Yipes! (Moar) Stripes!

In my rush to finish, apparently I missed taking pictures of the floor when I first painted it. But it is now definitely blackish. I decided to leave a foot wide border around the room, and stencil in the center, which required drawing a lot of lines and putting down a lot of tape.

 

 

I'm going for a double line here. I decided to try out some of 3M's competitor to Frog Tape to see if it works. It's about half the price, and it could be a disaster... here's hoping it works.

 

Once I got things all taped out, I painted them with the Navy Blue porch paint.

 

The border makes a big square, I'll be filling in with stencil. I picked this stencil for it.

 

I took up the tape while the blue paint was still wet, which I think helped with the crispness of the lines. There is definitely some bleed through with the 3M tape, but from a distance it doesn't show up much. (90% of the room will be covered, 90% of the room will be covered...)

Sanding. Again.

So I've now been through the sanding process twice, and there's not much I can say about it. This room is bigger than either of the spaces I've done before, and its being done in less time, so I'm cutting corners like a mofo. I've spent a day each on 40, 80, patching, and 120 grit respectively.  I skipped one of the passes I normally do with 80 grit in favour of saving a day.

 

 

I'm not sure if that's going to hurt me in the end, I won't really know until the first coat of paint goes on it. My mantra during this sanding process has been "90% of the room will be covered..." because I know the bed and dressers are going to take up the majority of the room. I've decided not to sweat the details this time around.

 

It definitely looks better after sanding, but four days straight is exhausting. Pretty sure I could win an arm wrestling competition right now though... my right bicep feels popeyesque after fighting with the belt sander for so many hours. 

 

Even Pharaoh is tired. He's adopted this pillow as his new home-away-from-bedroom.

 

And the bad, ugly patch is collecting tons of dust for safekeeping.

Floorwork

The floor process has begun! The first step is to scrape up all the drywall mud that is all over the floor. I used a sponge and a putty knife, resulting in a bucket of what looks like the grossest oatmeal ever. This step isn't entirely necessary, but the mud clogs the sander if I don't do it, which means using more sanding belts. They're expensive, so I went with the additional manual labour instead.

(I dunno why I always manage to get my foot in the picture.)

 

 

Speaking of feet, I also learned today that leaving your signature in wet concrete is not strictly a human endeavor.

 

I came in this morning and was greeted by a single print below the window sill. I didn't even know Pharaoh could get in, but apparently he did somehow. I wish I would have poly'd over it and saved it, because it made me laugh.

My Infinite Blooness

As long as everything was out of the room, I decided to fix as much stuff as I can, because I don't see this opportunity occurring again any time in the near future. I started with recaulking and staining the window sill. This sill gets a lot of sun, so the stain and caulk were dried out, flaking and generally gross.

 

 

Many patches were also achieved. I want to move the curtain rods, so I took them down and patched over them. You may also notice the ceiling is white. I hate it. When I first moved in, there was one coloured wall, and it was the ugliest colour of eggplant I have ever seen. That is probably redundant because I hate eggplant, but it was really an awful colour. I replaced it with blue. Then I decided more blue was necessary and painted the other walls a few years later. I have always regretted not doing the ceiling blue at that time. Right now, the white reflects all of the light that manages to get through the two layers of curtains I have hanging. I'm super sensitive to light when I'm sleeping, and I like to sleep in the day time. This ceiling conspires against me. I'm painting the hell out of it.

 

 

 

I went to Home Despot to pick up my paint. I was looking for Behr's Navy Blue and Black Suede in porch paint for the floor. It turned out that they only had one gallon of porch paint left, so my decision to repaint the room was confirmed and I went with interior.  The paint went on the walls OK, but it took many coats to finish the ceiling, and I wound up buying another quart... then another quart... then a gallon of porch paint.

 Here's coat one of the ceiling

And coat two:

 

It started to get slightly better at coat 3. At this point I started spot-painting it. There are still some lighter spots, but I think once the curtains are up it'll be so dark that no one will be able to tell. The many coats took longer than I had hoped, and now I need to let it dry for a few days before I start work on the floor. It's November 1st, and I only have TWO WEEKS to go.

The countdown begins

When last I wrote, I was just starting out on my bedroom. Moving my bed into the living room turned out to be a horrible idea for my sleep patterns. Between that, an impending houseguest, and the fact that I finished another class and don't have a new one until halfway through November, I decided to try to finish this project before November 15th. It's a lot of work to do in a tiny amount of time, so I've been slow at posting. I'm going to try to catch up now, while I'm between coats of paint.

First off, you should know that the step after pulling up the carpet involves a lot of tools. Laying them out like this makes me feel like I'm prepping for a torture scene. Actually, that's pretty accurate. Most of these I use for pulling staples, moulding and extra bits of carpet.

 

The first order of business, though, was convincing a very confused cat that his new home really IS the living room. He wants so badly to help with this project and get back into his normal space. And by "help", I mean "trip me as I'm carrying sharp implements."

 

Next up, moulding removal. You can see that the paint on the walls is pretty spotty. I was in a hurry last time I painted this room as well, and it definitely shows in the daylight. I decided that the walls need a new coat to help them look shiny and new. I decided to do this before starting the floor so that drips wouldn't be an issue. This turned out to be a horrible idea, because the newly painted walls got covered with tons of dust, which I'm having a hard time removing.



 

The painting is necessary because there are two large patches on the walls, from taking out the electric heater that was in this room. I'm having a heat pump installed later this week, so the heaters will be redundant, and keep me from putting furniture where I want it. There are two patches in this room, because at one point we moved the heater to another wall. The patch from this is UGLY.

 

 

The heater holes are filled with insulation and covered with sheetrock, courtesy of my father, but I have to put tape/mud/texture on them. Somehow I missed getting pictures of the post-taping steps, but rest-assured, the patches are less patchy now.

 

Carpet bagging

I used to have a truck. Trucks are awful to have when anyone needs to move, but they are very, very good to have when you need to get a room's worth of carpet and padding to the dump. Since I no longer have a truck, my father is visiting tomorrow to help me haul out the carpet from this room. This means I'm on a pretty tight timeline to get this done today, despite the fact that I was up til 630 in the morning comforting a crazy cat and talking to a sick friend.

 

I finished moving the rest of the stuff from my closet and started doing the prep work for the floors. It's unfortunately not as easy as just pulling up the carpet. Well, it could be, but that gets crap everywhere. The first order of business was sealing the door that goes into the bathroom. I'm trying to limit the amount of dust that escapes from the bedroom as much as I can this time.

 

 

Next step, removing the mouldings. I didn't do this in the hallway, and I regretted it the whole time. In fact, it still needs to be done, but will probably wait until this room is done. Sleeping in the living room sucks.

 

Hooray for being moulding-free! While I was pulling up the mouldings in the closet, I am pretty sure I discovered a new species of spider living beneath them. I haven't thought of a name for it yet, but closet spiders are the new Coelacanth.

 

Then the carpet came up. The pad underneath looks pretty, but its grooooosssssss.

 

This is the type of stuff under the carpet. Its not mold, its gritty, gross, sandy dust. It makes my eyes burn even through my safety glasses. It is probably some sort of closet spider residue. It is now safely in Stanley's containment unit. No streams were crossed in the containing.

 

Meanwhile, in the living room, Pharaoh is concerned at the amount of progress the bedroom is taking. He stares longingly in that direction all day. You can also get an idea of exactly how much crap had to be moved out of the bedroom. Hopefully the heating guys will be able to maneuver.

 

 

And this is the result for today: a big pile of garbage. I only got about halfway through the tack strips, but fortunately I can fit those in my normal garbage can, so I'm not as worried about getting them up before tomorrow. 

Eviction

Apparently that thing about rest and the wicked is true. Next week I'm having a new heating system installed. It'll give me actual air conditioning instead of my aging window unit, and I'm really excited about it. Except for the fact that I'm also starting on the Master Bedroom floors. This means moving ALL of the furniture out of the bedroom, including the clothes in the closet and drapes and whatnot.

 

I got about half of it done on Saturday, though it took me an extra day to move the mattress. I have two cats, which do not get along. As a result, Pharaoh lives in the master suite and Zulu has charge of the rest of the house. This seems to work out fine for them, though Zulu has attempted to annex a few times. As the bedroom has become more and more empty, Pharaoh has gotten progressively more nervous. However, he seems content to assume that I'll leave him in the room even when its empty. He's there on the mattress somewhere, looking fearful I'm sure.

 

 

 

I got the room effectively empty, and moved my mattress to the bedroom, which is where I'll be living for the duration of the floor redo. It's incentive to finish quickly, though I'm assured by a friend in the know that it's Coke Fiend Chic. Here's the room without much in it.

 

 

But wait. What's that dark spot in the corner? Some kind of weird shadow? 



 

 

Some kind of weird, furry shadow?

 



 

Why no, its the saddest cat ever, who refuses to leave the bedroom.

 



He stayed in this corner until about 4AM, at which point I dragged him out for the THIRD time and he decided staying in the bed might be ok, mostly thanks to his favourite stuffed animal, a cow that he constantly kneads. He gets a guilty look on his face whenever hes doing it, and its kinda creepy... but at least he's out of the bedroom. It's going to be a pain to managed the two cats on this one, I can't wait to be done. Definitely motivated to work faster on this one.