This is the tedious part

After hours of working last night, we got the small room painted

and another coat of compound on the wall repairs.

This is the part of home repair that always drags on and on for me - the wall patching.  Ugh.  Can't wait to be done with that!

More...painting...

I had my bedroom ceiling, office ceiling and walls, and dining room ceiling skimcoated. 

(skimcoat: coat with a mixture of gypsum and spackle; "he skimcoated the drywall", dictionary.com).  The bedroom and office had to be done as the paint was crackling and falling off.  Apparently the original primer didn't get a good grip!  The dining room ceiling was just ugly.  

The contractor did an ok job.  It's better than I would have done, but not as flawless as the guy who did my hallway ceilings.  Why didn't I hire that guy back?  Well - he made me uncomfortable.

Of course now I think I should have gone with brief discomfort - or had Jaimee deal with him ;) - as this guy didn't do as good a job, and he took nearly 2 weeks to finish.  2 weeks is a long time not to have a bedroom or easy access to your clothes... 

Anyway.  It's still a better job than I would have done.  Since I really wanted my room back, I took Friday off and primed and painted.  Max came to help, and by Friday night all 3 rooms were primed and the bedroom and office ceilings were painted.  Sunday I finished the dining room.  So after 2 weeks of work, a not -inconsiderable amount of money, and an exhausting weekend, I have 2 rooms that look...almost exactly like they did 2 weeks ago.  I mean, the paint is no longer falling off, which I think is great, but I'm reliably informed that many people don't actually notice that.

Phooey on those non-detail people!  I think it looks good.  And now I can finally paint the walls in the office - right after I pick the color.  And clean up all the joint compound dust that's all over the house.

In other news, my garden looks lovely.  New plans and some hard work from Hobs - it's coming along!  Pics soon.

I am very beautiful.

Nope, I'm not bragging. Just sharing the text message I received yesterday - from the contractor I hired to skimcoat the ceilings. While he was IN MY HOUSE. With KEYS. Can we say awkward??? It was just a generic compliment - he's married, and that was his last day of work so I wouldn't be running into him again - but really. This is the kind of message you send your clients? Oy.

(A friend reminded me that his livelihood depends on his rep, so he's probably not going to copy my keys and murder me in my sleep - ok, I watch too many crime dramas - but I still asked R2 to check the house to make sure he wasn't hiding in it last night :P).

Anyway, the hallway ceilings are ready for painting! He didn't quite do as much as I was hoping - he didn't patch some spots on the molding, and he's not quite the perfectionist that I am - but it looks damn good. Already much better than I could have made it! So here's to painting this weekend. And with any luck, a hallway that looks somewhat normal!

Colors. Have some. Need more.

So, does anyone else have any interest in paint colors? Thought not. This is for you, Mom.

I need a color for the molding. The horrid peach pink shade in the hallway just isn't cutting it... Here's the current color palette of the house. And - I swear it isn't actually this ugly in real life.

I have all these nice paint chips... Help. Suggestions welcome!

Adventures in lame-handed painting

As it turns out, it's not the actual painting/priming that is difficult one-handed, it's the prep work. Perhaps this should not be shocking, but I was a little surprised... But after sanding the last coat of compound, then cleaning up the dust, then washing the walls - that was one tired right arm!

At the end of the day, the long hallway wall is about 3/4 primed. I had some small technical difficulties along the way. Like - R2 kindly set up the long ladder for me to reach over the stairs before she left for the day, but I needed to move it in order to reach one spot on the wall. Um - can't move the long ladder using only one arm. So - that spot not sanded, therefore not primed. And the wall over the stairs would require lots of ladder shifting to paint, so that one isn't done either. I'm also messier when painting using only the right arm - but I have to say, no longer looking at the red/yellow wall is a vast improvement. Even if I'm now looking at splotchy primer ;) Look for more lame-handed painting to come!

Did I mention

That I fixed the fence? 'Cause I did. Before and after below. Dang those winds - and all the things I know now about fence creation with lattice that I didn't know when actually creating the fence...

From Re-fencing

Did I also mention I was trying to fix my elbow again? Yeah. Fun fun. But enough already with the tendinitis. I mean, not only does it make picking up a beer painful, but the hammer swinging was really not joyous. So all real work is on dr-ordered hiatus. However, I am looking forward to trying right-handed painting this weekend. The last hallway wall needs one more light sand, and it should be ready for the priming! If the right-handed priming goes well, then I'll actually paint too... Don't get too excited to see results yet, though. One friend has already told me she has "a feeling it's going to end with a quarter of the wall painted and you with a beer in your right hand - icing your elbow". Only time will tell... Wish me luck!

Almost...ready...

Another day of wall-work. Joy. But the upstairs hallway wall is about ready to go. And the stairway just needs one more sanding, which would have been done this weekend if I hadn't already tired myself out sanding and decided dealing with the unruly and heavy ladder was beyond me.

I got a little excited at the end of the day, thinking that I could actually prime the moldings as well (for those who don't know, they are a hideous peachy color). I have realized, however, that there might not be much point in doing that... If I'm going to tear up the equally hideous linoleum, I'll end up probably needing to redo the moldings after the floors are redone. Or maybe not. Maybe touchups and shoe moldings will cover it... I shall contemplate. Because they're really damn ugly.

In other news, thank you to the nor'easter for exposing my mediocre construction skills. Part of the fence blew down. Just two cross braces and one piece of lattice, but still. Well, now I get to showcase my mediocre repair skills!

Oh - and from an article in the Real Estate section of today's NYTimes:
"Much work remains. “Once you own something, it is never going to be done,” Mr. Krause said, “but I didn’t expect that so many things would present themselves so quickly.”" Man is he ever right!

Yup yup, still going.

Still workin' on the walls. I know, super exciting. I did take a tiny pause and actually hung some of the art that's been waiting in the living room and the library. And I primed one part of the hallway during the "snow day with no heat and therefore no power." But basically, still working on the hallway walls. Which reminds me - anyone have a brilliant idea for vacuuming behind a radiator? The tool doesn't fit, and there's plenty of joint compound dust back there now.

Mom suggested that I hire someone to skim coat the hallway ceilings. And she's probably right. But, um, the washing machine broke. So I fixed that - and therefore must really do the ceilings myself. Anyway, it's supposed to be a rainy weekend. So if anyone is around and feels like some wallwork, I've plenty to share, and some beers for after...

Why is my paint peeling?

A marvelous question. Why, oh why, IS my paint peeling? At least - some of it. Mostly in the hallway.

On Sun I spent three hours scraping off loose paint, creating an extremely ugly patchwork effect on the upper part of the wall. I was a little unsure what the next step should be - do I have to patch all the spots I scraped, as that would almost be skim coating? Can I just feather the edges? How come it's peeling????

So I applied Google. And discovered that in the absence of a leak, the problem sometimes occurs when the house has several old layers of oil paint and is then covered with a latex paint. Sometimes it's because there was originally calcimine paint used ("Since calcimine is essentially a water-based mixture of chalk and glue binder, in time any modern paint applied over a calcimine base will fail." courtesy of http://www.oldhousejournal.com/cures_for_calcimine_ceilings/magazine/1015).

The question now is - what do I do with the areas where the paint is still firmly adhered? I'm thinking I'll just clean what came down, seal it with a nasty sealer, and then maybe just feather the edges. But that might make a really wavy wall... Anyone dealt with this one?

I should have learned to love the wallpaper.

That would be - what, 907? - on the list of things I wish I knew before buying a house... Those involved in/sucked into the house since its purchase might remember that the hallway came wallpapered, in a mildly unattractive (though could have been worse) floral pattern. I of course did not like said wallpaper, and when we discovered during initial renovations how easily it came off, my crew of marvelous helpers yanked it all down.

You know what's under wallpaper? A sh*tton of paste. And cracks in the plaster, bad plaster patch jobs, and crumbly plaster. So before I can repaint the hallway, I have to a) finish removing the paste, b) fix the plaster, and c) take care of the spots on the ceiling with peeling paint. Last weekend I finally spent some time removing wallpaper paste. On a great note, it comes off quite well with the aid of water with vinegar, a scraper and a sponge. On a depressing note, I think 2 hrs gave me about a 5' x 5' area of clean wall. Um - and tedious jobs like washing walls are not my favorite things to do. I prefer things requiring brain power... At my current rate of progress, it may be July before the walls are ready!

Moral - perhaps I should have learned to like the wallpaper...

I'm a terrible skim coater.

Truly. I can only hope I get better - at least I'm getting lots of practice! Last weekend I spent two days starting to fill in the lumpy ugly part of the dining room ceiling. It'll take several coats to bring it all up to the same level, I think. While filling, I decided to see how smooth I could get it, as the last coat will have to be damn smooth. Consensus - well, if I wanted the ceiling to look like the ocean... Lots more to do there.

I also tried the Peel Away 6 on part of the moldings. It did ok, but not outstanding. I need to try the Peel Away 1 and 7 I think. And of course try my not-yet-built infrared paint remover. But the real question is - who paints moldings GREEN? Seriously, 3 layers down was green paint! Ick.

The plumber also came on Monday. I have to open a wall in the downstairs closet to try to locate the leak from Erin's sink. On the list for this weekend...

Clean clean clean!

Yes! For once, we ended the weekend with the overall house slightly cleaner than it was before the weekend! Finally we may have broken the cycle!

The wallpaper paste removal began in the hallway, thanks to a good friend. It looks much better (though the wall itself needs lots of work), and no longer makes me shudder when I brush against it. The removal makes a pretty big mess though, so we washed the walls and scrubbed the hallway floors - sparkling! We have to figure out how to get to the area over the stairs. We have some ideas, but any others would be gratefully accepted.

Thanks to more good friends, the basement is now as clean as a basement will be (though despite urging, I still think we will not be holding Thanksgiving in the 'torture room' in the basement). We re-arranged, vacuumed, cleaned up debris, and hooked up the dryer.

I started investigating the crappy portion of the ceiling in the dining room. It looks like they tried to replaster at some point, but the plaster is very gritty and doesn't look too sturdy. Kind of looks like crumbly cement. I'm going to try to repair it with setting-type joint compound, as several sites have recommended. If that doesn't work I'll have to just take it down and put a piece of drywall up there.

Erin did some sanding on that wall - and then an absolutely marvelous job of cleaning the dust (some of which was still there from original drywall sanding!). Although the dining room will become messy again very soon, it feels much more relaxed to me...

New low-flow showerheads are up! Haven't checked w/Erin yet, but mine is a vast improvement over the one that was there.

And yes, I'm still flipped out about the waterbug Erin had to hunt down in her room on Thursday night. We've sprayed with this Orthomax stuff from Home Depot, hope it works. Next step is to sprinkle boric acid up in the attic. I'm accepting volunteers for that - extra beer for hazard pay...