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.
# posted by Tony Starr @ 10:33 AM 
