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

No related posts.

I got some of this Olympic Premium Interior Latex paint (of the Eggshell varietal):

It’s Zero-VOC, which is good, and it wasn’t totally expensive. We have MANY $10 off a $50 dollar order coupons for Lowe’s so I think after it was all said and done it was only $18 dollars a gallon… which isn’t much more than the cheapy Lowe’s brand white paint.

I also picked up some more spackle and another can of primer, since I left our last can of Killz out on the porch and it froze. (Don’t do this). Gretchen and I plan on getting the kitchen done this week and using the weekend to continue the rest of the living room so that we can at least get our downstairs in order.

In other news, the furnace in the garage that heats the apartment is 100% shot. Well, maybe only 99% shot. We had a plumber come out this morning and check it out today after discovering that there was no heat upstairs. Apparently there is a multitude of problems with the thing, culminating in us needing to replace it entirely. 1. It’s 30 years old and mostly broken. 2. It’s installed improperly and “illegally,” which I assume means not up to code. 3. When it does run it pumps oil fumes into the apartment above the garage, which would be bad if anyone was actually up there.

So we’re waiting on a quote from the plumber for replacing that, but we will, in all likelihood, turn off the water and flush the pipes so that they don’t freeze over the winter. That means no heat, but it’s such a mess up there that nobody would be able to live there anyway. Instead we’ll focus on fixing up the (or installing a new) bathroom in “the main house” and finishing the cosmetic things. The plumber will also be quoting us on the bathroom. Cross your fingers.

No related posts.

1. I taped the template around the door in order to line everything up appropriately

2. I marked the door through the template at the center of both the deadbolt and the part the key goes in.

3. Drilled the first hole through the front of the door, using a 2 3/4 inch bit. I drilled halfway through, then drilled through the center with a smaller bit and drilled back through the other side to keep it from cracking through. Unfortunately, it still did a little bit. I then drilled the deadbolt hole using another small drill bit all the way through to the bigger hole. Then I took a nail and put it through the hole from inside the front of the door so that I could close the door and mark on the frame for where the bolt would go in.

4. I then had to cut a small section out of the ancient weather stripping, and drill a hole into the frame for the bolt entry.

5. The last step was to trace around both the frame and the side of the door where the plate would go so that it could be chiseled out. For some sadistic reason they make the plate with rounded corners, which I tried to maintain in the chiseled area, but it didn’t last long and soon turned into squared corners. After that it was a quick assembly process to get the whole thing together. At some point, I hope to fix the small scratches in the door with some matching stain, and stain around the plate so that it doesn’t look quite so out of place.

Once we got back, I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do since we first moved in. The heater in the bedroom makes noise all night and keeps me awake. I read up a little on how to fix this and read about “bleeding” hot water baseboard heaters. I was a little nervous about doing this because I couldn’t find an exact matching “bleed valve” on the internet as we have, but it really wasn’t too bad. Just keep some towels around to soak up any water that comes out once the air is out of the pipes and you’re good.

1. I took the plate off of the heater and found the bleed valve. All it took was a small wrench to loosen it slowly and air came out. Once water started leaking out, I shut it off. Simple enough.

2. I also read that when the heater comes on, the square metal plates that diffuse the heat move around a little, and part of the noise could be them tapping on each other. Which would explain the “ping” noises as well as the banging. So we straightened all of them out either with our hands or a pair of plyers. They bend easily.

It seemed to help some last night. There still was some noise, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. It sounded like Neil Peart in there at 3am.

The last update is that tonight we finished taking down all the wallpaper in the bigger living room. That’s one more room down. The place is starting to look entirely different, and we’re getting psyched that it appears we may finally be getting our living situation together!

My next challenge is to go back and finally finish the kitchen. It needs at least one more layer of joint compound and some sanding, and then a coat of paint and it’ll be done! Until we start taking the cabinets down.

Here’s the Pandora station we’ve been listening to while scraping wallpaper for 2 nights:
Flaming Lips Pandora Radio

And here are our two supervisors:

“This is Top Chef, Not Top Scallops!”

No related posts.