Great Stuff!

We've been slowly recreating Rachel's room after gutting it. Doug has been insulating and his new best friend is "Great Stuff," that expanding foam insulation. He has filled every single little gap he can find with the stuff.

I think he has used about 10 cans in her room but I don't believe that we will have to worry about drafts. He is putting up R-13 fiberglass batting in the stud bays. After filling the stud bays with batting he will be putting up a plastic vapor barriar because there isn't any on the outside.


He is also going to blow insulation into the walls of the room below (the living room) while these walls are still open. In a few years we will be ripping those walls out and putting in batting but for the few years until then, he wants some semblance of insulation in the walls.

On Saturday, Doug and one of our elders, Bill, were able to get the sheetrock for the ceiling up and start to make it look like a room again. They rented a sheetrock lift which is the only way to go for putting sheetrock on a ceiling. It's starting to look great!

Down to bare walls

We have finished getting all the lath and plaster and acoustical tiles out of Rachel's room and out of the house. Doug carried the last of it to the alley for the garbage men to pick up. They are great about picking up anything we put out here. They even came in our yard with Doug and helped him carry some very heavy bags out. Quite a change from our garbage men in Wisconsin.

One of our elders (we have the best elders here) came over last night and worked for several hours with Doug. He pulled all the staples out of the furring on the ceiling so that we will be ready to sheetrock the ceiling. He took down the trim around the second window, helped Doug with some of the electrical work he was doing and helped clean up. Doug put a light in Rachel's closet and worked on some of the electrical outlets. On the two remaining walls, there is a little bit of the wallpaper border to remove. Then it's insulation and sheetrock! Yeah!


This photo is looking down in the stud bays from Rachel's room to the first floor. Obviously, we have balloon framing and there was never anything put in the bays to stop movement of air, and thus potentially fire, between the floors. We will have to correct that before we insulate.

I know I said that we were going to complete the small projects on the list I made before we started another major project. Obviously, we didn't do that but we are still whittling away at the list. We did get a bedframe for our bed so our list of small projects is down to:

1) Move the phone cords in kitchen
2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling
3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling
8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan
9) Put in the glass for guest room French door
12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall
17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room

Not bad! It was originally 18 projects down to 7. We have the glass for the guest room door so it's just a matter now of Doug finding time to put it in.

We don't need no stinkin' insulation

We told Rachel that we would redecorate her bedroom for her birthday. She thought that meant a new bedspread and some paint. Little did she know! We have now removed all the lath and plaster from her walls and the acoustical panels (yuck, yuck, yuck!) from her ceiling. Her room started like this.
It was a dark maroon with a border around the top that had a baseball theme. It had kind of filmy, dark maroon curtains. The carpet is a browny-orange.

Since we started the remodel, her room looks like this.
Walls:

The amount of insulation you see is the amount of insulation we have. In other words, absolutely none. Not one tiny iota of insulation. Therefore, we are now the proud owners of seven rolls of insulation all primed to go into these walls. We also bought several great cans of Great Stuff to fill the huge amounts of gaps in the walls. The construction looks very solid and straight so that is nice to see but I can't wait to see what insulation is going to do to the temperature and noise in her room.

Ceiling:

We will be drywalling the walls and ceiling. The ceiling was dropped just enough to run the electrical wires. They could have easily been run through the attic but they chose to fur down the ceiling enough to run them and then put up the cardboard acoustical panels. They ruined the plaster ceiling in the process. We would much prefer to have kept and repaired the plaster. The complete lack of insulation and the ruined ceiling made that impossible.

How's that list coming?

I posted a list of the small things we would like to accomplish before we start on another big project. Here's the list again.

1) Move the phone cords in kitchen-NOT DONE
2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling-NOT DONE
3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling-NOT DONE
4) Put in more electrical outlets for office-DONE! These may not seem like a big deal until you've lived in an old house where there was only one outlet per room.

5) Put up the face plates in guest room-DONE!
6) Run the electrical to air conditioner-DONE! We had had a extension cord running from the attic to the outlet in Rachel's room to run the pump on the air conditioner.
7) Put in the plexiglass panel for screen door-DONE!
8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan-NOT DONE
9) Put in the glass for guest room French door-NOT DONE
10) Get a screen panel for the back screen door-DONE!
11) Shave off the door of the sunroom-DONE!
12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall-NOT DONE
13) Put a longer coaxial cord on the tivos so we can move them-DONE!
14) Assemble David’s bed-DONE!

15) Build a bed frame for our bed-NOT DONE
16) Get the dining room table and other furniture out of storage-DONE!

17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room-NOT DONE
18) Cover the french doors in Rachel's room-DONE!

Doorknobs, anyone?

We are back from our trip to Colorado. We got lost in northern Utah which wasn't a state we had actually planned on visiting. Anyway, we're back, we're done with our week of VBS and ready to settle down to a school routine.

One of the things I have found interesting in this house are the doorknobs. The doorknobs are fairly flat in front and these almost all have those fancy things behind them which may be called escutchions. Anyway, except for our blatently new doors, all the doors have one of these ornate things. Mostly of them look like this, just a little scrollwork at the top. Because these are the most prevelant, I think they must have been the originals.


The second most common set up is this...I think that this was the cheaper replacement used when the originals had to be replaced for whatever reason.

Here are the other types to be found in our house.




Well, there is more than you ever wanted to know about the doorknobs in our house!

What to do next?

We've gotten to put our newly painted guest room to good use. Keith Allen, known to anyone who has been to Silver Dollar City as the Rednecker, and his wife stayed with us Sunday night. Very interesting guy! We definitely enjoyed having them stay and they said they really enjoyed our enormous claw-footed bathtub. Last night our youth minister and his wife and daughter spent the night. They had other accomodations that fell through so we were really happy to have a dedicated guest room that we could share on the spur of the moment. I always wanted a separate guest room with it's own bathroom and now we actually have a house big enough to have one.

We are leaving for Denver for our nephew Justin's wedding tomorrow. What do we start on when we get back? Do we hit that list of small but annoying things that need to be done? Do we start another large project such as the office so that it will be ready when we start school in August? Do we go in and do the other projects in the guest room such as the ceiling, the woodwork, the floors? I think Doug is voting for cleaning up the list of small but annoying things that need to be done. There are about 20 things on that list like moving phone lines and installing electrical outlets. You can get some fairly instant gratification out of those projects. I think that is what we'll do next.

Here's our list of small but annoying things that need to be done
1) Move the phone cords in kitchen
2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling
3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling
4) Put in more electrical outlets for office
5) Put up the face plates in guest room
6) Run the electrical to air conditioner
7) Put in the plexiglass panel for screen door
8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan
9) Put in the glass for guest room French door
10) Get a screen panel for the back screen door
11) Shave off the door of the sunroom
12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall
13) Put a longer coaxial cord on the tivos so we can move them where we want them
14) Assemble David’s bed
15) Build a bed frame for our bed
16) Get the dining room table and other furniture out of storage
17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room
18) Cover the french doors in Rachel's room

If we completed this list the quality of everyday life would go up around here so I think we will hit this list when we get back from Denver.

The prep is the thing

Well, our initial work in the guest room is finished. I won't say the guest room is finished because there is still the ceiling, the floor, the trim, the windows, etc. but we have finished the walls for now. I love the result.

Ok, here's the story. We removed four layers of wallpaper and a layer of paint. We washed the walls extensively the remove the buildup of adhesive or something that was bright red off the walls. We patched all the holes (probably 200) with spackling. Doug skimcoated the walls with plaster. We sanded the skimcoat. We taped the woodwork because I am a sloppy painter. Then we primed. We figure we had about 40 hours of work in the room before the first coat of paint went on. I'm really proud of how smooth the walls are now. Here are the walls before paint. Doug, David and I all worked on this.





Now with paint. The gold is a very rich gold but seems to come out yellow in the pictures. I'm really happy with the way this project has turned out. And not a minute too soon because we are having company stay in this room tonight.

Pictures of guest room walls in transition

Here are the pictures of the starting-to-be-repaired walls that didn't fit in the last post.

How to destroy a perfectly good bedroom

I decided that the guest room needed to be the first major project that I would attack. Doug contends that getting the air conditioning hooked up was a major project and I agree but I really didn't have anything to do with that so my first major project is the guest room. It has plaster walls which had at least 4 layers of wallpaper and a couple layers of paint. The room started out like this, a perfectly nice room if you didn't look at the walls too closely. Every seam and crack in the wallpaper were obvious if you looked closely.


The wallpaper was really dry and the majority of the actual paper came off in large pieces without having to apply any kind of moisture or solution to it. It went really well for a while. When we got to the bottom layer, something else appeared. I still don't know what it is. It was a thick red stuff on about 3/4 of the wall surface that had to be washed off with water. There was some brown stuff that had to be washed off but nothing like this thick red stuff. I'm assuming it was a combination of the wallpaper paste and the backing of the first wallpaper that had been on for 100 years. It was probably, literally, 8 hours worth of work to get this red stuff off.




After cleaning that red stuff off the walls for what seemed like forever, I started patching the millions of nail holes with lightweight spackling. That worked well for the regular nail holes. There were a couple of good size cracks that Doug decided to patch with actually patching plaster. As he worked on this, he came to a realization that he would rather just put a skimcoat over the entire surface of the walls. He decided that since we had put so much time into these walls, he wants them to look really good so he used what he had on hand last night and will finish up tonight after buying some more. Then we can prime and paint. These walls should look good. Pictures of the starting-to-be patched walls in the next post.

Small (miniscule) signs of progress

We're back from our convention in Louisville and need to get to work on the house for a few days before we leave for our nephew's wedding in Denver. Here are the few things we've been able to accomplish so far.

One of our bedroom doors was missing. All the doors in the house are 5-horizontal panal doors so we wanted to match that style. We were lucky enough to find one at the local "antique" (junk) shop for $15.00. Not a bad price for a solid wood door! Anyway, as you can see, Doug and I are now officially room 14.


We have removed the wallpaper border that was in the living and dining room. It was practically falling off by itself and definitely not our style. I'm anxious to get some paint on the walls of our white box living room.


I took the screen door off the front door because it was just ugly and was hiding what we believe was an original front door to the house. Obviously, those strange sidelights were not original.


We took out the cabinet in the room off the living room that was blocking access to the front stairs. We believe the wall was completely open originally to show off the stairs and we will get to that eventually. Right now we are just glad we can get to the stairs without going outside. As you can see, this is the room we are keeping all unopened boxes in until we find time to open them. It's amazing to have a room that we don't actually "need" for any productive use at this time.


We've done a lot of things that don't show up in pictures like getting the air conditioning running on the second floor. That was essential. I'm in the middle now of destroying the guest bedroom. I'll put some pictures of the destruction up tomorrow and some pictures of our cat's latest adventure in home renovation.

An upstairs tour Part two

From the "media room" to Rachel's room there are double French doors because who wouldn't want everyone in the house to be able to watch you sleep? Rachel's room is dark maroon at the moment.


David's room

This we call the "Cowboy Room." It has very cute but very peeling cowboy wallpaper. We will use it for the gamecube and such but right now it's just one of those "extra" rooms we have right now holding boxes we haven't unpacked.

Well, I haven't shown you the attic or the basement but we'll leave those delights for another time. I'll be gone for a week so when I get back I'll post some pictures of what we've done so far.

An upstairs tour

In my last post I left everyone in the kitchen so here we are at the bottom of the back stairway ready to go up to the second floor. This is the stairway that the previous owners were using because the front main stairway was blocked off.

First we come to the upstairs bath with lovely carpet on the floor. It is a nice size for a bathroom but that carpet has got to go!

The next room is the one that we will use for our bedroom. Apparently it was an apartment at one time. The sink will be going even though Doug suggested keeping it.


Next is a large bedroom that connects to our room and Rachel's room as well as the hall. The previous owners were using it as a TV room and so will we. We grandly call it our "media room". And, yes, we do air quotes every time we say "media room."

I'm new to blogger and don't seem to be able to post any more pictures in this post so I'll continue with "An upstairs tour Part Two."

A downstairs tour

The living room

The room off the living room-the main stairway is behind that ugly cabinet. It has been closed off for years.

The dining room

The guest room

Downstairs bathroom

Kitchen

Room off the back of the kitchen-maybe originally a porch, we will use it as an office

Tomorrow we will tour the second floor.