I'm finally beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
This week I worked on painting and cleaning the other two bedrooms (the middle room--Carli moved into a studio rental earlier, and Wil's room).
Wow, what a job that was!
Since the middle room wasn't too bad, and Wil's room was horrible (!) I'm going to show the before, during and after of his room.
This is the before, showing the south wall. Yes, there is no closet door.
The east wall.
The north wall. Notice the "graffitti". That is not a sticker. It is drawn on the wall with marker pens (not with my approval or knowledge, by the way).
Here is the northeast corner prior to starting. You can see my new spray painter in the lower left corner. I took the crown molding down.
I've taken everything off the ceiling fan and covered it with a garbage bag prior to spray painting the ceiling.
The graffitti covered with primer.
And now the finished room. This is the northeast corner.
The north wall.
The south wall. There still aren't any closet doors but they will be going back up soon.
It took me an entire afternoon to scrub the tile floors clean, one tile at a time. The problem with them was that they are a porous type of tile. I'm not sure I'd ever use those type again. I had put that up a long time ago and since I didn't really know what I was doing it never looked very professional.
And may I just say I love my new sprayer. I decided to take the plunge and splurge on buying a nice mid-range sprayer. It's a Graco Magnum X7, the model just under the "professional" model. The reason I decided to buy rather than rent was because it costs $90 to rent. My plans were to spray the ceilings in the two bedrooms and the hallway. We also need to spray the underside of the patio and we can use the sprayer to do the stain on the wood siding on the front of the house. I knew we wouldn't be able to do it all in one day. Plus, we can always use it in the future. Three more sprayings and it will have basically paid for itself.
One thing I would do differently would be that with the "popcorn" ceilings I would spray paint the walls first, then tape them off and do the ceiling. As it was I sprayed the ceilings, then realized it would be too difficult to tape off the uneven surfaces and I ended up rolling the walls afterwards.
A roof guy came by and said it would cost about $350 to do some minor repairs and get a 2 year roof guarantee. And the best news so far was a termite guy came by and said he did not see any signs of termites. YAY!!!
Slowly, but surely, things are getting done. Besides scrubbing the walls in the front bathroom and kitchen there are just some minor things to do inside (closet doors in Wil's room, paint the back of one door, sand and varnish the back of another door, clean mini blinds) and after that it should be fairly easy to maintain.
8 comments:
OMGoodness, what a difference! I was wondering what you have been up to lately! Are you allowing the boy to move back in, or did you have him sign a contract, no writing on the walls. It looks wonderful!
How is Carli doing in her new place??
Patti
Wow, T. You're doing a great job. You may have convinced me to invest in a sprayer. I wish you'd told me about the cleaning the tile floors. I use a great product called Zap. It's a restorer/cleaner for tile and grout. It really does all the work and you just have to wipe it. I brought (what I thought was dark gray) grout to white!
The room looks fresh and clean. No more graffiti! Wil! LOL
LC
I promise I'm keeping an eye on Wil's room to make sure it doesn't get out of hand again! I wish I had known about the Zap before too. And my arms and shoulders and knees do too!
PS-Carli is doing fine!
Wow, great job! Kyle and I have been rolling our walls and ceilings at our new place. I keep suggesting that we look into sprayers but he's under the impression that the sprayers make more of a mess than they are worth. I don't know enough about them to know. Does the spray cause lots of paint mist? What did you wear to do the job? Do you get paint misted into your hair/eyes etc? Oh, so many questions...Maybe I can convince him to go talk to someone at Home Depot before we start painting the third floor (3bed, 2 bath, walk in master bed closet, stairway, landing, & linen closet). I think it would definitely be worth it if it seems to go on better than rolling. Do you think that the sprayer is faster than rolling it all on and is the finished result better than rolling?
Oh, thanks for the great "home improvement" chronicles! You and the hubby are doing a great job!! It'll pay off soon!
~M~
There is a lot of overspray but it is surprisingly easy to clean up. I just make sure that anything within two feet of the spray area is well covered. I didn't wear a hat but I did wear safety glasses. As with any paint job you should not wear clothes you care about. It is definitely faster than rolling. In fact the prep is what takes the longest, but then you have to do a certain amount of prep with rolling too. If it is done correctly the results are just as good or better than rolling. We have the icky "popcorn" ceilings and it is SOOOO much easier to spray those than roll, not to mention it saves a lot of time. A LOT of time! I did some research on line also before I bought. We had bought one of those little Wagner power sprayers a several years ago and ended up returning that. Those little ones are a total waste of money. If you can I would splurge, like I did. The one I got was $399. It is really easy to operate and even the clean up is fast and easy. You may want to just rent at least once just to see if you really like it. But I think you will. I also think it's a good investment because I know we will be using it again!
Thanks for the info and thoughts on it. We will potentially have the exterior of our house to paint once we reside it too. I think I'll try convincing Kyle to look up some things online regarding the sprayers. If he thinks he will want to try it then we might invest in one or rent one. (See, Kyle does most of the painting because I end up staying out of the way with Hannah - We don't have any family that seems to want to help by watching her unfortunately)
Thanks so much for the info again!
~M~
p.s. Did you ever think of scraping off the "popcorn" ceiling and re-surfacing the ceiling to a smooth finish? Our ceilings were the "ugly popcorn" finish too at our new place, but we scraped it all off and were trying to get a smooth ceiling. Unfortunately the person who built our house did not do a good job with the dry wall and we're now stuck trying to figure out a new solution for the ceiling. I think we plan on doing tongue & groove pine ceiling on the main floor. Anyway...just thought I'd ask...:o)
We did think about it but I knew it was a lot of work, probably more than I was willing to do. If we were staying and we were doing all this work I think we would have done it, but for now, no way.
Yeah, I agree. It is going to be a lot of work, but we had to do it because the pop-corn finish was done so poorly. I see your point. You've already done so much and it will look so nice once your all done and finished!!
:o)
~M~
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