scraping popcorn off ceilings

Since July, I have been on a ceiling scraping kick (though somehow I only included pictures of the school room project). Our house has this incredibly thick popcorn texture on all of the ceilings. I grew up with scant popcorn on my folks ceilings and it never bothered me. In fact, it was kind of fun to have it rain down on us when my sister and I played volleyball in our room and the ball hit the ceiling. Perhaps that's the reason the popcorn was so scant...and how we broke the light... Anyway, the popcorn in our house now is out of control ridiculous. 

When Terry and I returned from our youth group Disconnect trip at the end of June, I just found the motivation and started scraping in the upstairs bathroom. I'd been wanting to paint in there for a while and in fact already had purchased the paint. Scraping had to come first though. So here's that bathroom before. And a cute little Evie helper.

And here's the stupid popcorn. Sorry, I just really detest the stuff. WHY did they do this?!

I had never done it before, but found which scraper I liked pretty quick and just went to work like you can see below. It actually goes pretty fast, except for the edges. Those take a bit more work to get the painted popcorn scraped. So it's pretty quick to scrape but it is a massive mess and the clean up takes time. I also found found that I should wear a mask because of the dust it creates. The stuff starts to line the inside of your nose and that can't be good.

The color is Sherwin Williams Tame Teal with more white added in to tone it down a bit. 

I really love it and it matches the shower curtain just right. Sure brightens it up in there. 

The very next day I got to work on the upstairs hallway. This particular wall/ceiling really annoyed me big time. WHY did they spray the blasted stuff on the walls?! Isn't it bad enough to have it on the ceiling? Do we really need it on the wall as well?! Forgoodnesssakes.

Those popcorn sprayed walls had been painted over so it was a lot more difficult to scrape off. I probably should have used water or something, but I didn't. So it's not as clean as the other ceilings. But it's painted gray to match the walls and looks a ton better.  

The same day that I did the hallway I also scraped our bathroom. The walls there needed scraped/sanded too due to humidity peeling the paint. So I did both the walls and the ceiling. 

I was lucky the previous owners left us their leftover paint since I loved the color. 

And finally, just weeks ago I scraped the ceiling in our bedroom. We had just sold our bed and were waiting for the new one which was on order. Since there was next to nothing in there, I went to work. Of course I did. Find and destroy popcorn is what I do now, apparently.

Here is mid-scraping. So satisfying. 

Like I said, it's one heck of a mess. I should have been wearing long sleeves and pants but it was July and I was hot! 

Nice and smooth. You can see the drywall seams! Perhaps that's why they used such thick popcorn - to hide the seams. I'd take the seams over the stupid popcorn. 

When I was finished I moved all the popcorn to the center of my canvas drop cloth and called Samuel in for a size comparison. That's a big pile! 

It's amazing how not white those ceilings where.  

 How clean and crisp right?!

Oh yeah :)

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!

Evie's Christmas loft

When we bought this house three and a half years ago, it had just enough bedrooms for the five of us - three. We planned for Evie to have the small office like bedroom once the baby, Samuel, no longer needed it. I painted it yellow to match the Potterybarn quilt a friend in Gburg gave her years ago. And then I got pregnant with Ezra and all our plans went out the window... or rather they were changed and accelerated. 

We needed another bedroom. The first thing that had to be done was a new free space for all the storage in our unfinished fourth level basement. So we build a loft in our two story garage. Next we needed to put our big couch and toys in the unfinished basement so we could turn the den area they had previously resided in into a fourth bedroom. So we finished the basement, aka, dungeon. Then we needed that fourth bedroom, so, of course we did that too. 

Wow, we've done a lot. I sort of forgot. 

So our new plan was to have Samuel and Ezra in the green room next to ours, Evie in the nursery/office and Noah in the den area downstairs; his room would act as a guest room at need. One night a couple months ago Samuel kept Noah up late into the night for one reason or another and we decided perhaps it was time to make the great bedroom switch. It was not simple.

Evie had been in the green room by herself. After all, one girl with three brothers needs a little space.

Ezra had been in the nursery/office since birth when he kicked Samuel out of there.

Our plan was to put Evie's bed in that little nook where the crib was. However, the room was so small that it would have been very tight with her bed and two dressers. Terry's solution was to build a loft for her new bed. He spent time browsing plans and pictures on Pinterest and figured out what he wanted to do.

 The day Nathan and Ana left, Saturday December 19, we got to work. We moved Ezra's crib into the green room with Evie.

For five days they slept like this. A queen bed, crib and three dressers. Geesh. 

It was actually good training for Ezra to learn to sleep with someone who could talk better than Samuel. 

I had Evie lie in the place her loft would go.  

Then I got to work on my nemesis - popcorn ceiling texture. I've de-popcorned the master bedroom and bathroom, hall bathroom, school room, laundry room, Noah's bedroom - and now Evie's room. All that's left is the green bedroom and the main floor, which might never happen. 

As long as the popcorn hasn't been painted over, it's incredibly simple. All I do is scrape with a drywall spatula.  

It's the mess that's a pain. 

Then I painted the ceiling. 

I painted two walls pink with paint leftover from Evie's Gburg bedroom. 

I did all of that in one day. It was incredibly busy and I was exhausted. Terry got bored and decided to build the loft in the garage instead of in the room like he had planned. By that evening he had it done. What a productive day!

The following day, Sunday, Terry wanted to nap all afternoon. I booted him off the couch and we got to work installing the loft. And by "we," I mean Terry. I took pictures.

Terry made the loft to very exact measurements and it fit perfectly. We had to push it down into place and rough up the drywall a little but then it just stayed there, suspended in air, because it was such a tight fit. Most impressive. Then all he had to do was level it out before securing it to the wall.

There was only one leg supporting the loft from the floor (the ladder). When Evie first saw it she was alarmed, thinking she would fall to the ground. But Terry screwed the loft lumber into every single stud. This thing is solid. It don't need no legs.

Once he finished screwing the loft to the wall, he attached the ladder. Then it was time to call Evie. This is the first picture of her on the loft (Noah followed her right up of course). 

Next we had to decide how to do the rails. We wanted to be sure about where to put them so we carried Samuel's mattress all the way up the two flights of stairs and held up three different boards to make our choice.  

I guess we sort of forgot we didn't want to have a rail around the bottom of the loft so we decided to cut the second hand rail of the ladder off. 

One more thing left to do that night.

We had been up in the air about how we were going to do shelving under the loft. Evie had been saying for weeks that all she wanted for Christmas was a book shelf. At first we were going to buy just a generic shelf and call it good. But since we were going to do an entire loft we thought we'd combine the two ideas. In the beginning we were going to do little cubbies behind each ladder step. Too much work. We decided to do a plain table and add some shelves above it later.  

Terry screwing the table supports into the studs.

Boom baby! Not bad for a Sunday afternoon!

And actually, that evening Terry filled in his screw holes and I sanded the whole thing down. We kept Evie and Ezra awake too late in the next room.

The following day, Monday, we were hosting our staff Christmas party at our house. Man I had a busy day. First I cleaned my house and then I primed the whole loft, ladder and table. After the Christmas party I put a coat of white semi-gloss over the primer. That afternoon and evening Terry spent a ton of time out in the garage working on the shelves. 

On Tuesday I put a second coat of semigloss down and then one coat of polyurethane. Overkill perhaps but I just didn't want the thing to get chipped up. I hope it helps. That evening Terry implemented what he had spent all that time working on in the garage. Evie had begged for a drawer under her table and even though she didn't need one (she has nine dresser drawers!), daddy did it for his baby girl. Just when I thought I was done painting I had two shelves and a little boxed drawer to finish as well. It didn't take long and was done by the following evening.

By Thursday, Christmas Eve, we were done. And that had been our plan. It was her gift to be able to sleep in her new loft on Christmas Eve. That day was the most work out of everything. We had three bedrooms worth of furniture to move up two flights of stairs. Then there was the moving clothes and closet stuff, cleaning, organizing and installation of bedroom wall stuff. Finally we were done. I was exhausted that night. Christmas was the next day!

Here is Samuel and Ezra's new room. Ezra is still getting used to sharing...

And Noah's. All of the bedrooms but Evie's are incredibly bare. Maybe I'll get around to hanging something up...someday.

Now before the "after" pictures, keep in mind how plain it was before: 

Boom baby! There it is in all its glory.

This is the view directly to the left when you walk in. We added those two little hooks for her small things to hang on. 

Her pretty dressers from Grampa B have plenty of room. 

And here are the shelves and little drawer. The table is supposed to be for coloring or writing, and she probably does do that, but most of the time it's just a play area for her Legos. 

Ignoring fabulous Noah, let me point out the blackout curtains I made a year and a half ago and that still go well in her new room. 

The loft looks great and she really loves it.  Actually, I'm a bit jealous of how great her room is. It's better than ours!

Those four little pictures came with the bedding set, along with the translucent curtains, and a couple hooks. 

There are hooks. I wanted to get rid of the poster (it came with the house) but Evie insisted it stay. 

The video: