Gretchen took to referring to this bedroom as the 'creepy room.' For good reason.

One thing you can’t see in that photograph is the wall that runs along the side of the room where the doorway is. There was a very old light fixture with no pull chain or any way to turn it on or off. So once a lightbulb was put into it, it was on. Forever. Until you unscrewed it. Another thing you might not notice is the lack of outlets on the inside of the room. The only outlet in this room was on the side of said light fixture. That’s no good.

Before starting this project, we had an electrician give us a few quotes on installing some new outlets around the upstairs (of which we only had 3. In the entire 3 bedrooms upstairs.), and updating the ones we have downstairs to grounded 3-prong style outlets. We ultimately settled on Lehigh Valley Electric. Bob was our electrician, and I highly recommend him. He was honest about what we needed and didn’t need and even gave us some recommendations on how to fix other various things around the house. He also put down drop cloths everywhere and cleaned up everything when he was done.

Back to the room. The first thing we had to do was get rid of all of the old furniture. We’ve kept some of the stuff, if anyone needs a twin sized bed frame or an old dresser. Once we cleared it all out, we started removing the wallpaper. This time, we’re using a Wagner Steamer.

I bought the steamer on ebay for a few dollars more than it would have cost to rent one at Home Depot (just around $50 for 24-hours, ridiculous). After using it for this room, I’d consider it well worth that few dollars. I don’t know why we always try to do things the “hard” way first, but our aversion to wallpaper removal technology really set us back a lot. We started downstairs with spray bottles of vinegar water and putty knives, then upgraded to vinegar water and razor blade scrapers, and finally arrived at a steamer and razor blade scrapers. I think we’ve hit our productivity plateau. I really do recommend a steamer for this job.

I also had to remove the old baseboard heater cover. Following the advice of This Old House, I bought a long reciprocating saw blade and cut the nails that held the cover on. Once the cover slid off, we were left with a nice surprise. About five inches up from the floor on the far wall of the room, the wall just sort of ended. There was a gap between the floor and the wall in which you could see insulation and the outside wall. I have no idea why it was like that, but I knew I had to fix it.

The previous repair job for this issue resulted in a thin sheet of some sort of soft particle board being nailed into the beam that runs across the gap in an uneven fashion. That resulted in a few “steps,” caused by the different layers of patching and it looked horrible. I tore it all off and replaced it with some leftover drywall I had from our bathroom project. Then taped the seams and used a healthy layer of joint compound to smooth it all out. You can see where this happened in the picture below. The greenboard runs all of the way across the room.

With the wallpaper and heater out of the way, we began the arduous process of sanding any leftover glue off, then sanding the rough spots on the walls, then patching any holes or scrapes, then sanding, then patching, repeat. At some point after the walls were nice and smooth and wallpaper-free, my dad came over to help us remove the awful light fixture and run the electric up into the attic so that we could install recessed lighting. Because our ceilings are a little low upstairs, recessed lighting really turned out to be a great solution. Here’s a photo of the room after installing the lighting.

The lighting really was fairly simple to install. We measured the room and marked three equidistant spots on the ceiling where the lights would go. We picked up one of these 6″ hole saws to cut the holes in the ceiling. This model we used was a little more heavy duty because our ceilings are a thick plaster. This one would not have lasted long.

Once the holes were drilled, we installed the light housing.

This turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. The electrical wire connected to the first light in the line, and then from that light connected to the next. We just had to be sure to get the “Insulation Contact” model of housing, because our attic is insulated right up to the light fixtures. We also put in a Lutron dimmer switch, which is really nice because the three lights can give off a lot of heat.

Once the lights were in, we began painting. Because we intend to put new hardwood flooring down upstairs (what’s up there now is just a very squeaky subfloor), we were able to paint pretty quickly. It’s nice not having to worry about making a mess. Using our trusty Olympic Premium paint (zero VOCs!) we painted the ceiling white, then painted the walls, then painted the trim. Check out photos of the current state of the room below. Please ignore the mess, there’s still plenty left to do!

The new heater cover. Just need to do all the flooring first!

This is what's left of that weird gap between the floor and the wall post-drywalling and patching.

The new lights!

So what’s left to do?

1. Touch up paint from where the tape took some off
2. Install new hardwood floors
3. Heater cover
4. Base moulding

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I know it’s a little late for this, but here are some photos from our bathroom remodel (we did take them, we just never posted them). We did this during a week of vacation starting just after Christmas of 2009, and wrapped it up the last day of our break before going back to work. Unfortunately (and slightly because of embarrassment) we got a little hasty with the wallpaper and didn’t take any before pictures with the old wallpaper in place. Suffice to say it was a mess and was peeling at all of the corners. The floor (also barely represented in these pictures) was a yellowing linoleum tile. Not very nice.

Our old vanity and an idea of what the floor was like.

The old inset medicine cabinet and vanity light.

The old tub surround and a part of the wall.

The walls were pretty beat up underneath all of the wallpaper, and it looked like there had been some tile halfway up the wall at one point which contributed to the rough plaster. This was nothing, however, once we removed the old tub surround.

Years of showers with bad caulking resulted in this mess of a wall underneath the tub surround. The plaster was rotted. Not good.

I wasn't prepared for the wall to need to be replaced under the tub surround, but that's what had to be done.

I cut about a foot and a half out of the plaster all around the tub with a RotoZip (which did a great job, by the way), and replaced it with some greenboard. After a few healthy coats of joint compound, the wall was good as new.

Our next task was to replace the subfloor under the toilet. The wooden plank subfloor must have had some water damage, and just continued to rot for however many years. Gretchen’s dad helped us cut out the old floor and put in a new one.

From here on out we were working non-stop. Not having “facilities” is no fun. We quickly removed the old linoleum tile, removed any tacks and nails, painted the wall behind where the new toilet would go, and got started putting in new floor. Check out what was under the plywood that was under the linoleum.

We picked up some Ikea Tundra flooring and liner.

New Years Eve 2009 was celebrated by installing a new toilet!

Then we primed, painted the ceiling, and then painted the walls. We went with Olympic Premium paint again, this time a semi-gloss for kitchens and bathrooms.

We don’t have any pictures in the time between installing the toilet and finishing up, so I’ll skip ahead some. After painting we put a new tub surround in, put together and installed the new vanity and sink, patched up the wall some and installed a new medicine cabinet and then a new light. When everything was done I put some base molding around the new floor. Here are the “after” pictures.

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Living Room:

Living Room:

That’s it I guess… I could have sworn we had more. Before/After of the kitchen will be a bigger deal.

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Here are some pictures of our freshly refinished floor, and our freshly half-decorated living room and dining rooms. Oh, and our cats, Bea and Rza (whose diet is going pretty well!).

(Corner Cupboard made by Milford Furniture [Amish folk, supposedly] and Gretchen’s Birthday present!)

(I only post this twice because of the updates in cat positioning.)

(Storm Trooper Rod Stewart)

Overall, we’re pretty happy with the way things are looking! We do want to make some improvements like getting smaller speakers for the turntable (instead of these monoliths), hang more artworks around, and I’m not too sure the arrangement of furniture is 100% yet.

The color of paint we chose for the living room is “Aloe Essence” and the dining room is “Soothing Aloe.” They’re pretty close in color, but just different enough to make the two rooms have a little contrast. We had to choose lighter colors because of the dark woodwork around the house.

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It’s just gotten started on its three hour drying time.

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Real pictures soon!

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After much complaining about our unruly landscaping we researched on thisoldhouse.com that the best time to trim Rhododendron bushes is in late March.  We were a little late, but at the first sign of a warm April weekend, Joe’s step dad, Mike (www.namexa.com) was kind enough to help us tame the massive plants that covered up much of our front porch.  Everyone cringed when we told them our plans to give these bushes a serious trim since apparently they are beautiful in bloom, but these Rhododendron were so high that they mustn’t have been trimmed in years.  They were really great at hiding our curtain-less front windows, but alot of moss accumulated on the porch and they really hid the tiny cape cod.  Joe was able to finally clear out what will hopefully be a nice little flowerbed.  According to the this old house article it may take 2-3 years for them to be full again, but I think we’re more than happy to make that sacrifice to open up the front yard a bit.

Future summer plans for the outside of the house include new stucco for the foundation, painting the cement porch, adding a fresh coat of white paint, and adding a little flair by painting the shutters red. If anyone knows a lumberjack in the area, we would love to cut down the two humungous pine trees that are very close to our house.  Don’t get me wrong, I love trees, but I’m a little scared that a stiff wind mind send these pine trees down into our bedroom.

As you can see from this side view the columns are definitely in need of some new paint. We have a can of white in the pantry for a really nice day when we are feeling super ambitious.  Once we actually paint the downstairs, working outside will be more justifiable.  Now it just feels like we’re playing hooky from wallpaper scraping and spackling.  Plus, it’s still cold! These solar powered landscaping lights were one of our first impulse buys at Lowe’s www.lowes.com, we always come home with a few of those.  I’m very excited to see some tulips and assorted plants that I have yet to decipher growing in this flower bed. This dirt is full of huge rocks, but it’s nice to see that life does exist!

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Allow me to introduce the Piranha Wallpaper Shaver:

After stopping by Lowe’s to pick up some other things (A hose reel and a some joint compound), I checked out the wallpaper section to see what they had in stock. Oddly enough, they have done away with DIF (the stuff I spoke about in an older post) which is a fairly widely recognized brand, and started carrying Piranha brand products. I noticed this Wallpaper Shaver and decided that — after a few months of doing things as cheaply and non-gadget-or-miracle-solution-reliant as possible (putty knives and vinegar water) — I would give it a shot. It was only $8, so why not. Let me tell you, this thing rules.

Using the putty knives was and uphill battle. We had to SOAK the walls with vinegar water and even then it would take the paper off, but leave a film of glue on the wall that took a substantial amount of sanding to remove. I’ve been going over the living room again (where the wallpaper is fully removed but the glue remains) and spraying it with more vinegar water and using this thing and, as the name would suggest, it shaves the glue right off. It’s basically an ice scraper with a razor blade attached. I liked it so much, I went back to Lowe’s and purchased a second one for Gretchen.

Suggestion: I would be very careful when using something like this on sheetrock walls. It has a tendency to dig into the wall if you’re not careful. With our plaster walls we have some surface to spare, but it might do some more damage to drywall. Just be careful.

Another thing I noticed is that this brand is essentially an exact copy of this other product:

Hyde 4″ Wallpaper Shaver (The Wall Wolf)

Which can be purchased here. The difference between the two is that although the Piranha brand shaver claims to have replaceable blades, the blades it recommends are not available anywhere. I’m not even sure if they’re being manufactured. But in my search I came across replacements for the above tool and purchased them, hoping that because they are made to fit something that looks exactly like the Piranha shaver, that they would fit the Piranha shaver itself. We’ll see when they’re delivered, but because I’m not sure about it, I’d recommend getting the Wall Wolf (or whatever) and some replacement blades for that (because you know they’ll fit).

At any rate, the moral of this post is that if you feel your motivation for something waning, try to find a new, more interesting way to do it. Or go look at some tools. Of course, if you didn’t have the motivation to do the work in the first place, a new tool isn’t going to magically make that happen. But if you’re bored or frustrated with something, it’s possible that there’s a better way to do it. I’m surprised at how much of a difference it’s made. After a few plumbing disasters, a minor surgery that had me unable to work on the house, and spring making us want to work out in the yard (a whole other project), buying an eight dollar tool has me back in the living room, working steadily (even on weeknights). We’ve set a deadline of next weekend (also coinciding with a visit from a friend) to have the downstairs primed and ready to paint. It’ll be no easy task, but it’s looking good right now.

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We uncovered the other side of the archway that leads to the kitchen, and it’s patched just about as well as the kitchen side of it (with the backside of a piece of wood paneling). On this side an attempt was made to smooth out the joints with a little bit of joint compound and wall patch strips when it was closed up, so this should help when I cover the whole thing with a layer joint compound to smooth it out.

Sorry we don’t have any pictures, but it’s pretty uninteresting.

Another update for which I do not have pictures was a full replacement of our toilet’s guts. For a while now, we’ve been having strange noises occurring in our floor and basement shortly after flushing the toilet. We first noticed this out in the garage, when the water pipes were vibrating for some unknown reason. The noise started out as a low pitched hum and built up to almost a grinding noise by the time I got to fix it. After a little bit of internet research, I discovered that it’s a relatively minor problem with the toilet.

Apparently when the valve starts to go bad, the seal that stops the valve from letting water out when the tank is filling fails just enough to create a strange vibration in the pipe that runs water into the tank, and this vibration can carry through an entire plumbing system. In my searching I even read the story of a landlord of a multi-unit apartment building that had crazy noises throughout the entire building because of one faulty toilet. The noise in our bathroom could also be triggered by running water in the bathroom sink, which would take some pressure away from the valve and cause it to leak a little bit. I guess that’s also a common problem.

I verified the problem was with the toilet by lifting the lid off of the tank and pressing down on the top of the valve while the noise was happening. It stopped when I applied pressure, so I figured that was it. The toilet’s hardware looked like it had seen better days, so I opted just to replace everything in there with a valve and flapper from Lowe’s.

It was relatively inexpensive (I think around $11), so I bought the kit to replace everything, and after dealing with a noisy toilet for so long, I chose the Quiet Fill (supposedly tested to be the quietest toilet valve available). Installation was simple. For some reason the shut off valve on the pipe that runs into the tank was NOT shutting the water off to the toilet, so I had to turn the water off in the whole house.

I then flushed the toilet and kept the flapper open so the water in the tank drained into the toilet. I had to sponge out what was left (not all of it fully drained) so that I could open the inlet from the water pipe.

After this, I unscrewed the old valve at the bottom of the tank and removed it, unhooked the chain from the lever and removed the flapper. Putting the new one in was easy, I just repeated the steps in reverse and adjusted the height of the valve to the fill line on the tank, and turned the water back on.

After a few costly emergency visits from our plumber, burst water pipes, and snaking septic lines, I can say I’m finally getting comfortable enough with the plumbing system to feel like I can do small things myself. My next trick might be to replace the kitchen faucet with one that is a little bit taller. Washing bigger pots in that sink is impossible. We’ve also been doing a lot of research and reading looking for inspiration, and it’s finally struck, so look for more updates in the future as we pick out colors and begin painting the downstairs. And now that spring is finally here, my grandfather plans on helping us make a lot of things in his wood shop, including new kitchen cabinets.

What We Like

Gretchen is currently obsessed with this kitchen:

And looking on ebay for antique door knobs:

I’m currently obsessed with anything made out of bent wood:

We also plan on making a trip out to the Morris, NJ Habitat for Humanity store to see if they have any nice restored furniture or stuff for around the house.

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This past weekend when it was equally as nice I took the pressure washer out and cleaned off the front porch and sidewalks. I didn’t get a chance to take photos, but it made such an amazing difference. The big pine trees out front keep it pretty shady out there, so there was a coat of mildew on everything that came pretty much right off. Once the overgrown bushes and trees get trimmed, we’re set.

I also climbed up on the roof and cleaned out the gutters. It was a fun weekend.

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Here are some pictures:

We really like the way the archways have turned out now that the walls are primed. They needed a good amount of resurfacing with spackle and joint compound. But after a few coats of that and some sanding, they look great. The lines are clean, and the primer makes them look sharp.

Another shot of an archway

We’re still not exactly sure what we’re going to do with the water pipes that run down the wall in the dining room and living room. The had been wallpapered (why?) and the wallpaper over time burnt onto the pipes because they are hot water pipes. We were able to peel a lot of it off, and I sanded a small section of it with a fine grain sandpaper and it actually looks pretty good, so we’re considering cleaning them off and polishing them to their natural copper color. Not sure though. They also make high temperature paint, so we could paint them if we wanted to, but the color selection for that kind of paint is limited, so they probably wouldn’t be able to match the walls.

Disclaimer: This is something I’ve been avoiding for a while, but to give an idea of what the whole room looks like I have to allow you to see the condition of the room as a whole. It’s pretty terrible. Because none of the rooms are “done” we don’t really have anything arranged or cleaned, everything is just sort of piled in the middle of this room so we could take down the paper, but rest assured, now that the walls are primed we’ll be cleaning this room up some and bring the furniture in from the living room so we can seal that room off and start sanding. Anyway, here it is:

That’s a curtain on top of a bunch of boxes on top of a shelf with an old kitchen table mixed in.

Next up, the living room.

What we’ve been listening to while doing this room:
Johnny Cash Pandora Station
This American Life Podcast

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Saturday morning I got home from Darreck’s house (where I stayed after DJing Friday night) and Gretchen was stressed about the basement. Apparently all water that goes down any drain had been shooting out of an open pipe that is down there that the washing machine drains into. The washing machine would do the same thing, and that’s quite a bit of water. We stopped using water for a bit and thought it had been resolved, but by Saturday night it was back to flooding the basement. I called my dad and he made plans to come over Sunday morning first thing and see what was going on.

The way the plumbing is set up is that because there isn’t any water upstairs, all water runs into one pipe that is pitched to run out to the septic tank. On Sunday morning we realized there was probably a clog in the pipe leading out to the septic, so we went to Home Depot and rented a snake and borrowed a pressure washer from my grandfather to try to flush the pipes out. The snake was only 25 feet long, and not long enough to make it all the way so we ended up, after a lot of time and dirty work, calling a plumber anyway. He had a 50 foot snake and pushed the clog out and everything is back to working properly! Ugh, what a mess. The plumber was nice and came out for an emergency visit about half an hour after we called on a Sunday afternoon during an Eagles championship game. I highly recommend ASAP Plumbing in Quakertown for emergency work (if you need it).

I also started walking around talking to the neighbors about the public sewer line and figuring out how to connect to that in the best way in the not-to-distant future, so we don’t have to worry about this at all anymore. The only problem is that we’d have to run pipelines through my neighbors yard to the street. He seems okay with it, but we probably have a lot of political nonsense to sort out with the township before we can do any of that. It’ll be expensive, but I think in the long run it’ll improve the value of the house and definitely save us some headaches in the future.

Besides that, the living room has been sort of on hold. I’ve been patching up rough spots and sanding when I can. I’ve started cleaning the wallpaper gunk off of the molding so that we can prime the walls and then move everything in from the other room so we can finish there. There’s just not enough time in the day for everything, and Gretchen’s been a little sick and now that she’s feeling better I think I’m getting it. Hopefully it passes. We need to do some painting. On that note, I forgot to mention we found Zero VOC primer at home depot. Olympic makes it. That will definitely be our next purchase for the walls. I painted the walls in the kitchen with Zero VOC paint and there was barely any terrible paint smell at all. It’s not good for you to breath that nonsense in forever.

So after spending the entire weekend on plumbing problems, I’m happy that we’ve temporarily resolved them and can resume the living room. It’s also been snowing pretty regularly here and it’s great. Philadelphia would only ever get rain, though this morning there was some snow there!

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Sorry for the blurry pictures, turning the flash off makes that happen.

I peeled some of the wallpaper off of the soffit on the cabinet above the refrigerator and just painted white paint over the glue that was up there and it turned out pretty nice, so I’m thinking about just doing it over the rest of the cabinets to get rid of the dirty peeling wallpaper that’s up there until we redo the cabinets completely.

The walls being such a bright shade of white makes the trim look a little yellow, but it’ll have to stay that way until we get the living rooms done and then come back to the kitchen for the cabinets and such. The baseboard heaters are also the same color I think, I wonder if you can paint them… anyone know?

We also got the phone hung up all proper instead of having it hanging out of the wall and having a phone line running across the floor. It’s nice (even though our phone is probably the last remaining non-wireless phone in existence).

The Saturday after New Years, we got a lot done. My dad came over in the morning and helped drain the pipes in the garage and winterize the plumbing so that we could shut the electricity and heat off for the winter. That should save us some grief, and money. Thanks, Dad! Gretchen’s sister was also over and helped us scrape some wallpaper in the smaller living room, while I sanded the glue off of the wall in the bigger room and started spackling. Thanks, Merry! It’s coming along. I wanted to make more progress Sunday, but my arm was sore from sanding an entire room and we wanted to go visit Gretchen’s newborn nephew, so we did that instead and then watched Arrested Development on Boxee.

I know this makes our house look like a complete mess, but we have to keep everything packed and or covered up while we work so dust doesn’t get all over it. 3/4 walls in this room are scraped now… just the one wall is left (the one against the kitchen). I’m a little nervous to see what’s going on on the opposite side of the doorway that I had to patch up in the kitchen. They also uncovered this funny hole in the wall that appears to be filled in with cement. There must have been some kind of stove or something and had an exhaust pipe going out of the wall. It’s behind the hot water pipes that we are thinking of covering with a wooden box or some built in shelving, so we may not even need to patch it up, but it’ll be an adventure nonetheless.

This is just a shot of the wall in the bigger living room that I have sanded and started spackling. It looks SO much better than it did rough, and with the holes from the curtain hangers filled in. I’m so sick of sanding and then cleaning over and over, but the closer we get to being done, the more I want it to be done.

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I got some of this Olympic Premium Interior Latex paint (of the Eggshell varietal):

It’s Zero-VOC, which is good, and it wasn’t totally expensive. We have MANY $10 off a $50 dollar order coupons for Lowe’s so I think after it was all said and done it was only $18 dollars a gallon… which isn’t much more than the cheapy Lowe’s brand white paint.

I also picked up some more spackle and another can of primer, since I left our last can of Killz out on the porch and it froze. (Don’t do this). Gretchen and I plan on getting the kitchen done this week and using the weekend to continue the rest of the living room so that we can at least get our downstairs in order.

In other news, the furnace in the garage that heats the apartment is 100% shot. Well, maybe only 99% shot. We had a plumber come out this morning and check it out today after discovering that there was no heat upstairs. Apparently there is a multitude of problems with the thing, culminating in us needing to replace it entirely. 1. It’s 30 years old and mostly broken. 2. It’s installed improperly and “illegally,” which I assume means not up to code. 3. When it does run it pumps oil fumes into the apartment above the garage, which would be bad if anyone was actually up there.

So we’re waiting on a quote from the plumber for replacing that, but we will, in all likelihood, turn off the water and flush the pipes so that they don’t freeze over the winter. That means no heat, but it’s such a mess up there that nobody would be able to live there anyway. Instead we’ll focus on fixing up the (or installing a new) bathroom in “the main house” and finishing the cosmetic things. The plumber will also be quoting us on the bathroom. Cross your fingers.

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1. I taped the template around the door in order to line everything up appropriately

2. I marked the door through the template at the center of both the deadbolt and the part the key goes in.

3. Drilled the first hole through the front of the door, using a 2 3/4 inch bit. I drilled halfway through, then drilled through the center with a smaller bit and drilled back through the other side to keep it from cracking through. Unfortunately, it still did a little bit. I then drilled the deadbolt hole using another small drill bit all the way through to the bigger hole. Then I took a nail and put it through the hole from inside the front of the door so that I could close the door and mark on the frame for where the bolt would go in.

4. I then had to cut a small section out of the ancient weather stripping, and drill a hole into the frame for the bolt entry.

5. The last step was to trace around both the frame and the side of the door where the plate would go so that it could be chiseled out. For some sadistic reason they make the plate with rounded corners, which I tried to maintain in the chiseled area, but it didn’t last long and soon turned into squared corners. After that it was a quick assembly process to get the whole thing together. At some point, I hope to fix the small scratches in the door with some matching stain, and stain around the plate so that it doesn’t look quite so out of place.

Once we got back, I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do since we first moved in. The heater in the bedroom makes noise all night and keeps me awake. I read up a little on how to fix this and read about “bleeding” hot water baseboard heaters. I was a little nervous about doing this because I couldn’t find an exact matching “bleed valve” on the internet as we have, but it really wasn’t too bad. Just keep some towels around to soak up any water that comes out once the air is out of the pipes and you’re good.

1. I took the plate off of the heater and found the bleed valve. All it took was a small wrench to loosen it slowly and air came out. Once water started leaking out, I shut it off. Simple enough.

2. I also read that when the heater comes on, the square metal plates that diffuse the heat move around a little, and part of the noise could be them tapping on each other. Which would explain the “ping” noises as well as the banging. So we straightened all of them out either with our hands or a pair of plyers. They bend easily.

It seemed to help some last night. There still was some noise, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. It sounded like Neil Peart in there at 3am.

The last update is that tonight we finished taking down all the wallpaper in the bigger living room. That’s one more room down. The place is starting to look entirely different, and we’re getting psyched that it appears we may finally be getting our living situation together!

My next challenge is to go back and finally finish the kitchen. It needs at least one more layer of joint compound and some sanding, and then a coat of paint and it’ll be done! Until we start taking the cabinets down.

Here’s the Pandora station we’ve been listening to while scraping wallpaper for 2 nights:
Flaming Lips Pandora Radio

And here are our two supervisors:

“This is Top Chef, Not Top Scallops!”

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My coworker, Mark Allen, suggested this site (Polyvore) for assembling collages of color, art, furniture, etc. so that you can get an idea of what your house might look like. It’s pretty nice. I would like to see a site where you can take a picture of your room, draw in the perspective lines, and have it build 3D-ish models of the room and let you place things around it that are also drawn in three dimensions to get a feel of space and design. Mark Allen, want to get started building that?

Gretchen suggested we post the music we listen to while working on the house, which is a pretty good idea. So here it is!

Passion Pit’s EP Chunk of Change. This is “Sleepy Head”:

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Might as well start this with the most unrealistic…

Living Area

Eames Lounge Chair. Well, not really, but a pretty nice replica of one. Even the replica is a little pricey and more than I’d consider spending on a chair. Maybe someday if we win some extra money randomly. Maybe I’ll find one at a tricky tray.

Built In Bookshelves. Having bookshelves built into your walls is awesome. This particular example was made by Strong Hill Cabinetry in New York.

Kitchen

IKEA DOMSJÖ Sink. We like this sink a lot. It’s bigger than the picture lets on and is ceramic. It’s pretty heavy duty (especially for an IKEA product), and looks awesome installed. Here’s an image of a freshly done DOMSJÖ from another blog, called Stately English Manor, to give you an idea of what it looks like IN a kitchen:

Dishwasher. Even our last rental had one and that had probably the worst kitchen of all time. I suppose this is means we’ve been spoiled.

A Shaker Style Kitchen. I’ve been pretty obsessed with shaker furniture lately. It’s rustic and modern at the same time. The kitchen in the photo was made by Border County Kitchens. It appears the English love shaker furniture also.

Somewhere

Dane Pendant Lamp. These wooden lights are similar to the ones they have at Fosters, but a lot cheaper. We’ll have to get some electrical wiring run in the house, but we planned on doing that anyway.

Back Yard

Fire Pit. Gretchen is 100% psyched to entertain at our house this spring/summer. A fire pit would be the centerpiece.

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To be fair, this is probably the worst bad spot, but overall there were quite a few small cracks in it. Googling today for “cracked joint compound“ returned an overabundance of warnings not to put joint compound on too thick, none of which were included in the pages I read yesterday before applying the joint compound. We also probably should have kept the heat on a constant temperature overnight/when we left for work this morning.

“your environment is making the out side of the compound cure befor the inside, thus developing the cracks. Make sure to turn on the heat or get a room heater to increase the temps in the room as walls and floring absorb alot of coolness over night.” -Some guy named Stugotz on Yahoo Answers.

We got home from work pretty late, but I was determined to clean up the cracks so that we could put another layer of compound up. Unfortunately I didn’t make it all the way through, but I smoothed out the worst areas. I did this by wet sanding the compound using water and a sponge. This takes a lot longer than traditional sanding, but once you factor in cleaning the dust off of everything you own, it evens out a bit. Here are some steps from About.com that you can follow for wet sanding:

1. Start with joint compound that is not completely dry. However the compound should be dry enough that it won’t immediately smear off when you touch it. Drywall joint compound a few hours old should be right.
2. Soak sponge in bucket, then squeeze out.
3. Start with light, circular motions. Remember, let the water do the work more than pressure from your hand. Right now, you’re just concentrating on the high ridges and the spiky portions.
4. When it gets too difficult or the smears are too thick, rinse out and squeeze sponge in bucket. Sponge should be wetter than on the first pass.
5. On this second pass, since you’ve already taken down the high ridges, you can concentrate on lowering the joint compound “bump.”
6. After two passes, you’re done. Any more wet sponging will get the drywall paper too wet. If two passes aren’t sufficient, you may need to dry sand the joint compound.

Thanks Lee Wallender!

Wet sanding helped smooth out rough edges and the wet joint compound filled in most of the cracks. Here’s where it ended up (I’m letting it dry more):

The picture doesn’t show that the cracks are filled with a light layer of wet compound. You can still see them, but the surface is smooth. A second coat once this one is dry should hopefully smooth it over more.

Gretchen took a bit of wallpaper off from over the archway on the opposite side of the kitchen. That wall is basically done now, and it looks pretty nice.

Our next challenge is going to be figuring out how to take off this 61 year old wallpaper that was covered up on the underside of the archway.

Unlike the rest of the original wallpaper, this was not removed before the newer layer of wallpaper was put up. It’s on there pretty good. Hopefully we’ll make more progress tomorrow.

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(Lowe’s tip #1: You can find generic equivalents of almost all of the products they stock on hooks or shelves at eye-level down on the floor in boxes to save some $$$. For example, a brand name putty knife hanging on a hook can cost $4-6, but if you get one of the box on the bottom shelf they cost about half that.)

(Lowe’s tip #2: Go to this page and register and they’ll send you a 10% off an entire purchase coupon in the mail. We’ve also been receiving a steady supply of these coupons after filling out two change of address forms [one for the each of us]).

The Joint compound filled the indented doorway pretty nicely, and is drying a solid white color. It looks pretty good. I’ll wet sand it tomorrow (thanks for the advice JCC), and add another layer and we should be ready to paint. I also patched up the spots I missed with the spackle initially. Putting on a coat of the primer helped us find those spots a lot better.

In the living room, Gretchen continued her rotation around the wall, scraping off the paper and glue, and got most of a wall done. She continued to use vinegar cut with hot water in a spray bottle, because we forgot to pick up fabric softener when we were out at Wegman’s today. We DID however stock up on all of the things we haven’t been able to find since leaving Philly. Not a lot of grocery stores around here carry seitan. Here’s the wall:

With that wall and this section done, we now have a corner of the living room wallpaper free:

While waiting for the joint compound to set, I joined in on the scraping, and uncovered this lovely bit of wall:

It looks like after the walls were up, a vertical strip about 6 inches wide was cut into the wall to run the electrical work through. Then the hole was covered with a sheet of what appears to be metal and then slathered in spackle (or joint compound, I really don’t know what the big difference is besides consistency) to smooth it out. This caused some headache in scraping the paper off. On the rest of the wall, if you made the paper wet enough, it would scrape off. Then another wetting would let you scrape the glue right off. With this patch of wall, I basically had to scrape off a layer of the spackle underneath the glue with a 1” putty knife to get anything that was on top of it off. It looks a little sloppy now, but we can sand it down and patch up any rough spots later. The whole house looks pretty messy right now anyway.

Hopefully, tomorrow will mark the end of kitchen work and we’ll be set to paint it. I think we’re just going with white for now because we plan on putting in new cabinets and appliances sometime next year, and we can just paint over the white with a suitable color then.

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The paper itself peeled off very easily. Most corners were a little dog-eared, and by pulling on them slowly at an angle it came off in one piece. “We’re halfway done,” we thought. Then we noticed the layer of paper-like glue that still covered the walls.

This is not a picture of the kitchen, but the walls in the stairwell have a similar coating after peeling the wallpaper off there. Here’s what it looked like:

A little research on the internet led us to a product called DIF, made by Zinsser:

Most sites (including Zinsser’s own) that I read said it was a non-toxic substance and that the enzymes do all the work. Unfortunately, after buying it and bringing it home, Gretchen read the instructions and found this little gem on the bottom of the back label:

“This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.”

So we promptly returned our massive bottle of DIF and purchased a massive bottle of vinegar from the grocery store:

By cutting water in a spray-bottle with 1 cup of vinegar we found that the glue scraped right off with a putty knife. We’ve also read that diluted fabric softener works the same way (or better). More about that after we try it out. This part was pretty messy, but went pretty quickly with the two of us working.

Our first unexpected discovery is that there used to be a doorway between the kitchen and the front living room. We didn’t know about this, so after removing the wallpaper we were surprised to find the archway patched halfway with drywall and halfway with what appears to be the back side of a piece of wood paneling. This is what it looked like (post spackling [to smooth out the edges]):

I asked around about this, and short of tearing out the doorway and patching it back in to make it more flush, the best way I’ve heard to cover up this rough spot is with some joint compound. For now I’m just going to spackle the rough spots on the wall to get it cleaned up a bit. There was a lot of damage to the surface of the wall. It appears that the first round of wallpaper was removed before the current wallpaper was hung, and that took a layer of plaster off with it in irregular patterns all over the wall.

After scraping the glue off of the wall, we wiped it down with water and TSP:

This is a heavy duty cleaner that you should probably not get on your hands. It cleaned some things that probably haven’t been clean in 30 years. We used some rubber gloves, because this stuff will burn your skin. It helped clean off the last of the stickiness and prepped the wall before spackling. We chose TSP substitute because it’s phosphate free and better for the environment (and probably for us).

I used some basic lightweight spackle to smoothe over the rough spots and fill in the holes:

I also cleaned up the rough surface around the patched doorway, and tried to make the transition between the wall and the patching as smooth as possible, in the hopes that it wouldn’t be that noticeable afterwards. It didn’t really clean it up enough, but it definitely does look better.

I let the spackle dry for a day, and sanded it down the next day. The sanding left our house a nice coat of dust all over EVERYTHING, and was pretty hard to clean up. I’d advise anyone that has a lot of spackle repair to do in one place to either do it before they move in, or to move everything out of the room and close it off to keep the dust from getting everywhere. Fortunately (or unfortunately in most cases) a majority of our belongings are still in moving boxes (and we hope to get the walls done before getting comfortable), so it didn’t mess up a whole lot.

After cleaning up all of the dust, I wiped the walls down with TSP and water one more time and began taping the trim.

We picked up a can of Killz 2 Latex Primer (we went with the latex this time after realizing the oil based primer takes forever to dry), and got our painting supplies ready.

I did the trim with a brush, and then rolled the rest of the wall with a roller. After drying, it looks pretty good (for having just one coat of primer and no paint):

While I was priming the walls in the kitchen, Gretchen picked up where she left off on scraping the wallpaper in the living room. Here’s what we’re faced with in the rest of the downstairs rooms. Two full rooms of this:

The wallpaper has a weird texture on the surface, and does not come off in sheets like the kitchen. So we’re forced to scrape it off little by little. The same vinegar and water mixture and a putty knife works okay on that, but we plan to try using fabric softener and TSP to see if it works any better. The good news about this, is that the glue comes off with the paper, so it’s a lot less messy, but a lot more time consuming.

This is where Gretchen picked up the scraping:

And this is where she stopped (the wall is pretty much done!):

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The front of the house. With a little bit of pruning and some paint, this could turn out alright! Cape cods are our style.

Nice back porch. The house is on 3/4th of an acre. Gretchen’s already talking about having a fire pit in the spring, and I’m already thinking about where to put a hammock.

The cabinets were hand made of knotty pine. It’s pretty livable, but we probably need to update it in the near future. Removing the wallpaper is a good short-term goal.

This room has a lot of potential. Once the wallpaper is down a nice color could make this an entirely different room. The wood trim, floors, and bannister are really nice and are in incredible shape.

Another shot of the living room. Same need for updated wallcoverings. New windows look out to the front porch/front yard.

The “Master Bedroom” as it was. Nice hardwood floors continue upstairs. It’s a little dark, but nothing a few new lights wouldn’t fix.

Another shot of the Master Bedroom. The ceiling slopes a bit, as is usual with cape cods. The walls definitely need some updating. Nice new windows look out over the front yard, porch, and street. You can see the golf course from the bedroom window.

One of the smaller size bedrooms upstairs. This would make a nice office. It has the same view as the Master Bedroom. It’s a lot smaller, but taking out the carpet and revealing the hardwood floor would do a lot to open it up. The colors also help keep it a little dark.

This is the 3rd bedroom in the house. It's the smallest of them all, but has the most headroom. This could be a good place to relocate the (or add another) bathroom to. If not, the hardwood floors and new windows would make it a nice guest bedroom (once the wallpaper is down).

This is the detatched 1 car (and lots of other stuff) garage. It also has a 1-Bedroom fully livable apartment above it, which was previously rented out. I’ve always wanted a garage, and the apartment would be a good place to set up the dark room Gretchen has been meaning to find a place for, and the music room I’ve been collecting random instruments for years for. The driveway can easily fit 6 cars, which would definitely be nice for BBQs and parties.

As you can see, the house is smaller, but has a lot of potential. The wallpaper poses the most immediate problem, but luckily is little more than a few weekends worth of work (and little money) to update. The bigger updates would have to follow that. We find it slightly awkward that the only bathroom in the house is downstairs, but that could be remedied by turning one of the upstairs bedrooms into a bathroom. But I wonder, and this is probably a question to pose to a real estate agent, what is more likely to hurt the value of a home? Having only one bathroom and it being downstairs, or only having 2 bedrooms? The apartment more than makes up for square footage of “living space,” but I’d like to figure out what the best move for the future is, and not just make decisions based on current needs (like having some storage downstairs which we could use if the bathroom wasn’t there). No need to get into this kind of thing now, but I’ve always been one to think to far into things before even getting started.

When all was said and done, we loved the cape cod style, the rural (but beautiful) setting, the real wooden accents, the nice big yard, and the proximity to family without being too far from our friends or the city; and it was enough to make us decide on buying the house. This is where this story starts.

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