rub a dub dub

I caulked the tub! Not just caulked the tub, but scraped out the barely there remnants of the old grout, sanded and scraped the tub surround, and caulked. all in preparation for painting the tub surround.

Painting the tub surround, you say? Wha you say? The hell you say?

Why yes, that would be the same reaction I got from Mr. Nice Paint Guy at the Paint Store when we asked for a paint that would give us about 2 more years on this.

Our tub is a claw foot tub, that has been surrounded by a wood platform and box framed out in beadboard (the low walls of the surround, not the flat platform). The walls are tiled about 2-3 feet above the top of the tub, and then there's painted over wallpaper. Oh, and this surround is painted, after a fashion. With flat paint. Lovely, yes?

Yeah, I think so too.

Anyway, there had been a leak from the bathroom into the ceiling of the dining room below. And my new best friend Steve the Plumber said that it looked to be from water getting into and under the surround. Now, you'd think that if you built a platform to surround a claw foot tub you might say, caulk, the joint where the surround meets the tub. But you'd be wrong my friend! Very very wrong. Of course you'd only caulk where the surround meets the tile, because duh!

And so while I was all set to follow Jamaila's fabulous caulk removal tutorial, there was in fact no need for caulk removal goop, as there was nothing but crud in the joint. This came out easy enough with a few good scrapes. While I was at it, I scraped down the loose and peeling paint on the surround, and sanded the bugger down. Of course I hit bare wood, and so primer was called for.

And so there I was, at 1:30 am, sitting inside the tub caulking the crap out of this join. I have to say it's a very nice bead.

Tonight is painting time with the oil enamel paint Mr. Nice Paint Guy at the Paint Store suggested.

transitions

I hate moving.

But so far Jonathan and I are transitioning well. Or as well as you can when there are boxes literally to the ceiling.

Milo the cat however, was not transitioning well.

Yesterday he peed on the damn bed. under the covers, and stayed there for a while. Now, him staying under the covers of the bed for the last two days is fine. But dude. Don't pee there!

we stripped the bed, washed the sheets and quilt and mattress pads and soaked the mattress with faux nature's miracle.

Milo meanwhile hid under the bed, smelling like cat pee. Poor kid. I am annoyed at him, but also, poor kid. He must have been way scared to pee in the bed and stay there.

Then about an hour later, he was fine. He still smelled like cat pee, but he started nosing around, and clomping down stairs and being a brave 'splorer. I think he thinks the boxes to the ceiling are like his own personal jungle gym.

Scenes from a move

We have moved. Some highlights:

1. Our box spring, wardrobe, and 2nd couch would not fit up the stairs. Wardrobe and couch are in basement. Box spring also would not fit in basement, so it spent the night on the porch (and we spent the night on our matress on the floor). Jen is a genius so she called 1-800-MATTRESS at midnight on Saturday and they had a new 2-piece box spring installed at 8am Sunday morning (!!!) -- big props to the 1-800-MATTRESS people. [For the logic geeks in the crowd, Devil stairs : JBB :: devil wallpaper : Jen]
   
2. The movers grossly underestimated the job -- they brought 4 people and a 15,000 square foot truck planning on 9 hours of moving, and ended up taking 12 hours and having to go back to the apartment for a small 2nd load, as well as leaving 2 mini-vans worth of stuff behind in the apt because they were overtired. Oh, and they tried to change their rate from the estimate. Discussions will be had.
   
3. I took up the terrible rug in Jen's office while they were moving stuff in, by cutting it into pieces. We have the best utility knife in the world, super-sharp.
   
4. Washing machines are heavy. On the bright side ours is now in position to be hooked up by the plumber. But they are very, very heavy.
   
5. Jen did some serious work getting the bedroom and bathroom together on Sunday, while I tried to stay functional and out of semi-catatonia after all of the move-related craziness on Saturday.
   
6. After huddling on the 3rd floor all day Saturday, the cat has not come out from under the bedcovers since Sunday AM, with the possible exception of a short expedition last night.
   
7. Final steps tonight to getting out of the apartment are getting the food from the refrigerator and my fishtank (30 gallons, 4 goldfish, 1 pleco, and 2 snails).
   

so very tired

so I ignored the devil wallpaper last night. Every time I looked at it I just wanted to either cry, or throw something at it. Lovely how I am projecting my moving stress at the very walls of the house, huh?

Instead, while JBB bolted the pax to the walls in an extremely genius manner, I stripped the wallpaper from above the mantel in the dining room, which used to look like this:


Now THAT paper came off like wallpaper should!

I also primed the whole room, save the baseboards. That took until about 2 am.

I am tired.

devil wallpaper

You see this wallpaper on the right?



Yes, it's ugly. But more than that, it's the DEVIL.

Why you ask? Well because I was up til 1 am last night trying to strip the freaking thing off the damn wall. It. WON'T. COME. OFF.

Yeah sure, I got the top layer of faux fabric crap off. But the paper? Oh the paper just laughed at me. Guffawed at the properly diluted DIF. Chortled at the completely and 100% UN-diluted DIF. Giggled at the wee little steamer.

I swear to god, I think they put it up with epoxy or something. Thank goodness it's just chair rail level.

As I was scraping my little heart out, muttering curse after curse at the possessed wallpaper, Jonathan (who was assembling Pax closets for me!) came by and suggested co ering it up with wainscoting. At the time, I was like "NO! This wallpaper will bend to my will!" Now, it sounds like a good idea. Or a belt sander.

Jonathan's worst case suggestion: rip down all the plaster and replaster. HA! Because this crap is totally out to get me and that may be what it comes to.

moving day!

it's coming. . . .

it's Saturday.

and have we packed anything? Uh, not really. Will we? Maybe a few things. But that, my dear friends, is why we hire movers! Blessed blessed movers.

Best. Money. Spent. EVER.

After the last move, I have been told that I am a "bad mover" and been informed that, in fact, my presence inhibits progress. JBB has made it clear that the waves of panic that shear off me during moves is not productive and will most likely make his head explode. As such, I won't be present.

And so I will be moving my clothes and other girly accoutrements over the night before, and then day of, I will move the cat and his accoutrements over, locking him in the third floor, and getting the hell out of dodge so JBB can deal with the movers in peace and not have to talk me off of the ledge every five minutes.

Dude. Fine by me. I still think I got the best part of that deal.

Mom and I will go get door handles for the wardrobe and light switchplates and the like. And she can deal with the waves of panic shearing off me--she's got years of experience with that.

(Don't you love the irony that we're like "what? I'm not about to PAY someone to demo this for me." and "Contractors? BAH! Who needs em!"--but we hire folks to pack us up and move us 2 blocks? I do. )

everything including the kitchen sink

I know, wittiest blog post title EVER!

ehh. I need opinions.

We're going to get the cheapie wood counters from ikea for the new kitchen, and oil the hell out of them. but I also need a drainboard, and would rather have a drainboard integrated sink.

and because I am picky, I want a deep sink. (I blame Mom, who spoiled me with the 12" plus deep stainless sink we had growing up). My minimum depth is 10".

So far we've come up with this integrated dishdrainer deep sink from Elkay. It's oh so pretty, but problem is, that thing is more than cabinets. It's a thousand bucks. who spends that on a sink?

If I could just suck it up and get a double sink, I could get an ikea one for cheap. but I don't like double sinks. God, I am picky.

So if one were in the market for a single basin, deep sink with integrated dish drainer, where the hell could one find it for less than a thousand bucks?

um, I'm in love.

sadly, I am not referring to jonathan (though I am also in love with him), but I think he'll forgive me.

Cause . . . hello gorgeous!


traditional damask stencil from mystencils.com


provencal damask stencil from my stencils.com


florence damask stencil from mystencils.com


elizabethian damask stencil from my stencils.com

I'm thinking above the plate rail for the dining room? Maybe a cream on grey-cream, over solid red? Thoughts?

(keep in mind, I am doing this all in denial of the lack of a kitchen, and also because oooooh pretty....)

Quakers!

Some of you may know that my family is Quaker, aka Society of Friends.

And we totally bought a Quaker house!

When Jonathan and his dad were demoing the kitchen cabinets, they found an envelope that had slipped down the cracks. In the envelope was an invite to the 1951 annual meeting of the Society of Friends at the meeting house on 4th Street in Philly, as well as a notice about buying books about the Society of Friends.

How awesome is that?

floors

Sunday, Jonathan and his dad went to town on the kitchen, while his mom shopvaced up the crap on the living room and dining room floors so I could wash them.

Which I did. With a scrub brush. On my hands and knees. And 6 changes of water.

Y'all, they were FILTHY. Like turn the water black filthy. And I thought they hadn't been that bad beforehand, but now they look gorgeous.

It didn't help matters that the previous owners, or the previous previous owners, had decided to put drippy paint cans down on the floor with nothing underneath them and so I had to scrape all the goddamn paint drips and rings and dribbles up with a putty knife and some goo-gone (which works quite well by the way).

The one saving grace was that the cable is in and working and by god HGTV knows me so damn well I can seriously watch their cotton candy fluff for 6 hours at a time. Especially while washing floors.

I also hit the window sills and the outside part of the window sills (which, as far as I can tell, had never been wiped let alone scrubbed).

Ahh clean.

iiiikea!

I am posty mc posts a lot today. But it's because we got a lot done this weekend.

After Friday's adventure with carpet (ewwww) and near-completion of the master bedroom, we were left only to fix the lack of closets.

And that was a job for Ikea. Actually, Ikea and my parents, Mr. Tom and Miz Karen and their momvom, which will actually hold a flat packed Pax wardrobe box. Or five.

So Saturday am, I primed and started finish painting the baseboards in the living room, while the locksmith came and fixed our door and lock. Now all doors lock AND latch! It's a wonder of modern living, I tell you this.

We met mom and dad at Ikea (only 20 minutes late because of the locksmith and stupid parkway traffic that sucks). Luckily, if you are waiting for someone, Ikea's a pretty good place to do it, because you can say, plan their new kitchen wilst eating cinnamon buns on comfy and cheap sofas. It's kinda the perfect place.

so we wandered through the showroom, scoped the tv stands (leksvik corner thank you very much), the kitchen cabinets (lindingo, in white, some upper cabs with glass), ogled the comfy black and white flowery chair (lunna, but not in the boring grey shown here), my new dresser (leksvik 6 drawer), and then spent some time planning out the Pax Wardrobe System.

Oh, I love Pax. Why? Becuase I will have a freaking closet now.

Mom and I figured out what I needed--one wide tall with a fixed high shelf, two clothes rods, and two sliding shelves; on narrow tall with a fixed high shelf, a long clothes rod, and sliding shelves. The question was, do we go for the white birkland doors or the antique doors? but they're big. and that's a whole lot of antique, so we went with the white.

We went to the nice man with our list of things--including order numbers--and ordered the componets for pick up. One slight issue is that we mistakenly ordered fixed shelves in birch instead of white, which we didn't realize until we were about to pack the car, and thus had to go return the bad shelves, and switch them out for white ones.

Only other stumbling block? They were out of the awesome knappa pendant light, which will be going in my office. ehh, I'll order it online.

Once we got back, the boys unloaded the godawfully heavy boxes while mom and I polished off the rest of the baseboard and went to town on the master bedroom floor with the Murphy's Oil Soap scrub brushes, and Mom's amazing foam mop As Seen on TV. Shiny shiny clean floors!

Jonathans parents were coming up from MD for a short visit and they drove by just as we were finishing up dinner on the porch. And they brought porch lights and electric chainsaws and all sorts of nifty stuff (including a lovely spanish rose wine--yum!) They then got the grand tour for the very first time. They were quite impressed by the kitchen demo (that I'm sure Jonathan will be posting about shortly) and the shiny shiny master bedroom.

Because did I mention the master is DONE?

Next up? Shades for the master and the bathroom, otherwise the neighbors will get a little show.

hey, guess what?

The master bedroom is done! (mostly)

lookit those shiny clean floors!

Friday afternoon, after a lovely showing of Talledega Nights with a few friends (Will Ferell is awesome and John C. Reilly is freaking hilarious), I came home to the house and rolled up the carpet and nasty nasty nasty purple carpet pad that had disintegrated into dirty shreds, except for the parts that stuck to the floor. Ewwww.

After about an hour shopvac-ing that crap up, I was able to paint the baseboards and do one coat on the door frames. Then Jonathan got home and he hauled off the gross carpet and pad. Yay! That crud is gone!

On Saturday, post-ikea trip, mom and I scrubbed the shit out of the floor, and now it's all shiny and nice and shiny and it's done and YAY!!!

One room done!

<>

dear lord what is wrong with me?

I am now thinking of wallpaper for the top half of the dining room.

Now, anyone who has knows me knows my aversion to wallpaper. It's a pain in the ass to hang, and it's more of a pain in the ass to take off the damn walls. And it's everywhere in this house.

So just how is it, you may ask, that I am even considering turning to the dark side?

Because of this post at decor8, and these pretty pretty papers from
farrow and ball:


(they are st. antoine and silvergate)

and look! bees!



How much you wanna bet right now JBB and my mom are falling out of their chairs in shock?

Maybe I'll just stencil or stamp instead...

JBB vs The Bolt

When we first visited the house, we knew the kitchen was ugly and kind of beat up, but we (well, I) thought we could salvage it for a few years by fixing up the doors and repainting it. Once we closed and started looking in detail, though, we realized things were actually pretty messed up. My father-in-law, who knows a lot about woodwork, was instrumental in convincing me that everything was actually doomed and needed to be replaced. So after some grim thought about the need to redo the kitchen, I surrendered and we started planning the cheap kitchen redo.


Which brings me to challenge #1 -- demolishing the upper kitchen cabinets.

This is a good task for me, because when I was a theater geek in high school I started by helping to take apart all the flats (the giant paintable pieces of scenery) so I know a thing or two about busting stuff up. Plus breaking things = stress relief.

I learned a few things during the process, including:

• The old extractor fan was venting into a hole in the chimney. Not into a flue, mind you, but into a hole that looks like it has just been whacked through the bricks.
  
  
  


• The ceiling isn't the ceiling -- it's actually pieces of wallboard that are covering the original plaster and lath ceiling. Probably for the best because the plaster up there is crumbling like crazy and is covered in a brownish paint that I am neurotically convinced is lead paint that is going to kill everyone in the house starting with the cat.
  



• The Bolt.
  
  Dear Lord, The Bolt.
  
  Basically the old cabinets were probably built in place, by someone who mostly had no idea what they were doing. A hodge-podge of nails, screws, etc. For example, the shelves were two pieces of narrower wood held together by heavy shelf paper and some 1x1-ish braces. Despite this craziness, it seems like the intention was more elaborate at first, because the leftmost part of the cabinets was much sturdier, including the use of these giant 4" bolts with heavy-duty anchors in the wall to hold stuff up. Not so bad overall, if weird. Except for The Bolt. The Bolt was one of four holding the cabinets to the ceiling. Three came out fine, but The Bolt was somehow running through the old metal lath and up into some unholy nether region, and the bolt-head was a flat-head screw that was totally, totally stripped, so neither electric drill nor manual screwdriver could turn the MF more than maybe a half turn at a time. So basically half the cabinet was hanging from the ceiling by nothing but this one unholy bolt, that absolutely refused to move, or pull out, or anything. I don't have a reciprocating saw, so I ended up resorting to manually sawing away the wood around the bolt so I could pry everything out around it. This involved a hand saw that I had to keep whacking into the ceiling getting showered with plaster and paint dust (because as I said, the ceiling is crumbling like crazy). And because this is the ceiling, everything was over my head so my arms got more & more tired, not to mention keeping my balance because I am doing all this while standing on the base cabinet b/c Jen had the ladder upstairs painting the second coat of the bedroom. So I was standing there giving myself a plaster-dust shower and trying different ways to get around The Bolt for like 45 minutes, at the end of which I was pretty much incapable of saying anything that wasn't a savage, Kevin-Smith-at-his-most-profane type curse. Nonetheless the forces of good prevailed and all the top cabinets are finally down. Stay tuned for pictures of The Bolt and the de-cabineted kitchen.
  
  
  
  

oh yeah, before and after

so I wrote a superlongwinded post about painting the living room, but did not have any pretty
pretty pictures. oooh shiny pretty candy pictures... luckily I have them for the master bedroom!
(clicky clicky on the thumbnails)

Before:

Note the two wallpapers, and chair rail, held on only by the wee-ist nails and a wing and a prayer.


cause, yeah, I ripped it off with my hands the night before in a fit of "let's if I can tear shit out of the wall!"

During:

Luckily the wallpaper pulled right up. (note the ugly fixture.)


however, the walls were not in the greatest shape.

but they were worlds better after a ton of plaster patching, sanding, and a coat of primer.

After:


oooh, pretty!


so very pretty!

It still needs one more coat of wall color, the baseboard needs scraping and painting, and the carpet/dropcloth will go away. We need to take apart the windows to fix them a bit, and will paint more then.

paint is awesome

it's amazing what a difference a coat of paint (or two, or three...) makes for the look of a room.

now the living room was probably the best looking room of the house, decor wise. There was no wallpaper (hallelujah!), and while there was a decorative paint finish on the walls, it was comparatively subtle and neutral.

I had yesterday off and instead of sleeping or relaxing, I decided to paint the living room.

We'd decided on a color--Benjamin Moore Shenandoah Taupe--but had yet to get the paint. So I trucked off to the nice friendly paint store and picked up a gallon. I also got a quart each of Knoxville Grey and Gray Cashmere as possibles for the dining room.

Then I painted the ceiling. It took forever and I'm pretty sure it's a form of torture. I know it's what is causing the pain in my back today. How my mom does it so quickly and nicely, I'll never know. She had already primed it and cut in around the light fixture, because she rules.

Now it looks worlds better. Previously, it was a crappy dingy dirty yellow. Clean white ceiling! YAY!

Next, the trim, save the baseboards, in white semi gloss. I have to say, I'm pretty good at painting trim and cutting in. I think this may be a function more of the brushes than of me. I love my new sash brushes. Yes. I am a dork.

The trim took longer than I thought though, because there are two windows and two wide door openings. I even did the actual windows and not just the casings. And no paint on the glass either! The windows and the door openings are missing a few pieces of the smaller thinner trim that frames out the flat piece of wood on either side of the casings, so it was a little difficult to cut in. We need to find the right profile and replace that, maybe when we replace the missing baseboard caps in the dining room.

Then wall color! It took forever to cut in, again, because of the missing moldings. But I saved some time by not really bothering to cut in at the top. We currently have a narrow piece of picture molding up there, that we're planning to replace with a proper crown molding plus picture rail. The current proportions are just too small--it needs a more substantial piece. Meanwhile it made it a hell of a lot easier to just roll straight to the molding. By the time I was done with one coat, the first wall was dry enough to get a second one on. And while Benjamin Moore paint covers exceptionally well, the color definitely needed the second coat.

Round this time, JBB showed up post work. We both agreed, the color looks fabulous. I am in love with the walls. I would totally marry the walls.

I need to upload pictures, and you too, would totally marry the walls. They are HOT.

HOWEVER. Now I am thinking the planned Knoxville Grey/Cashmere Gray combo for the dining room will not work. The two rooms open to each other, and in the dining room there's a high picture rail about 4 1/2 feet up around the entire room. This will be semi-gloss white, which will be white along with all the other trim (at some point we will investigate to see if there really are pocket doors between the rooms, but first things first).

So what colors should we look at? Maybe red on bottom, cream on top? Chocolate brown, sage green top? We have black/very dark brown-black dining room table and china cabinet. I'd grabbed a red paint chip to look at Rhubarb for the offices, but Smoldering Red looks pretty good.... Suggestions?


next up:
second coat on master bedroom
baseboards in master bedroom
stripping more wallpaper in every other damn room
more demo of the kitchen

My "This Old House" theory of the week

We have been watching an inordinate amount of This Old House Classics since we bought the house (thank you, Comcast DVR). My theory is that everybody on the show hated Steve, the previous host from most of the 90's, and the set was full of tension and recriminations. If you watch closely, everything he says is negative -- it is either a passive-aggressive criticism or a forecast of impending doom. For example adding the molding to an external window -- he says "you have to trim the clapboards without destroying them." Not "Hey Tommy, how do you get the molding to fit?" or "Wow, Norm, that's a tricky operation." He has to throw the "destroyed" in there just to make us nervous.

The other thing I noticed is that they'll sometimes show segments with Bob Vila, but they never mention him by name or really acknowledge his presence. I'm kind of surprised they didn't do the Stalin thing and airbrush him out.

[We will eventually get up some pertinent posts about the actual house, so prepare yourself for amusing/cautionary anecdotes about discovering what lurks behind our demolished kitchen cabinets, figuring out our inscrutable phone line configuration, or Jen's ace painting job of our bedroom.]

hey yo jersey!

so me and the mister bought a house in north jersey built in 1899. and now we have to keep it from falling down around our ears.

fun! and yay house!