Renovating Bedroom #2

My son has been extremely patient with our schedule in renovating the house. A week ago, we did our daughter's room and now it's time to take care of his room. His room is slightly smaller and also has a smaller closet. Luckily, he has a lot less crap in his room than she had. The morning of July 4, we emptied his room and got ready to renovate it. His room had the original hardwood floor already exposed, and it's in good enough condition that we don't want to mess it up. The original closet bar and shelving was removed, along with the doors and electrical plates. Dig the horrible blue paint in the closet. It's bad in the closet, but it must have been worse on the walls of the room. Yes, all the walls were at one time painted this shade of blue!




Here's a minor irritation for me. The outlets in the house are all grounded outlets, but there are at least two different styles in use. The thing which really gets me is that some outlets have the grounding plug towards the bottom of the outlet, but most are what I consider upside-down. I'm guessing that these were installed for some reason by the previous owner because they are installed with the wires shoved into the push clamps on the back of the outlet. I'd think that most qualified electricians would go "old-school" on it and bend the wire to use the standard screw lug. I used to use the push-clamps until I found the wires slipping out during the installation. No thanks, I'll take the extra time to do it right. (The previous statement was in no means meant to infer that I actually do things right at any given time on any given project)




I'm damn-well afraid of screwing up the existing hardwood floors with paint and texture spraying, so I went overboard to protect them. First was a large paper drop-cloth, followed by the tape and paper edging to protect the base molding and trim. The trim paper was taped down on all seams onto the main paper drop cloth. On top of this I placed a plastic drop cloth, and taped it down around the edges. Yeah, I know paper and plastic drop cloths aren't extremely sturdy. Since I'm the only one who goes into the room until it's painted, I'm not too worried. If I had people in there to help, it'd be covered with a heavier drop cloth. Either way, it's now completely covered.




Not only was the floor covered tightly, the door frame and window molding were also covered in a way that would make sure they were safe. During this process I came to a conclusion regarding painter's tape. BUY GOOD QUALITY TAPE. The blue tape in these pictures is the standard 3M tape you can get at HD, Menards, etc. The stuff works well and sticks until you want to remove it. No surprises, no mess. The purple stuff is tape that isn't worth it's weight in goat carp. This stuff is sold under the "Pro Painter's Plus" name, and was cheap (yeah, I'll admit it). It works OK in taping down the flat seams of paper on the floor, but even on something simple like taping the perimeter of the window frame it shows how bad the quality sucks. The ends won't stick down and the edges keep lifting. As I type this, I throw out the remaining rolls of this crap.




Part of the incentive we gave the kids when it came time to leave the only house they had ever known to move into a fixer-upper was that we would allow them to pick their own room paint colors. Well, we told them that they could pick the color, but we got to pick the shade of that color. That explains the color in my daughter's room. No matter what shade we picked, I'd hate it. Oh well, I don't have to look at it every day. When it comes time to sell this house, we'll paint over it. My son had originally wanted blue for his room, but then changed his mind and picked green. I'm good with that, as we wanted more "earth tones" for the house anyway. He asked for what I consider a lime-green color, which I just couldn't bring myself to allowing. I asked him if he'd rather have more of an "army green" instead, which he loved the idea of (he's 6, so that was almost a given). I have a couple of large color rings from Sherwin Williams and we settled on a couple of different shades. We'll do an accent wall in a slightly darker color than the main room. Which shades? I don't know yet. I'll know when I go to the paint store Friday night. For people choosing a number of different colors for a renovation, I strongly recommend spending $20-30 or so to get these color rings. It really makes picking colors less of a gamble.

Stupid Window Tricks, Part 2

I'm on a posting frenzy today. I recently posted how I as able to update the look of my windows by removing some old 60's design elements. Well, today I learned a little more about the old windows. There are a couple of latches on the top sash which when released, appear to allow the top sash to be moved in some way. In what way, I wasn't sure until today. I didn't know if they just allowed the glass to drop or to be completely removed for some reason. This afternoon, I had removed one of the screens to get ready to replace the old screening. While the screen was out, I flipped the levers and the whole top sash tilted out. Not for cleaning, but for airflow. Why you'd use that instead of the lower sash (which has the screen) I don't know, but it's still kind of cool. The few windows I've tried so far move easily and were not painted shut, which surprises me to no end. Considering I don't want bugs in the house, I don't think I'll be using this window feature a whole lot.







Not shown in these pictures is the before & after difference after replacing the old screens. The screen frames were a little different than I had worked on before, but it's not like replacing screens is rocket science. The old screens were gunked up and nasty. The new screens (I used metal instead of the cheaper vinyl screen) almost disappear compared to the old ones.

Raise the Roof!

Now that school is out for the year, I've got a friend who's a teacher coming over to give me a hand with my roof. He does roofing & siding jobs in the summer as a way to keep his wife happy with the extra income. Actually, it supports his golf habit. I'm expecting to remove two layers of shingles, which should be fun. I know there are two small leaks to deal with, one in the garage (water slowly drips onto the concrete floor - not a big worry) and one around the chimney (no showing water damage inside, but there is evidence of a leak when you look from in the attic). I'll add a full ridge vent and remove some unneeded vents on the back of the house. I'll also add at least one tube-light (similar to a skylight) to help light the hallway and probably another for the main bathroom. The gutters need to be re-hung as well to make them flow properly, so this is as good a time as any to do that.

I'm willing to bet that the roof has never had shingles removed. Figuring that most shingles have around a 20-25 year life, and the top layer looks to be at least 25 years old, that would account for everything on the roof right now. The top layer is pretty brittle and curling in spots, so I hope it comes off easily...

More 60's Style Bites the Dust

As I was re-doing my daughter's bedroom, I took the time to look more closely at our windows. All windows across the front of the house had an insert in them which was laid out like a wine rack - diagonal mesh, basically. You can see what I mean easily in this winter shot of the front of the house:




We hated that design with a passion, but figured we were stuck with it until we got time & money to replace the windows. As I was looking at the windows in my daughter's room, I noticed some small clips on the inside pane of glass, as well as some slide clips on the ugly insert. Being the super-genius that I am, I figured that if the glass could be removed without breaking the clips, I could remove the ugly. And so it happened. Two clips have broken so far due to being brittle with age, but the inserts are gone! I didn't take a proper "before" picture, as the wife and I were too happy about just being able to remove these damn things. Here's basically what we started with (ignore the ugly paint choice - my daughter is 9 and it was her choice):




A few minutes later and we're left with "normal" windows. Best part is now we don't have to replace the windows just to update the look of the house! There are two windows, however, which have the glass cracked on the outside pane which I'll have to replace and reglaze at some time in the future. Still better than replacing the whole window though. I consider this a 10 minute facelift which removed at least 10 years of age from the house.




On an unrelated note, does the Project Tracker I have on this blog show up properly on people's computers? It works fine for me at home, but at work it doesn't show any detail properly. Maybe due to a firewall??

The Devil is in the Detail

Yesterday I figured I'd have my daughter sleeping in her own bed tonight, after I got the electrical outlets changed, the floor cleaned, etc. Well, considering I "work" for a living my time is limited. It took an hour to change outlets, another hour to remove old crappy window blinds and clean the glass, etc. By the time all is said and done, she's sleeping on the couch again tonight. Good thing she likes it...

Wheel Grease, Part 2

From the time we purchased this house, we knew there were hardwood floors hidden under the carpeting in two of the three bedrooms. The third room with exposed hardwood has a floor which is in decent shape. It's a bit worn, but doesn't need to be refinished. The big question is what kind of shape is the hidden wood in? Oh, and I removed all the tape and paper protecting the woodwork and windows after painting. Here is where we start the adventure into the unknown: crappy carpet on the floors.




How crappy is it? Well, the main carpet is in OK shape - it's not worn through or anything like that, but it's skid-mark brown. In the closet was what may have been original carpet from the house or a remnant added at a later date. Below is the wonderful closet carpet which was tacked down around the whole perimeter of the closet. Orange and brown isn't much better than all brown.




As I tear out the above pictured section, I'm hopeful. It looks good, and only has the staple holes for damage. The carpet in the closet was really a bitch to remove due to all those small staples, but I managed. I rule, remember.




So far, so good. The carpet is half-removed except for the tack-strips. Still no damage which would explain why the previous owners covered the flooring. No water marks, no rot, no pet stains. Even the carpet looks clean underneath, which surprises me. The padding is still in good shape considering it's age. I'm more worried than ever as to what may be hiding on the still covered floor.




Amazing enough, NO DAMAGE! Just normal wear & tear, but not even enough to warrant refinishing the floor. I'll give it a good cleaning and then put something on it to protect it's finish and call it a day. There aren't even any noticeable wear patterns in the floor. This means the floor still covered with carpet in the master bedroom will be in crap condition... In all, painting and removal/clean up of the floor took 5 hours, including breaks while paint dried. Tomorrow I'll install the new outlets and switch plates, put in the new blinds, and have it ready for my daughter to spend her first night in the "new" room. It's only a guess, but I would estimate that the changes I made to this one room have increased the value on the house by over $1,000.00. Once all three bedrooms are done I'd bet the value goes up by around $5,000.00 total. They just plain look soooooo much better it'd be a solid selling point.

Squeeky Wheel Gets the Grease

My daughter has been asking (bugging, whining, and complaining) long enough about her bedroom. The carpet is ugly, the paint is horrible, and there are nail holes everywhere. If all I were going to do is paint and remove the carpet, life would be easy. There are enough dings and layers of paint meaning the best option for me is to re-texture before painting. This brings things up to current "style" as well. Sunday morning, everything was removed from the room.

Here's the starting point. I've already removed the closet doors and the shelving. Nail holes were patched.




All the trim was covered up, but I'm leaving the carpet in place (for now) because it's old and crappy. It's also going to protect the hardwood flooring which was covered up a decade or two ago. At this point, I'm just hoping that it's still in good shape. Either way, it'll still be better than the current carpet.




The next big step is to texture the walls. I tried a different mix than I had used previously. Up till now, I've always taken standard drywall compound in gallon buckets and thinned it with water to the consistency I want. This time, I got the powder mix. This should be less expensive overall, and I don't have to worry about using the compound before it dries on me. So far, it's not bad. I think the mix was a little thick, but still workable. Here, you can see the larger "splats" which are still wet on the wall. As it dries, it turns off-white and matches the current paint.




Paint the walls with a brush and roller? No way, a sprayer is the way to go! I used this one a few years back in renovating a condo and love it. In the time it takes to paint the four walls in one bedroom I was able to paint two bedrooms, a hallway, two bathrooms, a living an dining room, and a kitchen. All walls and all ceilings. Seriously, that's not an exaggeration as to how fast it is. For as fast as it is to paint, it is just about as long to clean. For a small room (bathroom), I'd probably just use a roller and brush.




10 minutes and a 1-1/2 gallon of primer later, the room is done and drying. The annoying thing with how fast the sprayer is is how long I have to sit and wait for the paint to dry before doing the next color. I gave it 1/2 hour and sprayed the ceiling white. I'm giving it a few hours before hitting the walls with the color. The sprayer uses a bit more paint than by using a roller, as there is overspray and all the paint in the hose. Either way, for a large room or series of rooms, the extra cost is wort it. I find that I also get a smoother appearance than compared to rolling paint.