From Tying the Knot to Finding a Nest
Sunday, November 27, 2011
How did paint even get there?
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Our very first Home Improvement Project
(This picture was taken while the sellers were still living here)
Do you see that? Up, up, up....on the ceiling!!! That dear readers is the dreaded popcorn ceiling texture that was popular in the 50's, 60', 70's, and even the 80's (when our fair house was built, 1986 to be exact). Not only is that stuff unsightly, but up until 1978 it usually contained asbestos. Since our house was built nearly a decade after the ban we weren't concerned with the possibility of asbestos, but we were unexcited about the way it aged our home.
Long before we bought this home, we realized that it was very likely that we would be de-popcorning the ceilings of our first home. It was very popular for decades and well we weren't in the market for a brand new home. (Side Note: most new builds have more inspection items that need to be addressed than older homes.) So long ago we started researching how to remove this ugly stuff and we found out that in most cases it is relatively easy to remove if 1. it does not contain asbestos and 2. if it has not been painted over in the past. We were lucky because we didn't have asbestos and it had never been painted over, which is also why ours looked even more dingy.
In order to remove the texture one simply has to wet an area of the ceiling with either a spray bottle or in our case a pressure sprayer filled with water, give it a few seconds to soak and then use a putty knife (we used a 4 inch one) to scrape it off. It slides off like butter on hot toast and you are left with exposed drywall! If and when we felt a little resistance we simply wetted it down a bit more, waited a second and then scraped again. We found that the drywall seams needed the most soaking, as well as, along the edge of the walls where there is a bit of tape. Are you ready to see a picture? Here goes...
Ahh, look at how smooth that is. And surprisingly the exposed dry wall offers more lighting in room than the texture did.
Here's what the floor looked like.
We found the paper was creating more of a mess than it was preventing so we pulled out a tarp and then threw it and the popcorn goo from the ceiling out. And yes the carpet is pink...but that's a project for another day.
We managed to the get living room/dining room in two nights which really helped us devise a good plan of attack. The next night it took the two of us about an hour to do that mater bedroom including clean up. I forgot to mention but a nice wet/dry shop vac, while not essential, makes the clean up process so much easier. We just sucked up anything that fell on the floor and then we were all cleaned up.
Here's the master...
We have no overhead light in our room so we had to get creative with our mirrored closet doors and angled in light from the bathroom and hallway.
We managed to get my office done yesterday during the day and all we're left with is the guest room and the hallway which we hope to get done in the next few days. Our next project is to make sure the ceilings are uniformly smooth by using a screen sander on the exposed dry wall. We're thinking for now that we don't want to add any texture to the ceilings, so after sanding we will paint. We've decided to just white wash everything with primer and then once we are all moved in we can start making some more serious color decisions.
My office/craft room.
Stayed tuned as we continue to update the house and we will do our best to document what we're doing. Ohh and some day I'll use my real camera instead of just my phone, but until then you'll just have to deal with a lower quality pictures.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
House, house we've got a house!
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Healing and Moving Forward
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Negotiating with the bank is about as much fun as breaking your nose!
And sadly both have happened in the last few days since I posted. On the house front, the bank decided to counter our offer on Wednesday. We told them that they already asked for our biggest and best and that our offer would remain the same. As of Friday the bank had said they may accept some other offers and we let them know that our offer stands through Tuesday and then we will reevaluate. We love this house but we are not willing to go 10 to 15k over market price to get it. Please keep your fingers crossed that they bank decides our offer really is the best out there and that we can come to mutual acceptance soon!
In other news, aside from the house, I broke my nose last weekend. I was out wake surfing with some friends when I biffed it sending the board into the wake, the the wake rolled over me causing the board to punch me in the face. Luckily I did not need stitches for the open wound on the outside, but after visiting an ENT on Thursday we found out that I will need surgery to set it. The doctor told me I'd be much happier to be under slight sedation than to have them do it in office. Apparently one can't really have their nose numbed and since they have to manually shift the bones over surgery will be far less painful!
Currently we are spending time with family, waiting on the bank, and waiting for my surgery on Wednesday!
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Umm still waiting
After the bank received our offer on Tuesday they decided to open things up to a multi bid situation. Meaning we now had to give our biggest and best offer by 9am Friday. So we met with our FR on Wednesday to put in our final offer. We left that evening trying to be realistic about the fact that we likely would not hear back from the bank until Friday at the earliest, but then we recalled that Monday is Larbor Day meaning that Tuesday is the more probable day.
Low and behold we heard nothing either way yesterday, so here we are waiting until Tuesday. Keep your fingers crossed that we hear something early Tuesday.
To make this waiting game worse, our downstairs neighbors were extremely loud last night, slamming doors and stomping around which happens frequently. Then this morning they were playing their music exceptionally loud and were stomping around so much it was shaking our apartment. So we called the front office to file a noise complain and they didn't answer, so we called our first response security to leave the same complaint. Clearly they talked to our neighbors because they maturely responded by pounding on the ceiling/our floor,stomping around, opening the windows, turning up the music full blast, vaccuuming, and slamming the door over and over again. We called the front office again and no one answered. So irritating! Eventually they gave up and left for the day, but the whole experience was so pointless, be respectful people!
We need a house!
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Sitting, waiting, wishing!
So the big news in our neck of the woods is that we put in an offer on a house last night! We put an offer in on the only house we've really liked and after thinking about it all weekend we decided to make our move. Unfortunately our move was sped up because someone else had also put in an offer. Our hopes aren't high since we had no response from the seller today but in this game of house buying one never really knows. So here we are waiting...
We def feel that if this house is meant to be we'll get it, but if I doesn't work out we know that something else has to be out there. We are still excited by the fact that we are even one step closer to having a home!