Recent Reno – Post 6 of 6

Posted by pamlasmith in Carpet Removal, Dining Room, Living Room, Molding, Paint Colors, Painting and tagged with , , , ,

Who’s ready for some before and after pictures? I know, I know, I’m super mean for making you read five whole blog posts and wait three weeks before showing you the before and afters (or well progress pics). Max and I had to work for it, so I thought it was only fair that you did too!

Remember when the LR and DR looked like this:

and this:

Well not anymore! Shazam! Now it looks like this:

and this:

Next up – the nook/landing. Remember back to this picture?

You should see it now!

We know the condition of the hardwoods could be better, but we love it!

Oh, and I can hardly remember when Elsie’s room looked like this:

and this:

Not anymore!

The other spare room has shown major improvements over its previous condition too! Shown here:

Buh-bye paneling and wallpaper – hello awesome paint and new molding!

Then there’s our room, which I hated when it looked like this:

and this:

and this:

Now I LOVE IT!!!!

My favorite part is that all of the colors go so nicely together. You can see how well they coordinate where the master and Elsie’s room meet at the end of our hallway.

We love the progress our big little renovation made to our house. All of the space feels so different, and it is actually looking like us and our style. We’re super happy with the way everything turned out. There are still many items on the “to-do” list which I’d consider as is par for the course for most DIY projects. Here are a few things that were left undone:

1- Filling in the holes in the molding from brad nails

2- Caulking the molding

3- Painting the molding

4- Actually hanging things on the walls (curtains, pictures, etc…)

5- Painting Elsie’s Room’s Ceiling

6 – Desperately need to pull out the SLR to take better pictures (Whoa!)


The first three items  encompass easily another whole weekend of work, and since we needed rest before getting back to the grind we just let it slide until later. Number four is already in work. I have purchased a lot of items that just need hanging and ordered some photo prints before Christmas.  So again, all these remaining items will just have to be sidelined to wait for some free time. I just have to remember that  life is about the journey and not the destination.

Recent Reno – Post 5 of 6

Posted by pamlasmith in Uncategorized

WOOO! FIVE! We’re almost to the end! This day was a mismatch of solving problems, returning unused items to home stores, working on the finishing touches, and wrapping up cutting the molding. Again, my parents came out to support the efforts!

My Dad and Max kept plugging away on the molding. My mom and I painted some of the old molding in the family room (not replaced), ran errands, and painted the previously yellow spare room’s closet. It was a pretty full day and I was happy to reach the end of a few tasks. Nothing too major to show from my mom and my efforts. The window sill in the family room and the closet door appeared a bit yellowed which we repaired with a fresh coat of white gloss.

The major issue we were working on this day was that the HVAC register we removed needed to be replaced, but the slot for the register was very skinny as shown below.

The issue is that when we install the register grate over the hole, the molding has to sit on top of it. This is not a big deal and would probably never be noticed by the average home visitor (see below).

The problem is that once we nail down the molding there is no getting that register out of there, and when we go to replace the floor we need to be able to remove the register. In many cases, we’re going to do our best to follow recommended/best practice procedures, but sometimes snafoo’s like this one pop up. Then you’re faced with the dilemma or doing everything the “right way” just the way the works for us within our budget. We decided to temporarily install this molding by drilling pilot holes and partially hammering in some finish nails (not the threshold kind). This way  they could be pried out to remove piece of molding and the register when we go to install new flooring. Here was our solution:

We left  the nail sticking out about 1/4 inch, and only used a few nails to hold the molding to the wall until new flooring is installed at a later date.

As for the remainder of the changes on this day no progress was apparent in pictures, but it was important to call this day out for a very important safety lesson learned. When using  power tools,  exercise proper safety precautions and remember they are dangerous. This day came to a close with a visit to the ER, and Max getting a tetanus shot (he shot his thumb with the nailer – oops! We’re just glad it wasn’t the saw!). We were in and out pretty quick and Max was good to go in the morning. The next day’s plans were exciting- clean up and get the house back to normal!

Recent Reno – Post 4 of 6

Posted by pamlasmith in Bedroom, Bedroom Remodel, Carpet Removal, Molding, Progress Pictures and tagged with , ,

From my previous experience, the first several days were smooth sailing as far as old house renovations go. Day four was the beginning of experiencing set backs. We started out first thing in the morning by tearing up the carpet in the upstairs. At this point we discovered two fun things. First, we found our closet floor was covered by contact paper (OMG- who does that?). Second, we found out that the carpet installers GLUED down the carpet padding to the hardwood (seriously what were these people thinking?). We didn’t have time to care at that point, so we just kept moving by taking all the old carpet to the Gucci Dump

Next, we stopped by Home Depot to pick up all of the molding. We had already pre-shopped, and we knew we were purchasing contractor packs of 5 and 1/4 inch base molding for just about $1.10  a linear foot. We hadn’t concretely decided on a casing molding for all of the doorways and windows, but we landed 3 and 1/4 in width of  a fairly traditional style which was again about a $1.12 a linear foot.

This quickly added up to most of our budget, so we were careful to only re-do the molding on walls we knew we were keeping (there are some major wall moves and removals in the planning phases). We made the decision to remove and replace all of the base and casing molding for several reasons: the molding had been painted poorly many, many times; the molding was not coordinating throughout the house; the molding was not capable of hiding many of the imperfections in the drywall around the floor left from removing old school HVAC registers and paneling. The list could go on, but I won’t bore you. The first snafoo with the molding we ran into was getting the 16 ft long pieces/packs of molding to our house. We own a pick up truck, but Max was rightfully nervous about the extreme weather conditions (very windy) and crazy drivers in our area with us scooting along with 6-8 ft of molding sticking out behind our truck. We rented a 12 ft bed Home Depot truck for an hour to get the molding home, and we made it home with no damage to our load.

When we arrived at the house, my parents were already there hard at work removing the carpeting tack strips and staples. (SWEET!) I took on the task of returning the Home Depot truck and picking up our truck, leaving Max and my parents back at the house to work.  When I got home, all of the tack strips and staples were removed except for in the master bedroom. The master bedroom was double tack stripped, which at first didn’t seem too bad, but it definitely took double the time. Also, the installers used finishing nails ( the kind made for thresholds) made it that much more difficult to remove the tack strips. After finishing up with the removals, I tackled the contact paper in the closet, which luckily came up with no problems. This was not so much the case for the glue and double sided tape.

My mom and I spent more than a few hours with a bucket of warm water and soap just wetting and slowly scraping the glue and tape off the floor. It came up but there was still some damage to the floor. All in all, I’m happy because we did the best we could and we eventually plan on doing something to the floor down the line. Plus any angle I think about it from, the hardwood is still way better than carpet.

I’m sure you’re wondering where were my Dad and Max all afternoon while my mom and I were on glue duty? My Dad was showing Max how to measure and cut the base and casing molding. All I know is they were in and out a whole lot, every once in a while I’d hear, “it’s 38 1/4 and a line – what do you think?”, and someone would reply, “oh yea 38 1/4 and a line” then they would scamper around back to the saw set up. They got pretty  far before we decided to call it a night, but there was still plenty to be finished up the next day. Here are a few shots of the hallway and bedrooms with the base molding placed, but not installed. Also, some/most of the case molding is adhered to the walls, and the carpet has been removed.

Here’s the master bedroom:

Here is the spare room that I call Elsie’s room. There has been no molding around these doors and windows for months. Also, this is  the room I plan to paint stripes in at some time. As you can tell from this blog post, in order to make progress for the molding we had to remove a lot of the items we were storing in here.

This is the upstairs hallway, and it is apparent that the doorway at the end of the hallway was left incomplete at the end of this day.

And lastly, here is the stairway and nook.

Recent Reno – Post 3 of 6

Posted by pamlasmith in Bedroom, Dining Room, Living Room, Paint Colors, Painting, Painting Prep, Progress Pictures, Replacing sockets, Valspar Signature Paint

On the third day, “monkey paw” as well as many other aches and pains started setting in. I’m sure the first thing that’s coming to your mind is… what is “monkey paw”? Well, monkey paw is the term we use for the hand cramping that occurs for those of us who are more or less desk jockey’s at work and then spend 24 of the previous 48 hours doing home improvements. I’m no doctor but logic would suggest it comes from using muscles that are not regularly used to grip items such as hammers, crow bars, sanders, and paint brushes  to an extreme. Unfortunately until you work to the point of numbness, it can be quite painful (oh yes, this is how we roll). This was our physical condition when we started off day three.  Not to mention this was the day that the mess started really getting to me. There was debris all over the floor despite constant cleaning and everything was everywhere and there was nowhere to put anything (I’m an everything in its place kind of gal so, this really bugs me). Here you can see in this picture of Elsie all of the little wall pieces and random things placed all over the floor. Please keep in mind this was only a snap shot of a 5 ft by 5 ft area, and the whole house was in this condition.

When considering all the aches, pains, anxiety, and an analysis of progress made in comparison to time remaining to work/recoup, we decided it was best to nix the bathroom remodel. The good news is that we did some major shopping and learned a lot about what’s available and in style for bathrooms these days, so we did make some progress just not anything physical. Oh well, we’ll just wait until after the spring semester (guess I’m stuck with Christmas trees a little longer than I planned).

Day three began with a trip to the “Gucci Dump”, which is an awesome landfill because you drive up to a cement barrier and throw things over the side. There are no seagulls, no stepping in garbage, and there is minimal mud.  This was followed by stops at Home Depot and Lowes to get all of the paint (did I mention that we live 10 minutes away from everything? – Awesome!). We bought 5 gallons of Valspar Signature Paint Foggy Mirror, 2 Gallons of Behr Premium Plus Basketry, and lastly one gallon of Olympic Premium Paint Sand-dollar. Also,  re-enforcements (my Mom and Dad) arrived to help for the day shortly after we got home from shopping – WOOO!

We decided not to remove the carpet until after painting, and it served wonderfully as a drop cloth. The rooms really started to transform on this day.  Applying the color to the walls made a huge difference. My Dad and I took on trimming the foggy mirror gray.

My mom was assigned to the basketry tan color for the two bedrooms.

And last but not least, Max spent the first 8 hours of the day replacing electrical sockets and light switches because they were either a) painted over and unusable or b) a hodge podge of various colors. He also installed a ceiling fan in the previously yellow spare bedroom.

During this day of painting, I managed to paint every color and all three brands (Olympic, Valspar, and Behr) of premium paints on the wall. The first lesson I learned is that when your walls are in as crappy a condition as ours were, it is WAY worth it to spring the extra dough for the premium paint as it shows better coverage than non-premium (which was the ceiling paint from the previous day). Also in my unprofessional opinion, the Valspar Signature color had better coverage .  The Behr and Olympic were comparable, but not as good as the Valspar (sorry Behr and Olympic!). Next, we all discovered the accuracy of trim lines when using Frogs Painting tape over the standard blue paint tape or hand painting.  In most cases, I went back and touched up after removal of the Frog’s tape, but it helped expedite the process tremendously. Lastly, my Dad taught me a little trick to keep my trimming brush fresh. I learned that if I rinse out the brush periodically and dry it off with a towel after rinsing that it made little to no effect on the paint and it was easier to clean the paint brush when I finished.

Here was the progress at the end of day three:

Spare Bedroom – Behr Basketry (don’t mind the bed and check out the new ceiling fan!)

LR/DR – Valspar Foggy Mirror

Tricky Part of the Hallway shown only with the trim painted here (this was where I displayed my amazing balancing act!) – Valspar Foggy Mirror

Family Room – Valspar Foggy Mirror

Family Room (painted paneling) – Olympic Sand dollar

Oh, and did I mention I spent a lot of time in the sink last week? Yikes, here I am again!

We painted ALL day, and we finished all of the color painting – BOOM! I’m still learning to remember to get pictures of every room, so only the rooms I remembered to photograph were shown here (Oops!). It was awesome and celebrated by some serious sleep to prepare for the day’s next carpet removal and molding efforts.

Recent Reno – Post 2 of 6

Posted by pamlasmith in Bedroom Remodel, Living Room, Painting Prep, Progress Pictures, Spackle Dry Wall

As soon as we got home on Christmas night, we started packing away Christmas – kind of sad I know. We were keeping in mind the bigger picture and it meant we had to pack and stack away as much stuff away as possible to maximize construction space and items to be cleaned post reno. Preparing the house took easily a half a day of our timeline and here is what the house looks like in construction mode. First, there was stuff piled up wherever we weren’t doing any painting. Such as here:

and here:

Then we piled all of the items that were too large to move in the center of the rooms and covered them with drop cloths.

After finishing up more prep work, I ran around touching up on all of the spackling either by sanding or adding extra layers as necessary while Max started tearing down the paneling. Here is Max now working it!

Once we removed all of the paneling and molding in the master bedroom, it was not looking too pretty.

Next, came the spackling of the master bedroom. Then we began trimming and rolling paint onto the ceiling all throughout the upstairs, living room, dining room, and family room. By the end of the night, the ceiling had a fresh coat of paint. Since we decided to just repaint the ceiling white again, there wasn’t much to photograph but here’s the condition of the master bedroom at the end of day 2.

We also painted samples on the wall to select bedroom color for the master bedroom and the unpainted spare bedroom (the one with yellow walls) as shown by my lovely assistant Max.

I know that none of them are too different then the color that was revealed after the paneling was removed, but that was just chance as we had no idea what color was underneath of the paneling. We took a night to mull over the new color which wrapped up day two of the renovations.

Recent Reno – Post 1 of 6

Posted by pamlasmith in Bedroom Remodel, Dining Room, Living Room, Painting Prep, Progress Pictures, Spackle Dry Wall

After spending plenty of time contemplating (while painting, scrubbing, cleaning, sanding, etc) the best way to blog about all of our recent improvement, I’ve decided the best way to cover the whole process is just to go chronically. Six days of renovations makes for six blog posts. We started out with demo on Christmas Eve morning. The first day had a few items on the agenda.

First, we began by taking the paneling down in the spare room that was untouched. Here is the before picture of the room:


Once we starting taking off the paneling we found yellow walls underneath, fun!

Then we spent the rest of the morning spackeling  to prepare for painting as shown in a few pictures below (in the spare room and other rooms). I even got to sand one layer of spackle.

Honestly, everything was pretty tolerable this day.  We only worked for a few hours and we spent as much time working as we did cleaning up after ourselves ( shown below). I spent a lot of time in this laundry sink the last few days.

We tried to plan appropriately, so we could have plenty of time to rest for the Christmas Eve activities. Understandably, the progress wasn’t super exciting as we were still in the tear things down phase of the project.

Christmas Trees are Festive this Time of Year

Posted by pamlasmith in Bathroom Before

But who wants them on wallpaper in their bathroom all year-long? Not this girl, just saying. As many of you are already aware if you read this blog post that in our only full bathroom we have Christmas tree wallpaper as shown below.

Underneath the Christmas tree wall paper is another layer, which it looks like the previous owners tried to paint unsuccessfully. Anyway, I’m sure you might be asking yourselves what coordinates so well with Christmas tree wallpaper, that’s right sea shells.

Oh, the cherry on top of that combination is the yellowed marble print panelling and white linoleum sticky tiles.

Anyway, I’m bringing all of this up because Max so lovingly signed my permission slip to add an affordable bathroom redo to the list of items on the agenda next week. When we found out the paneling isn’t hiding tile earlier this week too, that was all I needed and my mind started whirling. The plan is to replace the current paneling with more modern paneling like shown here. I can’t wait. The state of the bathroom has really pushed the limitations of my tolerance, and I’m really excited for all the upcoming changes.

The game plan right now is to keep the vanity. Also, the lighting is covered because when we moved in we bought a new light fixture for the bathroom. Awesome. The only thing we’re going to have to work into the budget is paneling, new flooring (most likely a better linoleum tile), and well the anticipated big money grip – the new sink top. We’ve been debating checking out some of the reuse/recycle shops around here such as Second Chance of Baltimore. We’re planning to taking our measurements and our searching gloves  and getting our dig on before heading to Lowes or Home Depot to check out new sink tops – again like I already said I can’t wait.

The Holiday and the House

Posted by pamlasmith in Uncategorized

Coming up after Christmas, we have the whole week off AND NO SCHOOL! It’s really exciting to finally have time to finish all of the things we’ve been talking about doing for months now. There have been so many weekends that we have planned to do something, but the effort never got off the ground.

Lining up on the agenda for our time off besides cleaning up after Christmas includes:

Tearing down the paneling in the master bedroom and the other spare bedroom,

Tearing out the remaining carpet in the upstairs,

and, painting just about the entire house…

Since we decided on the paint colors a few months ago, I’ve wavered a bit so the final selections might be a bit of a surprise. This week long effort will most likely include tearing out the molding and re-installing new molding in the upstairs and the around the floor downstairs. I’m thinking this week I might walk through all of the things that drive me nuts on a  daily basis as a memorial to what’s about to be no more. Stay tuned.

 

(DesiredItem + MouseClick) – MoneyInMyAccount = Online Shopping

Posted by pamlasmith in Chairs, Living Room, Shopping Online

Despite the busy schedule happening around this house lately, something I have found plenty of time for is shopping particularly online shopping. I knew I wanted to work  a pair of chairs or a nice size chair with an ottoman into seating in the living room/ dining room. During recent consignment shopping, I found a chair and ottoman that seemed perfect, but I was trying to wait for the next price drop indicated on the tag. The day after the date that the price lowered, I was there to get my chair, but  it was gone. Oh well, I was not too upset  because I had resigned that if it was meant to be then it would be there on that date at the lower price (particularly because it needed to be re-upholstered – which would’ve been a project), so obviously  it was not meant to be.

Then two Sunday’s ago my mom text messaged me while I was doing homework that Target had  chairs on sale, and they were in my color scheme. A little online searching, followed by some g-chatting with Max, and we had decided we both liked this chair. At the time, it was more on sale then is showing right now (with free shipping), and it seemed like a bargain compared to some of the other chairs we were seeing around. I decided to ‘mull it over’ a bit, and then impulsively purchased them (yes that means I bought 2) one day during lunch last week.

Well the package arrived today and in Zdunosmith household fashion they were quickly assembled for evaluation! Well at least one was until I stopped the presses.  Then a ghost from my past appeared and my old ‘I’m afraid of patterns’ self just reared her ugly head. For those of you who didn’t know me before, I have in the past experienced difficulty embracing patterns and textures, but decided it was time grown into a new style which was more fearless. Needless to say, this has again left me in  mull it over mode. I’m trying to figure out if the chairs go with the couch.  Here is one piece of the chair on the couch, which has a slight pattern to it, with brown pillow:

Target Slipper Chair

Here it is with the rust colored pillows:

Target Slipper Chair

And here is the chair in potential chair location:

Target Slipper Chair and Couch

While I take the next few days to think it over, I’d love to hear if you think I’m just falling into my old – no pattern one texture way  - or am I right to intuitively feel like maybe these things don’t go together?

Blogging and Balance

Posted by pamlasmith in Uncategorized

It is a sad fact that I have not completed a new blog post  in  just about 20 days. The weekend following the my silly stripes post I was able to finish painting the primary color  in the spare room. Unfortunately immediately following the conclusion of the painting which was on a Saturday, it hit me that I had midterm coming up the following Tuesday and  immediately after it (immediately like met someone in school parking lot to go to airport kind of immediately)  I was whisking away to Huntsville, AL for work for a few days. There was no choice for me but to switch my focus from home improvements to the other things that I had going on.

The weekend following my return from the business trip, I had big plans to finish those stripes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t accounting for the fact that I would be wiped out from traveling and well I still had homework to finish. In previous years, I would have pushed through the pain, but these days I’m really learning the value and priority in getting those 6-8 hours a night. This is especially important with the delicate balance that is my schedule these days of working full time (while experiencing a job transition), attending graduate school, and well just life in general. I think this is a good lesson for me that it is OK for me to take a break and that I can’t be superman and do it all, all the time, every time. I’m in acceptance that although I make big plans, I won’t maintain my sanity if I beat myself up for not meeting home improvement deadlines as a result of my (very demanding) life schedule.

I look forward to continue updating you on the slow but steady progress in the house, and I’m going to let go and allow the evolution to take place in the time it’s meant to – that is until I finish school this Spring or Summer.  Stay tuned for additional progress of the spare room in the upcoming weeks.