Bedroom Picspam: The Before Edition
Fair warning: there a ton of pictures in here and they're mostly very boring. Partially because our room was very boring when we bought the house, and partially because the room is very small and hard to take pictures of. But I decided I'd put up some of what I had for anyone like me who goes a little crazy binging on vintage-house home-improvement blogs and always wishes there were more pictures. ;D
BooBoo: " Enters if U daaare. (P.S. Im teh Gatekeepr. Ar yu the Keymaster?)"
About as "before" as I have.
Except for this one from the second time we went to see the house with the realtor--before the curtains were de-pinked.
BooBoo: "Wow, U were rite. This *iz* boring."
I always liked the old light fixture. Not original , but old enough to be cool to me.
Wall: ::is gross::
Uhm, so that spot. Our homemade platform bed that we were using had no headboard. And was about four feet off the ground. I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU GUYS.
BooBoo: ::is clearly shocked people made him sleep in all this dirt::
And, uhm, yeah, wasn't big on shampooing carpets either. The clean spot on the left was where Mile's bed was, so that dirt isn't directly my fault. And the missing carpet was where he had a seizure and I just cut the carpet out rather than cleaning it--I knew we were getting rid of it. And the dirt in front of the bookcase spot on the right is just normal dirt?
White, white, white, and oooh, more white. And whatever, some pink that wouldn't come off easy.
The front/master bedroom has a neat little faceted inset facing the street. Originally it had the little window flanked by two matching larger windows.
Damn paparazzi.
Until one of the owners stuck a hideous tiny addition on the front of the house above the front porch so that it could be an apartment with two rooms. The matching window was then removed, patched, and replaced with a door to the extra room. Someday we'd like to put a glass paneled door there and turn the ugly little thing into a sun porch with lots of windows. Right now it's just gross.
I think this photo is even more craptacular than the others...
Through that door is what was originally a closet for the room. The window was on the wall to the left of where it is now, but when they put the addition on the front, they moved the window to the other side of the house. And then drove a huge beam into the newel post on the stairway landing opposite the closet (used to be separated by a space that let you look down into the foyer from the top of the stairs) and chopped off the banister and spindles on the stairs to make some more floor space so the closet could be bigger and become a "kitchen". Sigh. I still don't get why they had to chop apart the railing.
So then we started tearing everything apart and stripping woodwork. Almost all of the woodwork was left on the walls for stripping.
Lovely green carpet pad that had turned into brittle powdery glue.
The carpet pad had to be scraped off by hand. If you look closely, you can tell he's reconsidering what he's gotten himself into.
A baby Lily wondering how we're going to get this all cleaned up by bedtime.
Lily: "I has to sleep on the *cowch*?!" (She adjusted. Somehow. :P)
Same piece of baseboard, I just flipped the photo on the right.
Since this was our first foray into major paint stripping, we went with chemical strippers first. They left it looking like the picture on the left, minus the clean parts which were scraped with blades. The wood was never stained and shellacked, just painted, so removing the first few old (undoubtedly lead-based) paint layers was a pain in the ass and the stripper barely touched them. Nice sharp scrapers got a lot further.
We're working Gerry's study room now and we've moved on to using a homemade version of The Silent Paint Remover. It's one of those quartz rod infra-red space heaters. You hold it up against the paint for a minute or so and the paint softens and bubbles and can be removed much more easily with a scraper. Usually we have to do it twice over each area. No chemicals or mess, doesn't start it on fire like a heat gun, and it makes less dust than scraping cold.
This must be during one of our "breaks". Otherwise I have no idea why drawers of my clothes are sitting in there.
The room's main door and some of our tools. So much damn fun to scrape clean, lemme tell you.
A shot of our high-tech cat repelling system.
The closet door is missing, so we're thinking glass paneled door here eventually too.
The plaster repairs have begun. No really, this is to make it better.
The walls had a decent amount of cracking, but most of the plaster was still holding tight to the lathe. I bought plaster washers, but only ended up using a couple on this room. I did have to go through and dig out all the cracks, and more annoyingly, sand down all of the awful spackle patches someone else put over the cracks that did nothing but re-crack and shout, "Look over here at these cracks!"
Somewhere around this stage, where the room literally looked like a crackhouse, I got cold feet and walked away for a while. I'd never done any taping and mudding, so the next stage seemed really daunting when all of the cracks were visible.
During that break I did get the door sanded and stained and the window panes for the large double-hung window put back together. The glass was good and wavy, so I had new glazing putty put in, then stained and shellacked them. I paid to have the glazing done at the hardware store my brother worked at. He was raving about the old guy who did the windows there. I dunno. Wasn't that impressed. From now on I'm just doing them here.
I also replaced the broken sash cords on the counterweights with pretty copper sash chain. They make a much cooler noise when you raise them up now. I shellacked all of the window wood except for the bottom sill, which got Spar Varnish to protect against inevitable moisture, and the out-facing side of the window panes which got primed and painted white. Somewhere in there we also replaced most of our old storm windows with newer ones, so while the condensation/frost isn't quite as bad as it was before, it still collects.
This next set is just to show how much patching had to be done on the walls. All of the cracks got paper tape laid over them and at least two coats of skim-coated mud. The walls weren't quite bad enough to warrant full skim-coating, but I wonder if that wouldn't have meant less sanding to blend everything in. I was getting pretty good at mudding by the end though. And while it was pretty exhausting, it was still probably one of my favorite (read: minded doing the least) parts of the repair stage. Which is good because G. kinda hated it.
Wow, I think I'm tired all over again.
Which brings me to the last of the before pics. This is the room ready for staining to start. G. rigged up a small fan in the window that could be running at all times. Possibly we could have picked some time other than some of the coldest days of the year to work on it, but what can ya do. Especially when you're using someone's upcoming and non-adjustable visit as your finish date. ;) All the wood work is pine/fir, but we tossed the old quarter rounds (between floor and baseboard) and cove moldings (between ceiling tiles and walls) and bought new ones. There was also a number of patches that had to be made for places where old radiator pipes went through baseboards, hinges had been moved on doorways, and doors/jambs had been cut up for new latchplates and door knobs. I left all of that to G.
A peek at what color we wanted for the woodwork.
And that's it for the before! Next came staining, resanding a few places where it only *looked* like we'd gotten off the paint, more staining, a whole lot of shellacking, fresh paint, reinstalling the quarter rounds and coves, and then even more shellacking. It was the best blur of some number of days ever!
BooBoo: " Enters if U daaare. (P.S. Im teh Gatekeepr. Ar yu the Keymaster?)"
About as "before" as I have.
Except for this one from the second time we went to see the house with the realtor--before the curtains were de-pinked.
BooBoo: "Wow, U were rite. This *iz* boring."
I always liked the old light fixture. Not original , but old enough to be cool to me.
Wall: ::is gross::
Uhm, so that spot. Our homemade platform bed that we were using had no headboard. And was about four feet off the ground. I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU GUYS.
BooBoo: ::is clearly shocked people made him sleep in all this dirt::
And, uhm, yeah, wasn't big on shampooing carpets either. The clean spot on the left was where Mile's bed was, so that dirt isn't directly my fault. And the missing carpet was where he had a seizure and I just cut the carpet out rather than cleaning it--I knew we were getting rid of it. And the dirt in front of the bookcase spot on the right is just normal dirt?
White, white, white, and oooh, more white. And whatever, some pink that wouldn't come off easy.
The front/master bedroom has a neat little faceted inset facing the street. Originally it had the little window flanked by two matching larger windows.
Damn paparazzi.
Until one of the owners stuck a hideous tiny addition on the front of the house above the front porch so that it could be an apartment with two rooms. The matching window was then removed, patched, and replaced with a door to the extra room. Someday we'd like to put a glass paneled door there and turn the ugly little thing into a sun porch with lots of windows. Right now it's just gross.
I think this photo is even more craptacular than the others...
Through that door is what was originally a closet for the room. The window was on the wall to the left of where it is now, but when they put the addition on the front, they moved the window to the other side of the house. And then drove a huge beam into the newel post on the stairway landing opposite the closet (used to be separated by a space that let you look down into the foyer from the top of the stairs) and chopped off the banister and spindles on the stairs to make some more floor space so the closet could be bigger and become a "kitchen". Sigh. I still don't get why they had to chop apart the railing.
So then we started tearing everything apart and stripping woodwork. Almost all of the woodwork was left on the walls for stripping.
Lovely green carpet pad that had turned into brittle powdery glue.
The carpet pad had to be scraped off by hand. If you look closely, you can tell he's reconsidering what he's gotten himself into.
A baby Lily wondering how we're going to get this all cleaned up by bedtime.
Lily: "I has to sleep on the *cowch*?!" (She adjusted. Somehow. :P)
Same piece of baseboard, I just flipped the photo on the right.
Since this was our first foray into major paint stripping, we went with chemical strippers first. They left it looking like the picture on the left, minus the clean parts which were scraped with blades. The wood was never stained and shellacked, just painted, so removing the first few old (undoubtedly lead-based) paint layers was a pain in the ass and the stripper barely touched them. Nice sharp scrapers got a lot further.
We're working Gerry's study room now and we've moved on to using a homemade version of The Silent Paint Remover. It's one of those quartz rod infra-red space heaters. You hold it up against the paint for a minute or so and the paint softens and bubbles and can be removed much more easily with a scraper. Usually we have to do it twice over each area. No chemicals or mess, doesn't start it on fire like a heat gun, and it makes less dust than scraping cold.
This must be during one of our "breaks". Otherwise I have no idea why drawers of my clothes are sitting in there.
The room's main door and some of our tools. So much damn fun to scrape clean, lemme tell you.
A shot of our high-tech cat repelling system.
The closet door is missing, so we're thinking glass paneled door here eventually too.
The plaster repairs have begun. No really, this is to make it better.
The walls had a decent amount of cracking, but most of the plaster was still holding tight to the lathe. I bought plaster washers, but only ended up using a couple on this room. I did have to go through and dig out all the cracks, and more annoyingly, sand down all of the awful spackle patches someone else put over the cracks that did nothing but re-crack and shout, "Look over here at these cracks!"
Somewhere around this stage, where the room literally looked like a crackhouse, I got cold feet and walked away for a while. I'd never done any taping and mudding, so the next stage seemed really daunting when all of the cracks were visible.
During that break I did get the door sanded and stained and the window panes for the large double-hung window put back together. The glass was good and wavy, so I had new glazing putty put in, then stained and shellacked them. I paid to have the glazing done at the hardware store my brother worked at. He was raving about the old guy who did the windows there. I dunno. Wasn't that impressed. From now on I'm just doing them here.
I also replaced the broken sash cords on the counterweights with pretty copper sash chain. They make a much cooler noise when you raise them up now. I shellacked all of the window wood except for the bottom sill, which got Spar Varnish to protect against inevitable moisture, and the out-facing side of the window panes which got primed and painted white. Somewhere in there we also replaced most of our old storm windows with newer ones, so while the condensation/frost isn't quite as bad as it was before, it still collects.
This next set is just to show how much patching had to be done on the walls. All of the cracks got paper tape laid over them and at least two coats of skim-coated mud. The walls weren't quite bad enough to warrant full skim-coating, but I wonder if that wouldn't have meant less sanding to blend everything in. I was getting pretty good at mudding by the end though. And while it was pretty exhausting, it was still probably one of my favorite (read: minded doing the least) parts of the repair stage. Which is good because G. kinda hated it.
Wow, I think I'm tired all over again.
Which brings me to the last of the before pics. This is the room ready for staining to start. G. rigged up a small fan in the window that could be running at all times. Possibly we could have picked some time other than some of the coldest days of the year to work on it, but what can ya do. Especially when you're using someone's upcoming and non-adjustable visit as your finish date. ;) All the wood work is pine/fir, but we tossed the old quarter rounds (between floor and baseboard) and cove moldings (between ceiling tiles and walls) and bought new ones. There was also a number of patches that had to be made for places where old radiator pipes went through baseboards, hinges had been moved on doorways, and doors/jambs had been cut up for new latchplates and door knobs. I left all of that to G.
A peek at what color we wanted for the woodwork.
And that's it for the before! Next came staining, resanding a few places where it only *looked* like we'd gotten off the paint, more staining, a whole lot of shellacking, fresh paint, reinstalling the quarter rounds and coves, and then even more shellacking. It was the best blur of some number of days ever!