Paint! The Dining Room has Paint!

There's nothing more satisfying than rolling some clean, new paint onto an old wall.

I started with the ceiling, like you're supposed to, rolling on the white paint with my roller attached to a broom handle. It was going really well until the roller pad started to shift off of the roller. I thought I'd push the pad against the ceiling to get it back onto the roller. *SNAP* Broke the broom handle. Roller hits the floor. Good stuff huh? Clean up on aisle 4!
After I finished painting the ceiling (and floor!) I started on the walls. I picked out this khaki/tan color for the living/dining areas and even though I was concerned it would be too dark, I'm actually really happy with it.

Progress pic:
Finished product (just imagine crisp white trim, chair and crown moulding):
If you've read previous posts, you'll know my problem with the trim. It was all replaced in this room back when it was converted to a duplex. The wood is inferior in quality and I wanted to make sure it wouldn't look too bad if it was painted. I painted a little swatch with ceiling paint to see how the wall color would look with white trim.
I'll have to take a sander to the trim's varnish first to make a surface the paint will adhere to. I like the wood with the khaki, but it'll be more cost effective to just paint it rather than replace with good quality wood. The living room retains its original fir woodwork, so I'll be able to have the nice wood with the khaki there. Compromise, right?

There are a couple areas on the walls that need another coat of paint, but after that I'll be able to attack the trim and finish up. I'm thinking that room will become the living room while I redo the real living room next.

I'm almost at the end of winter break and I'm nowhere near as far as I had hoped to be. I guess that's just an old house for you. It eats your life!

Dining Room: Texture and Primer

I found a great new (to me) product that I'm so excited to share! I discovered these cans of aerosol orange-peel texture. The size of the texture is adjustable so you can make anywhere from small to medium to large splatters. There are two different kinds, one that shoots out white texture, or one that shoots out blue texture that turns white when it dries. I could see paying the extra fifty cents for the blue stuff if you have vision issues, but I really didn't see the need for it myself. I just thought I'd try it because it looked like a fun gimmick. It did work nicely for taking pictures. I don't know if you could have seen the white texture as well as the blue against the off white walls.

The only drawbacks were the price and the smell. They were a bit more expensive than sand texture would have been, costing about $13 a can, but so far I only had to use 2.5 cans of it. It's SO much easier than the sand texture, so I was happy to pay it. The smell was the other issue. I would have liked to be able to open up a window but I didn't want to let in the winter so I just tolerated the fumes.

Here's a photo of the giant crack I repaired on the North wall:I decided it would be a good idea take an action shot. I hope you like it; I over-textured that spot just for your benefit.
After I finished the texture, I primed the walls and ceiling. The ceiling hadn't been primed yet in that picture.
I just finished painting the ceiling, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I'm probably going to paint the walls now.

Painting Prep in the Dining Room: Motivation

Now, this is what I call motivation!
My roommate, after hearing me complain about the perils of sanding and how much I didn't want to start it again tonight, placed a delicious Summit Extra Pale Ale under my sander in the dining room right across from where I was sitting and watching tv. Mmmm... of course to get to the goodness I had to put that sander in my hand. It worked! I hate sanding joint compound, but my little treat for subjecting myself to such mindless and torturous labor has been Summit EPA every time so far. Why would this be any different? (only a couple, Mom!) For those of you who aren't anywhere near the Minneapolis/St. Paul or surrounding areas, Summit is a brewery that was started in St. Paul MN by a guy who grew up in... where... Wahpeton, ND!!! That's my hometown of about 8500 people. I'd support his efforts even if the beverage was gross but luckily for me it's SOOOO good. It's actually my favorite, and you'll find me ordering it quite frequently. It stays pretty local, but if it makes it up to me I'm sure it has to have a pretty good radius out of the Twin Cities. I know my MPLS readers get it, but do you get it in Wisconsin Jeff? Kelly in IA? If so, try one for me!

Anyways, back to the dining room. I finished sanding the walls and ceilings tonight. I used some drywall sand paper which has a kind of grid shape. Much like a window screen. Using this works really well because the open squares allow the dust to fall out and not clog the sand paper. The disadvantage of using this kind of sandpaper is that it leaves some ridges in the joint compound. I'll have to go back with a wet sponge and smooth out the ridges tomorrow.

I finally bought some tape and hung up some tarps over the entrances to the dining room. Dust control, woah! Finally I'm able to do some sanding without everything that's ever come into the house being covered with three inches of dust. Here are a couple photos of the tarps up. Boo dust!
Finally, when I finished sanding I was so excited to be done, I made a dust-angel. I feel like it's in the holiday spirit. Enjoy!

Merry Mud-Mess!

After a great Christmas with my family, I returned to the house of dust this evening and got back to work on the dining room. More mud was the call of the day. I re-mudded the patches on the ceilings and walls to prepare them for their second sanding tomorrow.

Ceiling:Walls:

I'm going to cry tears of joy when I get to priming. Paint? I'll just pee with excitement. I just want to get this room done.

I know the living room will be much easier than the dining room. The stairwell? The tears there will NOT be ones of joy, but I'll be so happy when that's done. It's really the ugliest part of the first floor right now. Like a giant zit on your senior picture!

Just a Little Late

A couple hours late, but still my best wishes for your holiday season!

Just Call Me Dusty

After work today I decided to sand down the dining room ceiling and walls.

As it turns out, the only thing more miserable than sanding walls is sanding ceilings. Yuck.

I need to go back and hit a couple areas again with mud, then do a second sanding. Texture, primer, paint, then done. I say done in very relative terms.

I need to go buy some tape ASAP because it seems there is none to be found in the whole house. I have tarps I wanted to tape over the openings to the room, but I couldn't find any tape. As a consequence there is dust all over the kitchen and living room now. Not nearly as much as the dining room though. Please see photo below (note the dust in the air floating through the house):I made the mistake of sitting down and leaning back on the couch without changing clothes first. Nice huh?
Tomorrow will be entertaining a trip to 'the Depot' as well as some Christmas shopping.

Basement Evils

Today I ventured down to the basement to see if I could try to fix my dryer. About half way through disassembling it all to take out the faulty heating element I decided to give up and just hire someone to do the job. I'm sorry, I just don't have the patience for that right now!

But, while I was busy screwing parts back together, my roommate started taking a shower upstairs right above me. Not a problem you'd think, but subsequently I began taking a shower too. Yes, maybe I need one, but I'd prefer to take mine on my own schedule. What was once a small leak at the shower's drain seems to have lead to a bigger problem here. I took a little video so you can understand my situation. Sorry for the poor lighting conditions.


It looks like replacing that shower stall might just be moving up to a sooner project. I'll be caulking soon, if nothing else.

I'll also have to tell the roommates to not take showers while the dryer guy is downstairs! Gotta love the house...

Painting Prep: Living & Dining Rooms

Well, I finally got around to starting the work that needs to be done in the dining room.

I, like most American 22 year old male college students, spent my Saturday night scraping loose paint off of a dining room ceiling. Oh, what an adventurous life I lead!
Look at that mess!
Check out how big that pile of paint chips is! (note feet for scale) (fyi, size 10) I also finished scraping off the residual joint compound from the walls and ceilings where I removed the extra walls. Here's a photo of the living room ceiling, ripe for sanding. The job got a lot easier once I started spraying water on the walls and ceilings before I started scraping. The joint compound became much softer and easier to scrape off.

Step 1: Spray water onto unwanted joint compound.Step 2: Scrape your heart out.Step 3: Repeat.

Woah, tangent! OK, back to the dining room. Today, after one of those five hour Sunday afternoon naps, I made a trip to 'the Depot' for some more joint compound. I patched up the holes in the ceiling left from the paint that chipped away. Now all I need to do is sand, re-mud where necessary, sand, texture, prime, then paint. Is this considered the home stretch yet? I filled all of the nail holes in the walls, but I still need to repair two big cracks. I just want to paint already! I've had the dang paint for months, gah!

I'm kind of up in the air about what to do with the trim in the dining room. The trim was all replaced (poorly) sometime before I got here. The wood is stained, but it is of an inferior quality. You can see stain on the oak flooring in all of the dining room pictures from when the p.o. stained the inferior wood. Yet another reason to thank the p.o.! The windows were painted at some point, but I can tell the wood was originally stained like the living room. So what do I do? Should I (a.) paint the inferior wood white like the rest of the house, or, (b.) use the inferior wood elsewhere in the house and replace it with better wood stained to match the living room. This option would require me to strip the windows.

Either way, the picture rail needs to be replaced. I've already removed it all from the walls. This piece shows the original stain color. There were a couple chunks of it missing from where walls went in during the duplex-ing process. I'm planning on using the old stuff I removed somewhere else in the house, but I'm not sure that I want to use the same picture rail back in the dining room. What if I was to switch it out for some crown molding? Would that be a bad idea? I just think that the crown molding might look more finished than the picture rail. The picture rail was about a quarter inch down from the ceiling which I didn't think looked very good. That little quarter inch gap lead my roommate to say that I should 'replace that crappy crown molding'. If I was to put the picture rail back up I think I'd pull it down a half inch so you can tell it isn't just 'crappy crown'.

Decisions, decisions. Let me know, loyal reader, if you have any opinions. I'll have plenty of time to think about it all while I'm mindlessly sanding ceilings and walls. Good times.

Christmas Tree Rookie

I forgot to water the tree for almost two days! I'm a bad tree parent.

I got home from work, threw my coat over the arm of the couch, and looked over at the tree. The thought of how long it had been since it had been watered flashed into my mind and I freaked out. I actually ran over to the tree to check how much water was left. 'Cause two more seconds of time without water would be catastrophic. I couldn't really see how much water was left so I, like an idiot, shoved my hand into the tree stand. Yup, had full of sap. Apparently water goes in the tree, sap comes out. It created this nice film of clear sap on the top of the water which I inserted my hand into. Awesome. No, sap doesn't wash off your hands well.

My roomie had a small Christmas party last night and, apart from people setting their drinks on my piano... grr..., everything went pretty well. I'm thinking that I'll need to host some sort of get-together next semester when the walls and ceilings get redone. Basically when I'm not completely embarrassed by the house.

Pines & Paintings

Today was a day sans work, sans class. Can't you already tell this is going to be a good post?

My main mission today was to get the house ready for my roommate's small Christmas party she's throwing tomorrow night. We still need to do a little cleaning and de-cluttering, but other than that things are about ready to go. I really wish this party was coming at the end of winter break so everyone had some nice, clean, painted walls to look at. Oh well.

First thing on my agenda today was to pick up a tree. A REAL Christmas tree!

I have NO idea how that fit in the trunk of a Pontiac Grand Prix. Since I have these amazing 9' ceilings I got an 8' fir of some kind. Sorry, I forgot what kind already. Whatever it is it makes the house smell amazing. Lets see your plastic tree do that!

And with ornaments please?



Aahhh, that's nice huh?

I also got a wreath for the door out front. It occurred to me that the white lights on white strings on my white house didn't really do much for the festive holiday spirit during the day.

Since all of the walls downstairs look like crap, I used those paintings my roommate made last year to disguise the imperfections (as much as possible) and turn this place from 'construction site' to 'warm, welcoming home'.

I still need to replace that light switch cover.


Fireplace and TV walls.

Good-bye mister stick-man smiley.

Dining Room. This room is pretty much dedicated to her paintings of a particular nude model who she chose to paint in green. She's somewhere in the ballpark of 80 years old. I think it's kinda funky, although I'm sure my mom wouldn't approve! I actually had to draw this same lady in one of my drawing classes for about a week. Mmm... I am feeling this HUGE urge to purchase some blinds since this room faces the neighbor to the west. Did I mention the neighbor to the west is a pastor? Yeah, I'm not sure how much he'd like this view.

I also put up this shelf quickly to put my glassware on before the party. The kitchen cabinet shelves are about an inch too short to fit the taller stemware on, so this was my best option. They had been on top of the fridge until now, but I think this is a little better.

We're going to do some checking around tomorrow for a cheap-o dining room set. Thrift store shopping anyone? We'll see what I can come up with.

Tis the Season

...for freezing off all fingers and toes while displaying your pension for cursing in front of the neighbors. Ok, so it wasn't that bad. It was cold though. Isn't it nice? I can't decide if it's good enough the way it is or if I should add lights around the windows on the second floor. It seems like I decked out the porch, but disregarded the fact that there's a second floor at all. I would like to put lights up along the top roof line, but without a taller ladder (than 6 feet) I'm pretty much out of luck. I could pretty easily throw another string of lights to circle the upstairs windows to draw some more attention up. Yay? Nay? Why do I really care? I don't know.

I finished my studio project on Friday and had my critique. How did it go? Hmm... well I've had better. One critic in particular really laced into the project and repeated his problems with my project again, and again, and again. This was so frustrating because I knew that I screwed these things up, acknowledged this, and he still kept talking about it. The worst part about it was that I could have done much better. AND the project was about PRESERVATION!!! That's what I want to do with my career and I go and blow the project. My problem was that I was worried too much about preserving the original structure and didn't think enough about how it would function today. A learning experience I guess.

One final on Wednesday, then the winter break is mine to get some work done on this shanty! Goals for the break you ask? Here's the list:

* repair walls in living room, dining room, stairwell
* paint walls in living room, dining room, can you guess? yeah, stairwell.
* repair ceilings in living room, dining room
* pain ceilings in living room, dining room
* finish repairing, then install storm windows flanking chimney
* get dryer repaired
* install doorknob on NW bedroom door (sorry roomie! I'm sure he's been waiting)
* paint upstairs doors and trim
* buy snowblower

There are a couple of other things I'd like to do, but I don't think I'll have time. We'll see. I'm excited to get the walls done because my roommate's an art major and has a whole bunch of paintings to hang up. I'm planning on getting a tree tomorrow. My roommate's throwing a Christmas party on Wednesday, so I'm thinking a tree's in order. Oh, and some cleaning. Lots of cleaning!

STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!

Doesn't mother nature know I'm stressed out right now? What's with this? We got another good 5 inches of snow today. Add this to the previous 6ish inches and you'll understand why I'm questioning why I'm not living about five states south.

My studio professor moved back the deadline for my design project until Friday (vs. Weds) so I had some time to go home and sleep. I parked my car in the back yard because my roommates had already driven back there and if they could get in and out without any problems I should be ok, right? Well, some SNOW happened. This much:After finally getting some sleep, I had to go to work tonight at 5. In the process of trying to get that car to the street I had some difficulties. Try an hour of difficulties. Gah! Usually it isn't too much of a problem to power that car through snow because it's got some pretty good power, and I'm a fairly good winter driver. When you take into account that your roommates have been driving on the driveway for a couple days and packing the snow down to ice, then add snow up past the bottom of your car doors, things become more interesting. If you try to punch the gas, the ice causes you to turn sideways, but if you don't go fast enough you can't get through the snow and you get stuck. At one point I could see the side of the house in my rear-view mirror... not good.

When I came home from work I found that my neighbor had brought his snow blower over and cleared out the driveway. How nice is that? I'll have to return the favor once I get a snow blower of my own. I'm really not going to have time to go snow blower shopping until after my project and finals are done. Lookin' at around Tuesday next week.

If it snows again before then, someone's getting hurt.

p.s. Am I not paying for getting the street cleared with my property taxes? I got stuck in the middle of my street again. This was at 9:30pm, when it stopped snowing around 3pm. What's up Fargo? Our taxes are almost twice those of Moorhead,MN just across the river and they can get their streets cleaned off. If I get stuck one more time more than five hours after snowing ceases, you bet I'm calling the city!

What's this Cold White Garbage?

Saturday. 6am - 10pm. Snow.

Saturday. 7am-3pm, 5pm-10pm. Nate. Work.

I hadn't moved my car since 7am and when I left work at 10 I got stuck in several places in the parking lot and stuck IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET TWICE in front of my house. Apparently Fargo forgot how to plow streets and parking lots. I'm sitting in Studio right now working on my project so I can't take any good photos, but here's a photo of the parking lot outside from a 4th floor window.
You can't really see the damage, but we got about six inches of standing snow in one day. I have yet to shovel out my 100+ foot driveway. The next big purchase for this guy? Snowblower. I found a couple on craigslist for $200-$300, so you better believe one of those is coming over to play! Anybody know some minimum requirements I should be looking for? I really don't want to get one that sucks and is going to take me all day to clear out my snow.

I have yet to get the fireplace wall's storm windows back up or decorate the house for Christmas. I'm so glad I get to do this all in the snow now. Just another lesson on the evils of procrastination? I'd say so.

Say No to Crack(s)!

It's about time that I post some pictures of progress in the living room. My plan is to repair all of the walls and ceilings in the living room, dining room, and upstairs hallway during winter break.

Problem #1: Living room duplex removal aftermath: walls and ceiling

During the de-duplexing process I removed a couple extra walls from the living room. The walls still show extra joint compound from the transition from original walls/ceiling to the walls I removed. I've been working on scraping off the extra clumps of joint compound and then using some new stuff to level out the surfaces that were marred by the duplex walls.

If you need a refresher, here's where the walls were:

This is about where the ceiling is at right now. It still needs to have some scraping on the far left part there, then a good smooth coat of joint compound, then some horrible overhead sanding that will undoubtedly leave me with a mouth full of dust. Lookin' forward to this one.

Then come the walls. I finished scraping off any excess joint compound from the walls, then I've laid on a new smooth coat to level off the walls. Just sanding needed here. My favorite.
Problem #2: Stairwell walls

When I removed the paneling on the staircase I was left with lotsa lotsa cracks and nail holes. I've started patching up the cracks already, but haven't gotten too far. Here's some of the work. Please notice the smiley face stick figure I painted for the roomies. I thought it was classy. It might need to be repainted onto the finished stairwell. Or not.

First thing I had to do was gauge out the cracks so they were wide enough for the joint compound to get into. Upon my Aunt Bec's suggestion I used a wood chisel and hammer to widen out the cracks. Here's a shot of some of the widened cracks.
Then she suggested that I use the mesh tape to cover the cracks. I haven't gotten a chance to apply a second coat of mud yet, but after that's done I should be able to sand it down to a smooth appearance. Then I'll just have to texture, prime, and paint.
Problem #3: Living room walls.

I also started repairing the fireplace wall. I'm going to cut a strip of drywall to fill that place where the plaster's missing, then I'll be ready to sand, texture, prime, paint, hang some art!

Since I was already messing with the tape and joint compound I decided to rip out the horrible PO tape job over some of the cracks in the other walls. When the cracks turned, this guy just turned the tape over the crack and didn't care about the kinks that were left in the tape. He also didn't mud under the tape so it was peeling up too. It was bothering me quite a bit so I figured I might as well repair them before I start painting. So that's where I am right now. I won't be doing ANYTHING on the house until after I'm done with finals, so don't plan to be seeing anything amazing for a while. But, when those tests are behind me, look out!

I'm a Trapper; Anyone Want a Small Pelt?

When I got home last night at about 2:00am the first thing I did was scurry through the house checking the traps. Kabaam! The coffee cabinet trap caught my first victim! It must have worked pretty quickly judging from how rigor-mortis had already set in. It seems the winning combination for the trap was equal parts gum, peanut butter, and cheese. After disposing of the vermin I grabbed one of the traps from the basement and replaced the one that caught the mouse. If I learned one thing fishing with my Dad and Grandpa, where you're catching fish is where you keep fishing. We'll see if there are any friends for this little fella.

Death: Brought to You Today by Skippy Peanut Butter and Kraft Singles

Before Thanksgiving my roommate called me into her room sometime around 1am and said she heard a 'chewing' noise coming from the corner of her room. I, like an idiot, assumed there was a mouse in her garbage can so I *picked it up and shook it*. Dumb. Out it came and ran across the room. Roommate does the cliche 'girl on chair screaming' routine and I spend the next hour checking every purse, shoe, and bag in her room for vermin.

Soooo... I purchased some traps! I'm really more excited than I should be about this, but this is probably the closest I'll ever come to hunting (In ND babies are born in blaze orange with shotguns in hand). I purposly purchased the traps I thought looked most 'splatterly' for the maximum gore factor.

I got eight of the old school 'snap off your fingertips' traps and loaded them up with a combination of peanut butter, cheese, coffee (I found that the mouse likes the butter pecan flavor the hard way... grrr...) and some mint gum. The coffee and gum are pretty fragrant so they should attract the mice well. Peanut butter was recommended by the manufacturer, and well, cheese is kinda required by tradition isn't it? Check out this buffet of death!

I placed one in my room, one in the cabinet where the coffee was mooched, (see photo with mouse-munched coffee)three in the basement, and two in the roomie's room where the mouse was originally found. Don't worry, she's out of town all weekend so she won't be grossed out by the savage brutality about to occur.

Setting the traps proved to make me feel less like a brave hunter and more like an eight year old girl. I flinched whenever one snapped on me and clenched my jaw every time I set a new one. My jaw actually hurt by the eigth trap. I'm not proud. At least I didn't scream when I had one snap on me!

So, anyways, about two hours after I set the traps I was watching TV in the living room and I thought I heard something. I yelled to my roomie in the kitchen to ask if he flicked on a light switch or if a mousetrap went off somewhere in the house. He said he didn't do anything and suddenly I became like a kid on Christmas morning. I came tearing down the basement stairs only to find that, not only did the trap not catch anything, but the dang mouse BROKE the mousetrap so I couldn't reset it. JERK! Oh... his day's coming...

No, I'm Not Dead.

Well, for the last couple weeks my focus has been anywhere but on the house. At this time please feel free to check the date on the last post and frown at your computer screen.

The only real work I've done since that last post was to begin repairing the walls and ceiling in the living room where I removed the extra walls during the de-duplexing process. I also started repairing some of the cracks in the staircase wall where the paneling (eck) had been. I read on someone else's blog (I forget who *sorry*) that there's always a reason the paneling is there. It's hiding something! In my case? Cracks. Lotsa 'em.

I'll throw some photos up soon but I can't right now since I'm at Studio and the camera's at home.

I'm getting my 1975 oil-chuggin' heat machine it's annual check-up tomorrow so hopefully it'll last through the winter. If that thing goes out it'll be my roommates and I huddled around a fire in a garbage can in the living room. No, I don't trust the fireplace; It needs to be checked out/cleaned and, last I checked, I don't have a money tree anywhere.

Oh, yeah, and the dryer broke this week. I think it's the heating element because it still runs the same as before, just without all of the 'hot' needed to actually make clothes dry. Of course I figured out this little problem when I went to pick up my clothes from the dryer before work. Yup, there I was ten minutes late for work because I had to dry everything with the roomie's hair dryer.

We had our first flurries of snow this weekend. No I haven't finished the storm windows yet. Yes I'm a bad little homeowner.

I'm going back to my parents' house in Wahpeton (40 miles away) for Thanksgiving weekend and I really don't even want to think about the house.

With the holidays aproaching, I think that I need to pick up some Christmas lights. I finally have a house to decorate for the season, so I'm pretty excited. I'm trying to decide if I want to go simple and understated, or be the obnoxious neighbor with blinky lights of every color running every which way across the house. If I take the 'what was he thinking' approach I know my coworker who lives across the street will have words for me at work. He'd appreciate the humor in it though.

That's all for now, sorry to all who have been checking back to see the same thing over and over. I'll try to do better!

Look at My New Neighbors!

Here they are! Cute huh?

There are three of them, and they've moved into the roof of the house to the South. It must be a pretty swanky apartment; There's a front door, back door, and upstairs balcony!

Front Door: Back Door: (little squirrel shaped hole where the gable meets the gutter)

Upstairs Balcony: (squirrel shaped hole at the top of the gable)
Sure, they look like nice enough neighbors, but they have some odd habbits I really don't enjoy. Their downstairs neighbors have in-home daycare, and lets just say that diapers from their trash keep ending up in my backyard... somehow I suspect these little guys.

When I sit on the couch in the living room, the front and back 'squirrel porches' (the little part of the eave that wraps around to the gable front) can be seen through the two windows flanking the fireplace. I'm finding it really entertaining to watch them run in and out, but I know I should tell my neighbor. Maybe he can charge rent. 30 acorns a week?

In other news:

This weekend I only made it to one salvage place which proved to be the WRONG place, since after this little visit I've heard from numerous people that I should have gone to Bauer Bros. Next time. I think I'll be back in Minneapolis in two weeks, so I'll try again.

I also had the privelage of going to a 'before party' for a fellow houseblogger. You can find their blog about the Healy House, an awesome Queen Anne Victorian, at http://thehealyhouse.blogspot.com/. I'm really excited to watch their progress as they restore it.