So many things So little postings

When I started my blog I really hoped to update weekly to give a good idea of the never ending dramas of home renovation. 

Sadly, so much work and 3 computer crashes has definitely made this difficult even to update monthly!

So for now lets add some highlights!

There was a small hurricane in September. You might have heard about it.. The morning after I stumbled on this poor little PTSDed frog on my wall.

 Half a tree came down in my front yard. They got the debris removed about 6 weeks later, and my yard is finally starting to recover as I fill in the ditches created by gravity and oak and try to get the grass to grow back over the dead spots...

Here is a before and after shot of the back yard... 

I ordered this AMAZING cart off Amazon right before the hurricane, I do not know how I could have cleaned up without it. I had a 1/3rd of an acre covered in limbs and spanish moss...   Pro tip: If you get it, grab your drill and drill a few small holes in the bottom so water does not collect and start to fester with rotting leaves and dirt... or become a mosquito farm.

 It tilts. This is the best part!

I snagged the elusive Disney stacking ghosts tiki mug. I love it so much. They are so hard to get!

 Monkey is doing well, being cute.

I built a BAR! I love my bar. Here are some action shots. I made it primarily from pressure treated lumber that I stained and sealed. The top has many many coats of sealant since it will be outside. The bottom yellow part is painted with exterior paint.

Remember the bald staring dog from last year? He has had to have several haircuts since then! Now he is so furry I have to trim the hair from his eyes! He is curled up on me while I type this.

I discovered the beauty of Amaryllis. Someday I hope can afford to plant dozens of these.

Other projects have been on hold, kitchen counters and tile work sits half finished. Been upgrading fences (which will be a whole post because fences are COMPLICATED and involve long rants... )

Holiday delays! New Camera!

Don't worry my friends, I have not vanished! There was a delay in pretty much everything due to houseguests and holidays.


When last we left off the bathroom was just about done and the backroom had a gallon of paint on the floor.

Sigh.

The bathroom has had one more change... CAULK. Please my dear friends, always remember to keep you walls caulked. Grout is not caulk and caulk is not grout. Grout is not actually fully waterproof. Caulk all your corners and edges every few years to keep water out of the walls! I could not see a trace of any caulk ever on my shower... not good.

But back to the back room. I did finish painting the endless trim...    It looks great. It took forever, but it got DONE! I enjoyed the entire series of Felicity while doing it... Apparently I missed the last two seasons the first time it aired!

Then came the floors. 

In order to deal with the floor, I had to clear out space in my workshop. In order to clear out space in the workshop I had to tackle a project. Painting and sealing the floor. I had some oops paint in a couple of colors so I mixed them together! 

This was a bare unsealed concrete. Something spilled and it would just soak right in. You can imagine how awesome that is when an angry cat is accidentally trapped in there for about 36 hours. Yes, that happened. I didn't do it! :) 

SO painting concrete is one of my favorite jobs ever. Not the prep, the painting! just pour and roll!

But first... prep. Sweep, mop, sweep, mop. There is no such thing as it being too clean. Use TSP. It is a cheap degreaser that helps the paint grip on. I did not photograph the cleaning. I assume all my readers know how to mop. If not, please ask me what you need to know! i won't judge. No really. We all start somewhere. 

see how much prettier that is? 

Word of Caution:


Pay attention to where you start rolling. Do NOT, I repeat DO NOT put your cell phone on a counter then paint 10 feet of floor starting in that corner.

That little blue speck on top of the toolbox might be my phone. Maybe. 

But look how pretty that floor is!!  

Due to bucket sizes the workshop floor is two slightly different shades of blue...   But this is a workshop, floor being sealed is the priority. And now it is. :D 

Bathroom: The Final Frontier

After poking, looking, thinking and using the sink.

I realized it was about 2-3 inches too tall. 

So I got new legs for it thanks to Amazon Prime for 10 bucks. 

After disconnecting the sink again removing it all, putting on the new legs and reinstalling it is AMAZEBALLS

Other than some delay with spackle...wait for spackle to dry... more spackle...repeat. for like 7 days...   It is done!! Ok, it still needs some double coat in a couple spots. BUT IT IS 99% done! 

So back to the rest of the space... 

Bathroom Part Deux

In blog world this bathroom magically renovated in a single day!

In the real world this took about 2 weeks (I do have a job as well... )

By the shower the wall had some water damage, so I scraped out all the gross old plaster and started the process of gradually filling it back up.

Meanwhile I ripped out the old vanity. And I ripped out the ceramic towel bars, and the toilet paper holder that was right where your knees need to go AND that could not hold a double roll. That was so annoying!

I had a hard time deciding about it, I like that vanity, but the countertop and backsplash had water damage. Once I ripped it out I found out the vanity had a lot of gross mold and damage as well on the back. So replacing it was the best choice.

Here you can see where the bathroom used to have a hanging sink. I had thought about going with pedestal one, but that ugly plumbing was way too ugly. 

I cannot express the feeling of relief that the floor tile went entirely to the walls, sometimes it doesn't... 

Of course, before you do anything TURN OFF THE WATER. Very important. I did do this. I remembered. Nothing exploded.



For months I have been trying also to find a suitable replacement. The space is wide but very shallow and I had a hard time finding anything I liked that was also shallow enough at the big box stores at the low price I wanted. Then, like a lightbulb I remembered to check Ikea. They had this cool sink with a couple of little shelves and a very inexpensive cabinet to fit it. Of course this took hours of wandering the store and picking and choosing to decide. They have a lot of details and choices...   They also had a $25 coupon which essentially got me a free faucet!

I hit a small glitch here. Namely the sink was not fitting under the mirror and was jutting out from the cabinet. 

I thought through a bunch of solutions... then realized the solution was SO EASY. 

What was it?  

See you tomorrow! 

Bathroom!!!

Due to the humidity here I have had to have multiple projects running at the same time. Namely, because things have to dry and it takes forever.

So lets move to the bathroom while the sewing room dries...

Due to my lack of a decent camera (long story, I was supposed to be getting one as a gift months ago... I am still waiting.) I have very few pictures of the before.

Let's just say, it wasn't purely offensive, but not good either.

So, when my grandfather built the house he put in a classic tile mosaic that is still in great shape. It is a sort of pink/orange color with some brown. It is an odd color but I like it.

Over the years when repairs and updates were needed there were numerous attempts to match it.

Listen close to design 101. NEVER TRY TO MATCH IT!  It is almost never possible to do this well. It just doesn't work. So what I have is one bathroom with baby vomit tan tile and another with a pale pink that is just enough off from the floor that it makes me twitchy.

This back bathroom is the baby vomit tan.

To add to this, 5 years ago, another attempt was made to match... by painting the walls in baby diarrhea tan. It is a similar tan, but slightly different.

The cabinet is not so bad except the sink is sinking which is letting water go into the back of the cabinet and the walls by the shower have some water damage... from Dog knows where. 

So I started the funnest part of any renovation, tearing out all the crap. 

Behind the laminate was the old wallpaper. That was the wallpaper I remember being up for my entire life. So bad...yet so familiar and homey to me. 

Behind the wallpaper we have the layers of the 1940s and 1950s  and some fun water damage! 

I love this. Apparently there has always been some sort of shelf over the toilet... and Pop Pop got lazy when painting..

See you next time for the changes!

Trim horrible trim...

So the thing about wood trim is that you want it to have solid cover, but you can't just roll it with the big roller.

You can do a lot with the foam rollers to get a nice coating on the flat parts, but it all still has to be painted all over, including against the wall. This room has SO MUCH TRIM!!! So I gave in, used a roll of blue tape. 

Despite using a paint with primer in it the trim needs a good four coats to get a really good cover. This has taken a week so far. Granted I took a couple days off in there to do the bathroom... but still. 

Also, after trying to get the closet doors off to paint them with a paint sprayer, I decided that for now I will just leave them off entirely. In order to get them down I had to remove the track, the old school rollers just would not come out no matter how much I googled and tried. 

Which means I also have to paint the interiors of the closets at some point... 

Sigh. So much to paint in such a small room!!! 

The highlight of this week was accidentally knocking over an entire gallon of primer. 

Yeah, I did that! 

This, my friends, is why you ALWAYS do the floors LAST!!! Thanks dog I have old sticky tile that I am not keeping...   

Once I scooped up as much of the paint as I could I used the floor like a paint pan and painted another coat on everything. 

Since the can was bent I had to find new storage for it. The green paint in the rest of the room was almost gone so I made my usual Mason jar of touch up paint and put the primer in the green can. Since it is just primer that little bit of tint won't matter much in the future and I refuse to waste paint! 

Let's Get This Party Started!!

Hi and welcome!

So here is a little background to my new adventure.

In the late 1940's my grandfather, Henry Walton, bought a double lot in the suburbs of Orlando.  Those suburbs are now in the heart of Colonialtown, 4 blocks from Mills 50, and in an amazing in town neighborhood. On this lot on an empty street he started building his new home. He was an architect, so he knew what he was doing :) .

Over the years the house grew as his business grew, rooms were added, porches became more rooms, walls of shrubbery were carefully cultivated...  And wood paneling was installed...everywhere.

So, 3 decades after he died, and 5 years after my grandmother died the house was on the brink of leaving the family. I decided to turn my world upside down and leap into the unknown and buy the house (with my brother and Dad as my partners in non-crime) and bring it into the present.

Now, the journey begins as I dig into 70 years of family history, wallpaper, wood paneling, carpet funk, and a few surprises I want to document the adventure and help others envision the possibilities with the own mid-century time capsules.

My hope is that I can modernize, clean, repair and update this space while still retaining the mid-century modern charm. I wish to cling to the quality craftsmanship, but shed the damaged, broken and outdated decor that increases energy bills, allergies, and water damage.

And so it begins:

REMOVE THE SHAG CARPET!!!

50 year old carpet has no charm. What it has is extreme funky smell, allergens and fills the room with despair and sadness.

So without delay, what did I do first you ask? I can't find my before pictures, but here it is with an old lady cat.

I had been DREADING this process. The smell I expected, but more than anything I thought I would have to do tedious cutting to get it in small enough pieces to get in my trash can. Luckily old carpet apparently turned to disgusting dirt powder. The backing just ripped like paper! It was glorious!!  It took about an hour to pull it up and get it outside, along with the powdery plastic padding underneath. I scraped and swept that up and found....  another floor!

And for my next entry I will examine the wonders I found underneath it...