This last week I’ve been focused on getting Brendan’s room finished and ready for the painter. So in light of that I took a look at his closet. The closet ceiling had been sheet rocked at some point in the past, right over the plaster. The job looked horrible and you could tell it was done by an amateur. I knew the dry wall had been put up to cover something; why else would it be up there?! But never the less, I decided it needed to come down and be redone so it looked decent.

Once the first few pieces of dry wall was off I discovered the plaster was in bad condition. As I continued to take off the remaining dry wall the plaster caved in, er fell off, exposing the lathe.

It was at this point you could see there had been a leak and the previous owners cut a hole in the lathe, fixed the leak, and put in insulation. Oops, wait a second. How did  know there had been a leak?! I figured that out, because the lathe to the left of the hole was completely rotted and covered in the “m” word. What’s the “m” word?! Yup, you guess it, MOLD! My little project of taking down the dry wall turned into a big project that took us two days to complete. Two days doesn’t sound so bad but when you look at how many hours we put in you realize it was in fact a big, long project.

Since this was my project it was up to me to rip out all of the lath, deal with the nasty insulation that rains down, and of course clean it all up. As of day two I was so frustrated and crabby I decided to take it out by hitting the remaining plaster with my pry bar as hard as I could. All that did was knock off a few little chunks and put insulation down my shirt. At that point I had it. I went to Shane and whined. I wanted him to finish ripping it out and I would clean the mess. My whining worked and he finished the demo stage, as well as doctoring up a rotted out joist.

Once the closet was all cleaned out, Shane put up new insulation. I have to admit that while this was an unexpected project I’m glad we did it. I’m sure I seem crazy since this was a closet and I could have just tried to make the existing dry wall work, but there is a reason for my madness. While it may just be a closet, the right side of the closet is used as a small play room for Brendan. There are shelves full of his books and toys all over the floor. Brendan loves to go in there, shut the door, and play. I’m sure to small child it seems like a fort. Now with this in mind, Shane came up with an idea that we might as well change out the closet lighting  and get it up to code since we’re down to the rafters/joists. It currently has a single incandescent, exposed bulb literally an inch away from the angled ceiling. In our closet the electricians had to put in a florescent pull light to replace the existing one to get it up to code since they worked on wiring in there.

While I like the original lights it does scare me because it gets super hot and its butted up to the ceiling. Shane came up with putting in a light on either side of the door and instead of a pull chain, wiring in a light switch. I love this idea, because the light switch will be low enough for Brendan to control, yet high enough so it doesn’t seem off if we ever do sell this house. Now that I have written a small book  it’s time to get ready for church. Happy Sunday every one!

I am struggling with what I should do in Brendan’s bedroom. I ripped out the carpet with the intent of refinishing the hardwood floors underneath. However, the black tar paper is not wanting to come off. Shane and I have tried using boiling water,  scraping, and the heat gun. None of these methods worked very well. I have gotten a total of 6 tiles done and they aren’t that clean.

So after getting frustrated I decided I would just put new carpet in. I picked it out and about died when I tallied up how much it would cost me. I went to Lowes and I’m looking at $600 for the carpet, premium carpet pad, tacks, and installation. After talking to my mother-in-law she had me rethinking the carpet. She’s voting for hardwood.

I love our hardwood floors in the house, but I’m still unsure about having them in the bedrooms (especially in Brendan’s room). Brendan loves to play on the floors. He is all boy; crawling around on the floor, wrestling etc. I like the idea of carpet just for the fact that it would be easier to play on. But I could do the hardwood and find a nice 8×10 rug that is thick. I’ve looked at a few rugs and it looks like it would cost me around $200-$300.

To sum it up I need to make a decision and I could use some help! Shane helped me create a poll.  Your answers and comments would be greatly appreciated!

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Hello. It has been a long time since I posted last. I’ve been busy trying to wrap up my many projects and starting some more! Last week I decided it was time to get off my butt and get moving. In other words: I was finally motivated.

The first thing I did was putty the wood work in the bathroom with some help from Shane. From there I stained and applied the first coat of poly. It looks amazing. Crazy how having it all stained can make such a big difference.

Next I started sanding the hallway and the newel post. I’ve got some more to do, but I am making progress. I hope to have this done in the next two weeks.

The new project I started was Brendan’s room. I called our painter, Andy from Exquisite Painting, to come work on Brendan’s room at the end of July. He will be fixing a few of the major cracks in the plaster, skim coating the walls and doing an orange peel, and then painting. For paint I have a light blue that will go on all of the walls except the window wall. On that side it will be a light tan that will also go up on to the ceiling. My mother-in-law suggested that since I have navy curtain panels on the window.

With Andy coming to paint I realized I needed to have the top of the woodwork stripped and stained before he comes. I made the mistake in our hallway of doing this after he had painted and it made such a mess. Eventually I’ll have to go back and touch up the paint and have Andy edge it on the woodwork so we have a straight line. I am rather proud of myself, because in two days time I have heat gunned the tops and sanded them. They are ready to be stained, but I am going to wait until a few days before he comes to finish it. The reason for that is, because I have put myself on a deadline for all of the woodwork! My goal is to have all of Brendan’s woodwork sanded and ready to be stained in two weeks. If Andy is behind schedule and can’t start until the beginning of August I will extend my deadline to 3 weeks. Tomorrow my plan is to strip and sand the window.

Now today after talking with my mother-in-law I went ahead and ripped out the carpet in Brendan’s room. I debated about doing this, but it was stained with urine from the previous owners dogs (nasty) and in order to finish the wood work it had to come out as I couldn’t get to the bottom of the baseboard. Underneath the carpet is linoleum and then tar on top of the wood floors. Eventually we will have to scrape and heat gun it off and redo the floors like we did in the bathroom. This linoleum is different than the stuff in there and hopefully will be easier to remove.

Before I end this I’d like to thank every one who gave me some encouragement when I was feeling overwhelmed with every thing! Also, thanks to Liz for the rug we won!

As I mentioned in our last post, we won a rug from Liz over at A Constructed Life in conjunction with CSN Rugs. We received the rug just a few days later. With this gorgeous weather we’ve been enjoying, our posting has almost been non-existent. We’ve got a few things to catch up on, but for now, I leave you pictures of a rug we won that looks like it was meant to be in our house:

Brendan approves:

Like I said, it was meant for our house! I couldn’t have picked out a better color, size, or style myself.

Thanks again Liz! If I can ever get back into posting regularly, we’ll have to do our own little giveaway.