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Day one of homeownership....
Oct. 27th, 2012 09:06 pmWell, the idea today was to paint inside my house. Unfortunately, I underestimated the tenacity of wallpaper. The kitchen had a wallpaper border all the way round the soffit, and on every wall. My first task of the day was to remove it. It also turned out to be my only task for the day! I started in the dining room and after 3 hours, this is what I accomplished:
Sorry it's a lousy picture from my cell phone. I meant to take my camera but didn't.
Fortunately that wall was the worst because they had applied wallpaper over wallpaper. Unfortunately, in removing the wallpaper some of the wall was removed too. It's not, obviously, sheetrock but I don't think it's lath and plaster either. It could be plaster board. It certainly was finished with plaster. So I'll have to patch those spots- you can sort of see them; they are the darker spots. This was the only wall where it was a problem.
Still the paper was highly resistant to removal and so I, and then we (my mom and Trudi), spent hours with little putty knifes, wallpaper remover, and wet rags peeling the paper off inch by inch and scraping as much of the residue adhesive and paper backing off as we could. Nearly every inch of the wall took three applications of the remover and more scraping, mostly because the paper separated into three layers. It was very tiring and tedious work.
While we worked on the kitchen, dad rewired the light switch in the pantry (it's never good when moving the wires shuts off the light). That meant we were working in the ambient light for a good portion of time while the breaker was off. It's a very good thing to have done though. When it was done, Dad investigated the plausibility of removing the AC units from the windows. Unfortunately, for most it's impossible without doing damage. We were able to move one enough to close the window but it's less than ideal. We'll need a couple of people a little stronger than my dad is to actually move it into the garage.
Mom and Dad had to leave by 6:00 so Trudi and I went to Bambinos and had lasagna for dinner. Then we came back to the house and taped off as much of the kitchen as we could. The soffits were too wet so I'll probably need to get a good cutting tool and use it when painting along the ceiling. After that we went out and tested the hot tub. It works quite nicely. When I arrived about 11:00 this morning, it was at 60 degrees. When we got in, a little after 8:00 it was 104. I turned it back down to 70 when we got out. I'm not sure yet how much it costs to run it so I'm going to be a bit cautious.
Sorry it's a lousy picture from my cell phone. I meant to take my camera but didn't.
Fortunately that wall was the worst because they had applied wallpaper over wallpaper. Unfortunately, in removing the wallpaper some of the wall was removed too. It's not, obviously, sheetrock but I don't think it's lath and plaster either. It could be plaster board. It certainly was finished with plaster. So I'll have to patch those spots- you can sort of see them; they are the darker spots. This was the only wall where it was a problem.
Still the paper was highly resistant to removal and so I, and then we (my mom and Trudi), spent hours with little putty knifes, wallpaper remover, and wet rags peeling the paper off inch by inch and scraping as much of the residue adhesive and paper backing off as we could. Nearly every inch of the wall took three applications of the remover and more scraping, mostly because the paper separated into three layers. It was very tiring and tedious work.
While we worked on the kitchen, dad rewired the light switch in the pantry (it's never good when moving the wires shuts off the light). That meant we were working in the ambient light for a good portion of time while the breaker was off. It's a very good thing to have done though. When it was done, Dad investigated the plausibility of removing the AC units from the windows. Unfortunately, for most it's impossible without doing damage. We were able to move one enough to close the window but it's less than ideal. We'll need a couple of people a little stronger than my dad is to actually move it into the garage.
Mom and Dad had to leave by 6:00 so Trudi and I went to Bambinos and had lasagna for dinner. Then we came back to the house and taped off as much of the kitchen as we could. The soffits were too wet so I'll probably need to get a good cutting tool and use it when painting along the ceiling. After that we went out and tested the hot tub. It works quite nicely. When I arrived about 11:00 this morning, it was at 60 degrees. When we got in, a little after 8:00 it was 104. I turned it back down to 70 when we got out. I'm not sure yet how much it costs to run it so I'm going to be a bit cautious.
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