It was another busy week as Lawrence went over to the house every day after work. In fact, there hasn't been a day since we purchased the house in February that Lawrence hasn't been doing something at the house.
He finished coating and smoothing the walls and ceilings getting ready for texture. But before we started texturing, Lawrence wanted to build a stand to hold the texture gun upright. It's a weird shaped device that can only lay on it's side, that is until Lawrence built the stand. The stand makes it easy to fill the texture gun with the compound, which has to be mixed with water to the consistency of pancake batter so it will flow through the gun. There are different settings for different types of texture. We want what's called "orange peel", so Lawrence set up some cardboard in the garage to test the gun for the right spray pattern.
My project this weekend was to cover windows, outlets, switches and doors with either plastic or paper and tape it all up to prevent both texture and paint from getting on any of these objects. I got three of the rooms done, and it's a lot harder than I thought it would be.
Once we were ready, we moved the compressor to the hallway, plugged in the air line to the gun, filled the gun with texture, turned on some lights so we could see what we were doing, and off we went:
Being our first time to do any of this, there were a couple of small problems with thickness of the texture, too much in one spot, not enough in another, etc. About 5 minutes after spraying, I went through with a large flat metal scraper and "knocked down" the sprayed material. By the time we got to the second room we had it pretty well down, and overall it looks good! We may go through and do a second coat, but we'll wait until it all dries to see what else needs to be done.
Spraying the walls is easy, but the ceilings are very difficult since the sprayer doesn't like pointing very far up as it loses pressure.
The nasty carpet that is in the house was bad before, but now it's got lots of stuff in it from texture material, ceiling scrapings, and no telling what else. As planned, it will be the last thing changed before we move in. We have more rooms to texture, then all the painting, so it's going to get a lot worse.
We also went to Home Depot, as we seem to do every day, and looked at various types of molding. We're trying to decide what we will use on the ceiling, the floor, and possibly chair railings. We also need to start thinking about tile for various rooms. While we were there, we picked up some more plants to fill-in the backyard. Lawrence has been busy planting and digging. It's coming together, but just like the inside of the house, there's a lot more to do. We also picked up a new and larger birdbath.
A couple of loads of laundry and some cleaning up finishes the weekend. It's nice to see progress, even as slow as it is. Lawrence will continue to go to the house every day after work, and I'll be there next weekend.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Weekend Update - April 15, 2012
Things are progressing well at the new house as Lawrence has spent almost every waking moment over the past few weeks working on something. The biggest project he has undertaken, and is still working hard at it, is finishing the ceilings and walls. If you'll remember, all the ceilings had this thick texture that was sprayed on then moved around into a wave type pattern. Looked really bad. The walls were fine but had that old fashioned popcorn texture on them. I scraped most of the walls, Lawrence and I did the living room ceiling together, and he did all the other rooms by himself.
After that was done, Lawrence went and covered every inch of those ceilings with a smooth layer of joint compound, and is now going back and smoothing and sanding all of it. It's a major undertaking that has taken weeks to complete, and he is just about finished. I started taping plastic to all areas not to be textured or painted and hopefully I will be able to finish that project next weekend. There are still a few minor details to complete, but when we do, out comes the texture gun as well as Lawrence's new toy, a brand new professional paint spraying system. When it comes to tools and toys, he doesn't fool around!
My two big projects this weekend were cleaning out the garage of all the junk that needs to be thrown away and dragging it to the curb since tomorrow is heavy trash pickup day in our neighborhood. This included old ceiling fans, stove vent fan and light thingy, old closet poles, and just about anything else that needed to go. I also carried all the tin gutters that were removed from the house and stacked in the backyard against the fence. All of that is now at curbside as well. With Lawrence's help, we both removed the junky old gas stove that was in the kitchen and moved it to the curb also.
As we were finishing up with the stacking of junk, an ambitious old man came by in his pickup truck and started loading all the metal items for recycling. I had no problem with that, but there was a lot of metal on the curb and his pickup truck was already full. Surprisingly, he got every bit of it in that truck, including the stove on the back tailgate, and away he went. All that was left was a box of scrap wood and the closet poles. I was impressed.
Back to the taping of plastic in areas not needing texture or paint. Lawrence was using the 8 foot ladder in one of the bedrooms for his project, and the 12 foot ladder won't fit in the bedrooms, so off to Home Depot I went for yet another ladder. It's a 4-foot model, and that makes our current count of ladders at four. If you ever need a 4-foot, 6-foot, 8-foot, or a 16-foot extension ladder, we've got them all. When this is all done, I might have to start renting out tools, sprayers and ladders. We'll pay off that mortgage in no time!
Back inside the house, I finished up removing layers of wallpaper in all the rooms, including the kitchen as we prepare for texture and paint. Lawrence also did a load of laundry in our new washer and dryer. They are the weirdest machines I've ever seen, but they do a good job with the laundry.
Last weekend a friend of my family came by to help out with some electrical problems. He's a master electrician with over 40 years of experience, and he fixed everything that needed fixing, as well as solving a few mysteries of what wall switches went to what. He'll come back soon for a few more things. He also agreed that the main breaker box outside needs replacing but he can't do it since he is out of Austin and not licensed in Houston. He wrote down some important specifications of what we need to replace and I am on the hunt for a good electrician. The replacement of that breaker box is going to be expensive and crazy as we have to pull a permit from the City of Houston, have Reliant Energy come out and cut off power to the house, replace the box and do rewiring, have Reliant come back out and turn on the power, then have the city inspector come check it all out. I might need to start my rental service quicker than I expected.
A little further back we had a minor injury at the house, and it involved Rusty the dog. He was wandering around the backyard when he saw a neighbor dog, and he ran towards the wrought iron fence at a full gallop. He's not used to fences, so WHAM, his head went right through the bars and he got stuck briefly. He made a huge racket with a type of doggy scream, but luckily Lawrence was close by and helped him get out. He got a few scratches and they are healing well. Lawrence placed some big potted plants and bricks along the fence line to try and discourage Rusty from trying that again.
So, as you can see, we are progressing right along, and hopefully within a couple of more months we can start moving things over little by little. Lawrence wants to be in the house like right now and is about ready to set up a tent and sleeping bags in the middle of the living room floor. I keep saying it will be awhile mostly because we have some major expenses to cover like new carpet, blinds, a stove, all the paint, more furniture, etc. and it's a matter of money at this point. We get it, we spend it.
Patience, my friend. Patience.
After that was done, Lawrence went and covered every inch of those ceilings with a smooth layer of joint compound, and is now going back and smoothing and sanding all of it. It's a major undertaking that has taken weeks to complete, and he is just about finished. I started taping plastic to all areas not to be textured or painted and hopefully I will be able to finish that project next weekend. There are still a few minor details to complete, but when we do, out comes the texture gun as well as Lawrence's new toy, a brand new professional paint spraying system. When it comes to tools and toys, he doesn't fool around!
My two big projects this weekend were cleaning out the garage of all the junk that needs to be thrown away and dragging it to the curb since tomorrow is heavy trash pickup day in our neighborhood. This included old ceiling fans, stove vent fan and light thingy, old closet poles, and just about anything else that needed to go. I also carried all the tin gutters that were removed from the house and stacked in the backyard against the fence. All of that is now at curbside as well. With Lawrence's help, we both removed the junky old gas stove that was in the kitchen and moved it to the curb also.
As we were finishing up with the stacking of junk, an ambitious old man came by in his pickup truck and started loading all the metal items for recycling. I had no problem with that, but there was a lot of metal on the curb and his pickup truck was already full. Surprisingly, he got every bit of it in that truck, including the stove on the back tailgate, and away he went. All that was left was a box of scrap wood and the closet poles. I was impressed.
Back to the taping of plastic in areas not needing texture or paint. Lawrence was using the 8 foot ladder in one of the bedrooms for his project, and the 12 foot ladder won't fit in the bedrooms, so off to Home Depot I went for yet another ladder. It's a 4-foot model, and that makes our current count of ladders at four. If you ever need a 4-foot, 6-foot, 8-foot, or a 16-foot extension ladder, we've got them all. When this is all done, I might have to start renting out tools, sprayers and ladders. We'll pay off that mortgage in no time!
Back inside the house, I finished up removing layers of wallpaper in all the rooms, including the kitchen as we prepare for texture and paint. Lawrence also did a load of laundry in our new washer and dryer. They are the weirdest machines I've ever seen, but they do a good job with the laundry.
Last weekend a friend of my family came by to help out with some electrical problems. He's a master electrician with over 40 years of experience, and he fixed everything that needed fixing, as well as solving a few mysteries of what wall switches went to what. He'll come back soon for a few more things. He also agreed that the main breaker box outside needs replacing but he can't do it since he is out of Austin and not licensed in Houston. He wrote down some important specifications of what we need to replace and I am on the hunt for a good electrician. The replacement of that breaker box is going to be expensive and crazy as we have to pull a permit from the City of Houston, have Reliant Energy come out and cut off power to the house, replace the box and do rewiring, have Reliant come back out and turn on the power, then have the city inspector come check it all out. I might need to start my rental service quicker than I expected.
A little further back we had a minor injury at the house, and it involved Rusty the dog. He was wandering around the backyard when he saw a neighbor dog, and he ran towards the wrought iron fence at a full gallop. He's not used to fences, so WHAM, his head went right through the bars and he got stuck briefly. He made a huge racket with a type of doggy scream, but luckily Lawrence was close by and helped him get out. He got a few scratches and they are healing well. Lawrence placed some big potted plants and bricks along the fence line to try and discourage Rusty from trying that again.
So, as you can see, we are progressing right along, and hopefully within a couple of more months we can start moving things over little by little. Lawrence wants to be in the house like right now and is about ready to set up a tent and sleeping bags in the middle of the living room floor. I keep saying it will be awhile mostly because we have some major expenses to cover like new carpet, blinds, a stove, all the paint, more furniture, etc. and it's a matter of money at this point. We get it, we spend it.
Patience, my friend. Patience.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Time Flies
It's been nearly a month since our last blog entry,..... my how time does fly..... blogging about what your doing when your mostly busy doing what your blogging about can be tricky to do, its hard for me to take the time to write, when all I want to do is work on the house for the most part. Hope you understand. I'll try to write more since Bill hasn't had the time of late to do it.
So what have I done for the past 30 days?.....
People told me it was going to be hard to do, and if I had to do it again, (scraping and smoothing the ceilings), I might seriously be looking for a new house to buy or ask for a discount from the seller. I'm looking forward to the day when this part is over and done with.
After hand troweling nearly 8 boxes of pre-mixed joint compound, thats 28 gallons, or roughly 272 pounds, I am nearly done smoothing out all the ceilings in all the rooms, (4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, diningroom, living room, breakfast nook, kitchen, walk-in closet, hallway & closet). I estimate that Thursday, the initial work will be done, then I will check each ceiling and do any sanding of ridges and whatever to make it ready to be spray textured in the coming days...
It was not every single day that I worked on the ceilings mind you, but roughly every other day on average. A couple of times I cut the lawn, as the grass still grows, and weeds need to be sprayed with herbicide, then theres watering, and trying to plant some things in the back yard. Speaking of the back-yard, we now have 5 trees growing in it. one is a lemon tree, a mandarin orange tree, clementine orange tree, lime tree, and an elm tree. The Elm tree is Rusty's favorite tree, I've had it growing in a pot for about 10 years, now its in the ground proper, just for him.....
More Breathing Room
One of several things I did to break the monotony of smoothing the ceiling was to install a second return air duct for the (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) HVAC system. I had noticed the first time when I looked at it, that the amount of suction is so great, that on a new a/c filter, it warps the filter and it was almost enough pull to collapse the filter and render it useless. Another thing is the amount of air coming thru the vents didnt seem like much, so with that in mind, and as luck would have it, I was easily able to double the air filter capacity by just cutting a second hole on the adjoining wall and thereby more air could flow thru the vents and the filters don't become so disfigured when it is running.
 |
| Hole cut in wall |
 |
| I replaced the old return air duct with a new one also, old one pictured alongside new one in this photo. Walls need paint....I know... |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)