Smoothish sailing

Tonight was sort of a milestone: the first time I've attempted to smooth out a skim coat on the de-popcorned ceilings.

Started in on the bathroom, since that's the next project. I mudded last night. Tonight the sanding went pretty well.

And, considering this is my first attempt, I'm actually not displeased.



It's now primed, and needs touch-up in about four places tomorrow night. But all in all, it wasn't a disaster by any means. I am certain this is going to be satisfactory. In fact, I think it might even end up looking good by the time I've had some more practice at it.

Rechilled

Nothing visual to report tonight. However, the fridge is back in action.

What the repairman found: The previous owner removed its defrost timer -- a completely vital piece in the refrigeration chain, which the fridge can operate without for about six weeks. Which is how long we've been here.

He'd taken it out and bypassed its wiring, so that the compressor has been running without a defrost cycle this entire time, making it all frost over and freeze up. How slimy of him to pull a trick like that.

Not that we're surprised.

Anyhow, it's fixed and we can focus on other things again.

Next to godliness

K, that's overselling it. But tonight was time to get some things tidied up a little bit. Ripping out the old linen closet had left behind a huge pile of debris in the big bedroom, seeing as I was too exhausted to stand, much less lug junk, when I was finished.

So tonight I cleaned that room out. Down to the old vinyl floor, covered with popcorn debris. No big. It's all coming out anyhow.



Then on to the first coat of mud in my skim coat on the bathroom ceiling. It's too early to tell how well I did, but I actually felt pretty good about things when I finished.




Tomorrow will be an exploratory sanding, to see how much more it needs before a primer coat. Crossing my fingers that it'll be enough here -- but I'm not betting on that.

Oh, and the refrigerator quit chilling almost completely today. The fridge side is at about 57 degrees right now. Pay the $75 warranty service fee, which will have them fix it, or possibly give us money if it's inoperable, right? Probably a better idea than just buying a new one, we decided. Hey, money grows on trees. Ha.

Low-key

After several days of doing lots, today was a day for less.

Some minor details, some cleaning up, some planning, and mostly some laundry. Because it'd been quite a while since we had machines.

It was gorgeous and sunny, so the cats had a nice time themselves, obviously.

Finally, a bit of finality

Guess what? We pretty much finished the laundry room - minus the doors, which won't be here for another couple of weeks, probably. However...

Got all the drywall sanded and smoothed. Painted the ceiling and walls last night. We went for a really beautiful, pure blue color that is hard to describe. It's close to primary, but it changes quite a bit in the light.

After we got all the paint done, however, I realized my plan to leave the laundry without its own light wasn't possibly the best idea. Sure, it's right in the hallway, and that has two light fixtures of its own. But not having a source in the laundry seemed a half-measure.

So I went ahead and cut new holes, ran new electrical and installed a light. Actually, the one here is temporary while the understated new one I ordered is delivered.

It was then time to install the flooring: medium-gray Flexi-Tiles in a slate finish. You install them by pounding the interlocking fingers into one another. I have to say that I wasn't quite as impressed with the engineering as I thought I might be, but they went in pretty smoothly.



Those in place, it was time to decide on shelving. We hadn't really intended to do this tonight, but we had to go to Lowe's for some caulking anyhow -- so why not just get the shelves before messing with the washer and dryer?

Rubbermaid wire shelves are the perfect solution here. Add the laundry machines, and our first room is pretty much done. One of the hardest ones down. Now on to the bathroom with my full attention.

White lung

Tonight was sanding and priming time on the new drywall.



But first, let me build some tension as we see the red plastic tarp - tantalizingly, translucently revealing part of the hallway as we head up the steps.



OK, back to Earth. The work went pretty smoothly. And now everything's all white. I decided you had enough of the same angle, so I got fancy with tonight's shot.



As I said before, I gave up on the metal corner tool, deciding instead to use the disposable, flexible plastic one and a regular old plastic putty knife. And I must say, I am very pleased with my results.



Once I was done, the drywall compound dust had been flying fast and furious. I wore my face mask, but it only does so much. Now I have a vision of what I'd look like if I went silver.

Tomorrow, blue.

Nothing to see here, move along

The second night of mudding isn't really worth documenting visually. However, Jeff cleaned up the debris from the weekend's construction, which was worth a LOT. Our friend Nathan came over to look at the fun 'n' games, which was great. We love Nathan.

Tomorrow night is the third mud coat. Again, not visually interesting. But that brings us one day closer to primer and paint. Stay tuned for something that's almost finished!

Mud

No "my name is" jokes, because this isn't something I'm very good at. Nobody would ever mistake me for a professional drywall finisher.

Still, I went ahead and did the first coat of mud on the laundry room tonight. If all goes according to schedule, we'll get the flooring in this week some time, and I'd really like to be ready to paint and get everything installed. Even though the doors will still be several weeks out, it'll be as close to finished as possible.



The taping and first coat went pretty well. Not gorgeous, but one or two more coats will make it as good as it needs to be.

Lucky for me, most of the inside corners are inside the closet itself where almost nobody will ever see them. My sister loaned me some of her tools, including this particularly hateful little implement, the inside corner knife.



Beyond useless, especially with my meager skills. How are you supposed to make a 95-degree angled tool smooth out a 90-degree corner? I don't geddit.

Now we're getting somewhere

All in all, it was a really good thing that we had to do the bathroom first, because now we're well past the point of no return, and I'm starting to get very enthusiastic about the progress.

Once the framing was done, drywall called. Not my favorite thing in the world, but not the worst, either.

Since the walls have to look nice and meet the ceiling cleanly, I really have to bite the bullet and scrape the stupid popcorn out in the hall. Ugh.

However, we have a new weapon in our arsenal. Our friend Jo Ann loaned us her Hudson (actaully it was an Ace Hardware one) sprayer. Holding a little quart-sized spray bottle over your head and squeezing thousands of times is absolutely for the birds.

With the sprayer, you can lay on a ton of water at once -- and no more sore shoulders, either. Trust me: When you're scraping popcorn, this is THE most important tool you'll ever find.

Jeff and I got on our ladders and started late Saturday afternoon. And surprise: About two and a half hours later, we were completely finished. Thank you Jo Ann!

The approach up the steps from downstairs is a bit more dramatic now, eh?







A better view of the new laundry room, all framed, drywalled and ready to tape and mud. I used an old piece of paneling over the plumbing as an access panel, just in case there's ever an issue. It's behind the laundry machines, so nobody will ever see it anyhow. I just consider it an insurance policy.





I also did the wall Jason had to rip out in the bathroom. This was the most time-consuming part of the whole thing, as the pieces were odd sizes and the wall needed switches and a new GFI outlet. The part I dislike is getting the electrical boxes in place, but these actually went in without a hitch.









One part of this really stunk. Jeff was working at his apartment, so I had to figure out which breakers worked which outlets and lights. By myself. Running up and down the steps after every flip of a breaker wasn't my idea of a good time. And of course, the breaker box has zero sense of logic in its numbering.

Tomorrow, the mudding starts. Lucky for me, we're putting in crown molding everywhere, so I won't have any inside corners to do, except for around the top of the laundry and the two new corners there. But at the ceilings, I get to let the joints stay unfinished. That isn't cheating, is it?

We've been framed!

I have to admit I was at a little bit of a mental standstill, because I just couldn't get myself excited about moving the bathroom doorway over the six inches it needed to go, nor about framing in the new laundry room. I have the ability to do those jobs, but they're not the kind of projects I enjoy doing myself.

That's why we gave our friend Jason a call. He's a contractor our friend Nathan works with sometimes, and Nathan's always had the highest praise for the quality of Jason's work.



Well, Nathan was right. Jason made quick -- and absolutely superb -- work of the upstairs. He also moved an electrical outlet to shoulder-height just inside the closet door, which will make it easy both to plug in an iron or any other small appliance like a dust-buster we might want to keep handy within reach.



I'd recommend Jason's work to anyone.

Another major milestone: The replacement bathtub was in at Lowe's, so I was able to swing by there, borrow their truck (for free since we paid last time to get the busted one home) and lug it home at 9:45 last night. Also picked up some more drywall, since the truck was on their dime.



The tub is preeeeetty. And VERY deep, suitable for even tall people like me to soak in.

This weekend, I sheetrock everything and maybe even skim-coat the bathroom ceiling. The changes are going to start looking a lot more dramatic soon.

Not exciting, but important

Tonight was a very unimpressive step - but a necessary one nonetheless.

When tearing out the tub, I didn't chop the drywall out all the way to the ceiling. Tonight I had to do that.



Again, unthrilling. But since I'm going to be using Schluter Systems' Kerdi for the tub surround, I need to have the drywall yanked out down to the studs.

Kerdi is amazing stuff. It's a waterproof membrane that you affix on top of plain old drywall like wallpaper, using thinset as the glue. Then you tile right on top of it.

Easy? Maybe. I'd rather work with drywall than concrete board at any rate. The biggest upside is that water never gets a chance to soak into the concrete board, since Kerdi's impenetrable. That means your shower doesn't get moldy and mildewy.

I also removed the old plumbing from the shower and cut out the drywall where the right-hand sink will go, since we need to move lines and drain. Lucky for us, they're run from the direction we want to go -- meaning we will just have to chop off instead of running new lengths.

It's still gonna be a big job. I can't wait to get this finished.

Incremental and inevitable

Tonight my sights were set on the medicine chest. We'd originally planned to just leave it and put nicer trim on it, because it's big and spacious. However, it's also -- shocker -- beige and mounted extremely poorly. I don't think I would ever be able to make it look the way I wanted.

Unfortunately, there's not a replacement made that's the same size exactly -- but we can make do with a nice beveled, frameless one the home stores keep in stock. Which we have in our garage now -- though it has a tiny chip in it. Grrrr. Back to the Home Depot.



Destruction went pretty well. Might as well take out the bar of globe lights above it too, while I'm getting dirty.

That stupid outlet at the bottom center of the cabinet is going to have to go, too. It has no purpose, and isn't really centered anyhow. Can't deal with that, no way.

Next, I go to the hallway to assess the door situation. I really, really want to believe that I can leave the bathroom door where it is and get the laundry room adequately closed off.

Sadly, that is a pipe dream. The bathroom door is going to have to move over six inches or so to the right.



It isn't an enormous job, but it's also not one I relish. So I call a contractor friend for a bid on it. Bonus: He can also get us the doors we want for the rest of the house and have them delivered. That's worth quite a bit, big picture.

Not the biggest accomplishment I've ever made, but it's work. And I'm tired.

Bath-be-gone

Despite not owning a sabre saw, I decided to tackle the bathtub insert today. After all, it's just fiberglass, so it can't put up too much of a fight.



What a surprise - it's almond. So unlike everything else in this house, which is instead off-white. Or beige.

Anyhow, it's gross. A few swings of the hammer confirm that it won't pose a huge obstacle. Not the easiest thing I've ever done, but it busted up fairly quickly.



I was able to liberate it from its mudded-in prison within an hour and a half or so. The jigsaw was plenty adequate for chopping pieces out that the hammer couldn't obliterate.



The particle board subfloor showed some water damage, despite the best caulking efforts of whoever put the vinyl floor in 29-some years ago. Further proof that particle board has no business in a bathroom. At least the subfloor beneath was still fine. By the way, the overzealous fastening exhibited in the laundry closet was in full force on the subflooring too. That's a lot of little nails.

Feeling good about my speed, I decided to go for the vanity and sinks, too. What the heck? There was still light out. So bye bye to you two.



Tomorrow night, the toilet and the rest of the flooring get their turn. Then the work can begin in earnest on the ceiling and the walls. It's kind of nice to have the forced respite from installing the tub. This gives me time to get things exactly as I want them. Yeah, that's what I'll tell myself.

Bump in the road.

We went to Lowe's to pick up all our stuff to complete the bathroom, part of which we had to special order. Tile, backerboard, thinset, grout, toilet, sinks. Haven't picked out the faucets or towel racks yet, but that's everything.

Except one detail you might notice is missing from the big pile here in the attached garage:



Um, yeah. That'd be the bathtub. The one that came in this week and we picked up, put on the truck and drove here to the house this afternoon.

"Let's check it out before we go back," I tell Jeff, just in case. We tear back the cardboard carton to make sure everything's okey-dokey -- and it's not. Somewhere along the way the back left corner of the tub has been snapped, probably by someone putting something heavy on top of that edge of the box.

So we lug it back to Lowe's, get a refund, and have to order a new one. Which now costs 5% more than when we got this one less than two weeks ago. Sparing you the details, but it wasn't an easy fix to get the price adjusted.

Grrrrr.

Temporary hold

OK, this cold has gotten a lot, lot worse. Taking a few days off to get better. I'm barely able to walk upstairs, much less lift a hammer.

This weekend, destruction continues, I hope.

Bathroom step two

I can hardly believe I had the giblets to start into this tonight. Got home from a somewhat taxing day at work, with a low-grade cold to boot. Not feeling like being a slug, I decided to go ahead and feed the cats, check the mail and work out.

Then I made a quick dinner. It's by this time 8:15 and Jeff's home with another big load of stuff from his apartment. What better time to start on the bathroom ceiling?

It's hot, nasty, sweaty work. But by 10:45, I was done.



I left the area behind the shower wall, where the linen closet will go. I have a ton of firesafe drywall in the garage, and I'd much rather just add a new piece to the ceiling than scrape any more popcorn. Call me lazy.



The great thing about scraping off popcorn is that once it's done, it's done forever. You have to repaint a room every once in a while, but you never have to remove those little nubs of evil again.

Hideous vinyl floor, you're next.

Here comes the rain

So, we were feeling pretty good about the progress on the bedroom. After all, once the ceilings are scraped, we're just a short distance away from painting, which then lets us get to the floors. No, not the easiest thing in the world, but also not an impossible task.

That is until I woke up last Monday and went to the fridge for some milk. As soon as I opened the door, water poured onto the floor.

My first thought was that somehow the ice maker had malfunctioned, until I realized there isn't a water line even attached to it. So I look to the top of the fridge, and notice there's pooled water, coming from the cabinet and ceiling above it.

The bathroom is directly above the fridge, and by my calculations it seemed the leak was coming from either the washing machine (brand new, just installed two days previously) or the tub . The bathtub seems the most likely candidate, so we decide to quit using the tub and shower in the first-floor (awful) bathroom. The water must be from the previous days' showers, so it should dry out.

The next morning, it's still going. Time for a visit from the plumber. As I wait for him to show up, it occurs to me what must be happening -- the washer's water valves have to be the culprit, because this water's still going. Unfortunately, the washer/dryer are deep inside a niche and imposible to get to without completely removing them.

Well, we'd always intended to take the laundry out of the bathroom and move it about six feet to the left, into a weird, unused part of the hallway. No time like the present. While I wait for the plumber to show up, I bust a section out of the wall outside the hookups, which lets me see what's going on. As I suspected, the cold water valve is leaking like a seive.

Doug the plumber shows up, we wrestle the washer and dryer out of their hole -- and discover the valves are in such bad shape they won't even turn off any longer. No time like the present, so I set Doug to tearing them out and moving them to their new place. While he's there, I have him cap off the bathtub supply lines so that I can begin tearing out the old tub and setting the new one, which will be in this week.

Here Doug's finished his work, with the lines ending up in the linen closet I intend to demolish.

The old washer/dryer niche will become a linen closet from inside the bathroom, but I have no interest in making another hole in the outside of the house. Since the dryer will be moving over only about two feet, let's just run a hose through the wall (courtesy of the hole I already had to cut anyhow) and connect it up.

Might as well make it look good.

So just two short days later, the closet is history, the vent is re-routed, electrical is moved, and I'm a mess. The closet was ridiculously over-built, which doesn't upset me at all. I have a feeling the rest of the house has this kind of overkill, too -- not a bad thing, considering this is the only demolition we intend to do.

Next: Removing the old tub and scraping that awful popcorn from the bathroom. Fun.

Scraping commences

The ceilings in most of the house have a heavy coating of paint over the popcorn. What joy. That is gross for a lot of reasons - the biggest being that it makes removal a lot more problematic.

Popcorn (cottage cheese) ceiling texture is really nothing more than little particles held in a mixture of drywall mud. The mud is particularly water-soluble, so if you get it wet, the texture is generally pretty easy to scrape off with minimal effort.

Not so when it's been painted, though. Paint is a pretty good water seal, so you have to break through it to get your water in to do its job.

I first tried a tentative scrape without moisture, just to see how tightly the junk was going to hold on.

Not too bad, so far. It isn't coming off easy, but it's not holding on for dear life, either.

Encouraged by my little 2-square-foot test, I pulled out the ladder, and armed with two spray bottles, two plastic stripping/scraping tools and a fancy Ceiling Texture Scraper tool from Home Depot, I went to work in earnest.

By the way, the floors underneath the icky carpet in the bedroom? Icky fake-parquet vinyl tiles.

It took a little bit of a learning curve. The most important steps to scraping a painted popcorn ceiling, I've discovered:

1. Scrape off as much surface texture as you can first, while the ceiling is still dry. I did most of this with the specialized de-texturing tool in this room, but I believe I'm going to switch to a 1/16" v-notch trowel for the next one. You want something that'll really rough it up quite a bit.

2. Soak it with your spray bottle. If you're the kind of person who usually overdoes things, you'll need less water than you think. If you're the kind of person who usually doesn't do enough the first time around, you'll need more water than you think. You want to find that perfect balance where your popcorn gets soaked, but your drywall's paper layer doesn't lose adhesion.

3. After the first soaking, move to another section and work there for about 10 - 15 minutes to let the water do its work.

4. Return to the previous location and see if your texture is ready to come off. If you did it right, the junk will drop off with minimal resistance. If you're scraping still-solid mud, you need to rewet and come back.

5. Soft plastic tools seem the best bet for me, at least for now. When we get to the living room downstairs, those ceilings haven't been painted, and I'll revisit the special scraping tool. But for now, its blade is simply too big and flexible for it to be of much use. Its handy ring to hold a bag for falling debris is certainly a nice touch, though.

6. Resign yourself to getting dirty. Really, really dirty. Mud washes out of clothing VERY easily, luckily.

Sorry about what I've done to your shirt, Gary Numan.

Anyhow, the end result? Totally worth the eight hours of hard labor it took. The ceilings are completely clear now, and all they need is a little skim coat, and they'll look like they were always smooth as a sheet. Lucky for me, the drywalling in this house appears to be top-notch.

One room down, eleven to go. The rest will be much easier now that I know what I'm doing.