Progress So Far

Living Room Walls

This was the condition of much of the plaster walls after we got the wallpaper down.

Buttons to screw the plaster back to the lathe.

Mesh tape. Stylish yellow so you know when it is properly covered in joint compound, I guess.

Patch with one layer of joint compound. I did this all over the place. When I was done, it looked like the walls were half patches. There were also rough spots and I needed to feather the patches with joint compound so the walls would appear smooth and level. So, I figured I'd skim coat the entire room. How hard could that be?

On the left: rough wall. On the right: skim coated wall.

Skim coating and the magical disappearance of a patch job.

Same area with one coat down and a second going on. It took several days (spread out over a couple weeks) to get both coats on. A third would have been nice, but . . . I didn't wanna.

This was such an improvement; if we wanted white walls, we might have gotten away with just leaving them as they were. After the skim coat, I just needed to sand the compound smooth. Here's where I made my biggest mistake. I did not contain the room because it seemed that the dust was falling to the floor (which actually still had the carpet down, so I didn't care). Actually, my entire house was being blanketed in a fine film of white powder. It even went upstairs and down into the basement. I ended cleaning every surface in the house, buying a shopvac, cleaning out the heating vents and blowing outside air through the house with a couple box fans. Oops.

Living Room: Floor

A reminder of what we started with.

I had hoped for a proper underlayment beneath the carpet, but that was foolish. So, after taking up all the little ticky-tack carpet things, we had to remove the uber soft particle board. Again, I hoped that I could just pry them up one board at a time, but they were so soft that each nail had to be pulled individually. I counted 40 nails in one board and then stopped counting. 

At this point, we had a decent plank subfloor. I screwed down a couple of loose spots, but all in all, was surprised at the decent condition. These boards are mighty old, as I'm pretty sure plywood or OSB subfloor has been the norm for a number of decades now.

Green shingles were used in some places to level out the floor. Ignore that hatchet; what kind of crazy person uses a hatchet to take up floor?

Christmas

Okay, so this is ridiculously late, but I since no one saw Toad at Christmas, I wanted to put these up anyway.

My camera has a hard time. And it turns out 500 lights just isn't that many.

Tree. Uh, it's a tree. Balsam.

Our "star" courtesy of the Kilgore-Kennedys.

Home-made stockings courtesy of Mom. Yep, the cats each got one and learned how to unhook each stocking while standing on the stairs.

Up next: The Living Room makeover.

Stupid Dryer

It is nice to have my own washer and dryer, to no longer hoard quarters like they are some precious gem pulled from the earth through great toil and sweat to be guarded and stashed away from lecherous fingers.  I laugh when I walk by the huddled masses in their laundromats and wonder wistfully that I, in my youth, carried clothes down a creaky flight of steps into the basement to fight spiders and mildew for the right to wash my garments. This was one of the small aspects of home ownership I most looked forward to.

Of course, there was a problem. The set up is in the kitchen, which is fine if not a bit odd. I would not have minded at all, but the dryer had this quirk. It buzzed. Most dryers do, when they are done. But most dryers allow you to turn the buzzer off. And my dryer buzzed at random intervals preceding the finish of the cycle. Something like, "Hey, here's your 15 minute warning!" and "Seven more minutes until hot, dry clothing!" Even that might have been tolerable, but it would be impossible for me to express how long and loud the sound was, like mini 747's taking off from from the kitchen with gremlins clinging to their wings, touting air horns and pulling the feathers from a goose.

One night, the dryer finished up a final cacophony of heart stopping nonsense and I grabbed my screwdriver.

This little guy was the culprit. How could so much noise come from something so small?

The dryer still runs, silently. Somehow, I manage to anticipate when the clothes are done.

I can safely say

The cat is now out of the bag. Here's a before shot:

Maybe she was hyperventilating?

Putting Panther in the Attic

If you recall Toad on the outside, the most distinguishing feature is the mansard roof. That means a second floor with high, level ceilings, but also an attic that is little more than a 4 foot high crawl space. The nails from the shingles come through like stalactites. Also, no floor to walk on. Yeah, I'm whining, but this was really the least fun experience of home ownership so far.

There was 6 inches of insulation in some places, but without a moisture barrier. Also, someone had tried to store boxes of blanket up there, which compacted the fiberglass into uselessness.

I also found this very large TV antenna bolted to a rafter. It had wires for UHF and VHF. Perhaps now I can get ESPN?

Safety first.