Wednesday, August 6, 2014

finishing the school room

It has been nearly four weeks since we tore out the school room fireplace on July 18th (mostly for efficiency reasons that I bemoaned in my last post). This is what it looked like mid-demolishion. Not a pretty sight. And it was ugly to clean up. Oofdah.



After I handled all of the smaller rubble, I decided to handle the ceiling popcorn. That was just a few days later on July 22nd where I left off from my last post. Terry was at work and I figured in order to get this project done and done and not have to wait until the weekend, I'd do as much as I could. That, plus, I'd become proficient enough in removing popcorn since doing precisely that in our bathrooms (which I haven't blogged about apparently. darn darn darny darn!). I just detest the popcorn in our house. Some popcorn, like at my parents house, is live-able because it's pretty sparce. But ours has to be like four times as thick as theirs. I'm serious. It's out of control stupid. What was that contractor thinking? Okay. Soap box ended. So here is the nasty stuff (and my pretty, spick and span fireplace pad).



It was messy work. I completed half of the scraping before lunch and had Noah take my photo amidst the wreckage to show how I felt.



But check out how much incredibly better that looks! 



I finished that afternoon and it looked great. 



The following day, Wednesday the 23rd, I primed the school room doors and siding. It was mega hot and humid outside while the kids played with sidewalk chalk and I rolled away. 



The kids love to paint. I have to force myself to slow down and let them have a little fun. I just want to get it over with. 



But they each got several turns and were actually pretty helpful. They'll be happy to see themselves painting on the blog. :) 



After lunch that day I tackled the school room brown siding. I had been previously calling it wainscoting when I painted the stuff in the boys room. But it is technically called car siding. It's pine and comes with two boards together with a groove down the center and then a tongue and groove on the sides. They must have stained it that dark color originally to match the rest of the trim. And I didn't hate the trim color, I just wanted something brighter for the school room. I like white a lot now. Wish our whole house was white. But now at least half of it is. Before:



And after. I primed the grooves first with a brush and then went over it again with a roller. Then I rolled two coats of semigloss. But this is just the primer. You can see why it needed so much paint! 



The following weekend we took a break for some reason. Might have been busy. So during the final week of July I scraped the popcorn off the downstairs bath/laundry room and Terry filled that fireplace pipe hole. Actually, he cut styrofoam insulation to fit and put it in the tube opening. Then he pushed the rolled insulation in the outer layers of the pipe, followed by screwing a board over the opening. Then he put this insulation up, drywall, tape and mud. Take that inefficiency!!! He also added an electrical outlet right there since that wall only had one before (of course it didn't need one when it was a fireplace!). 


So last weekend, the first in August, we were extremely busy in the school room. Probably a little crazy. What can I say? We just wanted the thing DONE. 

Friday August first started with Terry adding a fourth coat of mud to the wall to even it out more. He also added some mud to the ceiling from where he had gouged it with his sledgehammer and falling brick during demolition. He's doing the ceiling here.



While he prepped the wall for texture, I painted the de-popcorned ceiling. Look at how much better that white looks! 



It took Terry like five minutes to texture. Setting up took more time. He even hand textured the ceiling gouges so they would blend in.  



I went and bought paint and decided it was too yellow. Had to go back and get the next darker shade. Glad I did. Here is the original.



Still during that same Friday Terry finished insulating the foundation with that styrofoam stuff. Then he started on the car siding!



They finished right before family pizza movie night. That's why Noah was like, "Let's nail this down dad!" here. We were so ready for a break.  


The next day, Saturday the 5th, I primed and painted the car siding. Sunday afternoon we painted the walls with a shade darker paint. 

Just to give you a better idea of the change and how much brighter and happy it is down there, here is before: 


 And after :)



Here is the other half of the room before: 


And after :) 



I cut in while Terry rolled. He got the first coat down pretty quick and was still feeling good. He wanted to go ahead and finish the second coat that night. At first I was all for that until I came upstairs and saw the orange paint from there. I did not like it at all! 



Even though those stairway walls are connected to the school room, their hall color needs to flow upstairs. And it did not at all. I felt terrible about it! I felt like such a failure. Perhaps it had to do with how tired I was but I took it pretty hard. All that Sherwin Williams paint was expensive and here we had wasted it! I didn't know what to do. I took these photos and sent them to a couple friends for advice. They helped me to decide what to do. See how the hall orange and the kitchen burnt orange clash?



We decided to keep the orange in the school room (because I like it there!) and paint the stairway hall back to gray. Looks SO much better. It was just all wrong. 



While Terry was rolling orange that day, I was out in the garage painting the trim. I got those all done that day and a few days later we brought them inside to await installation. But that is for the final post!

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