Beginning Work on the Upstairs Rooms

We don’t have a lot of photographic evidence of the upstairs BEFORE we started tearing down the wallpaper, but we’ve been doing a little work up there. Check out the picture below to get an idea of how creepy the room used to look.

Gretchen took to referring to this bedroom as the 'creepy room.' For good reason.

One thing you can’t see in that photograph is the wall that runs along the side of the room where the doorway is. There was a very old light fixture with no pull chain or any way to turn it on or off. So once a lightbulb was put into it, it was on. Forever. Until you unscrewed it. Another thing you might not notice is the lack of outlets on the inside of the room. The only outlet in this room was on the side of said light fixture. That’s no good.

Before starting this project, we had an electrician give us a few quotes on installing some new outlets around the upstairs (of which we only had 3. In the entire 3 bedrooms upstairs.), and updating the ones we have downstairs to grounded 3-prong style outlets. We ultimately settled on Lehigh Valley Electric. Bob was our electrician, and I highly recommend him. He was honest about what we needed and didn’t need and even gave us some recommendations on how to fix other various things around the house. He also put down drop cloths everywhere and cleaned up everything when he was done.

Back to the room. The first thing we had to do was get rid of all of the old furniture. We’ve kept some of the stuff, if anyone needs a twin sized bed frame or an old dresser. Once we cleared it all out, we started removing the wallpaper. This time, we’re using a Wagner Steamer.

I bought the steamer on ebay for a few dollars more than it would have cost to rent one at Home Depot (just around $50 for 24-hours, ridiculous). After using it for this room, I’d consider it well worth that few dollars. I don’t know why we always try to do things the “hard” way first, but our aversion to wallpaper removal technology really set us back a lot. We started downstairs with spray bottles of vinegar water and putty knives, then upgraded to vinegar water and razor blade scrapers, and finally arrived at a steamer and razor blade scrapers. I think we’ve hit our productivity plateau. I really do recommend a steamer for this job.

I also had to remove the old baseboard heater cover. Following the advice of This Old House, I bought a long reciprocating saw blade and cut the nails that held the cover on. Once the cover slid off, we were left with a nice surprise. About five inches up from the floor on the far wall of the room, the wall just sort of ended. There was a gap between the floor and the wall in which you could see insulation and the outside wall. I have no idea why it was like that, but I knew I had to fix it.

The previous repair job for this issue resulted in a thin sheet of some sort of soft particle board being nailed into the beam that runs across the gap in an uneven fashion. That resulted in a few “steps,” caused by the different layers of patching and it looked horrible. I tore it all off and replaced it with some leftover drywall I had from our bathroom project. Then taped the seams and used a healthy layer of joint compound to smooth it all out. You can see where this happened in the picture below. The greenboard runs all of the way across the room.

With the wallpaper and heater out of the way, we began the arduous process of sanding any leftover glue off, then sanding the rough spots on the walls, then patching any holes or scrapes, then sanding, then patching, repeat. At some point after the walls were nice and smooth and wallpaper-free, my dad came over to help us remove the awful light fixture and run the electric up into the attic so that we could install recessed lighting. Because our ceilings are a little low upstairs, recessed lighting really turned out to be a great solution. Here’s a photo of the room after installing the lighting.

The lighting really was fairly simple to install. We measured the room and marked three equidistant spots on the ceiling where the lights would go. We picked up one of these 6″ hole saws to cut the holes in the ceiling. This model we used was a little more heavy duty because our ceilings are a thick plaster. This one would not have lasted long.

Once the holes were drilled, we installed the light housing.

This turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. The electrical wire connected to the first light in the line, and then from that light connected to the next. We just had to be sure to get the “Insulation Contact” model of housing, because our attic is insulated right up to the light fixtures. We also put in a Lutron dimmer switch, which is really nice because the three lights can give off a lot of heat.

Once the lights were in, we began painting. Because we intend to put new hardwood flooring down upstairs (what’s up there now is just a very squeaky subfloor), we were able to paint pretty quickly. It’s nice not having to worry about making a mess. Using our trusty Olympic Premium paint (zero VOCs!) we painted the ceiling white, then painted the walls, then painted the trim. Check out photos of the current state of the room below. Please ignore the mess, there’s still plenty left to do!

The new heater cover. Just need to do all the flooring first!

This is what's left of that weird gap between the floor and the wall post-drywalling and patching.

The new lights!

So what’s left to do?

1. Touch up paint from where the tape took some off
2. Install new hardwood floors
3. Heater cover
4. Base moulding

It’s Been Almost a Year!

As often happens, doing the work on our house has quickly taken precedence over writing about doing the work. This, among other things, I blame for our complete lack of updates over the past 8 or 9 months. Since our last update we have redone the bathroom, and moved to the upstairs to continue the never ending battle against wallpaper.

I know it’s a little late for this, but here are some photos from our bathroom remodel (we did take them, we just never posted them). We did this during a week of vacation starting just after Christmas of 2009, and wrapped it up the last day of our break before going back to work. Unfortunately (and slightly because of embarrassment) we got a little hasty with the wallpaper and didn’t take any before pictures with the old wallpaper in place. Suffice to say it was a mess and was peeling at all of the corners. The floor (also barely represented in these pictures) was a yellowing linoleum tile. Not very nice.

Our old vanity and an idea of what the floor was like.

The old inset medicine cabinet and vanity light.

The old tub surround and a part of the wall.

The walls were pretty beat up underneath all of the wallpaper, and it looked like there had been some tile halfway up the wall at one point which contributed to the rough plaster. This was nothing, however, once we removed the old tub surround.

Years of showers with bad caulking resulted in this mess of a wall underneath the tub surround. The plaster was rotted. Not good.

I wasn't prepared for the wall to need to be replaced under the tub surround, but that's what had to be done.

I cut about a foot and a half out of the plaster all around the tub with a RotoZip (which did a great job, by the way), and replaced it with some greenboard. After a few healthy coats of joint compound, the wall was good as new.

Our next task was to replace the subfloor under the toilet. The wooden plank subfloor must have had some water damage, and just continued to rot for however many years. Gretchen’s dad helped us cut out the old floor and put in a new one.

From here on out we were working non-stop. Not having “facilities” is no fun. We quickly removed the old linoleum tile, removed any tacks and nails, painted the wall behind where the new toilet would go, and got started putting in new floor. Check out what was under the plywood that was under the linoleum.

We picked up some Ikea Tundra flooring and liner.

New Years Eve 2009 was celebrated by installing a new toilet!

Then we primed, painted the ceiling, and then painted the walls. We went with Olympic Premium paint again, this time a semi-gloss for kitchens and bathrooms.

We don’t have any pictures in the time between installing the toilet and finishing up, so I’ll skip ahead some. After painting we put a new tub surround in, put together and installed the new vanity and sink, patched up the wall some and installed a new medicine cabinet and then a new light. When everything was done I put some base molding around the new floor. Here are the “after” pictures.