Labels: remodel, site_maintenance

Before we left for San Franciscom we started working on the front hall closet. This wasn't a huge project and we were able to get a lot of it done before we left. That closet has always been a disorganized mess. The kind of closet where you would stick the stuff that otherwise had no home but you couldn't quite stand to get rid off.

So before we started we had to empy it out and sort through what was there. Irene convinced me to part with a (for me) fairly large amount of stuff and the rest of which was pilled up in various locations through out the condo. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of it in it's original state, so you'll just have to trust me that it wasn't pretty.

Then the closet doors had to come off. This was difficult (and even harder to get back up when we were finished).

Then the shelving came out. It was the kind with brackets screwed to the walls. So there was a small amount of repatching work required, but nothing to bad compared to the bedroom and office. And since it was a closet, we didn't worry too much about making it look pretty.

Taking the closet doors off allowed me to finish painting the front entry blue (left undone for 3 years). And I decided to do the inside orange as we still had most of a can left over from the bedroom. You can see the results here:



After we got back from SF, we did the orange and then Friday I went to Lowes after work to buy the new shelving. It's much more organized than what was there before and will eventually have a coat bar as soon as I can cut one down to fit. Plus we now have a bit of a wine cellar which frees up a bit of space on the overhead kitchen cabinets, which is where the wine ued to be.





So I'm pretty pleased with the way it looks. Now I need to go through the stuff again and dump some more before it all goes back in.

Labels: remodel

I think the last time I updated about the grand remodel project that is my condo we had just finished painting half of the bedroom, after which we took a break for a couple of months before continuing. We had to move the bed to the other side of the room in order to work on the walls behind.

Now as I've said before, about 90% of the surface area of my place was covered in the same awful textured wallpaper that had to come down before painting could commence. Well the wall behind the bed was even worse as the previous owners had painted over the wallpaper (something that has been suggested to me numerous times as a short cut) and the result was like a particularly rough sandpaper. So that had to come down as well. Only, when I started to remove it, the paper started taking up huge swaths of sheet rock:





So I then had to go in and scrape off the bits left behind before I could go in and fix the cracks and resurface.



This all took a few months (as I move quite slowly on theses types of projects).

Well finally, over this past three-day weekend, I managed to finish the primiring and painting and rehanging of closet doors:





And last night, after we returned from seeing Pan's Labyrinth (excellent) we moved the bed back to it's original position and put the bedroom back in order.



Now all we have to do is get a real bed frame and side tables and it will look a bit of all right.

Next projects on the agenda: 1) Front hall closet and 2) Rehang doors in studio.

Stay tuned

Labels: remodel

So after a long hiatus, work has resumed on the bedroom. We finished sanding down the walls. and the proceeded straight to the primering.

Here are the walls with 2 layers of white primer.



And after one layer of a special grey-tinted primer that is supposed to be good for color, allowing you to get even coverage with fewer coats. We'll see how well it works.



And look! It works great! Here are the walls with only one coat of Fragrant Cloves, our chosen color. Looks good, I think 2 coats will probably do it! Last time I had to do, like three or four coats of the blue, and more of the red.



In person, the orange is darker than it appears here. I'm very happy with the color.

Next we need to move the bed and finish the other (much smaller) half of the room. Peel, resurface, and paint. The fun never ends...

Labels: remodel

A couple of weeks ago I started on a remodel of the bedroom. This is the second remodel project since I moved in two and a half years ago. The first one being the studio/foyer, which, strictly speaking, still isn't complete. Two rooms in two and a half years really isn't going to break any speed records, I realize, but the last project was such a pain in the ass, I was really not very motivated to start again.

You see, when I moved in, the entire place was covered with the same drab textured wall paper, and removing it proved very difficult. I tried all kinds of chemicals and gels before finally settling on muscle and a vinegar/water solution. It took forever.

And then, once I had the wall paper off, I could see that one whole wall was going to need to be resurfaced. And only then could I finally get around to painting. The whole thing put me off remodeling for awhile.

This time, though, I bought a wall paper steamer for $50. Let me tell you, it would have been worth it for three times the price. It made peeling off the wall paper so fast I did an entire wall in three hours (as opposed to the three days it took me the old way).

The first picture (click to enlarge) shows the wall after the first layer had been peeled off. Then, in the second picture, you can see the two steps. First the top part peels off leaving the paper/glue backing which then has to be steamed off.





The third picture shows the closet with the doors off, which I had to do to get to the wall paper tucked behind them.



So after the paper came off, the wall needed to be washed down to remove the glue left on the wall. In this picture you can see how I'm halfway through washing down the wall.



And here you can see Irene helping.



We're actually still in the middle of this, we just took a short break because it's tiring work. I hope that we will have this wall and the one with the window finished up today. Next weekend I'll finish washing down the walls and start on the resurfacing. This wall is the back side of the one I had to resurface last time, and it is in just as bad shape. I actually think I'll have to resurface the entire room, as there are two walls by the bed that they just painted right over the wall paper, and it's like sandpaper now. I'm probably going to paint a mural of some sort on that wall and will need it smooth.

I'll update my progress here next week,

Labels: remodel