A Family Effort

For those of you who have remodeled a house on your own, you quickly find that there are plenty of projects that require an extra set of hands. As was the case with this weekend's projects - ceilings! I don't have to tell you that old houses - with foundation problems - will eventually have problems with the ceilings (and walls and floors and etc etc :) In particular, the master bathroom was in serious need of repair, but the problem is how to repair it. The easiest way overall was to put up new sheetrock over the old lathe and plaster. Of course one could always patch up the cracks then texture it or popcorn it, but the problem with that solution is that in old houses like this one, they actually put a wallpaper like material on the ceiling over the dried plaster. And unless you can pull all of that off, there's no point in trying to texture it with joint compound or popcorn because the paper will suck up the moisture and peel off (trust me, experience speaking here). Thus the only real course of action is to put up new sheetrock. And boy isn't that fun...

While this is the easiest solution to a cracked and falling ceiling, it requires a little more help than my two own hands can muster up. Enter - my dad for the weekend :) With the master bathroom being probably the worst ceiling in the house, that was the first project we needed to tackle in the 72 hours while Dad was here. However, because the walls & ceilings are angled, we first needed to drop the ceiling down a few inches so we could match up the new walls on the angles to the ceiling itself. Enter another slight problem - using a stud finder with lathe and plaster doesn't work all that well, thus it's the time consuming action of trial and error with a drill and screw to find the studs. But once studs were found and furring strips attached to the ceiling, my job started with measuring and cutting out the 1/2" sheetrock that was to become the new ceiling. A day later, it's done! At least, that part of it - mudding and sanding are still to come, which means a few more days of sore shoulders and a neck!

The next big issue to tackle was the ceiling in the second bathroom upstairs, which fortunately for Dad and I is much smaller. That ceiling only took a few hours, no furring stripes needed (though I still have some smaller parts to screw up). The next job will be to put up new sheetrock on the cracked and water damaged walls, then a new tiling job.

The last job Dad and I tackled into the late evening last night was the dining room wall. The west wall, after years of the foundation settling** (see footnote), had cracked and bulged out considerably. Fortunately, the only thing holding it up was the fantastic wallpapering job my mom did years ago when we first moved into the house. But with nearly ten foot ceilings, this was no small job for me alone to do. Usually, when putting up new sheetrock - either over the older wall or after tearing down the plaster - I pull off the door & window trim and baseboards. No easy task given the fact the baseboards are 8 inches high and have a high tendency to break in half when trying to remove them. Note - when the builders put it up initially, they didn't want them taken off!

Once the walls were up, one last thing Dad wanted to tackle, and consequently giving me one more project to add to the already growing list. With the demand of hard wood floors in today's housing market, Dad wanted to see how rough the original hardwood floors in the dining room were. While the entire house has wood floors (some more finished/polished than others), we had them all re-carpeted when we bought the house back in 1991. So, with fingers crossed, we pulled back a section of the carpet in the dining room to discover that overall, the wood floor is in very good shape, despite needing a good cleaning and some small nails and staples (holding down the carpet tacks and padding) removed. Lucky for me, I don't think the floor will need to be sanded, only polished and maybe re-stained in some areas to match the original coloring of it. While it will be different to walk into that room and have no carpet, I agree with Dad's idea that the hardwood floors will add more appeal and value to the house in the long run.

And so the work continues...

Master Suite

While I've shown pics of the updates to the bathroom, I realized I didn't put up any pictures of the master bedroom renovations over the last month (or two). Thus, here you go! At first I only thought that I'd have to replace the southern wall, but it turned out that as I tried to strip off the old wallpaper that the north wall too needed to be redone, and instead of patching it I just put up new sheetrock up over the older stuff. With a few more minor touches and some paint, this room will just about be done.

New Wall for the Confessional

The upstairs hallway has a unique closet - it was once a confessional! As far as we've been told anyway. However, despite this neat aspect to the house, there was one slight problem. As with several other places in the house, the back wall had several years of water damage to it, which of course led me to go ahead and replace it. My daddy always told me if you're gonna fix something, might as well do it right.

So the last few days have been not only finishing up the last details of the new walls in the master bedroom (largely mudding touch-ups), but also tearing down the wall behind the closets (no fun) and replacing it, mudding, sanding (even more no fun), finally painting it and putting it back together. With this done, I can turn my work to the adjoining bathroom.

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...