Making over the new house

 

Anytime you move into a new place, there's usually some painting that needs to be done, either to freshen up worn or dirty walls, or to get rid of choices of previous residents. In our case, it was both. Some walls hadn't been painted in at least a decade, and other walls were "what the hell were they thinking" bad. The first room tackled was a "what the hell" bedroom and decades old paint job in the bathroom. The previous homeowners had triplet boys who were college age, that said, they still had boy themed rooms. This one was the highway room.

The room was gray like a highway, complete with solid and dashed lines to mark the lanes. Then someone must have come up with the brilliant idea to take a tire, roll it in black paint and roll it on the walls to make skid marks. Oh, and they used a satin finish on the lines and skid marks, so I had to sand them down before I could prime and paint the walls.

Before I could do any of this work, however, I had to clear the room of all the furniture. Since I was doing this during the day while M was at work, I had to move all the furniture myself. I'm not as young and strong as I used to be, so I had to be more creative in how to move everything so I wouldn't injure myself lifting, pushing, or pulling. This is where physics came in handy. Some furniture I tipped onto a corner and pivoted and walked the furniture out of the room. Other furniture I disassembled, or flipped it upside-down and slid, pushed, and pulled them out of the room.

Once the room was clear, M decided it would also be a good time to get rid of the dingy popcorn ceiling. I'm not sure if she meant it was a good idea while the room was empty, or good idea to do it while she was at work.

I went on-line and found videos of guys removing popcorn ceilings with a shopvac. They made it look so easy! No matter what I tried, it was not that easy.  Or, let me clarify that, the popcorn came off easy enough, but I couldn't just suck it off the ceiling with the shopvac like the YouTube videos showed.  I tried my scraper on the top and the bottom of the hose.  I tried pushing the scraper and pulling the scraper.  Nothing worked to make it quick, clean and easy.  I'm not sure what they were doing different on the videos, but it never worked for me. It was also pretty messy.

This was also another area where my age and infirmity made the job just a little harder. I can still run around without my glasses because my distance vision is still okay, but my close up vision is steadily declining, so I had to leave my glasses on to see what I was doing up close to the ceiling.  Of course with the spray from the water bottle and the dust from the popcorn ceiling, I couldn't see much  Also, those masks are really hot and tend to fog up your glasses. 

So this is the finished ceiling. I got most of the popcorn off without any problem and I didn't over-soak the ceiling or do any damage to the drywall, so for a first time attempt, that part went well.  I did have trouble getting the popcorn off where the ceiling met the walls.  Because of the width of the handle on the scraper, I couldn't get tight into the corners.  Now here's where I messed up.  The next step after removal is to sand the ceiling.  I did that.  Then you need to skim coat the ceiling with drywall plaster.  I didn't skim coat.  I read that I should, but the ceiling seemed smooth enough, I thought a couple coats of primer and paint would be fine.  Um, yes and no.  Looking from a distance, it looks fine.  There aren't any streaks, but if you're lying on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, you can see every spot that wasn't perfectly smooth.  Good thing it's an upstairs bedroom and not one of the main rooms downstairs.  Next I'm going to tackle the laundry room ceiling, and I will try to teach myself how to skim coat.

After the ceiling, I sanded and primed the tire tracks and stripes.
Then primer went up on all the walls.

It was amazing how much brighter the room got once the popcorn ceiling came down. Popcorn ceilings trap dust and light doesn't bounce off them.

Next the color went on. We chose a pale blue/gray, which when it went on the walls, looked more blue than gray. We tried to pick a color that would go with the varnished wood in the room.  We prefer white woodwork and trim, and this house has way too much brown wood everywhere you turn, but because there is sooo much of it, I certainly didn't have the time or patience to begin painting nearly every inch of this house, so rather than paint it, we decided to work with it.  This window ended up having water damage on it, so I ended up restaining and polishing it.  It came out nicely I think.

I was able to paint the bedroom without taping it, the bathroom, however, was another story. There were too many tight angles so I had to tape everything.

I painted the bathroom the same color as the bedroom, just a satin finish to repel water. I got a little paint in my hair in one of those tight corners. Then I was finally able to decorate, my favorite part. I went with a spa/beach theme for both rooms. As soon as I get through working on classes, getting stuff ready for my daughter's wedding this coming Saturday, then I'll start on the laundry room.