I need a potty

The one place you need to feel clean is the bathroom.  

Our story begins one November....

and isn't finished until April.

The sink was too broken and the toilet too low!

Next there was a scary hole in the floor!

Tiny toilet

Primer and floor almost done

New sink

Fix that hole and cover it well...

Add in some new fixtures that have better flow.

And then there was a lot of cold weather so I wanted to paint....

Then the paint was too bright, so I pained some more....

Its a little like a fun house and silly outdoors

But its clean an pretty and works like a charm.

 

Detail

PLEASE FEED THE TREE

View from the hall

Carpet catcher

Its time to start talking about what we have done! Its been 8 months and thankfully we have taken a lot of pictures. After the painting of every room, the first things we tackled were the floors.  I like being barefoot.  That was just not possible with this house. Talk about yuck. The first thing was to remove the germ infested carpeting from the upstairs room.  I gave some sneak peaks of this project earlier, but I hope this explains a bit more about how we accomplished this easy task.

Studio / bedroom

We designated one room upstairs to be the carpet catcher.  Began cutting and ripping until it was all pulled up. At the end we were able to roll the carpet, bag the padding (yuck) and take one trip to the dump to deposit it all. We then began removing the carpet tacking which was not so complicated once we got a small pry bar and a painters multi-tool.  There were staples everywhere and we were able to remove them easily. It took a couple hours per room.

Office / bedroom with carpet

Office / bedroom pre-sanding

There was a lot of paint that had been sprayed on the floors in every room.  we used the shopvac to remove remaining dust and staples. 


Working well into the nights that week we used a cheep orbital sander, which we hooked to our shop vac to keep the dust down.  Started with 40 grit, then moved on to 80 grit, then a final 120 grit. The room was a bit dusty, we covered the door way with plastic sheeting and kept the windows open mostly as long as it was not breezy. Working in 4 hours shifts we finished sanding one room in about a day.

Master bedroom with all materials 40 grit process

We vacuumed, swept, vacuumed and swept and damp mopped. We began to oil the floors with boiled linseed oil and a chip brush.  I used the brush to get under the edges of the moulding and up against the painted wood work. 

Using a deck stain applicator we applied more linseed until the floor was covered. this only took about and hour.  Using clean dry cloth I soaked up and rubbed in any spots that were puddling or showing too much shine.

Voila! Let dry for 12-24 hours and pretty floors. This wood is the original 1921 hardwood floors in our home. Using a machine would be too much for them. In some spots the wood is thin and in need of repair but they are lovely.  The linseed oil will protect them, as they did in 1921. I will need to apply another coat in a year or two, but it sure is better than other treatments.  A coat of hard wax may be an option we go with later, but we have to live here now!

Time....gets away from you

Time really does get away from you when you do not have internet...but I will share that experience later. For now, back to the first week after closing.  Everything is a blur from lack of sleep, sweat and tears. Here is progress from day 5, 6 or 7?  Who knows.

Living room painted and part of the dinning room shown in this picture.  SO MUCH better!

LOOK what we found!  1921 hardwood floors!  Never stained, never sealed. (Guest Room) 

Everyone thinks we're crazy but we chose to sand this floors by hand because we did not want to remove too much material from the floor and we love a used old floor look. We ended up settling on an orbital palm sander. It worked great for removing just the bits of paint and dirt on the surface. (Master Bedroom)

So this one day will be my art studio.  Right now it is the carpet holding center until we can get to the dump.

Boiled Linseed oil application after sanding. They dried a bit lighter but have a beautiful color.  (Master Bedroom)

Time to move in!  Our Bedroom is finished!

A little Paint goes a long way.

DAY 3 and 4

A little dizzy and flustered trying to get it done fast and right.  It is really amazing what a little paint can do to a space.  Our house is starting to look like a home.  We are trying to make decisions about our amazing floors (insert sarcasm), will let you know how it goes.

3 THINGS I LEARNED

1.  Paint the ceilings, then the walls then the trim.  Allways paint the outside edge of the moulding the wall color.  It makes it very easy and also looks so much more beautiful when it is finished.  ( A little tip from my awesome uncle who drove from New Jersey to help us.  He owns a painting company! )

Office

Guest room

Guest room

Bedroom

2. Wet paint is easy to wipe up.  Drop cloth is a nightmare. So is tape.  Keep a rag handy and forget the expenses on both.

Stairwell

3. Ladders can go on steps.  That hallway 16 feet high was not impossible.










Amazing find at local ReStore (Habitat for Humanities) !

DAY 2 ... Prep work

An entire day spent removing thousands of staples, screws and nails.  We removed a 3 inch sheet rock nail from a switch plate, another from a metal bracket intended to hold up a curtain rod. What?  There was so much icky stuff on the walls, I have to buy a steam cleaner to remove the build up...yuck. Here are some pics from day 2.

A little surprise under the carpet.  No floor.  And another surprise! 25¢ 

(Original Hardwood 1921 in bedroom )

Dinning room all clean!

Office with primer!

Priming away the awful red

Bedroom primed!

A little surprise for me, My niece and nephew primed my studio room while I was at the store.  Was not planning on doing this until later! See all those doors....They have to be painted too.

DAY 1..... Closing day

How about being excited and dreading the next 3 weeks at the same time? Here are some before pics we took of all the work that will need to be done to our new home. updates to come. :)

Closing was a smooth 45 minutes, cleaning and painting are taking a bit longer.  The biggest confusion now is trying to schedule a moving company and pod delivery... by the way, pod does not prorate your last month.  How crazy.

Did I mention the worse colors ever?

 DAY 1 Project : remove switch plates

 Future Living room

 Future Art Studio

Future Kitchen

 Future Half Bath

ALL the switch plates 44+  (I got sick of counting)

worth the wait...

I guess its all worth the wait.  We maybe one of the first people in our circle of friends that are actually closing on schedule. Closing is tomorrow. We will be sure to post some pics (before pics only) so our process can be followed. We will be doing painting, flooring, bathrooms and eventually a new kitchen. I'm so excited.  Now just to hope we find a renter for our other property!  Stress is escalating, and I guess no sleep tonight!