Last Coat

Last coat, at least for this room for now. The challenge is to limit your eyes to the task at hand and not see all the other imperfections around you that you would love to touch-up… it’s not easy being a perfectionist.

So after 3 coats and some sanding, the wall and ceiling are smooth and we reestablished the original edge bead around the opening.

Its primed and someday we will repaint it blue… but for now we have our bedroom back!

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Spackle Spackle

So, doing construction in your bedroom is always fun… lucky for us we now have a guest bedroom so we can leave ours covered in drop clothes until this project is done. (And yes there is a Birthday banner behind the hanging drop cloth! Left over from my birthday…) Here is the first coat of joint compound:

A fun night of spackling… here is the 2nd coat:

Fixing a Surprise

Remember last December’s surprise leak at our deck door?

http://madisonsquare.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/surprise/

Well we fixed the leak right away but the gaping hole in our bedroom ceiling from where we cut out the wet drywall and plaster stuck around for a bit longer… and it is time for it go away.

So we squared off the drywall for an easier patch, vacuumed out the ceiling, and reinsulated.

Then the hole was infilled with some scrap plywood to bring the substrate out to the face of the old plaster and give a good base to screw into.

And finally up goes the drywall and no more scary black hole to look into when you wake up at 3am!

Next up … more spackling… fun : /

Cover It Up!

So tonight it was finally time to close in the 2nd floor air handler. Here the opening is prep’ed for the hinges.

To improve acoustics we attached a thick felt carpet pad, that also had a rubber backing, to the inside of the enclosure door. Felt is great at absorbing sound energy, and the change of densities between the felt, rubber, and wood door also help reduce sound transfer. I knew what kind of door backing we wanted and it turned out a carpet pad was the least expensive way to buy bulk felt.

The door of course will work in concert with the rest of the enclosure which is lined with batt insulation. We want this to be a pleasant bedroom so minimizing HVAC noise is critical.

Here the door is finally hung. It hinges up for service access and will have a support member similar to a car hood to hold it open.

All done, including latches at the corners, and all covered up!

Kelly also got some painting done tonight on the doors while I fussed with the above door installation.

We are slooooowly getting back into renovating and finishing the house. : )

Splash!

Today we jumped back into the shallow end of the renovation crazy pool, by doing a little organizing, and painting.

Rob took on the little bedroom window – I had painted the trim weeks ago but it had been too cold to paint the window:

Luckily the new sashes are of the tilt in/ lift out variety so it made the job a little easier. One of the sashes:

Back in after two coats. Blue tape = touch up areas.

Meanwhile I was busy filling some trim and painting the final coats on the bedroom and bathroom doors, to ready them for hardware :

Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of the 2nd floor {bedroom/ closet/ hall/ bathroom} work!

Another Day, Another Door

We’re hanging doors left and right and tonight the bedroom door went up- on the right:

We started by routing the door for hinges in our living room workshop, then carried the door upstairs:

Then rout the door frame, attach frame side of the hinge, then lift the HEAVY door up to click the hinges together:

Then drop in the ball topped pin. These are the old hinges that I ironically stripped then painted. I may be biased but the new paint job is possibly superior to the previous paint jobs. I’m not sure what that white spot is but it must be dust or something.

(That’s would be them a few months ago on the left, also it’s the same door/ jamb )

Side project- prepping the mechanical soffit panel (aka an old door); it needed primed so we can hang that guy too. Pre-prime:

Post prime. Doors stacked upon doors… This is an example of the door land that is our living room right now:

Pain(t)

The hall got another layer of paint too. Since one area’s always drying it’s nice to have another space to work on so you can just paint paint paint all day! Before:

After!

I did all the cutting in myself which is probably the first time ever. Sure it’s fulfilling but I’m still not convinced that I want to completely take that job over from Rob just yet. This corner almost made me give up and paint the trim Lighthouse.

We also re-hung the pocket closet door which has been under weights for a week trying to straighten it out a bit.

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It’s better, but will probably need some sort of minor adjustment during hardware install time.

(Pain)t

In a nutshell… this weekend for me was all about the Paint. Actually first the wood putty, then the Paint:

Daylight painting!

Pre-paint:

First primed all the new trim:

Then painted the picture rail and above BM Linen White in flat, as well as the lower ceiling:

The lower walls will be the next paint step in here…