With a little help from our friends (part II)

A few weeks ago, my parents came for a long weekend. They made it very clear that they expected to work on the house during their visit, and I was expected to have a job list prepared for them.

Initially, I had planned for them to paint the walls of our front bedroom. I had completed painting the trim and had settled on a color for the walls, until P and I began having second thoughts about exactly what we would use that room for. (More on that later.) P thought I should just pick a color and we would figure out the room's purpose later. But I refused to move forward on a color until I knew what furniture was going into the room and what mood I wanted it to evoke--I guess it's a woman thing.

The gridlock on the front bedroom turned out to be fortunate, because I ended up assigning my parents a much larger project, which better suited the number of hours and hands we had available, and allowed me to squeeze every last bit of labor possible out of our guests: painting the dining room and kitchen. 

Both rooms were wood panelled (except one wall of the kitchen, which was wallpapered).  Not our thing, and it made the rooms appear darker than they were.  The kitchen already has a moderate lighting deficiency (two small east windows, both of which are shaded by our carport), so we want to maximize every bit of lighting we have.  Finally, the yellowish vinyl floor kitchen floor, combined with the paneling, wood cabinetry, and yellow-toned faux butcher-block laminate countertop and backsplash, made for an overwhelmingly yellow room.  We'll eventually replace the countertops, backsplash, and flooring, but for the time being, we needed a paint color that would tone down the yellow nature of the kitchen.

Here's what we were starting with:

We decided to paint the two rooms the same color in order to tie the spaces together.  My mom and I had been consulting by email, phone, and mailed paint chips, and thought that a light gray would brighten the spaces up and minimize the yellow cast.  I was overwhelmed by the number of gray paint swatches I liked, so made a semi-arbitrary decision to limit the field to Benjamin Moore's Historic Colors line.  I had been browsing the internet for pictures of paint colors I liked, and had asked my mother what paints she had used in the past, and was repeatedly frustrated when a color I liked was no longer in the company's catalog.  The historic colors don't change, so I'll be able to easily pick up a new gallon of paint anytime I need to touch something up.

From the Historic Colors line, we selected the Wickham Gray and Stonington Gray to test.  I followed my usually procedure and painted swatches on various walls with different lighting conditions. These two grays, more than any other color we've tested, are amazingly changeable depending on light and setting. The Wickham ranges from a light blue to a light taupe, while the Stonington swings from a light gray to a mid-range charcoal to a medium lavender. Fun!  We liked them both, but settled on the Wickham (the lighter one, on the left).  (I just want it on the record, after the bedroom paint debacle that you haven't even heard the half of yet, that we are usually capable of choosing a paint color!)    

I had planned to prime all of the wood paneling before painting, but had just put the samples directly on the paneling when testing the colors.  The paint was adhering and hiding so well, that I decided we'd just skip the priming, and paint two coats directly on the paneling.  We were using Behr's Paint and Primer in One, eggshell finish.  Skipping the primer was a good choice: even though the Behr paint promises that you'll only need one coat, I've found that that one coat needs to be thick and perfectly applied, even over primer, in order to look good.  By just putting on two topcoats, the project cost a little more (maybe up to $15 extra), but we didn't have to be nearly as exacting in our application of the paint, and things went much faster.  We also were able to use just one coat of paint in a few areas that are difficult both to reach and see.

It was wonderful to have helpers on this particular project: there was a lot of trim to paint, and a lot of careful cutting in by hand around the newly painted trim.  I discovered that my mother is really good at doing this kind of precision painting work, and is putting all of my painting in the rest of the house to shame.

And my parents are hard workers--they wore us out!  It was a lot of hard work, but a really gratifying project: two and a half days later, when it was time for them to head back home, the project was done, and the rooms were completely transformed.  P keeps saying that it doesn't even look like the same house.  He was skeptical of the painted paneling idea, but we both love the way it's turned out.

Here's a group picture just before my parents left, in front of our newly painted wall:

And a few more stunning after pics:

With the crisp white trim and the light blue-gray walls (especially on paneling, which does a nice bead-board imitation), we've discovered that we have inadvertently created a nice beach-cottage vibe.  We're good with that, and might stick with it for other parts of the house--so long as that doesn't mean we have to decorate with starfish and corals.

Cleaning the floors

With our floors repaired, puttied, and sanded, there was one more small step remaining before we started to apply finish: cleanup.  It was a bit of a drag, and took a few hours, but I didn't want to cut corners here.  It seemed silly to skimp on the easy stuff, and have all of our hard work result in a product that wasn't as good as it could have been.  So we pulled out the ShopVac (to which we've added a bag and a HEPA-quality filter), and gave all of the rooms a thorough vacuuming.  Actually, we started out extra-paranoid, and vacuumed the walls and ceilings, as well as the floors.  After a room or two, we decided that was overkill--there wasn't much dust clinging to these surfaces.

The traditional next step is to rub down the floors with tack cloth.  But our favorite flooring book (which is also the newest one out there) agreed with my gut instinct and suggested reusable microfiber cleaning cloths.  I already own a stash of these, and love them.  To spare my knees and speed the work along, I clip them into my Swiffer mop--they're just the right size to fit in there.  The Swiffer makes fairly quick work of going over the room, and the cloths pick up a LOT of dust that the vacuum missed.  I had to go over each room 3-4 times before the cloths no longer picked up much additional dust.  So a few hours later, we were finally ready to start applying finish.  And that's when things started to fall apart....

Pleasant surprises

When P and I bought the house in March, we thought that the landscaping was just azaleas and dogwoods.  I like dogwoods, but I was a little disappointed that there were no spring bulbs popping up in our yard. 

Well, two months later I'm finding that the landscaping is just mostly azaleas and dogwoods--there are also a few pleasant surprises lurking out there for me.  First, a lush peony bush appeared.  This was really exciting to me--I had been planning to buy a peony for next year.  Peonies formed that core of my wedding bouquet, so I've got a soft spot for them. 

I cut a big bunch of them and used them for a centerpiece with our Mother's Day dinner--they were amazingly aromatic, like an old-fashioned garden rose.  Nothing like the grocery store peonies I used in my wedding bouquet!

Now I've got these mystery plants coming up--they certainly look like calla lilies to me, and the timing would be right.  Another very exciting discovery--P chose to have calla lilies in his boutonniere for our wedding.  Callas are also pretty expensive to buy--usually 3 for $10--so discovering a natural source is great!  They look like they need to be thinned, so I'll do that after they bloom (assuming they do prove to be callas), and spread the wealth around the yard.

What are the chances that the two flower species we chose to use for the wedding would be the two that would appear in our yard?

Corners and edges

The random orbit sander was great at getting right up to the edges of the floors, but still, it couldn't get the last half-inch or so, nor could it get into the corners and a few really tight nooks and crannies we had.  Then there were a few boards that had particularly low corners, and we didn't want to run the sander for an extra hour to level the whole room enough to get those few extra square inches.  So all of those spaces had to be done by hand. 

This scraper was good for getting the finish off of larger areas, like corners, that we couldn't get the sander into.  We hadn't bought it with this particular job in mind (P gave it to me as a Christmas gift for refinishing furniture), but it turned out to be exactly the same width as our floorboards.  This was very convenient--it's very sharp, and I discovered the hard way that if I tried to do two boards at a time, I was liable to put a serious scratch into one.  The scraper required a good bit of strength to use effectively, so I left that one for P. 

Mostly, we used a really low-tech solution: a folded piece of sandpaper left-over from the random orbit sander.  80 grit was good for removing finish, followed by a quick polish with 120.

The difference between the before and after pictures is fairly subtle, but it was definitely worth the effort.  (Yes, the baseboard molding in this room is at carpet height, so elevated off the floor by about 1/2".  Yes, this is a problem--we can see under the boards and into the gaps along the wall.  No, we're not in any hurry to do anything about this, for reasons that will become clear later.)

Finally, P, being the meticulous guy he is, used a putty knife to scrape the worst of the finish out from between the deepest of the remaining bevels.

With a little help from our friends (part I)

A week and a half ago, P's older brother A, his wife T, and son little A came to help us move our belongings out of their storage locker and into the house. 

They were an enormous help--A pretty much single-handedly loaded all our belongings into and out of the U-Haul while P arranged them to "optimize usage of space."  I'm told that this was a very important and difficult job, but it sure looked like A was doing all the work.  Then again, I'm not in a position to point fingers--I loaded some of the lighter and funny-shaped items into the truck (lamps, drying racks, kitchen chairs, etc.).   I didn't even lift a finger with unloading the truck.  I unpacked some of the kitchen items, and just pointed at where I'd like the men to put things. 

This was by far the best moving experience we've ever had, and not just because A was doing all the work.  We're used to having to deal with stairs, too-small apartment doors, lines for elevators on moving day, either sub-freezing or tropical temperatures, rain, etc.  This time, the weather was lovely.  And this is one of the times when it's great to live in a ranch.  A and P tied up the tree branches that block the front of the house, and backed the truck right up to the front door until the truck ramp connected directly to the top of our little porch landing.  Everything could be wheeled right in on a handtruck--very little heavy lifting required!

So now we've got all of the stuff in the house, but we haven't decided where we want it to go, nor have we completed work on the rooms.  So we've just turned our living room into a new storage locker.  Still, it's really nice to have everything in the house--we can begin to unpack boxes and place furniture as spaces get prepped. 

It's also really helpful to be reminded of what we have, and to see it's current condition.  We have an oak dresser that used to be in P's brothers' room.  A was eyeing it fondly as we about to load it into the truck, and we agreed that they just don't make furniture that solidly anymore--it would be worth my time to refinish it so we could enjoy it for many years to come.  Then A loaded it on the handtruck, and we discovered that the dresser now had a softball-sized hole punched in the side.  Not sure how that happened--the side is made of plywood, not particleboard.  I was pretty surprised and annoyed that I hadn't noticed that when the movers dropped it off at the storage locker--we could only make damage claims at the time of receipt.  Anyway, now I just need a floor plan that places the dresser into a corner.  I'm not ready to give up on it yet.  :-)

A also brought us a used lawn mower from his landscaping business.  We knew we were getting one from him, but had a five week gap between closing on the house and his visit.  In that five weeks, we got away with only hiring someone to mow the lawn once.  (He did charge us extra because we'd let the grass get so long.)  Anyway, the lawn looks a lot better now--we're well on the way to no longer being a blight on the neighborhood!

The weekend wasn't all work; having a very active nineteen-month old in the house with us ensured that.  We hadn't seen little A since Christmas, so it was fun to see how much he had grown and changed.  He's starting to use a few words, and is super-cute when he says "cracker."  I love seeing the things that we take for granted but that totally fascinate kids.  He and I spent about twenty minutes opening and closing our front storm door--him on the outside, me on the inside.  Once he closed the door and admired his handiwork for a few moments, I would unlatch it for him, as he can't yet reach the doorknob.  (Thank goodness he can't leave the house on his own!)  Then he would do all the rest of the work of opening the door fully, swinging it around a little, and then swinging it closed.  Again and again and again.  As my mom says, who needs toys?

T was a big help behind the scenes--every time I turned around, she was doing dishes or helping to clean up.  When I came back from helping the guys load the truck at the storage locker, I found her washing dishes in the right well of our double-well sink, while little A stood on a chair so he could scrub out the left well (which we've designated our construction material well) with a sponge.  It certainly needed a cleaning!  Thanks, kid!

Most of all, it was nice to have family around.  Since T is a mom, and Sunday dinner is a big thing in P and A's family, I figured I had better do an actual Mother's Day dinner.  If it had just been P and I moving, we would have just grabbed something at Chik-fil-A.  Instead, I threw a pot roast and some potatoes in the oven first thing in the morning, and didn't worry about them until whenever the guys had unloaded the truck.  (I love how forgiving pot roast is!)  Toss a little broccoli on the stove, and look--dinner!--in hardly more time than it takes to drive to Chik-fil-A and back.  I don't know why I don't do this more often for just the two of us, but having more family members around the table definitely makes the event more special and fun.