Love and hate

Today I spent my day working on the hall of doors. 

From this angle, you can see 4 of the 6 doors in this hall. 
All of them need to be painted. 3 coats on each side of the door, plus door frames. That would be a total of 36 coats of white semi-gloss paint on these doors. I think. If my math skills are a little fuzzy it is because I've been in white semi-gloss hell all day and everything is a shiny white blur.

This is taken from the opposite direction in the spare bathroom's doorway. The pantry door is to the right, which you can't see here. Straight out in front on the right are (closest to farthest) basement, linen closet, spare bedroom/studio. On the left is the master bedroom. You can just see the edge of the dryer there on the left. Know what that means? After all these doors are painted and the new flooring is installed, we'll put up the bifold doors that go on the laundry closet and I'll have more doors to paint. 


Oh, joy.


I've come to both love and loathe white semi-gloss. Nothing freshens up a room more than having a new coat of white paint on the trim. It screams clean and neat, even if everything else in the room does not. But the actual painting of white semi-gloss? Oh lord help me. 


b...o...r...i...n...g...  


My mind is screaming for color and fun and- 
and I still have 21 coats to go.
Not counting the laundry doors. 


Blech.


btw- that blue is not staying. I can't wait to cover the blue. It bugs me in a way I really can't even explain, nearly inciting me to violence. I know, it seems like such a tranquil color. But I despise it and soon it will be erased by either something linen or sand or whatever fancy name for beige. Which is really sad. I mean, what does it say about my current state when beige is something exciting???

Spare Bathroom -so far

It isn't quite done, but I thought I'd give you a little teaser on the spare bathroom. If we work hard, I think it is realistic to expect this to be done by the end of the weekend. Yay!

What we've done so far... I mentioned that the electrical had to be redone when we were expanding the laundry closet. This left us with a big hole in the wall that had to be repaired. Fixing the electric meant changing the door swing to the place it was originally intended, which meant removing the existing door and replacing with a new one. The bead board glue had come loose so it needed to be fastened to the wall again. This time we used nails. The ceiling had an area that needed to be repaired, plus it needed to be repainted and of course, cleaned thoroughly.

I've got to the point of painting the walls with primer and 2 coats of paint. I still see a few touch ups, plus the trim and ceiling still need to be painted. The floor will need to be re-grouted before we put down the floor trim, and we still need to install the new door. But we have made a lot of progress.

The old, very bold turquoise color-

The new colors-

I took one pic with the light on and one with the light off. On the right with the light off is a truer depiction of the yellow color. It is actually the same shade of yellow in the great room of our current home, Behr's Calm Air. The gray aqua color is Behr's Contemplation. Calm Air and Contemplation- good names for a bathroom, don't you think?

There is a tall white cabinet that fits in to the left of the pedestal sink. That has been removed while we work but will be replaced soon. The pedestal will be fitted properly back under the sink and the tank will be put back on the toilet. It is all a process, but I wanted to show you that we have really started work on the main floor.

DIY How to Remove Wallpaper Border

How do you feel about wallpaper? Seems like a polarizing question- people love it or hate it. I'm not terribly fond of it, however I have used it, especially decorative borders to easily add a design element to a room. My dislike of wallpaper originated in the first house my husband and I owned. When we bought it, we didn't realize that the garish Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtle-Green paint in the previous owners' son's bedroom wasn't just painted walls. It was actually painted wallpaper. Since we were new to the whole renovation thing, we were adamant that we were going to do it "right." Which meant stripping the wallpaper down to the plaster and painting.

Well.

That was a noble idea, but we soon realized that there were more layers of wallpaper than the one that was covered by the very bold green. Five layers in one bedroom. Six layers in the other. In both rooms the paint covered the ceilings. Oye. What started as a simple paint job turned into two weeks using a hot, heavy steamer during one of the hottest summers on record in a non-air-conditioned house. Picture steaming hot water dripping down your arms and face as you hold a steamer over your head for HOURS, hundred degree heat, scraping one foot sections off at a time. Decades-old wallpaper landing in your hair, old glue sticking to your face. After stripping off all that wallpaper I vowed to myself NEVER AGAIN. I would never use wallpaper. NEVER.

It is easy to understand, then, why I loathe wallpaper. Except sometimes it really does add just the right touch. The spare bedroom that is going to be my studio's new home was previously used as a little grandmother's sewing room. When we built the house I found a vintagey sewing border and thought it was perfect. With a new purpose, it is time to remove the border. Fortunately I know the walls are sound underneath and this border isn't hiding any of the things wallpaper is often used to mask. If you've never removed wallpaper, stripping it can be easy or difficult, depending on the adhesive that was used to apply it. Most readily available modern wallpapers are vinyl coated so the first thing you want to do is try to peel off that top layer.

This can actually be sort of fun. Kind of reminds me of peeling off skin after a sunburn, trying to see how long of a piece you can pull off at once. Pull with a slow, steady tug to maximize the length and minimize your efforts.

Sometimes you'll have wallpaper which refuses to give up the top layer. In that case you'll have to score the surface with a tool called a tiger tail. It is just a plastic disc with what looks like toothy gears underneath that you swirl over the wallpaper to help the hot water and chemical release penetrate to the paper underneath.

Since I was able to peel off almost all the vinyl, I was left with just the glued paper backing. Using a sponge and warm water, I like to get the paper wet before using any chemicals. It doesn't need to be so saturated that it drips down the walls, but you do want to make sure the surface is completely damp because it will make the chemical stripper work better and faster.

Next, spray the paper with a chemical stripper. I personally like this DIF spray. This bottle has lasted me through at least 5 stripping projects and 9 years. I consider it a bargain! It goes a long way when you remove the vinyl and wet the paper first, and it is still just as fast and effective as it was when new.

Gosh, now that I'm boasting on it, I hope it is still available. The gel spray is nice because it doesn't drip down the walls. It stays where you spray it and makes the whole process much less messy than steamers or liquids.

I work in small sections, maybe 4' or 5' at a time with border, smaller if I'm doing larger pieces of wallpaper. Let the DIF set for about 10 minutes and then see if it is ready with a plastic scraper.

You can see my scraper has seen some use over the 20 odd years I've had it! I use kind of an arcing motion to scrape the paper off the walls. It should come up easily, if it doesn't, you may need to use a wet sponge to re-wet the area and spray a little more DIF. When it is going well, the paper will come off in nice sheets just like the vinyl, although you will have to use the scraper underneath almost the entire surface.

Once all the paper is off, use fresh warm water and a clean sponge to remove the remaining glue residue. If there are any nail holes, be sure to spackle and sand, then you'll be ready to primer and apply a fresh coat of paint.

Removing the wallpaper border in this room took approximately half an hour. As I said, with the right technique and tools, and newer wallpaper, this process doesn't have to be brutal. If your wallpaper is a century old, though, as it was in my first house- well, I wish you a little luck and a lot of patience. On the bright side, two weeks of steaming could land you some nice triceps!

New Studio

I'm sure I've mentioned this, but H2 is a four bedroom home. Our family of four will only need three of those bedrooms, which leaves the smallest bedroom as a bonus room. What to do with it?

The obvious options are guest room or home office. It was previously used as a sewing room, so any sort of crafting space would work as well. Since I work from home making jewelry and other assorted projects, I've decided this will be the perfect spot for my new studio.

Currently, it is storing all the things that used to be in my studio, a space about 6 times larger than this room.

Bedroom #4 circle tour... ignore the mess! The window looks out onto the covered porch and front yard. Moving to the right, there is a wall about 6' long. On a slight angle, the next wall comes in. Then the door to the hall, followed by a large closet with bifold doors.

My previous studio was in the downstairs of our walkout ranch, all the way back. It had a cement floor that had been painted to look like slate tiles which was very convenient for a studio, especially when I was making stained glass. But as my projects changed and our family grew, it turned into a large storage room and was kind of cold what with being downstairs and having a cement floor. I want something just as functional and easy to clean, but also more of a show room where I can bring clients and also a cozy place to work. I want to have my computer handy and incorporate a shipping station so I can package items without leaving my space to fetch boxes or tape.

I can't get too carried away yet as we will most likely be stealing some space from this room for the master bathroom. We plan to revert to the original house plans and use about half of this room's closet for the master bathroom's shower. Flooring won't be installed until we do the entire lower level. However this is the one room that pets really weren't allowed which is why it was the first place we used for storage. What I can do is paint, install wall cabinets, and start organizing my studio so that I don't have to continue turning away business. Not to mention freeing up the floor space by finding a home for all of my supplies.

Currently we have three rooms going simultaneously, so the progress happens in fits and starts. After making a plan for this room, the only thing I've done is remove the wallpaper border. The next step is to remove the baseboards and primer, then paint. Finally, I'll refinish the cabinets that are going in this room and mount the wall cabinets. They will be going on that 6' wall. This should leave me with enough room to use a large table in the center of the room as a layout area. I plan to find a cushy chair on casters that can serve as seating at the table or rotated 180 degrees, work at the counter space on the cabinet wall.

Originally, I had a plan to paint the walls a dusty grayish mauve color, then put both a chocolate and a white glaze on maple cabinets. Curtains and art would be shades of white, cream, and beige. Think Ballard Designs. I have two off-white media cabinets which I planned to put in here, repurposed for storing supplies and finished jewelry. Then I saw a couple 2012 trend ideas that I really liked. One had plum colored walls and the other a rich emerald. Both used distressed black furniture/cabinets and chandeliers, very gothic looking. I have to say, both rooms grabbed my attention and I thought, "I want to go there!" Which makes me wonder if it is time to tap into the dark side, create a space that feels more like a creative cocoon than floating on a cloud. This is my space and the only things that are set in stone are the window and white trim. After that, anything goes. What do you like better? Leave a comment and give me your vote- gothic or ethereal.

Desk makeover

One of the items that happened to be in the garage at H2 was my husband's childhood desk. It was given to him by his aunt. I think our niece used it as well, but the desk itself was showing it's age. This is a picture of how it started:

Ok, that isn't exactly how it started. There were three wooden knobs and the top wasn't sanded. Two of the drawers had missing backs and two of the wood pieces that support the drawers had fallen off. But you get the idea, it was in rough shape. My daughter saw the potential, though, and wanted this painted green for her bedroom. On the whole, it was a pretty easy and fast refinish.

First things first, there was a spot on the top corner I had to patch with wood filler. This stuff is really stiff, but works well. This is what it looked like after it was filled but before I sanded it down-

I used a palm sander to sand the entire finish off the desk. I'm not sure of the wood, perhaps mahogany or cherry. The wood was red straight through so it wasn't simply a stain. After sanding-

Next, I rolled primer on. With all the primer options, I'll be honest. I rolled on the Zinsser primer we happened to have. It did not list bare wood on the label, but I ignored this. It took 3-4 coats of primer to completely mask all of the wood. Three for most of the desk, four for the drawer faces and top because they are the most visible surfaces.

I didn't think to take a picture of it after priming, basically picture it white. I had planned to have paint mixed to the right shade of green and roll it on, but happened to see a can of Rustoleum brand paint in nearly the exact shade of green my daughter picked out. I put about 4 coats on which required all of one and part of another 2X (twice the coverage) cans. 

Since I already had these knobs leftover from an old loft bed, we decided to reuse them. You can see two are missing, that is because two of the screws that were with the knobs were too short. 

The desk fits perfectly into her dormer. As in, an inch more and it wouldn't have worked. 

I promised I'd show you how the top came out. The bad spot was right above this heart sticker. Can't even tell now, can you? That wood filler has probably saved us $500 in doors that my husband has been able to salvage instead of replace. The door jambs in nearly every interior door have been clawed to bits by cats. Like the surface of the desk, however, once they have been filled, sanded, primed and painted, you would never know.

You might be able to see that I distressed the edges slightly with a sander. This brings up a faint white line from the primer and gives this simple piece a little dimension and enhances the fact that it is a vintage desk. I put several coats of Minwax finishing wax over the top surface to give it some protection. I didn't bother with the sides because as you can tell, noting can really touch them in this location.


Give me your thoughts! Makeover success?