Project 6: Redo the Orange Bedroom Closet

This is our surprise project! We decided to add something fun to the bedroom upstairs and continue our exploration of color.

The shelf in this closet was pulling away from the wall - the nail holding the rod and shelf in place had been more than half-way yanked from the wall. My guess would be that someone placed too much weight on the shelf/rod for many years.

So we pulled out the shelving unit, which went fairly smoothly. I used a crowbar on one side, and accidentally poked a hole in the wall. So we used our new patching drywall skills to fix my mess!



N was much more methodical on the other side of the wall, where he first exposed the nails, dug around them, and then carefully removed them leaving no damage except nail holes.

Then we moved on to texturing the newly exposed areas.





After the texture was done, we painted the ceiling white, and the majority of the walls yellow. We marked out how the stripes would be placed in the closet, and where the yellow would be exposed we painted a second coat of yellow paint.







Then it was time to tape the walls. This part of the process was very time consuming. The pattern we decided on was to have tweleve inch stripes of yellow and red (the yellow from the bathroom downstairs, the red a new color). N and I were concerned that it might look a little too much like a circus tent, so we decided to include a two-inch orange stripe in the center of the yellow stripes.

The taped closet:







Close up detail of the tape:



Although we taped the closet, we weren't sure if the paint would bleed through the tape or how neat our lines would turn out. We decided to paint the small orange stripes first:





With the tape off:





We were actually really happy with the orange! The lines were fairly straight, and where the lines isn't straight, it's a natural bleed out onto texture. The stripes aren't too fussy. Now it was time for the red:

I had bought a quart of this red paint (COLOR NAME) at Lowe's, and when N opened it up the paint was much thinner than we were used to with the Valspar paint. This was both good and bad; the good: the paint was thin enough that one quart could completely cover the red sections of the closet (but only just). The bad: the paint was very thin and spotty.

Red paint with tape up:







Even after a second coat (with a new full gallon of paint that was the usual consistency), the tops and corners of the red were uneven. Also, the thin red paint had leaked under the tape quite a bit in some areas, so I went back with a small brush and covered some of the red spots with yellow, and with another brush went over the weak spots in the red:





The last of the can of red paint:

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 1: Redo the Half-bath, Part III

After the mud dried, we sanded it down, and sprayed the texture on. I bought a can of orange peel texture from Lowe's, and using the fine texture we were supposed to get a maximum of 110 feet of texture.

We first tested the texture against the old vanity in order to get a feel for spraying the walls. N had much better control of the can, probably because he's done more spray painting than I have.

The orange peel texture is nice looking, but after the one can was finished, we felt that the walls needed more texture. We grabbed one of the cans that we found in the garage, and used that one up. The combination of the two actually looked pretty good. We decided to let it dry for a half-hour, and then we'd paint.

I should note - if I haven't already done so - that this bathroom is under the stairs, and therefore has no natural lighting. We had to turn off the power to the half-bath (which is connected to the lights and power in our master bath, and was marked on the circuit box as either "dining room" or "hallway"), and uninstalled the old, ugly light fixture, and now we are using a trouble light only to illuminate our work.

We decided to begin painting around the light fixture hole and the whole vanity wall so that perhaps we could later install the new light fixture and have better lighting for the remainder of the job. At first the job seemed to going okay, and then...





BUBBLES!

(The color of the paint isn't very vivid in these pictures.)

Another consultation with my folks, another rounds of sanding and then using mud. And yet more bubbles.

I read some online, and it turns out that not only are bubbles in the drywall when painting, priming, or using mud a very common problem, I couldn't find any true consensus on the preferred solution. Some swear by adding dish soap to the mud, others declare that the way of stirring the mud is important, and still others say that the problem doesn't exist if you use good materials, use multiple light coats of mud, and pressure down hard enough to make your arm sore. I've decided to listen to this last advice, along with the layering advice of my mom, and we have had reasonably good results.

We covered the bubbles in the areas that we painted with mud, got everything nice and tight, and then use a spray primer (KILZ) on all areas where we feel that the drywall may be prone to bubbling. We sprayed another round of texture on the sanded areas, as well as nearer the ceiling, which we had previously missed, and we noticed that the bubbles no longer seemed to appear. N has since applied one more round of KILZ, then another bit of texture, and has begun to paint the bathroom. Hopefully (hopefully!) when I get back to town the walls will looking good enough that we can move forward with the next steps.

Lessons learned: when redoing the master bathroom, which is also wallpapered, we now know that after removing the wallpaper we should prime the walls using an oil-based primer. Then we can texture and paint. I bought a water-based texture, which we put on the walls without priming them, and I think this aggravated the existing problems of the drywall. The water-based texture is marketed as less smelly, which I thought was important because this room doesn't have good ventilation. Next time, I will just live with stinky air for a few hours and run the air filter throughout the house.

Sanded, mudded bubbles:



Next steps: tile the floor, replace the baseboard, and install the new vanity. Oh, and get the new light up, new hardware installed, and hang the mirror...and replace the light switches and outlet with new white ones. And maybe rehang the door.

Project 1: Redo the Half-bath, Part II

Zounds!

Friday was spent in Lowe's picking out a new vanity, faucet, and light fixture for the half-bath. We brought along the new toilet roll bar to help us match the new faucet and lights to the rest of the bathroom's new accessories. We also selected a color: Valspar's Golden Mist. The paint associate at Lowe's was mentioning that Valspar's been on sale at Lowe's for months. While we couldn't get the new vanity in my compact car, Lowe's will be holding it for us until next Friday.

Saturday morning we woke up ready for demolition. The wallpaper was off, most of the tears in the drywall paper were patched, and now we needed to paint behind the old vanity because the new vanity is 15 inches narrower and there will be space visible between the vanity and the walls.

N disconnected the faucet, and I removed the cabinet doors and drawers. But we met a challenge - the separate pieces of the back splash were caulked so thickly we couldn't even get the crowbar into the space. Even after consulting my parents we were unable to do more than chip at the back splash and despair that an hour and half had passed...

Despondent, I decided to consult Google with "vanity removal." Behold (Warning: I have no idea what the guy is saying - I had my sound turned off. Just skip to around the 1:10 mark and watch):



Would you be surprised at how efficient this method is?









Once the sink was smashed out, we unscrewed the cabinet from the back wall, which we noticed was warped slightly, but the new vanity should hide this. Once the vanity was removed, the last task in demolition was cleaning up the trash the builders in 1986 had neglected to collect: dry wall pieces, dust, and a Whataburger wrapper:



We placed the old cabinet outside for the next three weeks until junk trash collection, and threw the pieces of the sink in the trash. We then patched the new holes and let the walls dry.

Part III will cover the difficulties of painting the half-bath.