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!
