Project 4: Redo the second bedroom, Part III

The weekend my grandparents were visiting they helped us install a new fan (actually the old Hunter ceiling fan from my childhood room in a David Weekley house similar in some ways to this house).



N and I picked out a color for the bedroom. We considered the artwork we wanted, the other colors we have selected in the rooms near it (green and orange), and our preference for bright, striking color. This shade of blue is Valspar's Enchanted Sea.

A couple of Thursdays ago N removed the remaining baseboards in the room, and I began taping off the moldings around the windows and doors. After sanding and texturing the patched areas of the walls, we began to paint every area except the patch from the previous door.

I decided to remove the plate for a telephone line that was run into the bedroom, and left it as is in the closet. There was a bundle of wire/cable that ran up from the electrical box through the closet ceiling and into the attic. I simply shoved the cable up the hole in the ceiling, and patched the bed room wall. There was no true electrical box: the phone line and cable were hanging out next to a two-by-four. I kind of made a mess of the wall cutting a hole to pull out a non-existent box.





N sanded down the wall patch (after a disastrous attempt at painting it - did not do a neat enough job with the MUD), and we spread out the patch significantly.







But, not enough. After N finished painting most of the room and everything dried, we realized that it was not as smooth as we had hoped. N sanded the area again, and then applied MUD. Less of the area needed sanding/mudding, which is a sign that we're getting closer to the right job. Here's a spot with a little of texture on (a different texture - the knockback texture without the knockback).



Pictures of the painted room:









Meanwhile, I sanded down the window sills and painted them with the good white alkyd paint. They and the door frames and doors will need to be painted completely.

Project 4: Second Bedroom, Part II

During my description of the second bedroom I stated that the next step was closing up the wall. And after procuring three 2X4s and two pieces of drywall, ta-da!



My parents framed the area on Friday afternoon while I was hammering out the bad tiles in the half-bath. They built up the floor in the hole, and then nailed a 2X4 at the base of the hole and another one at the top of the hole. They then placed a 2X4 on either side of the hole, and braced the entire structure with a 2X4 44" up the wall, which will be useful when we can install a towel rack in the room. I neglected to take a picture of the framed up hole, but imagine a wall with a hole the size of a door with pieces of wood along the edges and in the middle.

Friday evening after the French-door handle installation my mother taught me how she removes anchors from a wall. There were 32 anchors in the blue bedroom from the former bookshelves, and two or three other anchors around the room. Using a pair of needlenose pliers we wiggled on the fronts of the anchors until there was an edge to grab, then twisted off the face of the anchor, and finally pushed in the anchor body all the way through until it fell down the back of the wall into the attic. My mom removed the various screws and nails around the room that we had missed when painting the ceiling, and I removed the curtain rods to discover more screws that were painted over underneath, some in pink, others in blue.

The next day I removed the blinds from the window, anticipating that we will be painting this room before too long. My mom, the MUD genius, covered over these holes and other in the room. We have already bought and cut the molding for the baseboard for two of the walls in this room. We will paint the molding, paint the room, and then install the molding. But before we can do any of that, we must finish building up the MUD over the former door hole, prime, and texture the area.

We didn't have a chance to install a new ceiling fan. My parents still had the ceiling fan from my old childhood room. It's a white Hunter ceiling fan. Perhaps if we've been able to paint the room by the next time my parents visit we can install the fan and the faux wood blinds found in the attic. The blinds are cut to fit these windows perfectly. It's perhaps best that McVicker never found the time to replace these blinds, as he probably wouldn't have bothered to fill in the holes from the old blinds, or even repaint the room something less blue and glossy.

In my first post about the bedroom I mentioned that there were gray paint spots on the window ledges. Here they are in all their ugly glory:

Project 4: Second Bedroom Redecorate

Upstairs there are two bedrooms and a full bathroom. The third bedroom was damaged during the storm - pieces of wood protecting the chimney were pulled off (likely due to a satillite dish that McVicker either put up or never removed) and water was able to leak down into the bedroom. It was only water-stained, no structural damage. We primed the damaged area with KILZ and then painted the room. Afterwards, my family help us reframe the window. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the previous framing "attempt," but the woodwork was uneven, ill-fitted, and painted poorly with the same paint that disfigures most of the woodwork in the house.

The room as it is now, with the window needing a final sanding and a final coat of paint:





We painted the ceiling a true white, and the walls are painted with Olympic's Indiana Clay in eggshell, which isn't terribly glossy, but because this paint shows more brush strokes than a flat, we'll stick to flat or flat enamel finishes from now on. A little electrical work was needed to replace the ivory outlets and stubby switch with white outlets and a flater, easier to use light switch. We've replaced the original closet door handles to match the doorhandles downstairs, which we hope to carry upstairs before too long. The handles are oil-rubbed bronze.

Left to do is finish painting the window frame, repaint the doors, replace the fan, order blinds for the window, redo the inside of the closet (since the current shelves are falling down), and recarpet. I should also note that the baseboard will most likely be redone in the future as well.

I preface the description of Project 4 with this story because the second bedroom is in more need of repair and it wasn't even affected by Ike.

Here's a picture from the house brochure of the second bedroom:



First off, there's the door between the second bedroom and the bathroom. Looking at the original floorplan of the house, as well as the state of the walls around this door (drawn on with red), I believe that either the Wards (the first owners of the house) or McVicker decided to tear out the wallpaper that was originally torturing human eyeballs, and installed a new door as well as retexturing the walls, painting the ceiling a truer white, and then painting the walls beige. We've found texture spray cans in the garage, and the patterns match the texture in this bathroom, which is unlike any other texture in the house.



This door directly to the bathroom leaves the blue bedroom with no uninterrupted walls on which to place furniture. One wall is dominated by closet, another by two windows, and the third wall has a funny inset section. If we want a wall on which to place the bed, it almost has to be the wall that currently has two doors. Once the hole from the second door is patched there will be plenty of wall space for a full or queen-sized bed. And it opens up a room that currently feels tiny, but is in fact at least 14' by 12'.

So, there's the poorly done door install. The frame of the door was nailed into the wall with one (1!) nail. The demolition took very little time, and the door is now gone, with the hopes of repairing the wall in the immediate future.





The second big problem with this room is the color. It's a pasty blue that is one or two shades off from being attractive, but is rather sickly than calming. The paint is also high gloss, which I don't understand. The ceiling and fan were originally covered with glow-in-the-dark stars (a whole solar system of them). My mother tore down 99% of the stars during a recent visit. On Saturday N and I removed the fan, which was wobbling and threatening to endanger guests, painted the ceiling with KILZ because we do not know the origin of the grease spots on the ceiling, and then painted one coat of "Ceiling White" Olympic paint over the KILZ. The ceiling will need a second coat, and we've bought another can of paint in order to do so. During the painting process we discovered some green, pink, and red splashes of color on the walls and ceiling, and we wonder how many colors this room has been during the past 23 years. We're still looking for the perfect deep blue for the final room color.

And the final major problem, one which we encounter again and again: random screws, nails, anchors, and holes in the walls.

When we bought the house, this room had a set of three shelves on the wall in the shallow recess. The shelves were only 5 1/2" inches wide, and I assume they held something, although I doubt they held books since they weren't wide enough or sturdy enough for books. Upon unscrewing the bookshelves from the wall (because ugly is ugly, and must be thrown out) we found the following example of McVicker craftsmanship:



That is a group of four anchor holes, which were not used to support the shelves. The screws instead went into the drywall 1/8" BELOW the anchors. Ta-da!

Upon further inspection it appears there was a fourth bookshelf below the three, which was not to be found in the house. I'm not sure what prompted the removal of one and not the other three, but this is indeed not the biggest mystery of our house.

Around the room are various other holes, random screws, and nails. The closet is marred by a row of three pastel hearts:



I replaced the doorknobs on these closets with the same handles as in the orange bedroom closets. The curtain rods we still need to take down, and in the attic (oh, the attic!) we discovered two white, faux-wooden blinds cut to fit the windows. In this house one actually discovers items, objects, and belongings: they appear like presents you hide months before Christmas and then forget about until the following February. Finally, the ledges of the windows need to be repainted. Spots of grey paint decorate our window ledges. Where that grey came from, only McVicker knows.

Onward! Next part: close up the wall, repair the random holes, and paint, paint, paint!