Tuesday, February 28, 2006
New TownHouse Renovation - Day 2 (2.26.06)
Day 2 of the Renovation project started earlier than day 1. We were up and packing at around 8-9, and after making breakfast and relaxing a bit we were on our way. Let me just start by saying that we were both pretty sore getting going this morning. Rena's hand was getting cramped and my arms were sore as hell. I guess I should list our goals for each day so that people can play along at home:
Goals for Day 2: Finish removing popcorn from the Dining room, and completely remove popcorn from the top floor. If we have time, completely do a first sanding pass on the first floor.
The day started off by me removing the dining room lamp (which I have decided is never going back up) and Rena scraping the rest of the dining room. I decided to wrap up everything upstairs in plastic to prepare for wetting and scraping. I got about halfway done, when I realized that the ceiling in the master bedroom was coming down VERY easily. I decided to take advantage of this and grabbed the big scraper. It took about half an hour to do the whole room, which was REALLY fast. While I was doing this, Rena was busy removing the ceiling popcorn mess from the downstairs, which took about as long as actually scraping the stuff off.
When I finished the master bedroom, Rena joined me and she scraped the upstairs bathroom while I wetted the ceiling, cleaned up popcorn mess and finished covering everything.
When Rena finished the bathroom, we both decided to tackle the other bedroom, which turned out to be a huge pain. The ceiling was really stubborn in this room, and really wore us out. As we neared the end, we decided that we needed lunch. We took off after we had finished the room, but not before I did a test section of the upper stairwell, which looked to be the hardest section yet (due to tall ceilings and slanted surface).
I managed to leave a trail of drywall dust and chucks all over the El Torito in Pasadena. I don't think they were too pleased.
We found a woodworking store on the way to lunch that I had read about online. They have molding, flooring and staircase stuff that might be useful later.
Back at the pad I begin working on scraping the final large area (the upstairs hall and stairwell). It is actually going pretty smooth, and then Joyce and Paul (Rena's mom and step dad) show up to see the place and bring us goodies. We give them the mini-tour since everything is covered in plastic and half the upstairs ceiling is hanging in pieces.
They want to help out, but there isn't much to do since nothing can be done until we stop scraping and sand everything. So they depart and leave us to finish. I finish with the hall ceiling and begin cleanup work, and Rena starts to tackle the stairwell since She is a champ on a ladder thanks to her being on them all day long at her stores. She finds a way to reach the tall ceiling and proceeds to kick ass. I finish up the hard to reach parts and then we are done with the big pieces. There are 3 closets left to finish, and we tackle those, and then begin clean up.
Before we leave for the night, we sand the entire downstairs with the rough sandpaper in preparation for spackling and sanding on Monday.
We accomplished all of our goals, and we are feeling proud of how much we are getting done.
I'll post pictures of some of this soon.
Goals for Day 2: Finish removing popcorn from the Dining room, and completely remove popcorn from the top floor. If we have time, completely do a first sanding pass on the first floor.
The day started off by me removing the dining room lamp (which I have decided is never going back up) and Rena scraping the rest of the dining room. I decided to wrap up everything upstairs in plastic to prepare for wetting and scraping. I got about halfway done, when I realized that the ceiling in the master bedroom was coming down VERY easily. I decided to take advantage of this and grabbed the big scraper. It took about half an hour to do the whole room, which was REALLY fast. While I was doing this, Rena was busy removing the ceiling popcorn mess from the downstairs, which took about as long as actually scraping the stuff off.
When I finished the master bedroom, Rena joined me and she scraped the upstairs bathroom while I wetted the ceiling, cleaned up popcorn mess and finished covering everything.
When Rena finished the bathroom, we both decided to tackle the other bedroom, which turned out to be a huge pain. The ceiling was really stubborn in this room, and really wore us out. As we neared the end, we decided that we needed lunch. We took off after we had finished the room, but not before I did a test section of the upper stairwell, which looked to be the hardest section yet (due to tall ceilings and slanted surface).
I managed to leave a trail of drywall dust and chucks all over the El Torito in Pasadena. I don't think they were too pleased.
We found a woodworking store on the way to lunch that I had read about online. They have molding, flooring and staircase stuff that might be useful later.
Back at the pad I begin working on scraping the final large area (the upstairs hall and stairwell). It is actually going pretty smooth, and then Joyce and Paul (Rena's mom and step dad) show up to see the place and bring us goodies. We give them the mini-tour since everything is covered in plastic and half the upstairs ceiling is hanging in pieces.
They want to help out, but there isn't much to do since nothing can be done until we stop scraping and sand everything. So they depart and leave us to finish. I finish with the hall ceiling and begin cleanup work, and Rena starts to tackle the stairwell since She is a champ on a ladder thanks to her being on them all day long at her stores. She finds a way to reach the tall ceiling and proceeds to kick ass. I finish up the hard to reach parts and then we are done with the big pieces. There are 3 closets left to finish, and we tackle those, and then begin clean up.
Before we leave for the night, we sand the entire downstairs with the rough sandpaper in preparation for spackling and sanding on Monday.
We accomplished all of our goals, and we are feeling proud of how much we are getting done.
I'll post pictures of some of this soon.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
New TownHouse Renovation - Day 1 (2.25.06)
Well, this is the official start of our TownHouse renovation project.
I figured that I would start a blog updating us and everyone else on what exactly was happening with the new place. We have a month basically to remove the popcorn on the ceilings, paint the whole place, put in wood floors, replace the kitchen counters and install the new appliances.
We got the keys to the place Friday, and decided to get a start on it early this morning. I started the day by emptying the garage of tools, toolchest, rolling tables, stereo, more tools, ladder, trash cans, more tools and some shelving and then packing it all into the Jeep-Jeep and Rena's CRV (The Serve, as we like to call it). I took me 2 hours to load up, most of which was spent emptying CD's out of Rena's car....
Around 10ish, I woke her up, and by 11 we were on our way. After some Target shopping and picking up lunch we arrived at the new place. I guess at this point I should describe the place. Its a 3 story Townhouse in Pasadena. The first floor contains a garage and two small rooms. The second floor contains a kitchen, dining room, living room and half bath. The 3rd floor has two bedrooms and a full bath. The whole place is covered in that nasty popcorn ceiling, some 70's cabinets (even though it was built in the mid-80's) and some funky flooring.
We already went crazy and bought all of the new appliances last week. So we are way ahead of the game with those things that should have been the last thing to buy.
So back to the renovation... We loaded up on tools for doing the work ourselves last week at the Home Depot. We decided to test our popcorn removing skills in the garage to see if we had any hope of doing it. We spent a good 2 hours removing a third of the popcorn from the garage, I got enough practice to feel confident in not messing up the important ceilings. So we decided to get some more tools that we were missing, grab some lunch and then hit the roof again.
I tackled the staircase while Rena prepped the areas we were working in by laying plastic down, removing lights and fixtures and wetting the areas of the ceiling that were next on my list. After I finished the stairwell area, we started working on the living room entry area. I finished that, but by this point I was getting tired of looking up at the ceiling and Rena wanted a go at it, so she took over wetting and scraping duties, and I got my start on sanding the areas we had already done (scraped areas need to be sanded with heavy duty sand paper, filled with drywall plaster, then sanded again before priming the ceiling). I got about 90% done with the stairwell sanding while Rena kicked ass on the living room. She was a little scraping demon. We left a small patch around a light fixture in the dining room, since we were running low on light. At about 10pm we decided to pack it up for the night. Total time at the new place: 10hrs. Actual work hours: 8
pics: Day 1 Photos
I figured that I would start a blog updating us and everyone else on what exactly was happening with the new place. We have a month basically to remove the popcorn on the ceilings, paint the whole place, put in wood floors, replace the kitchen counters and install the new appliances.
We got the keys to the place Friday, and decided to get a start on it early this morning. I started the day by emptying the garage of tools, toolchest, rolling tables, stereo, more tools, ladder, trash cans, more tools and some shelving and then packing it all into the Jeep-Jeep and Rena's CRV (The Serve, as we like to call it). I took me 2 hours to load up, most of which was spent emptying CD's out of Rena's car....
Around 10ish, I woke her up, and by 11 we were on our way. After some Target shopping and picking up lunch we arrived at the new place. I guess at this point I should describe the place. Its a 3 story Townhouse in Pasadena. The first floor contains a garage and two small rooms. The second floor contains a kitchen, dining room, living room and half bath. The 3rd floor has two bedrooms and a full bath. The whole place is covered in that nasty popcorn ceiling, some 70's cabinets (even though it was built in the mid-80's) and some funky flooring.
We already went crazy and bought all of the new appliances last week. So we are way ahead of the game with those things that should have been the last thing to buy.
So back to the renovation... We loaded up on tools for doing the work ourselves last week at the Home Depot. We decided to test our popcorn removing skills in the garage to see if we had any hope of doing it. We spent a good 2 hours removing a third of the popcorn from the garage, I got enough practice to feel confident in not messing up the important ceilings. So we decided to get some more tools that we were missing, grab some lunch and then hit the roof again.
I tackled the staircase while Rena prepped the areas we were working in by laying plastic down, removing lights and fixtures and wetting the areas of the ceiling that were next on my list. After I finished the stairwell area, we started working on the living room entry area. I finished that, but by this point I was getting tired of looking up at the ceiling and Rena wanted a go at it, so she took over wetting and scraping duties, and I got my start on sanding the areas we had already done (scraped areas need to be sanded with heavy duty sand paper, filled with drywall plaster, then sanded again before priming the ceiling). I got about 90% done with the stairwell sanding while Rena kicked ass on the living room. She was a little scraping demon. We left a small patch around a light fixture in the dining room, since we were running low on light. At about 10pm we decided to pack it up for the night. Total time at the new place: 10hrs. Actual work hours: 8
pics: Day 1 Photos
