is replaced with primed wood, and the windows are vinyl and don't have mildew residue on them. Amazing!

My most recent project is getting the red rooms ready to prime. I've scraped, sanded, and spackled the walls and I've removed the baseboards. I'll write soon about the priming party I'm having on Saturday.

New Windows -- delayed

Thanks to Tropical Storm Ida, the rain will prevent my windows from being installed this week. Crossing my fingers for Monday. In humorous news, my brother -after having commented on the McDonaldsness of the current paint colors- asked if I was getting a drive-thru window installed. =)
The jokes keep coming.

Finished refinishing the stairs!

I spent a couple hours here and there sanding my stairs so that I could finish my floors entirely. Just so you could see before-after pictures of the same spot, here are the stairs before I moved in, and after I put a coat of sealant and 4 coats of varnish on them. What a difference!

New Windows!

Even though my walls desperately need a good coat of paint, I've decided to focus my energy and money into winterizing and greening my home. I knew that I would need to get new windows eventually, but the ones in the basement were original windows to the house built in the 1950s and had to go ASAP. I actually had to tape one of the windows so that it wouldn't open. Classy, huh?

I scheduled an appointment with my good friends Home Depot to get quotes on window replacement. They're getting installed sometime this week, so I'll post some before and after pictures.

Attic Reinsulation - muscle building, but dirty job

I researched attic reinsulation and found that foam insulation is the most energy efficient because it creates an air seal that blow-in and batting insulation do not. Although in order to do foam insulation in an attic, you have to create a clean surface. I spent my first weekend in my home being very itchy because I had to remove the old fiberglass insulation and a large nest. The insulation had obviously been there for a long time and the squirrel skeleton indicated that the nest had been too! I don't think I could have handled a recently dead squirrel and am extremely glad there were no live ones either! So there's looking on the bright side.

If you do choose to remove old insulation, make sure you wear long sleeves/gloves/mask and don't pack the bags full like I made the mistake of doing. Its too hard to get them out of the attic, and they're more likely to split and then you have to double bag them anyway. Just fill them 1/2 to 3/4 full and tie them tight.

The following Monday I realized that squatting in an attic for a weekend makes for a really good glut workout.

Here's a picture of my cleaned out attic


Using the spray foam insulation was actually pretty easy. I was lucky to have the perfect temperature day to do it (70 degrees) and my attic now looks like this:

It's M-F-ing Hardware Time

http://www.marriedtothesea.com/110109/HARDWARE-TIME.gif

If it becomes a shirt like this one - -
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/021506/booze-time.jpg
- - I think I'll be required to buy one.