We’re slowly getting back into the swing of “normal life” and starting in the setting up of the upstairs rooms. Exciting! However, the vacation took our camera as a victim by the way of a “waterproof bag” that turned out not to be “waterproof.” D’oh. As soon as we get that little broken camera situation resolved, I’ll be back with more updates! Boo!

This is in the last bedroom with popcorn. (We have a “not-thinking-about-it-now room that still has it – our master bathroom. BOOO. But it doesn’t have carpet, so as far as we’re concerned it doesn’t exist at the moment)

Many milestones achieved this weekend:

• Our contractor came and installed the new subflooring in the gray bedroom and hallway.
• Put first coat on trim in gray bedroom.
• Re-hung fan in gray bedroom (Thanks Dave!)
• Oak finished mudding and sanding the aforementioned “last bedroom”
• We spent like 3-4 hours cleaning all the drywall dust off the floors of the bonus room on Friday night (yay!  engulfed in a dust cloud!).  However, we did learn the running the vaccuum in “wet mode” by putting some water in the bottom of the canister allows the suction to stay MUCH longer than using the filter, with the same amount of exhaust dust.  NICE shop vac tip there!!
• Washed all the bonus room walls with Murphy’s oil soap, which I’m convinced I am semi-allergic to, due to the minor rash I get from it EVEN WHEN I WEAR GLOVES!  What the heck.  Too bad this stuff works so well and smells nice.
• Primed the walls and ceiling of the bonus room.  Thanks Dave!
• Cleaned drywall dust off many hardware pieces, like all the switchplates, and the ceiling fans and other light fixtures that need to be re-installed.  Thanks mom!
• Painted the ceiling in the bonus room with our favorite Glidden color-changing paint.
• Put wood putty on trim in bonus & “last bedroom.”
• Murphy’s oil soap fun in “last bedroom.”
• Primer coat on walls, ceiling, and trim of “last bedroom.”

Hm.  No wonder I am tired.  haha.  This will probably be the last post I make before carpet.  We’re down to crunch time, folks..

Pretty!

The paint was (once again!) found in the “oops” section at Home Depot. This is actually some Behr kitchen and bath paint (fancy!). I figured the light blue would lighten up the basement space. I had considered using the gray that I used in the upstairs bedroom down there, then I figured that’s just too much gray for a basement.

Here’s the closet. It’s totally a weird color – another oops paint.. It looked more beige in the store. Oh well, the white doors will go back on eventually! I’m pretty sure whatever is living in the closet doesn’t care what color it is. Whatevs! haha.

I don’t have too many plans in this room besides hanging a curtain and using the awesome $12 bedspread I got at Tarjay. I’m hoping when we go through all our stuff i’ll miraculously find some appropriate wall hangings for this room. Fingers crossed!

Oak also did a TON of work on another one of the upstairs bedrooms this weekend.. removing the texture and doing the initial “mud work.”  In that room, we discovered some kind of previous ceiling damage when we removed the popcorn.. there was a good size 3ftx2ft patch in the back right corner of the room.  Not sure what happened there, but it seems like it’s going to look okay, and whatever caused the issue to begin with is resolved.   Oak noticed that the popcorn came off a lot harder in that room, and we think they probably painted the popcorn to match when they did the patch work.

In other news, I painted the closet in the gray bedroom.  I used some boring ivory colored oops paint so that’s not really too exciting for a picture.   I’m hoping to work on some of the door trim/windows in that room this coming week.

I need to choose a color for the stairway and hall. The problem is that it needs to be the same color as the entryway, which openly borders 3 rooms (formal living room, dining room, and family room).   Do I go with a boring beigy color or a lighter version of the family room color I’ve chosen?  The family room color is kind of a dark slightly bluish green which should compliment the wood trim in that room.  I am thinking a chocolate color for the dining room, and the formal living room is currently a dark tan, which might stay that way for awhile at least (that room is actually in pretty good shape).   Any thoughts?

We were a little disappointed to be moving to a neighborhood that had a homeowner’s association.. but, to some extent they are hard to avoid in this area. However, after going to the annual meeting last week, we pretty much learned it only exists for Purposes of Fun (holiday parties, community yard sales, etc.).  Ding!

Remember our guest bedroom?  The one with the crazy stained/water damaged subfloor and the hole in the ceiling??

Well, it’s almost “done”!  (However, it was not without a few arguments over the entire “smoothing” process… the repair made it that much more difficult!) The trim .. I will paint after the contractor comes to put in the new underlayment on Friday.  Before I show the awesome wall color photo, let me share a new love affair with Glidden’s color-changing ceiling paint.  OMG, amazing.  We had first tried the Behr ceiling paint, which, I guess was OK but it was SO HARD to tell where you put the paint on.  With the Glidden paint, it appears you’re painting the ceiling pink.  Which, is weird psychologically but great for getting good coverage in ONE COAT (well, counting primer, it’s two coats).  When you return to the room an hour later, it’s all magically evenly WHITE!    Oak has become the local ceiling-rolling expert..

I do almost all the other painting tasks, but I have to applaud Oak on his abilities to evenly paint the ceiling.  It gives me a serious neck and shoulder ache.  The top (un-pink) part of the photo is where the hole WAS!  whoot whoot.

One paint that we tried in this room that we did NOT enjoy was Zinsser’s primer.   It was super super thin – even painting over the beige that was there left a very uneven color!  The gray covered it, of course, but in the meantime we were almost dying from the uber strong fumes as well.  We will be sticking with our Kilz, thanks.

Here are some “almost-after” shots (just imagine some nice shiny white trim instead of the sloppy edges.. haha):

Can you believe I painted the entire ceiling line without taping or any other tricky devices?  It’s like I am getting some serious painting skills or something.  I just don’t have the patience to do that with the trim.  yet.  For now, I will tape…

You may be thinking… that dark gray is not a very Carrie-esque color.  Well, it was some “oops” paint, which cost a grand total of $5 for the room.  And, because this is the guest bedroom to some extent I do not want to offend our guests with a crazy wall color. lol.   However… I have some plans on introducing color into the space (let’s channel my design buddy/hero David Bromstad..)

I’ll be back with the basement bedroom pictures soon.  It’s completely done, but apparently I forgot to take some pictures.  Whoops!

Here’s a picture of the room post popcorn removal and smoothing. This is an arduous but considerably unphotogenic process. BTW, that crazy huge light (aka “the man light”) is by far, the single best investment we’ve made in tools (in my opinion). At least, as far as this ceiling stuff goes!

We also patch the walls and the wood trim. As you can see here, there were also approximately 823 holes in the walls. Apparently there was a bunch of stuff posted on the walls with push pins, or something. We also had to use a lot of wood putty on the trim work to fix cracks and other damage to the baseboard molding. On the crown molding, we had to fill the holes that were left by the nails in the original installation of the molding (um, wtf??) I guess we should just be happy that we have fancy molding, right? haha.

In the upstairs rooms, there is also prep work to be done on the floor. The carpets are taken out, but there are staples from the foam padding left. So, those get pulled out one by one. In this basement room, however, we just had rows of nails that went around the perimeter of the room. Those got pulled out with a pry bar and Oak filled the holes with cement patcher.

The patcher is pretty easy to apply.. just like spackle or wood putty, you smooth any holes with it. In action:

AFTER all this work is done, you can finally paint. Which we have moved on to, but I will keep you all in suspense until we can do a “final reveal” (HGTV style yo!) More soon…

Apparently even NC is cold for the wrens.. because at some point, they found a way into our garage (OK, that’s not that hard for a teeny little bird considering there’s a hole in one of the doors) and decided to make a nest in our rag box. Then, every time we’d go to the slop sink they’d freak out and fly away. Oak managed to catch them in action one night:

Look all the way to the background and you will see our friend “Sir Fluffikins.” We have to figure out what kind of house he enjoys so we can buy or build him one soon!