Memorial Day

I've been really busy over the last week or so... of course that makes it even more difficult to update this because there's more to write about.

I finished painting the front rooms of the house, but haven't put up pictures or anything yet. I'm not quite sure this is where I want to place the sofa but it'll probably stay there.

It came out pretty well - the color matches the white / green in the pillows. I'm still not sure what to do with the windows but I'm not in any hurry.



As usual, the green color of the sofa doesn't come out. You'll have to use your imagination here.





I had to take a couple of days off to clean up and do other things...




I've spent the last few days working on enclosing the tv hole. The project started off small, but it keeps on growing. I wasn't going to add a door, but I had to take the trim and all the drywall off anyway and it's easier to do now while everything is apart. Since I was building a wall it wound up being a great opportunity to move an outlet out of what's becoming a closet and into the living room. I also fixed the bad job the previous owners did of installing the speaker wires.



Before


It took a lot longer to remove everything than I thought it would. All the corner pieces added a lot of work, and I had to cut the floor by hand.


Finished removing things, now it's time to build.


Drywall going up...


How it looks right now.

I'd normally write up a bit on how to frame and hang drywall, but there are guides all over for doing that. One thing I don't see a lot of are opinions on installing doors. This time I went with a prehung door from Lowes. These are split jamb doors and both sides of the doorway sort of come together as mating pieces. I found it far more difficult than doing it the traditional way, putting in the jamb in one piece, then hanging the door and installing the casing. The pieces are too big and awkward to manage very well on your own, and that slows everything down.

Anyway this week I'm going to finish sanding the drywall, prime and paint the entire room (of course, thanks go out to my wife who was essential in picking the best paint color). With any luck we'll be done in here by the weekend and then I can move on to a few more annoying things around the house after we finish unpacking from the move.

Pictures of the Mess

Now for a few pictures of what I've been up to...

It's all kind of small stuff so far. When I moved in the doorbell was missing and a cheezy sounding wireless one was in its place. Those didn't exist in 1959 so there had to be something going on here... I dug through a pretty solid plug of painter's putty to find a hole but only one wire was barely visible in there. I guess the old button broke and they lost the wires somehow, and decided this was easier than running wires back down the hole to where they belong.

They were right about which would be easier... I had to pull off the trim and a couple of small pieces of siding to feed the wires back down.



I also discovered that somebody went to a lot of trouble to remove the porch light and make it look like nothing was ever there. I came across the wires in the attic just sitting there with the ends exposed when I was digging through some insulation. It's always nice when someone just leaves something like that there waiting for you.

I've also spent a lot of time painting. That's really gone far in terms of making the place smell better, because the walls picked up the dog/scented candle to cover up the dog aroma parts of the place had. Not to mention that it looks better.




One last look at the dirty tan colored walls.



Looking much better



Ready for paint. I started to paint this room the same shade of blue the master bedroom in the old place had, but it really wasn't coming out so I called it off. The new plan is to go for the same color that some of the leaves in the upholstery have... kind of a sort of off white. We'll see how that works out.

The family room is getting closer to being ready for paint. This room will be a blue that matches with what's in the rug. I'm not painting this room until the old tv hole is walled off, but I'm painting the entry way / living room before I do that just to keep the chaos limited to one area.



The last thing I've been working on is the oven. It was pretty bad. I'm really not sure if it's ever been cleaned or if it's only been so long ago that it really doesn't matter. So far I've only cleaned the door and that took hours! I took the glass panel off the front and broke the door all the way down. Even between the glass and the metal behind it there was a ton of grease. Enough to eat through the paint on the metal completely!



Here's how the front looks now.



And the inside. It's pretty clear I have a lot of work still to go.



That's pretty much where the place is now. I'm continuing with the inside of the oven, unpacking, painting the front rooms and then working on enclosing the tv hole. I want to be finished with at least a couple of these things before the weekend is out.

cleaning and unpacking - what fun

WOW it's been too long since I've updated this... Only yesterday we got internet service set up so I've been doing these and basically anything online from a coffee shop down the street. And of course it's late, so pictures will have to come sometime tomorrow.

So on to progress. The floors are clean anyway, and everything else like showers and other stuff you use on a daily basis. At this point we're still solidly in the first part of the project - sort of getting the place more liveable so we can kind of get a feel for the house and what would work out best. I've also been spending a huge amount of time unpacking and writing up the claim for damaged and lost items.

The walls were way beyond cleaning so we've been priming all of them. So far the entry way, most of the kitchen, living room and family room are some shade of white. The dark purple is taking two coats to hide of course, and there's loads of damage to the walls to repair. The family room will be a shade of blue that works with the rug... while the entry, dining, living room and kitchen will be some kind of off white that matches the upholstery on the couch. Neither of these two colors have been figured out yet.

I've also been playing around with the oven. It smells bad when it's turned on because it's probably never been cleaned, so right now it's in a half-assembled state on the kitchen floor. Sad thing is, that's just the door. Scrubbing it led to wanting to get out a lot of nastiness behind the glass, which led to the paint behind the glass coming off because it was no good anymore and now the door is taken apart so it can be cleaned and repaired completely. With any luck it'll be back together tomorrow. It's probably more effort than anyone else has put into a 35 year old Jenn Air but at least it won't be a huge filthy thing in the center of the kitchen.

Future plans are starting to form. I'm thinking bigger/more windows, and maybe a vaulted ceiling in the den (but something would have to be done with the fireplace). Not sure, but I still have plenty of time.

Done Cleaning (Almost)

First off - sorry I haven't responded to comments yet. For some reason my work computer doesn't work very well with however they're set up on this site. Anyway on to the pics...

Like I said earlier, before and after pics of dirty vs clean are hard to take. Here are a few attempts anyway.





My first project will be to make this room some color that's NOT purple. Nothing against Barney or the high school I went to, but it's a terrible color to paint a room. This is the TV hole I'm enclosing. It'll become a regular closet after I'm done. The hole works great if you happen to have a tv that exact same size. Of course nobody but the previous owners do.

The main bedroom came out pretty clean. The bathroom took extra scrubbing though.



The den is taking a lot of extra work. I know the carpet isn't something that we'll keep. But I'm not ready to work on this room yet. On the other hand the room smells horribly like dogs. Two of them used to use this room as their highway to the back yard (dog doors). Last night I got a carpet cleaner from Lowes and used it once. It made a huge difference but the smell isn't completely gone. However you have to be in the room, and it's a lot lighter now. The carpet also came out a different color so that's a nice bonus. I'm going to run it again this afternoon and in the evening before returning it.





I decided not to post the pic showing the fireplace to the right with all the dog fur everywhere.



This is how it looks right now. Lots cleaner but there's still more work to do. For now I'm waiting on the movers to show up so all our stuff will finally be here. At least I made the goal of having clean floors before furniture is in. Next up will be painting (everywhere) and enclosing the TV hole.

I'm still figuring out what to do with the strange molding and baseboards. It really doesn't go with anything we own, or the house at all but I may leave it up for a while just to speed up painting the place. It needs to be done badly, and I'd rather get all the rooms a decent color and then worry about what to replace it with and how to take it down. Really the worst part are the corner pieces so I may try and match the crown molding that went up and splice in new pieces there.

More to come soon!