Prep work is the Devil!

Who knew cleaning and taping could take so much time! We are trying to get the entire house prepped to be painted so that the painting goes faster, but between taping plastic on the windows and scraping boogers off the walls it's going so slow! (Yes, you read boogers correctly. Children are dirty little creatures.) Not to mention that we are using ammonia to clean which smells like cat pee and makes the whole experience that much more fun.

We have 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and the mud room left. It doesn't sound like much, but a small part of me wants to cry when I look at it. Then I look out the window and our beautiful property and remember why we are doing this.

An another up note, we met our neighbors and they aren't scary at all, which is a big plus! They are actually really nice. Leo apparently gets bored easily and offered to knock down our field and all of the backyard that didn't ever get mowed by Fannie Mae's people. He's also going to chop up the downed tree in the front yard that we haven't gotten to. I'm all for neighbors getting bored and doing manual labor that I don't have to.

And then there's paint colors. For some reason I am having quite a time of picking out colors I like. Not sure what is going on. I'm normally pretty decisive about things like this. It's not that I'm unsure of the shade or something, I have no idea what color I want anywhere except for the main area. Color me frustrated.

One Step Closer...

Just a quick update...

We are so close to painting! The carpet and padding are all out. The floors are now nail and staple free and I have the blisters to prove it. We've pulled all the cabinet doors off and gotten the handles removed. I've got a couple of paint samples on the wall to see which color we are going to choose. Just the small patches of primer that we have up give me faith that the walls will look sooooo much better. I think I'll do a happy dance when all the floral print is gone.

We decided to replace the beautiful chair rail in our bedrooms and the one entry room with normal squared off chair rail. It'll be a little bit more expensive, but I think we will like it a lot better. Tonight we'll be prepping and measuring for that. Hopefully by the end of the weekend the walls will be ready for primer and the cabinets, doors and trim will be prepped as well. If you fell like sanding something give me a shout. We've got plenty to go around.

The Wall Dilemma

I've been scouring the internet for ideas for the walls.

Mobilehomeliving.org has become my new favorite website. A lot of what I've seen has been to either texturize the walls or use bead board and go with a board and batten look. I like the clean lines of the bead board, but it's a bit more of a country look which I'm not loving so much. I love the idea of a more modern board and batten/wainscot look, but thinking about the mass amount of trim boards we would have to buy kind of make my head spin. I think it would be a great way to not only hide the wall strips, but also make the interior look a bit more "us".

For the floors we've decided to try plywood. We are planning on ripping sheets of plywood into 1' x 8' boards and laying (lying? Danica?) it like a normal hardwood floor. After the floors are down we are going to stain then a dark brown/black color and then probably poly over them for durability.
I found a tutorial for someone did the same thing. They ended up leaving them natural, which I really like the look of, but I'm a little over having light colored floors. I found a blog with a picture of a stain color which they called Kona Brown that I really liked. Hopefully it will look the same on fresh plywood. I'm going to do a practice run with a few different options and see how it goes.

The last major change we are planning is painting all of the cabinets. The kitchen cabinets are going to be white and I think I'm going to end up paining the counter tops a dark gray. They are this hideous combination of blue, gray, and pink right now and I just don't thinks that's going to work for us. Oh, and I'm crossing my finger for a new kitchen sink. My list just keeps getting longer and longer it seems. Every day I wake up and hope that a little magic fairy is going to have visited the new house and completed my entire wish list for me and every day I'm disappointed. Maybe tomorrow?

Popcorn Free

The ceiling have been de-popcorned! It wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting and the drywall underneath was in much better condition than we thought it would be, so bonus for us. We were going to do a knockdown texture on the ceiling but have decided to keep them smooth instead. It equals a lot less work for us and we'd rather have smooth ceilings anyway. To say I'm happy is an understatement.

The popcorn was very easy to remove. All we did was take a normal weed sprayer, fill it with water, spray down a section of the ceiling, let it sit for about a minute, then started scraping with a normal 6" mud knife. It was cake. If you have popcorn ceilings that you've been dreaming of getting rid of, do it! The only downside is that it is extremely messy. Since we were ripping the carpet out anyway we didn't put anything down on it. As soon as we were finished with a room, we would cut the carpet, roll it up, and away goes the mess.

I did try to keep the kitchen some what clean. I got a huge roll of painters plastic and covered all of the cabinets as well as the floor since we are just going to put the new flooring over the existing laminate. Covering everything up was probably the most time consuming part of the whole process. It worked great though and was very easy to clean up.

Do you see the nastyness that is popcorn ceilings. It's like a breeding ground for dust covered cobwebs. When I was scraping them there was literally cobwebs that would get knocked down and just hang from the ceiling. Uck!

The mess! When I was done it looked like it had snowed in the house. The other downside was that if we didn't roll up the carpet right away, the next day all the plaster had dried and every time you stepped on it there was a constant cloud of drywall dust. I definitely recommend taking it out as soon as you are done while it is still damp.

Aw, the finished product. The ceiling aren't completely perfect, but they are so much better. I'm excited to see how they look when they are a completely patched and painted.

Next up, you get to see the house without any carpet, padding or fans before we prime EVERYTHING. For the past few days we've been taking down all the light fixtures, getting rid of any remaining carpet, removing that terrible cabinet over the bar in the kitchen, and earning plenty of blisters pulling up carpet staples.

Till then.

It begins...

Last night was our first night of demo in the new house. Also, it was Alfie's first trip to his future home. It didn't take him too long to discover that the windows are now the perfect height for him. Pretty sure his world is going to be changed forever. It also didn't' take him very long to discover the chickens in the neighbors yard. I have a feeling they are going to meet him a little more up close and personal than they would like.
We didn't get a ton done as we had limited time, but we did manage the get out locks changed out and started scraping off some of the popcorn ceilings. I started int he closets to see what condition the drywall underneath was in and was pleasantly surprised to find that it looks fantastic. I'm hoping we can get away with not texturizing them at all and going with a smooth ceiling finish. Here are some before shots of the house to commemorate our first day of work. Also, so we don't forget just how far we've come.

This is the master bedroom. 

Master Bath. I know, the carpet in the bathroom is fantastic.

Our beautiful double sinks.

Front room. No idea what we're going to do with it.

Front room leading into the dining room/kitchen area.

Same place, better shot.

Future site of our kitchen table. Don't you just love the wallpaper pattern!

The kitchen, which is quite roomy. (Yes, Alfie feels the need to be seen in every photo.)

My lovely popcorn ceiling.

First room to be de-popcorned by yours truly.

Goodbye carpet! It only gets better from here!

Closing. Three Weeks Later.

The closing in itself has been an adventure. We've had four closing dates and 3 date changes. After having the Title company come back to us every week with something new that they needed signed (apparently the Title company was unsure of what they needed to process the title), we finally closed yesterday. Brad went back to work for an hour and I ran around town trying to come some stuff done on the new place.

We have REMC now, which is cool, but I had to go in person to get it switched to our name. After about an hour of running around Brad and I were going to meet at the new place, have a quick drink, then head over to Cam & Misty's to finish canning.

I got to the property before Brad and saw a red truck backed up to my front door. I got out of my truck and politely asked one of the men what they were doing and he informed me they were winterizing the property. My property. My new property that I have to move into in 2 months. Luckily I got there right as they were finishing (read the sarcasm) and asked him (Joe) if he could not winterize the property, which he had just finished winterizing. Sigh. I hate Fannie Mae a little bit. Who orders a winterization (is that even a word?) on a property that is closing? Frustration thy name is Fannie Mae. The workers politely packed up their stuff and shipped out. They were nice and it wasn't their fault. They were just doing their job. Brad finally shows up and I tell him what was going on. As we attempt to flush the pipes we realized that Joe did not in fact turn the water back on like he said. Joy! So, off Brad goes to crawl around under the house to turn the pump on and all the fun that comes along with that. After about 10 minutes he comes back inside, without success, and informs me that some one has stolen our air condenser for the AC. Double Joy!

This is where I proceeded to break down and cry.

Not the most encouraging thing when you have just bought a new property. Sometimes a person just gets a bit overwhelmed with it all. As Brad was in the crawl I was walking through the house tallying up all the things we need to do. There is a lot to do.

I'm off to make my list.