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
# posted by Tony Starr @ 10:58 PM 
