Sanding, as I've learned, was the bane of my existence during what I refer to as "the drywall experience". Mudding, hanging, all that....nothing. Sanding....well, I'm still finding sand particles in the house. I fear they will never leave. Someday, I'll go to clean my ears, 10 years from now, and a chunk of particles will come tumbling out of my ear canal. I just know it. Either way, sanding is the art part of drywalling and I detest inside corners. Well, outside corners as well. I just dislike them. The seams were easy.
Party time.
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6:49 PM
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drywall,
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So, I thought the worst was over. I mean, it's all torn down and things just need to be reconstructed. No worries, right? Right? RIGHT??!?!?!?!? Right. Little did I know what I
was in for. Just getting it to my house was stressful enough. Putting it up and figuring out
the angles and usage of the boards? Lucky I had Paul. He knew how to do that. I certainly
never fared well at geometry. Only when playing air hockey.
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The Chez
at
9:31 PM
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drywall,
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living room,
Paul,
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So, part of the process of tearing down the livingroom and putting it back up meant
INSULATING! I'm still surprised how much that's changed the comfort level in the room.
I always thought it was just marketing at it's finest to sell insulation. It really does maintain
comfort levels quite well. Plus, it's super easy to install.
It was now time to start the harder part: hanging the drywall.
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The Chez
at
8:33 AM
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house,
insulation,
interior,
living room,
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Sometimes you just gotta tear down and build back up.
In this case, I got tired of stripping wallpaper. I wouldn't
wish that task upon anybody. ANYBODY. It gave me a mean
case of golfer's elbow. That said, I decided to try my hand at
drywall. My buddy Paul has done both of his places and insisted
that I not pay the $1500 everybody wanted and we would do it.
Little did I know what I was in for....
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The Chez
at
6:35 AM
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Hammers in walls! I don't drop hammers, I set em!
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
8:06 AM
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drywall,
homeowner,
renovation
So, this house(I'm convinced) never had a washing machine. There's a clothesline in the backyard, but there is no evidence of a washing machine or a dryer. That led me to believe that Opal(the better half of the duo before me) washed all the clothes by hand. Seriously? Who does that still? It's not like my house is from the 1800's, it was built in 1951!
So, that said, I had to figure out how to get this washer and dryer set up because I sure as hell wasn't washing clothes by hand and I'm not doing the laundromat thing. I'm a responsible adult now, right? So, I called concrete cutting companies to get estimates and they both came in at the same amount to cut an L in the floor from the utility room to the garage and remove the concrete - $1500!!!!! WHAT? NO! So, I decided to go the makeshift route and do some ghetto plumbing and make something work. PVC, a box and some PEX and voila! Ghetto washer! The dryer made it into the garage. New Mexico taught me plenty.
(This is how I wanted it to look)
This is how it turned out.
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The Chez
at
10:09 PM
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dryer,
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As neat as the tile looks on the walls and all, it sure is a challenge to line things up geometrically. I certainly didn't do well at geometry in high school and this project really tested my patience and fortitude several times. I had to walk away a couple times and just clear the mind. Luckily, Ben calmed me down and got me focused again. I love the results that came of it though.
I ordered a medicine cabinet, four weeks later it came, with a cracked mirror. Ridiculous. Fixed that, put in a hotel shower rod, painted and added an exhaust fan. Now I have the bathroom of which I am decidedly proud. I really love taking a bath or shower and just looking around in amazement that a ton of hard effort and very little planning achieved. I maintained the era of house with decidedly modern materials and am very happy with the results.
Posted by Posted by
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at
7:09 PM
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bathroom,
Ben Mastico,
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Man, when you decide to use subway tile, you end up with a lot more tiles to lay down.
Still, in the end, subway tiles are some of my favorite. Classy, classic, timeless.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
7:27 AM
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bathroom,
Ben Mastico,
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subway,
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tiling
The tearing out of things always seems to be the easiest. Destroying is easy. Building up is much harder. So, with the deconstruction out of the way, we set to setting tile. Mind you, I didn't do too well with geometry in high school. I was extremely lucky that Ben was there to play with angles. I had a hard time keeping a straight line with the subway tiles, but it eventually worked out. The act of setting tile itself isn't hard. I think the worst part of it all is figuring out where the partial tiles are going to end up and where you want to start/stop designs. For this whole tiling and bathroom effort, I'm eternally grateful to Ben for pushing me into this job.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
7:41 AM
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bathroom,
Ben Mastico,
floor,
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Okay, after looking at the last post, I have to start down the path of jumping around with time. I saw the pictures of the bathroom and how horrid it looked before and just couldn't make you people keep looking at it.So, as much work as the house is and everything, I have some overall picture in my head and it follows the lines of this:
But that's not how life automatically works unless you come from a family with money. I, do not. Therefore, I have to do all my work bit by bit and I won't be wandering through my kitchen with my skis while in my rockin board shorts. No, I'll be doing a grand majority of this work via myself and friends. It will probably cost me just as much in beer but it will be up to m
y lofty standards.
So, with the bathroom, I wanted to just gut the thing and start over with the exception of the bathtub. What we ended up doing was leaving most of the drywall other than the wall where we were replacing the fully rotted window. The window literally fell apart when Ben tried to knock it out of the house framing!
Here's the start of what we did:
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
10:54 PM
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50's,
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Ben,
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After finishing the first room of wallpaper stripping shortly after moving in, I realized I just couldn't live with the 80's sink that they put in the bathroom. Well, as a homeowner, you learn things fast: like plumbing, drywall, electrical connections, etc....
I wanted to just gut the bathroom, but all good things come in time. For now, it was just the sink that had to go in this nasty room.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
6:40 PM
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bathroom,
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Has anyone ever peeled wallpaper? I don't care what method you use. It sucks.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
7:57 PM
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house,
Portland,
renovation,
stripping,
wallpaper
In 2009, the market crashed, the housing boom ended and a recession started. All in all a great time to invest. Invest I did that year. I felt like a plastic soldier sized Warren Buffett. Buy low, buy low! All was good until I was relegated to FHA because of a certain cable monopoly who refuses....I'm not gonna waste the space. Anyhoo, I was forced to an FHA loan and the underwriter came back with an initial list and then a secondary list a week before closing. Thanks, all you homeowners who lied about your funding for the last 10 years. I got to bear the brunt for that. That said, I had to go in with my realtor and take care of the second list if I wanted a loan. Great. Here's the results:
Living room with the world's most disgustingly dirty carpet removed. Hello oak floors!
Insert removed from the fireplace. It couldn't be proved that it was up to code.
New floor tiles(stickers, basically) over the scary asbestos floor.
This is the room where the leaking happened by the window and the wallpaper was peeling.
Posted by Posted by
The Chez
at
10:08 PM
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house,
Portland,
renovation
