The House: Mudding and Priming is Done

Saturday, October 11, 2008

And would've been done on Tuesday, had I not contracted a majorly unpleasant bug from Lyndon (who told me upon returning from Atlanta that he didn't want to worry me but he'd felt dreadful over the weekend and up until Tuesday, whereupon he landed in Atlanta and felt 100% better. I then listed my symptoms to him and he said, "Oh, yeah, that's how I felt!" Ah...) which pretty much kept me off ladders since Tuesday. As I felt better Thursday evening, however, I went over and finished the last of the mudding -- and judging from the amount of powder I raised from sanding the hallway walls, the immediate purchase of a Shop-Vac would be a goodness indeed.



Yesterday and today was priming, well, pretty much everything. I suspect that raising my arms tomorrow will be something of an adventure, and when I came home Lyndon said, "Darling, you have a big stripe of paint on your face that makes you look like Adam Ant." And lo, I did -- it was even in the right direction. Of course I didn't have the frock coat, boots or groupies, but I did warble a line or two from "Kings of the Wild Frontier."

Tomorrow I need to give the ceiling another coat, and then it's time to apply the texture paint. Weelah! And to make things even better, our new bookcases arrived so Lyndon picked them up -- next weekend, I stain and varnish them. Seeing as we've decided we need to paint the bathroom cabinets and doors as well (they're a dingy cream that just isn't going to go with the blue and white), I see a HVLP sprayer in my immediate future, yes I do.

The House: I am a Golden Goddess of Drywall

Monday, October 6, 2008

Considering that the last time I did any mudding was, oh, 15.5 years ago, the skill set came back remarkably quickly. In four hours I was able to get the top half of the hallway smoothly mudded, and patched a bunch of areas around the bathroom. With luck and a tailwind I should finish all the mudding tomorrow night, and then we can primer the crap out of it, put the textured paint on and the topcoat.

And THEN we get to tile. Whee!!!

In the meantime, the Bodacious Brit keeps asking when we'll start painting the master bath. Granted, he's not being pushy so much as wanting to know when I need him, but I have to keep saying, "Not yet."



I did explain that today I have to finish the hallway mudding and the patching around the rest of the room; while I'm doing that, he could pull the toilet out of the toilet stall and remove the baseboards in preparation for painting and tiling. Hmm -- I may tape the doorway and cut in the ceiling first thing this afternoon so that he can start painting in there while I mud the rest of the bath.

Oh, and then he goes to Atlanta tomorrow for three days. His managers have such good timing.

The House

Friday, October 3, 2008

So, we bought a house. The reason why I'm posting about it here is that I am about to don my cowl and mask and become Spackle Woman, Maid of Mortar, DIY Warrior Princess (catchphrase: "Criminals, prepare to be renovated!") and overhaul the master bathroom, which is...well...

Okay, you have a 15' x 12' room with am L-shaped 2-sink vanity, Roman tub, glass shower enclosure, a 6' hallway leading to the bedroom, and a sloping ceiling which means the wall closest to the interior of the house is 10' tall. In reality the room is more like 12' x 12' because one interior corner is cut off and leads to the toilet stall, and the other corner leads to the walk-in closet -- the space between them is taken up by the hallway.



1) The walls have painted-over wallpaper (the paint is bright mustard yellow and the wallpaper is an extraordinarily hideous blue and red paisley. Euuuuuuu...) which is badly damaged and has to come off; after this, the drywall must be repaired, primed, covered with textured paint and painted with an Aegean blue topcoat. The ceiling will be painted semi-gloss white. Part of this requires me to climb up a 6' ladder to get at the top of the 10' ceiling -- intellectually I know that a fall of five feet won't kill me, but it could certainly break a couple of bones.

2) The main floor is carpeted and the toilet stall has a linoleum floor; all of this is coming up, along with the baseboards, and is being replaced with white textured porcelain tile and suede white coving tile.

3) The fixtures (two 4" centerpoint sink faucets and drains, one Roman tub faucet and drain, one shower faucet and showerhead, one towel rod, two round towel holders, one toilet paper holder) are ancient gold-colored things that are corroded in places; they will be replaced with brushed nickel fittings.

4) The shower door and glass wall are sheathed in tarnished gold trim and need to be replaced. Because of the odd shape of the half-glass wall (it sits on a tile wall next to the far end of the tub) I may have to have the pros come in and do this.

5) The vanity lights are tarnished gold and need to be replaced with brushed nickel vanity lights, and the glass acorn light fixtures in the toilet stall and closet replaced with nice dome lights.

The exercise angle is, I'm doing all of this renovation work myself, with the possible exception of the shower stall door. Lyndon is helping me as brute force and painter's apprentice, but the mudding, paint cutting in, tiling, plumbing and wiring is being done by yours truly. So far I have badly banged up knuckles and a blister on the underside of my right index finger, my arms feel like limp noodles from all the wallpaper scraping, my feet hurt like hell, my Achilles bursa needs to be iced every night, and I'm having the time of my life.

Haven't lost any weight so far, but I think I'm also retaining water as a result of muscle and joint inflammation. I do know that my leg muscles are starting to firm up something wicked. And yes, pictures will be posted once the job is done.