2nd Floor Renovation Update

Hey y'all,

It's been a busy week for the house, particularly the master bathroom and the upstairs hallway. If you recall from the Nov 15th post on the hallway, I had a bit of an issue when I ran out of the tabs needed to put up the ceiling - somewhat important when you still have about four feet to finish. After a couple of attempts to create my own tab-like thingys, my luck struck gold when the manufacturing company told me they'd send me some more tabs for free :) So on Wednesday my tabs came via Fed-Ex and guess what project finally got finished? (well, almost) I still need to buy more trim for it, but overall, it's up and looking good.

As for the master bathroom, it is almost finished! The floor tile is down and I grouted half of it Saturday. I have about 6 or 8 tiles to stick up on the exterior shower wall, which I plan to have finished tomorrow, in addition to putting the toilet back now that the stool area is grouted. After the tile and grout is finished, I have some more trim to put up around the edges and touch up on some of the paint, then overall the bathroom will be finished. We're still decided what to do with the ceiling and I'm hoping to find a cabinet to put under the double sinks - if not, I'll have to try and make something that will finished that look off.

This week will most likely be spent finishing up the bathroom then turning my attention to the bedroom itself. I've decided to sheetrock over the north wall instead of trying to patch it - it will take less work overall instead of patching. Getting the sheetrock up the stairs is a challenge, but once it's up the easy part begins.

Master Bathroom Work

It's been a crazy and work-filled week, both on the house and outside it. My good friend, Rene, had emergency surgery about 1.5 weeks ago and while recouperating, I filled in teaching her preschool and beginner gymnastics classes in addition to the team girls I help with three nights a week. And as for the house, the worst part of the work is still to come.

I began working on the MBa in the closet, by finishing pulling off the wallpaper that was already detaching itself, only to find that the north wall needed a serious patch job. The other two walls are newer and didn't need repairs, given they were built when we first moved into the house to make a closet (the bedroom had to adjoining closet). But after seeing just how much needed to be patched, I decided it was easier simply to take off the floor trim board and put a new piece of sheetrock directly over the wall and make a new wall. So that was a three day project (by the time you mud and sand and mug and sand a few times) but I'm glad to say it's done, the closet is painted, and we can move on to more pressing things.

As for the bathroom itself, several challenges await, the biggest and most questioning is the ceiling, as you can tell from the pictures below. Something, though I'm still not sure what, will need to be done for the ceiling but I'm perfectly content right now with leaving that until last and moving on to the floor.

After finishing some basic trimming that needed to be done on the 2x4 walls, Saturday I began the no so much fun job of putting down the backerboard in preparation for the tiling that I hope to get done in the next few days. It was my first time with backerboard, and while it wasn't too bad in comparisons with other things I've done, my fingers did hurt after screwing it down every six inches. I also discovered that cutting 1/2" backerboard isn't as easy as my Dad made it out to be. Apparently he'd never work with 1/2" before, only the 1/4" inch, which I plan on working with for a few of the small wall jobs that also need to be done in the bathroom. Let's just say that a couple of scores with the cutting knife doesn't quite get the job done when it comes to the 1/2" (unlike the 1/4" I'm assuming since he told me '2 or 3 times with the knife and it breaks like sheetrock').

Needless to say, today begins the long process of getting the tile cut to put down and then hopefully mudding will begin by Wednesday.

Goodbye Scaffolding!

Remember that staircase scaffolding I put up those many many months ago???

(hint - http://313eastmain.blogspot.com/2010/08/fixing-old-fallen-walls.html)

Well, it is finally time to take it down! The wall and ceiling have been patched, mudded, and now painted, and it was time to bring it down so I can finish the bottom half (which ironically was being blocked by the scaffolding). So please, enjoy it with me ~ Jen

I'm BACCKKKKKK!

Just a quick note to say that I'm back in town and work on the house has begun again. After a vacancy during the holiday months, it's time to brace the cold weather and get things done!

Updates once I get somethings done - currently painting...

Hey Hallway, lookin good!

As I've posted before, lathe and plaster is a pain in the butt. If you think walls aren't fun to redo, try ceilings. Not only is it hard to replace plaster ceilings when the 2x4 supports run this way then change to that way whenever it feels like it, but it's also difficult when the ceiling isn't level.

Luckily for me, my Dad's a pretty good bargain shopper, which is why we have a lot of things we may or may not use. If there's a sale, he feels inclined to buy. But occasionally he gets lucky and such was the case for this nifty new ceiling fix - tongue and groove boards designed especially for ceilings to give that wood floor look up above. Dad got a great deal on the ceiling panels, but with only 100 sq ft the question became where could we use it? The master bathroom ceiling was in desperate need of having something done to it, but there wasn't enough square footage to cover it all. So where else could we use it that needed it? The upstairs hallway. Bazinga!

Of course one of the hardest things when putting the ceiling up was leveling off the ceiling. Seems simple, but when the 2x4 studs in the attic run left to right for three feet then up and down for another 2.5 ft, finding studs to screw furring strips to is somewhat difficult. But once it was done, the ceiling was easy and simple. Measure, cut, screw into place. Unfortunately for us, the reason for Dad's bargain shopping was most likely the result of a special order which was returned to the store - with parts missing. There happen to be these little tabs which slide into the grove section and hold the boards in place by being screwed into the furring strips. Well, when the three boxes were returned, only one contained the tabs, so I only got about a third of the ceiling up before I ran out of tabs.

Regardless, the ceiling looks really good (even better once it's done and molding is put up) and I was really happy with how easy it was to drill through so I could hang the light in it's old spot. Here are pics before and after (as far as I can until I find more tab thingys).

Ladybug Invasion!

I know a title of Ladybug Invasion may raise some eyebrows - what exactly does it have to do with the house repairs? Honestly, nothing, except that every time I pass the kitchen/nook to go to my workstation/utility room to get a tool, I have to stop and vacuum up the darn ladybugs which have somehow managed to get into the house. They're usually hanging around the sliding door or the kitchen window, so I just drag the vacuum from room to room and vacuum them up until the latest group of them get into the house (and how they're doing that I'd love to know). Guess until it gets really cold I've just gotta keep the vacuum plugged in.

The last few days have given us great weather - I mean great as in in the high 60s/low 70s for Nov, yet at the same time given us 25-40mph winds (can't figure out why the winds won't blow during a cold and crappy day when I'm working inside so I can have a nice non-windy day to work outside on the ladder). Needless to say, despite the wind, I've spent the last few days working outside on the house, finishing touch-ups on the paint and providing disappointment to the squirrels who live in the porch by blocking off all points of access in the underlying of the porch. Lucky for us, we didn't even need to go buy the wood for this project - our neighbors took down our privacy fence on the east property line when they replaced it with one of their own and were nice enough to leave the old boards in our backyard. Thus, the fence is now a porch roof :)

Since Dad and I redid the northeast corner of the front porch roof, making it more of an actual slope so the water wouldn't collect like it had done in the past (flat roofs are terrible for that problem), it also meant we had to redo the fascia on that part of the porch since it was now wider than it had been (and also giving the squirrels another way of getting into the porch, and from there, the house itself). But that is now fixed and painted, so hopefully the squirrels will leave once and for all.

Well, I'm signing off so I can finish the master bedroom wall, which is just about done - one last final sanding and it will be ready to be painted. More to come later!

How did they build houses with lathe and plaster?

Question - how did they ever build homes with lathe and plaster? It's a pain in the butt and I hate working with it...(see video below!)

I know it's been forever since I posted last, but things have just been crazy! From going to a job interview in Ohio and back and forth between IL and KS after a month's stay in IL working up there for a while - I'm finally back in KS to stay and back to work!

Quick update: The house, except for minor areas like around some windows and the porch railings, has been painted!!! Good to go for another 15-20 years (and hopefully I won't be painting it) So that big project has been tackled. I'll finish the rest bit by bit while the weather holds up, but in my eyes it's done and I don't have to worry about it!

Dad was down here last weekend, so we worked on putting up new sheet rock on the second floor ceiling in the hallway and on the ceiling of the master bedroom. Dad also had some luck in the clearance section of Lowes and found basically what is tongue & groove wood laminate that is designed for the ceiling. We only had about 100 sq ft of it, so we weren't sure where to put it. There were several places upstairs that we could have used it since the lathe & plaster ceilings are cracked and/or falling down, and we seriously thought about using it for the master bathroom, since that ceiling really needs to be redone somehow. But after debate, we decided to use it in the hallway to cover up the unleveled ceiling. Once I have it done I'll be sure to post pics.

As with any old house made of lathe & plaster, several of the walls are cracking or have already fallen down (largely due to the foundation settling and other things like water damage from bad roofs, etc). Luckily, most of the walls that are cracked are being held up by 20 year old wallpaper Mom put up when we first moved into the house, so it's just a matter of putting up new sheet rock on top of the wall and Ta-Da! A new wall! Currently, I'm working on finishing up the master bedroom (see video) and soon will move on to other items on the list - which continues to grow every day it seems like.