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| From 2014 June |
Friday, June 20, 2014
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Reno: The Week the Wallpaper Ate
So after I wrote last we hit a brick wall on work on the house. Or more like a quadruple hurdle. I threw out my back and so was only minimally helpful for days on end (as in I spent one entire day lying on the sofa bed mattress on the floor while Joe removed wallpaper), my dad wasn't able to come up as planned this week because he's been sick, the wallpaper was more time-intensive than we had thought, and we had a lot of days without daycare (and holding Elizabeth is harder on my back than working on the house, so I couldn't even take over that). Put it all together and in the 6 days following that post we did a grand total of get wallpaper off the bedroom walls and prime one wall. Yes, one wall. We had initially thought we'd strip all the wallpaper in the whole house before we moved in. Yeah, that was funny. But the bedrooms are done. And my mom arrived Monday evening and is staying for almost 2 weeks to help. We still plan to do the kitchen and bathrooms later this summer because they are small real estate and won't have furniture in them. And the hallway, living room, and dining room wallpaper will just have to wait, probably until next summer.
The wallpaper came off in those big strips on the rest of Elizabeth's room and our room. But what I hadn't realized yet when I wrote the last post was that after we got the wallpaper off we still had tons more work to do. First we went over every inch of each wall with vinegar/water and a putty knife, scraping off glue. And in some places we went over an area multiple times to get the glue. And then we thought we were done, but when we started washing the walls with TSP to prep them for painting we realized that there was still glue residue on a lot of the walls and so did another round of scraping every inch while washing with TSP. And that was just to get to the point of taping, which always takes hours longer than it seems it should.
And then we started on Nicholas' room. And things got even more discouraging. Our magic process failed. Joe and my mom tried all sorts of combinations but could only get the top layer off with the dif and then had to use vinegar/water and spend hours hacking at the bottom two brown paper layers to get them off. And even with all that work, this was what they had accomplished after hours of work:
At this point we rented a steamer to do the rest of Nicholas' walls.
And thankfully it worked because that was our Hail Mary pass. If that hadn't worked, I don't know what the next option would have been. Joe spent probably about 5 hours on it and my mom spent another 1, but they got the room done.
Tomorrow we (okay, Joe and my mom because painting seems easier on my back than scraping) will start on the process of scraping glue so there is still a lot to be done, but at least the wallpaper is off.
BUT we have now started painting Elizabeth's room and our room and so the progress has picked up remarkably. Yesterday late afternoon we were finally ready to paint so we picked Nicholas up from school early so he could help. When I asked him at the very beginning of this project what parts he most wanted to help with he listed pulling up the carpet (check) and painting both kids' rooms. So he helped do the first coat of paint on one wall of Elizabeth's room. (And then got distracted and went into his room to watch Joe steam off the wallpaper.)
Today I had a conference in the morning and Elizabeth didn't have daycare so needed someone to stay with her but even with only Joe at the house until 2:30 and then my mom and I there for about 2 hours in the afternoon we got 8 walls painted! So the 3 light colored walls in Elizabeth's room have had both coats and so assuming we don't see any major missed spots when we go in tomorrow morning, are done. And the 3 light colored walls in our room have their first coat.
So, anyway, we are making progress but more slowly than we had hoped and have had to scale back our expectations for what will be done before we move in. We'll then have enough projects left to occupy us for years.
But Elizabeth has a purple room!
The wallpaper came off in those big strips on the rest of Elizabeth's room and our room. But what I hadn't realized yet when I wrote the last post was that after we got the wallpaper off we still had tons more work to do. First we went over every inch of each wall with vinegar/water and a putty knife, scraping off glue. And in some places we went over an area multiple times to get the glue. And then we thought we were done, but when we started washing the walls with TSP to prep them for painting we realized that there was still glue residue on a lot of the walls and so did another round of scraping every inch while washing with TSP. And that was just to get to the point of taping, which always takes hours longer than it seems it should.
And then we started on Nicholas' room. And things got even more discouraging. Our magic process failed. Joe and my mom tried all sorts of combinations but could only get the top layer off with the dif and then had to use vinegar/water and spend hours hacking at the bottom two brown paper layers to get them off. And even with all that work, this was what they had accomplished after hours of work:
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| From 2014 June |
At this point we rented a steamer to do the rest of Nicholas' walls.
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| From 2014 June |
And thankfully it worked because that was our Hail Mary pass. If that hadn't worked, I don't know what the next option would have been. Joe spent probably about 5 hours on it and my mom spent another 1, but they got the room done.
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| From 2014 June |
BUT we have now started painting Elizabeth's room and our room and so the progress has picked up remarkably. Yesterday late afternoon we were finally ready to paint so we picked Nicholas up from school early so he could help. When I asked him at the very beginning of this project what parts he most wanted to help with he listed pulling up the carpet (check) and painting both kids' rooms. So he helped do the first coat of paint on one wall of Elizabeth's room. (And then got distracted and went into his room to watch Joe steam off the wallpaper.)
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| From 2014 June |
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| From 2014 June |
So, anyway, we are making progress but more slowly than we had hoped and have had to scale back our expectations for what will be done before we move in. We'll then have enough projects left to occupy us for years.
But Elizabeth has a purple room!
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Reno Days 5-9
After pulling up that carpet all other progress seems so slow because there just isn't as much of a dramatic change as quickly. But we are making progress. It often feels like 2 steps forward, 1 step back, but we're moving.
Each of the three of us who can walk have taken turns pulling staples out of the floor when we had little bits and pieces of time and I spent an hour or so pulling up tack strips one day from half of the dining room. Joe has been over at the house for the last 3 hours working on tack strips so I am excited to see how far he has gotten. (Update: he just got home and finished ALL the rest of the tack strips! I cannot tell you how excited I am by this.) But while all of those steps absolutely have to happen, they don't have the same visible reward as pulling up the green carpet did. Also, while the floor looked great compared to what we were anticipating, that initial glow is wearing off (and the literal dust is clearing) and I now see all the imperfections. And because we are in limbo on what to do about sealing/protecting the floor (I refuse to sand them all the way down and re-stain given how good of shape they are in but the hardwood flooring contractor we had out thinks someone used wax on sections at some point which apparently makes it impossible to have them just buffed and coated) I am constantly paranoid about whether a scratch is something we've done or whether it was always there and I just hadn't noticed.
The office is the only room that is finished. Well, even that room isn't what I had planned because I had planned to paint the wood paneling that goes around the window white, but it may have to stay wood. But we are really happy with how it turned out.
Nicholas helped prime the second wall and he actually did a phenomenal job but it was very stressful for me. He is 5 and so still knocks over cups of milk at the table and he was working with paint and open buckets of paint in a room with wood baseboards and floors. And goodness knows that I inevitably get paint on doors and ceilings so I was waiting for the time he made a mess. But he didn't.
I ended up doing two coats of paint after the primer. It was like 95% after the first coat and I probably could have gotten away with it, but I would have seen all the imperfections and gone insane.
Joe and I started stripping wallpaper on Wednesday and got halfway through Elizabeth's room (the smallest room--not counting bathrooms--in the entire house). We started with the vinegar and fabric softener suggestions we'd been given and read about and the paper was coming off and in ways that basically matched what we expected from what we'd heard (little bits and pieces, with a lot of scraping).
And so we were just plugging along. And then after an hour this is what we had accomplished:
And we started doing the math and realized that at that rate we'd still be working on Elizabeth's room when it was time to move in. So we decided to try the chemical spray I'd bought since it was sitting there but with the plan of going back to Home Depot after lunch and renting a steamer. But the spray made a big difference and so we decided to keep going with it. Occasionally we got a big strip, although there was still quite a bit of scraping. So after another hour and a half we had finished the first (and smallest) wall.
But that progress seemed very comparable to what we had seen in youtube videos of people using a steamer, so there didn't seem to be any reason to go rent the steamer. After lunch Joe switched to working on the basement floor (I didn't take pictures, but apparently the water was black after he mopped!) while I went back to the wallpaper. And a miracle happened:
I'm hoping that I figured out the trick and it wasn't a fluke of that one wall. We will see tomorrow when we start on another interior wall. For the record, what I did on that wall was score a sheet with the paper tiger, spray on the gel, rub the gel in (with chemical resistant gloves on because even I have some limits) in a circular motion, peel up the top corner of a sheet with the putty knife, pull gently all along the top of the sheet so that the entire sheet was released at the top, and then pull slowly down, the entire sheet at once (pulling each side a little and then the middle. Pulling slowly there was occasionally a place that caught or where the bottom paper layer started to rip and the trick was to stop immediately and use the putty knife to get that spot so that the sheet could continue to be pulled as a whole. It actually makes sense why this would work so much better than what we had been doing, but I spent hours reading blogs and forums and watching videos and no one else said anything about rubbing the gel in or pulling the sheet as a whole, so I am still worried it was a random easy wall. We shall see tomorrow. But, regardless, we are so lucky because they had stripped off the 1960s wallpaper (see the yellow and orange flowers below) when they put this wallpaper up (we assume in the 1980s) and the walls are plaster. I have such respect for the previous owners!
Each of the three of us who can walk have taken turns pulling staples out of the floor when we had little bits and pieces of time and I spent an hour or so pulling up tack strips one day from half of the dining room. Joe has been over at the house for the last 3 hours working on tack strips so I am excited to see how far he has gotten. (Update: he just got home and finished ALL the rest of the tack strips! I cannot tell you how excited I am by this.) But while all of those steps absolutely have to happen, they don't have the same visible reward as pulling up the green carpet did. Also, while the floor looked great compared to what we were anticipating, that initial glow is wearing off (and the literal dust is clearing) and I now see all the imperfections. And because we are in limbo on what to do about sealing/protecting the floor (I refuse to sand them all the way down and re-stain given how good of shape they are in but the hardwood flooring contractor we had out thinks someone used wax on sections at some point which apparently makes it impossible to have them just buffed and coated) I am constantly paranoid about whether a scratch is something we've done or whether it was always there and I just hadn't noticed.
The office is the only room that is finished. Well, even that room isn't what I had planned because I had planned to paint the wood paneling that goes around the window white, but it may have to stay wood. But we are really happy with how it turned out.
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| From 2014 June |
Nicholas helped prime the second wall and he actually did a phenomenal job but it was very stressful for me. He is 5 and so still knocks over cups of milk at the table and he was working with paint and open buckets of paint in a room with wood baseboards and floors. And goodness knows that I inevitably get paint on doors and ceilings so I was waiting for the time he made a mess. But he didn't.
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| From 2014 June |
 |
| From 2014 June |
I ended up doing two coats of paint after the primer. It was like 95% after the first coat and I probably could have gotten away with it, but I would have seen all the imperfections and gone insane.
Joe and I started stripping wallpaper on Wednesday and got halfway through Elizabeth's room (the smallest room--not counting bathrooms--in the entire house). We started with the vinegar and fabric softener suggestions we'd been given and read about and the paper was coming off and in ways that basically matched what we expected from what we'd heard (little bits and pieces, with a lot of scraping).
 |
| From 2014 June |
 |
| From 2014 June |
 |
| From 2014 June |
And we started doing the math and realized that at that rate we'd still be working on Elizabeth's room when it was time to move in. So we decided to try the chemical spray I'd bought since it was sitting there but with the plan of going back to Home Depot after lunch and renting a steamer. But the spray made a big difference and so we decided to keep going with it. Occasionally we got a big strip, although there was still quite a bit of scraping. So after another hour and a half we had finished the first (and smallest) wall.
But that progress seemed very comparable to what we had seen in youtube videos of people using a steamer, so there didn't seem to be any reason to go rent the steamer. After lunch Joe switched to working on the basement floor (I didn't take pictures, but apparently the water was black after he mopped!) while I went back to the wallpaper. And a miracle happened:
 |
| From 2014 June |
 |
| From 2014 June |
I'm hoping that I figured out the trick and it wasn't a fluke of that one wall. We will see tomorrow when we start on another interior wall. For the record, what I did on that wall was score a sheet with the paper tiger, spray on the gel, rub the gel in (with chemical resistant gloves on because even I have some limits) in a circular motion, peel up the top corner of a sheet with the putty knife, pull gently all along the top of the sheet so that the entire sheet was released at the top, and then pull slowly down, the entire sheet at once (pulling each side a little and then the middle. Pulling slowly there was occasionally a place that caught or where the bottom paper layer started to rip and the trick was to stop immediately and use the putty knife to get that spot so that the sheet could continue to be pulled as a whole. It actually makes sense why this would work so much better than what we had been doing, but I spent hours reading blogs and forums and watching videos and no one else said anything about rubbing the gel in or pulling the sheet as a whole, so I am still worried it was a random easy wall. We shall see tomorrow. But, regardless, we are so lucky because they had stripped off the 1960s wallpaper (see the yellow and orange flowers below) when they put this wallpaper up (we assume in the 1980s) and the walls are plaster. I have such respect for the previous owners!
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| From 2014 June |
Monday, June 9, 2014
Crawling
She crossed a critical hurdle today and is now able to go much further distances. At this rate I fully expect her to be racing around the house by the end of the week. Just in time for the apartment to be torn apart and completely unsafe as we begin packing.
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| From 2014 June |
7 Months
A portrait of Elizabeth at 7 months:
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| From 2014 June |
- She is super active, throwing herself all over and trying desperately to figure out how to crawl and pull herself up on objects. On the day she turned 7 months old she started going to sitting from lying down by going up on all fours first. As of her Sunday 7 month mark she could scoot herself forward a few inches or a foot to get a toy but wasn't actually crawling. Getting her dressed or even changing her diaper has become a wrestling match because she won't stay on her back.
- Most nights she gets up twice to eat. Half of the time she goes right back down and the other half of the times are difficult. She still nurses herself to sleep sometimes (esp if she is really tired) but often she declares that she is done nursing before she is asleep and so I just put her to bed. Sometimes she then fusses for a bit and gets herself to sleep. Other times she needs me to stand there rubbing her back until she falls asleep and screams bloody murder nonstop if I leave.
- She loves finger foods. She still fights us to try to get the spoon when we feed her baby food, but anything she can eat on her own is a winner. And she now gets more of the puffs and yogurt melts in her mouth than down her chair, although just barely.
- She loves grace at dinner and is remarkably attentive at church. I have no idea.
- She doesn't babble very much at all. She mostly just shrieks or pants when she wants to express herself, but no intonations that I've picked up on.
- She is developing a sense of humor. She thought it was hilarious the other day when I sucked on her pacifier to clean it off. That actually suggests to me a lot of complex thought because she had to have figured out that it was odd for an adult to have a pacifier in her mouth. Unfortunately she also thinks that pulling Nicholas' hair is funny and we are having trouble convincing her that it isn't.
- It is often a real challenge to get her to nurse, at least more than just a quick snack. She wants to be doing things and moving and looking around.
- She still loves chewing on everything.
- She still doesn't have a nap schedule. She has finally at least gotten to usually napping twice a day, which is what most babies do, but the times of day and lengths have no consistency. Most of her home naps are still taken in her carseat, simply because we're always on the go on days we're home, especially since we can't even try to plan around a nap schedule.
- She finally had her 6-month checkup 1 day after she turned 7 months old, so here are her stats: 17lbs 6 oz and 26.5 inches. She has hung out right around the 50th percentile since she was born.
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| From 2014 June |
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Reno Day 4
No more green carpet!
And this is the only real damage to the floor:
I really don't think I did anything wrong, but this piece (about 1/4 inch thick and 2-3 inches long) just came off with the carpet. Luckily it is at the threshold to Nicholas' bedroom because if you're going to have one piece that doesn't match, that seems like the best place. (There are also a couple spots where there are scuff marks but nothing too bad and certainly not worth sanding and refinishing all the floors for.)
As you can see, we haven't finished getting the staples up from what we did today and there are TONS of tack strips to come up as well as sweeping to do, but the entire look of the house has already changed.
And a couple pictures in process:
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| From 2014 June |
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| From 2014 June |
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| From 2014 June |
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| From 2014 June |
I really don't think I did anything wrong, but this piece (about 1/4 inch thick and 2-3 inches long) just came off with the carpet. Luckily it is at the threshold to Nicholas' bedroom because if you're going to have one piece that doesn't match, that seems like the best place. (There are also a couple spots where there are scuff marks but nothing too bad and certainly not worth sanding and refinishing all the floors for.)
As you can see, we haven't finished getting the staples up from what we did today and there are TONS of tack strips to come up as well as sweeping to do, but the entire look of the house has already changed.
And a couple pictures in process:
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| From 2014 June |
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| From 2014 June |
Friday, June 6, 2014
Reno Days 2 and 3
This week has been mostly contractors working on the house and so we haven't done a ton (and most of the work they've done has been simultaneously very expensive and completely invisible (but important--we now have no asbestos in the attic and the water pressure seems to have been fixed)). But there has been some progress and it is so gratifying to actually see the results of work I do!
Yesterday morning Nicholas and I did a bit more carpet ripping on the way to school. We managed to get the carpet up in the whole dining room!
And then yesterday afternoon I took Elizabeth to the house in the afternoon and pulled up all the staples in both of the chunks we had cleared. Most of the staples weren't bad at all (way easier than I had feared based on what I had read), although there were a handful along the place where the carpet met the entry linoleum that were back breaking. This afternoon I started on the tack strips and those are much more difficult. Getting them up is the most difficult part of getting the carpet up so far And the least rewarding because underneath them are all sorts of huge nail holes we need to figure out what to do about. But since they have hundreds of tiny nails sticking out of them, they clearly have to come up sooner rather than later.
This afternoon Joe and I started working on the office, since it is the only room that can be painted without first stripping wallpaper. It is, however, covered (completely--including the inside of the window frames!) with wood paneling. Again, not too much visible progress because before we could start painting we had to wash the walls, sand the paneling to break up the shellack so the paint will stick, wipe off the resulting dust, and tape the edges. I only managed to get one wall primed, but I am very encouraged by how well the primer has covered the knots.
It may only need one coat of real paint!
Nicholas is insistent that he has to help take up the rest of the carpet and was very upset that there wasn't time to do it this morning, so I have promised to take him over to work on it in the morning before tee-ball. I doubt we'll finish, but progress is progress. And then next week I think we start on wallpaper!
Yesterday morning Nicholas and I did a bit more carpet ripping on the way to school. We managed to get the carpet up in the whole dining room!
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| From 2014 June |
This afternoon Joe and I started working on the office, since it is the only room that can be painted without first stripping wallpaper. It is, however, covered (completely--including the inside of the window frames!) with wood paneling. Again, not too much visible progress because before we could start painting we had to wash the walls, sand the paneling to break up the shellack so the paint will stick, wipe off the resulting dust, and tape the edges. I only managed to get one wall primed, but I am very encouraged by how well the primer has covered the knots.
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| From 2014 June |
Nicholas is insistent that he has to help take up the rest of the carpet and was very upset that there wasn't time to do it this morning, so I have promised to take him over to work on it in the morning before tee-ball. I doubt we'll finish, but progress is progress. And then next week I think we start on wallpaper!
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Reno Day 1
I don't really know if it counts as a reno since we aren't knocking down any walls (much to Nicholas' disappointment) and doing only the most minor repairs in the kitchen and bathrooms, but it certainly feels like an undertaking. And I have been itching to get to work since we put the offer in two months ago.
We went over to the house first thing this morning, in theory just to let the asbestos removal guys in, but they were late so we tackled a few easy projects while we were there. Joe switched out the storm window on the front door for a screen, Nicholas and I removed the accordion door from the kitchen doorway (pinching hazard), and we tried (unsuccessfully) to move the sofa bed we bought from the previous owners to the basement.
The asbestos guys then arrived and we high-tailed it out of there.
Really only the bedrooms, upstairs bathrooms, and attic are off limits (see, that makeshift half bath in the basement that wasn't in the listing has already come in handy!), so after school I decided to let Nicholas do a few minutes of helping pull up carpet. I hadn't planned to work at the house today and the plan for the carpet was for Joe and I to work on it Friday afternoon while Nicholas was in school, but this morning he was asking about it and clearly wanted to help. So my plan was that we would do 15 or so minutes, just get a little corner up, so he could feel like he helped with it and was part of it. And an hour later:
It both came up more easily than I had feared and Nicholas was able to do more than I had assumed. And especially once I realized that we only needed to cut occasionally and could actually just do a lot of ripping, there wasn't much he couldn't do.
He was actually the perfect amount of help. It only required one adult's worth of strength and knowledge, but really did require two sets of hands. And he so loved working on it. When he has something to work on that he is engaged in and feels is worthwhile he is so mature and responsible and reliable. The difference in his demeanor is really astounding.
And so far so good on the floors. We are about halfway done with the living room and we have only uncovered one small scuff mark and no stains or discoloration. Cross your fingers that it continues this well. I have had all sorts of practical concerns about hardwood (I like the warm, soft, comfy of hardwood, especially in winter), but I can't deny that these are absolutely gorgeous! I'll have to take a picture with a real camera sometime in the next couple days because my phone does not cut it.
We went over to the house first thing this morning, in theory just to let the asbestos removal guys in, but they were late so we tackled a few easy projects while we were there. Joe switched out the storm window on the front door for a screen, Nicholas and I removed the accordion door from the kitchen doorway (pinching hazard), and we tried (unsuccessfully) to move the sofa bed we bought from the previous owners to the basement.
The asbestos guys then arrived and we high-tailed it out of there.
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| From 2014 June |
Really only the bedrooms, upstairs bathrooms, and attic are off limits (see, that makeshift half bath in the basement that wasn't in the listing has already come in handy!), so after school I decided to let Nicholas do a few minutes of helping pull up carpet. I hadn't planned to work at the house today and the plan for the carpet was for Joe and I to work on it Friday afternoon while Nicholas was in school, but this morning he was asking about it and clearly wanted to help. So my plan was that we would do 15 or so minutes, just get a little corner up, so he could feel like he helped with it and was part of it. And an hour later:
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| From 2014 June |
It both came up more easily than I had feared and Nicholas was able to do more than I had assumed. And especially once I realized that we only needed to cut occasionally and could actually just do a lot of ripping, there wasn't much he couldn't do.
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| From 2014 June |
And so far so good on the floors. We are about halfway done with the living room and we have only uncovered one small scuff mark and no stains or discoloration. Cross your fingers that it continues this well. I have had all sorts of practical concerns about hardwood (I like the warm, soft, comfy of hardwood, especially in winter), but I can't deny that these are absolutely gorgeous! I'll have to take a picture with a real camera sometime in the next couple days because my phone does not cut it.
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