Been a busy weekend. Of course there was the holidy which ment I had lots of time. That got turned into venitan plaster, the trim on the doors is up, along with the picture rail and the top moulding. I still need to do the windows, and baseboards. the curtains are haning on temp 2 dollar cheepo curtain rods till I find ones I like. Since the walls are done, and 90% of the trim is done I was finally able to move into the room. 8^) It is awsome, even if there are some details to deal with. Like real light fixtures and a need to chop out the attic floor to install some ceiling insulation to keep the rooms warm till the attic is renovated and fully insulated / rewalled itself. So far despite all fo the hell that this one put me through it is starting to loko like the best project on the place so far. Ok, right up there with the lubmerjacking experinance of 2005. 8^) I liked that one because nothing gets rid of itself like firewood. 8^) Though you could not pay me to burn free pine in a fireplace and chimney owned by me. We even managed to hoset a small party this weekend in part to celebrate the near enough to completion to call it done bedroom project.. Also I needed to absinthe up my freinds. 8^) It was nice to see the looks on peoplese faces with this one when they got to see the new room in person. 8^) Next year when the radiant system is on line I will have the bonus of being able to tell them to take their shoes off and see their faces when they realize the floor is warm. 8^) This week, the copper stars are going up, next weekend I will be taking off from working on the house to have a life… In two weeks I hope to hang the new curtain rods, lights, and install the baseboards.. The windows are heavly covered with plastic.. The R value now is probably better than glass. So, I might leave them till spring at which time I am concidering just putting replacement windows in all of the holes. Something with low e glass and stuff. We will have to see as I spent plenty of quility time rebuilding the sashes already and would feel like kind of a dork if I did all that and didn’t use any of them.

I rill try to have pics tomarrow.

Ivan

Glitter!

Glitter for paint is some pretty course stuff. The silver is mad out of aluminium and something else. As one would expect when you are trying to get it on the ceiling mostly you get a mess. 8^) Still, the final coat of paint is now up on the ceiling and the glitter is on the paint. 8^) Tonight I stop at home despot and pick up the venetian plaster, copper paint and stop at the craft place next door to pick up some plastic I can use for stensils. By Friday night I should be moving into a new 95% done bedroom.. After this week all thats left

1 Baseboards
2 sand and finish window casing, install sills
3 Ceiling Medalion
4 real light fixtures
5 push button light switches
6 switch and reciptical plates
7 Curtains

Not all that bad concidering how long the list was when it included things like install subfloor.. 8^)
Ohh, I do also still need to get the door open between the two rooms, that will have to happen on Friday, as I will need a nice easy path for moveing things between the rooms.
As for the glitter, I expect that I will still be picking out from between my teeth a year from now.

Ivan

wow, another last night about a block away. One of the old whitnall brick places apparently was burning around 1:00am.. 8^P
Its kind of spookey.. Apparently they have been electrical fires. This is what happens when you dont treat teh old knob and tube stuff with some respect. Or better yet treat it to a retirement party and get a more robust system in place. Thing is the folks living in the whitnal brick buildings were nice and quiet. If I had my way only the noisy annoying crack selling folks would be torching their places. 8^P

Off to the usuall Saturday trip to home despot, as I need a new can of schellack for the trim I will spend the day swearing at. 8^)

Ivan

Yes
The question that no old house owner / renovator hates to be stuck asking. So, I was sitting in the study last night working on my latest video when the smell kind of hit me. The smell of burning. I thought I was being oversensitive and continued editing.. Then it was stronger, finally I was sure there was a problem and started the usuall sniffing around the house.. Still I could find nothing, I went to the basement to see if there were problems down there.. Nope.. As I passed the outside door commign back up stairs I noticed a much stronger smell.. Now I was thinking that perhapse some crack head or bum had lit one of the many leaf pile ablaze.. Annoying!.. So, I went out back and noticed the source of the fire. One of the really big remuddle conversion to 6 unit jobs down the ally had flames shooting out of the roof. Ohh yea.. Not gonna miss that place. No more crack heads hanging out in the back yard doing crack headed things. Also, this menas there is a double wide lot avaliable on that block now. If I had the spare cash I would have my place moved and then put a good wall around the property and a nice garage 8^) So it appears that crack heads and space heaters do not in fact actually mix. 8^) Santa should leave some for the folks living in the place two doors down.. With all of the cheep plastic siding on the place it would take the house on either side with it making lots of cheep yard square footage available to me, and increasing the value of the rest of the neighborhood all at once. Could finally be rid of the buisnessmen that have setup shop on the corner as well. 8^) Oh well, I can dream..

Mean spirited? Yes.. Tired of crack heads and near homeless guys fighting over crach whores and absentee landlords trying hard to make the neighborhhod look like a concentration camp? Yes.

THe next post will be more wacky fun, hopefully with pics of the trim finally up in the bedrooms. 8^)

Ivan

Finally
I managed to stay motivatd long enough to get the last bits of plaster up, push the last bit of romex into the receptical it needed to go to and cover the last 10 inch by 10 inch bit of wall. Tonight the second coat of plaster goes up along with the picture rail.. That leaves the crown moulding, the full finished paint job on ceiling, the wall paint and real fixtures. Ok, and baseboards, shoe molding and replacing the windows with something other than the very slick and air tight triple layer plastic job thats up now. Heck, I have been thinking about putting a caot of fancy radiant insualation up on those and calling it a winter. The R Value would be better than any replacement window I could casually go out and buy. 8^P Thankfully because of all the insulation in the walls the room is actually doing a pretty good job of being warm already. 8^) Thats with the heat shut off to it as well.. Once it has heat it should be pretty nice in there… Even better next winter when the PEX system comes on line.. I really wish I had gotten that done this year, but *ehh* I will live. By next winter I will have it in the attic, in the kitchen and on most of the second floor.. I can wait for all that at once. 8^) Now if I can just finish the damm 1/2 bath from hell before the anuall Yule party which is in exaclty 4 weeks. 8^P

grrrrrr…. I wanted some down time.. I suppose after the party things will finally be far enough along to take some time off for the winter and lay about watching youtube and eating peppermit ice cream. 8^)

Ivan

Grrr, damm comment spammers with their viagra and whatnot. I need to either finish my anti comment spam system for this software or get a new blogging engine. But, I like this one its nice and simple and the code base does not suck except for the lack of some anti spam features….

I mananged to finish haning the casing around the doors and windows last night.. Tonight I will be putting up the top molding *hopefully* or finally getting the last bits o plaster done so the ceiling paint can be finished and the top molding put in hassle and painter tape free. 8^P Grrr.. Gonna be plastering arnt I.. Not that I dont like the plastering 8^) Just not really in the mood to be doing that up on the scaffold. 8^) With the one ligt in the room right in my face. I so should have gotten this part done a month ago, now I pay the price… 8^P

Ivan

Trim, its the stuff that makes a room look like a room and not just a painted box. It is also my mortal enemy. Its just too damm fiddly, and too damm expensive especially when you figure out how many liner feet you need of a particular profile. Early Saturday morning I was thinking about this while I was trim shopping at Home Despot. There was all of the extra pieces of trim needed for the ceiling wall transition, then there was the picture rail for the front bedroom then there was yet another gallon of stripper for the window and door casings. Most of the paint was heat gunned off so I am only trying to get the last bit of varnish off them. Still paint stripper always results in mess. But thankfully the trim is actually going up. Not at exactly break neck speed but up at least. 8^P While avoiding actually working on the trim I started working on getting the door between the bedroom and the master closet / dressing room working again. I discovered that it was not just painted closed. Ohh no.. The builders screwed up and since they did nothing to shim the door it had done a bunch of shifting around in place so the previous owner had sealed it up nice with caulk. Caulk? WTF? Granted the gap is large enough to see in an know that the door is locked but still… Caulk? grrr what a pain in the butt. Still not at bad of an idea as using tar in place of window putty, or the great covering the wall with cork board idea of 1975.. But crap the door is filled in with CAULK!!! This from a guy that thought it was fun to go onto bbs forums and flame folks for spelling and punctuation. Grrr Caulk has got to be among the most misused construction material on earth. Right behind liquid nails, and faux wood paneling. 8^P Grrrrrrr again…
Progress is slow but at least it is being made. I won’t be relaxing in the new living room till late next spring but at least I will have a new bedroom in a week or two.. Probably closer two two at this point, as I have been feeling lazy and well I hate trim I can always find something better to do that work on trim. 8^P

Speaking of lazy I thought I would give you all a direct link to my youtube favorites list. 8^) It is randomly loaded with good stuff.

MY PLAYLIST

Ivan

Ok,

The bandage is off. For those that have not been reading a few weeks ago there was a drywall cutting incident that would have made any *cutter* feel satisfied. Yea, as I guessd back then it left a mark. Looks like the right index finger will be acting as a drywall cutting reminder for a good long while. Its pretty healed over and I was willign to leave the bandage off today.. There is a noticable dent where the cut was. 8^) I so should have gott pix of the mess I made of myself.. But, probably best to spare everyone, especially me. 8^)
In the meantime, not much gettign done on the project rooms this week, I dont know how many weekdays I wanted to get the beadboard up in the 1/2 bath from hell of finish the last 18 inches of joint on the ceiling in the bedrooms where it did not happen.. This is another one of those weeks. Used to be that I was out of time and out of luck when I got home at night… These days, I am just plain old tired and burned out. Fortunatly now tht I am getting lots of sleep I will eventually be ahead of the needing sleep curve and able to catch up on some of this mess again. Speaking of mess… Nothing better than the project done clean up.. We finally started on that last weekend.. With the upstairs floors all finished there was no reason to be leaving a mess all over the place. So, finally I can walk around barefoot again and have my feet stay clean.. My doc would probably have a cow if he knew how much time I spent barefoot in the house.. But heck, I dont make a habit of leaving broken glass or thumbtacks or carpet tacks laying around on the floor, especially once the projects are done for the year. 8^) So, since I stared this mess, winter has been barefoot time. Once the kitchen is done *hopefully* next summer it will always be barefoot time in the house.. Except for when I go down to the silence of the lambs basement to do laundry, I feel like I should be wearing boots and hazmat gear down there though… 8^)

Ivan

Hey all,
With the new job and all I have been a bit too busy to be posting. The good news is that I do actually have more free time now that I am no longer driving 3 or 4 hours per day away. 8^) Unfortunatly I am spending most of that time catching up on three years of lost sleep. 8^P I think thats getting better though, as I am not quite as twitchy when I try to go to bed these days. I am also feeling better when I wake up in the morning as well. 8^) In better and more home renovation news, the rooms with the fancy insulation job are really impressing me with their ability to stay warm. 8^) This weekend some of the trim will be going up and the last fiddly bit of wall work will be finished. 8^) We should be painting the front room on Saturday, and hanging some of the new trim and perhapse the window trim in both rooms on Sunday. We spent last Saturday at Ikea. 8^) I really like that place. 8^) They have added some parts to their kitchen cabinets, very cool I can now add a built in plate rack and wine rack to the kitchen design. I am kind of glad that I didn’t jump the gun and do the kitchen already, or I would have midded out on them.. 8^) Found the lights for the middle bedroom there as well…. 8^) I still need to buy them though.. Probably after Xmas, as I am going to be too busy till then to worry about them.. Also, they have added some displays focusing on useing Ikea stuff to create small boutique stores. I saw the Ikea version of a clothing store and liked the storage / display solution enough that it is very likely going to be the storage solution for the new mega walk in closet / dressing room. The floor to ceiling racks were very cool, and cheep as well.. Double bonus. Hopefully Friday night on the way home from work I will also be stopping by Home Despot and picking up the new toilet for the downstairs half bath from hell and by sometime friday night that will actually be usefull down there. 8^) If things go really well on Saturday morning I will run to Lowes and pick up the vessal sink I saw there for the Half bath and by Sunday night the room will only be needing baseboards. 8^)

Ivan

ok, its cold enough to start feeling the difference that the hard core insulating of the bedrooms makes. Wow, the hand test of the outside walls last night was quite noticable.. The new rooms with the r24.5 insulation and radiant barrier had noticably less cold outside walls compared the the rest of the rooms. 8^)
This can mean only one thing, that is that the new insulation is working like a charm and I was in fact headed in the right direction with this idea. 8^) I need to pick up the radiant paint additive to try out on the back bedrrom / temp living room. In the mean time r13 fiberglass + r11.5 radiant barrier == less a noticably more comfortable room. Still, need to get the windows sqaured away, I think I might cheet and replace two of them with replaqcement windows just to avoid the woodworking needed to make the frames hold the sashes correctly again. 8^P

Ivan