So Ugly It's Cute: November 2006

Quick Bathroom Fixes

You may recall the lovely color scheme of our bathroom at purchase:

Another view:

In our apartment in DC, we had a gray/white/silver color scheme going on. We thought about it long and hard, and decided that the gray floors and black/gray tiles in the new bathroom fit well into that color scheme, and also, that pink and gray went well together. Pink, blue, gray, black and silver? Not so much. So, to avoid having our eyes twitch everytime we went into the bathroom, the bathroom got toned down quite a bit.

The color we used in the bathroom is Glidden semi-gloss in "Tears of Joy."

Edited to say: "Tears of Joy" is a warm light gray color. I picked it to try to somewhat coordinate with the pink fixtures.

First coat of paint.

Second coat of paint.

The end result is a bathroom we can live with for the time being, accomplished merely with a few coats of sensible paint. We do plan to renovate it, since the fixtures are old and, well, pink. And because the floor is chipping in places (and ugly). And because the toilet is our enemy -- it's essentially a 100 gallon flush toilet, or feels like it. Also, the flush mechanism doesn't work correctly, so you have to reach into the tank to adjust it after every flush. As you can imagine, after 50 years, that tank is pretty gnarly!

But, hey, it's a functioning bathroom, so we can't complain too much!

The First Weekend, Part 5: Huffing Paint Fumes

Now that the walls were de-papered, de-paneled, and de-holed, we could FINALLY start painting. We started by pulling all the baseboards off, and storing them in the most obvious place: the bathroom.

At this point, we only had the bedroom and the office ready for a coat of primer. We taped plastic dropcloths over the floor of each room, to protect the nice hardwood floors. Then we painted, and painted, and painted some more. Turns out, the original dark colors are really difficult to cover up...

Bedroom, after the first coat of primer.

Bedroom, after the second coat of primer.

Office, after the first coat of primer.

Kristen's mom, starting on the second coat of primer in the office -- the next day!

Finally finished priming the bedroom and office...

So, then we started on two coats of paint. We used Glidden, flat interior, in a shade called "Wood Lily." It's a lovely off-white color, and it really picks up the warm tones in our wood floor and wood doors.

Bedroom -- all done!

Kristen's mom, putting on the finishing touches in the office.

By the end of the first weekend, we had both the bedroom and the office completely painted and ready to move into. Not that we had any furniture or anything, but still, two rooms DONE. Whew.

I (Kristen) must also mention that we had a ton of help getting to that point. Evan's parents came over not only to help us paint, but they also showed up Friday night to help us unload our moving cube. And Evan's dad has been over several evenings after work to help with projects since that weekend. Evan's sister, Eden, helped paint for several hours each day, around dress rehearsals for Madame Butterfly, in which she sang in the chorus. My mom flew out -- last minute -- from Wichita to help us paint, and take care of other details. And she was completely flexible with where she slept each night, as we didn't have hot water and thus couldn't stay at our house. And of course, Georgia was a huge help with the kitchen.

But our weekend contained even more excitement!

I thought this was a safe neighborhood?

We woke up Saturday morning, early, to find that someone had driven down our street, with a baseball bat, and smashed all the cars! My car (above) thankfully only took a hit to the trunk, but everyone else had their windows and windshields punched out, as well as dents in the bodies. But, on the plus side, we did meet all of our neighbors!

The First Weekend, Part 4: SuperGeorgia

We mentioned earlier on this blog our awesome real estate agent, Georgia. To further demonstrate her awesomeness, Georgia showed up at 8:30am on our first morning in the house bearing food and drinks.

And then, she ripped apart our kitchen! She and her helper, ~~who I think was named Jesus~~ who I'm told is actually named Javier, not only took out the old cabinets, but they also gave it their all in trying to remove the old linoleum.

Preparations to chop up the old cabinets.

Cabinets out; floor on its way out.

They also wrestled the old water heater out of the house.

Seen here, unplugged but still leaking!

Georgia even lined up plumbers and electricians for us. Frank, our electrician, wired basically everything we could think to electrify.

Frank, while wiring the kitchen

Notice the piece of green wood under Frank's left foot - that's covering the hole that goes through the subfloor, through the cardecking, and into our crawl space. This is what happens when you let a water heater leak for months on end, *cough*previousowner*cough*. We discovered this hole when Georgia and Jesus pulled up the flooring on that side of the kitchen.

As further evidence of Georgia's awesomeness, she loaded up an entire truckload of old house, and hauled it to the transfer station for us. And left us her industrial-sized shop vac to use during the rest of our kitchen renovation. Note: we still have the shop vac because the kitchen renovation is still going on.

Now, all we need to do is write up a super review for our super agent. Oh, and give her back her shop vac...

Next: The First Weekend, Part 5: Huffing Paint Fumes

The First Weekend, Part 3: Stupidity of the 70s

A brief recap of the 1970s

The Good: Led Zeppelin, homosexuality is removed from the DSM, The Brady Bunch, Pong, the Sears Tower, Star Wars, Evan

The Bad: Nixon, vast economic crisis, terrorism at the 1972 Olympic Games, Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, the Vietnam War, Rush

The Ugly: Wood paneling

Seriously, what were you people thinking? It just is not possible to recreate a log cabin feel by slapping some paneling on your walls. A room does not feel larger by extending the floor onto the walls. Wood paneling has not become a classic housing feature.

After much research into the various ways to negate the ugliness of wood paneling in a room, we threw up our hands and said, "let's just pull it down. How bad could it be?"

The paneling in the office comes down.

Generally, "how bad could it be?" is supposed to be a rhetorical question. But we got an answer, and that answer was, "it could rip chunks out of your drywall - not to mention, leave large globs of glue all over the place."

The office wall, sans paneling.

And then the answer continued: "I hope you like to spackle. A lot."

Kristen's mom, repairing the office wall.

Oh, but the office wall was an easy fix compared to the living room wall...

The paneling in the living room had been glued down with care.

Now, that particular wall is the largest wall in our house. It was completely covered in paneling, and each piece was glued the same way. With lots of glue. And that glue happily pulled down large strips of our drywall.

So, we sanded, and spackled, and sighed. And once again, we threw up our hands and said, "well, we can live with a slightly bumpy wall, but there's no way we can smooth the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. It's just too much glue." At which point, Evan turns to me and asks, "how do you feel about crown moulding?" And I replied, "crown moulding is fantastic."

Spackle and more spackle.

Conclusion: wood paneling is stupid

However, you'll be happy to know that, once painted, the bumps are much less noticeable. If you look closely at our walls, you'll see all the divets. But from a few feet away, you'd hardly know that they're there.

Next: The First Weekend, Part 4: SuperGeorgia