The Junk err I mean Sun Room

Yes, I know, been a while since I sent out the latest House update :) But despite broken wrist and mental burn-out, I have continued working on the house...just quite a bit slower! Have a four day weekend, so am using the time to knock out the last of the projects...or at least enough of it to get the house listed for sale this week!

The sunroom, or back room as I usually call it, has actually been most commonly the junk room for most of the ten years I've lived here.

During the three years I sold books online, it actually was the book room - at one point more than 10,000 books were stored back here! That history actually led to the biggest challenge of this room - filling in ALL those holes in the walls from where I had shelving hung on the walls. I went through an entire container of wood putty and half a container of spackling to get all the holes filled in! Granted, they were small containers, but still!

The first thing was to clear out all the junk and trash that had accummulated in here. Brianna and Mark helped me with hauling off the dog sofa, I

sold the futon (not shown) at one of the yard sales, and cleaned up all the just plain trash. The small window was cracked and broken in a bad wind storm, and I'm having fun (not!) finding glass the right size to fit is, as none of the pre-cut glass available at Home Depot or Lowes is the right size. But I'll get it done.

[caption id="attachment_189" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Sunroom north facing, after clearing out"][/caption]

Despite all the holes in the wall, I expected this room to be the simplest room to make over. The plan was patch the holes, repaint the walls and ceiling, pull out the fugly piece-meal carpeting that was at least 30 years old, paint the floor (it's concrete), and move all my craft stuff in here.

Of course, just like every other room, this room had an unexpected surprise or two...sigh...the big surprise in this room was a humongous crack in the floor. Seriously huge. The floor of this room was actually just a slab, the room was just simply a back patio that was enclosed in 1956 by the owners at the time. When they enclosed it, they installed two huge single-pane picture windows, and reused a storm window as the side window, and built the small window on the north side that is now cracked. They didn't insulate or anything, of course. But they did build the room right over the existing floor, of which a 2-foot by 4-foot section of the south portion had cracked, broken, shifted, and skewed about two inches off the level of the rest of the floor.

OMG, how can anyone build a room on a floor that is OBVIOUSLY broken, without fixing it first!! Sure, I know it wouldn't have been exactly cheap to inject concrete under the broken section, lifting it and releveling it, but to just build right over it without doing ANYTHING at all! They filled the crack in with gravel and sand, and put a very thin layer of morter over it (thin like in less than 1/4", all broken and gone now)! It's amazing to me!

I'm seriously getting sick and tired of finding myself on my hands and knees dealing with floor issues in every single room!!

[caption id="attachment_191" align="alignright" width="300" caption="sunroom south after clearing out - see the crack from hell"][/caption]

Well, of course I can't fix it properly - which would entail injecting concrete under the broken section, lifting it up and leveling it. For starters, it would be outrageously expensive. Then there would be the problem of the wall that is built over it - lifting the slab would lift the wall, causing at best lots of cracks and a big broken window, but would probably damage the roof and knock the south door out of alignment completely.

The next option would have been for me to pour a new floor over the existing floor with self-leveling cement. I seriously considered this, although pricy (about $100-$150 worth of self-leveling cement) it would have corrected the broken slab issue, and would have leveled the entire floor. But self-leveling cement isn't recommended for situations requiring a leveling over an inch - and the slope of this slab is 2-1/2 inches. I then would have had to redo both exterior doors in this room, cutting them about 3/4" shorter than they are and reframing them, because the floor would then be over the threshholds of both doors.

Forget that. Too much work. As it is, the back door will probably need to be replaced as part of the sale of the house, assuming the potential new owner doesn't want a doggy door.

Sigh... I can't fix this problem the most proper way, as it will simply lead to virtual destruction of the room. But I can improve the situation.

So I decided to just patch the crack, and feather it out as much as possible to at least smooth out the juncture between the intact slab and the

[caption id="attachment_193" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Working on the crack"][/caption]

broken portion of the slab. I'm not worried about the slab sinking or shifting anymore - it obviously hasn't moved since the room was built in 1956. I suspect the crack originally occured during the first ten or twenty years of the house's life. It looks that old. Following the advice of my neighbor Matt, who used to pour concrete foundations and patios for a living, and the advice of Trey, who just simply knows a little bit about everything, I first dug out all the broken crap out of the crack, I then chipped the crack wider, by about an inch, I then poured a layer of resin down the crack, then using repair morter, actually filled in the crack, about 1/2" at a time, letting it dry and cure for about 2 days between each layer. It took nearly two weeks just to repair the crack. Although the slope where the floor is cracked is still obvious, it's a lot less drastic than it was - no one will trip over it now!

No wonder nobody has moved the carpet pieces in this room in decades! I've lived here 10 years and never noticed that the floor was different there either - wow!

I found a gallon of "oops" Behr floor-and-porch paint at Home Depot for $5, tinted the most perfect shade of light blue with just a bare touch of green to it - very 1950s. I love the "oops" paint shelf :) I wish the guys in the paint department made even more tinting mistakes ... I swear almost all the paint in my house is "oops" paint :) Anyway, $5 for a gallon of paint that normally runs around $28 is awesome :) I painted the floor, and used Behr's paint chips ($7.95) to "fleck" the floor to give it some interest, and also to detract from the crack :)

I must admit this room was the most fun to paint :) Whoever last painted it was a total slob - they painted right on the glass, dripped all over the floor. Since I knew I was painting the floor, I didn't care if anything got on the floor. No need for drop clothes! Since I was going to have to

[caption id="attachment_194" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Painting and flecking the floor"][/caption]

scrape 30 or 40 year old paint off the windows anyway, I didn't bother masking them. When I painted the floor, I just poured the paint right on the floor and rolled it out :) Very fun :) I managed not to paint myself into a corner, too :)

Of course, I kept forgetting to CLOSE THE DAMN DOOR! Both dogs and Lassie the Cat all stepped in the wet paint at least once!

When it came time to paint around the windows, I discovered that the caulking around the windows was cracked, brittle, and even missing in some places. I also discovered that one of the picture windows wasn't framed in at all - the caulking was the ONLY thing holding the window in place. I'm stunned the dang thing hasn't fallen right out. Lucky, too. Using some scrap wood, I built a quicky frame around the window, painted it, and after cleaning out what little remained of the existing caulking, I caulked both windows.

I then moved the white cabinet that used to be in the kitchen into this room, and moved all my craft and sewing stuff that was previously strewn around the entire house into this one room. It's all organized now... which is really quite scary :) I even repurposed a bunch of small plastic containers and sorted through all my notions, storing them into containers that are now labeled and stored in the cabinet :)

[caption id="attachment_195" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Organization!"][/caption]

Yes, I said *organized* and *labeled*. Yes, two words not normally used in conjunction with me!

I put all my patterns into a binder. Did the same thing with all my stencils :)

On the other side of the room (not pictured, batteries died in the camera, gotta recharge them!) I put the dog and cat food into to large plastic bins and set them up neatly in the corner. I then hung my aluminum can crusher on the wall next to the back door, and set up three other plastic bins for my recycling - paper, plastic, and aluminum. Looks nice and neat, and is colorful, if I don't say so myself :)

I cleaned all the thermal insulated curtains I had hanging up over the windows, they look much nicer now, but I have not rehung them up. Although they do a remarkable job of keeping this room warmer during the winter and cooler during the summer (the room isn't heated) I decided the room looks much nicer with the sun shining in - it'll show better.

Voila! The notorious junk room is now a multi-purpose craft and recycling room :) As you can see in the pictures, I do still have some craft stuff to finish organizing - that's the pile on the cabinet - and the window still needs to be repaired. I've got all my tools sitting in there right now, those will get stowed back in the garage when I'm done with all this house rehabbing stuff, but it's nice to have the tools in just one place now while I finish up all the work I'm doing on the house.

[caption id="attachment_196" align="aligncenter" width="1024" caption="Just about all done!"][/caption]

Costs:
$5.00 for "oops" floor and porch paint
$7.95 for Behr paint chips
$7.98 for a gallon of white paint for the walls and ceilings
$4.90 for spackling and wood putty
$12.80 for repair mortar, which will also be used to patch some small fine foundation cracks.
Total: $38.63

The Utility Room, Day Three: Good Memories

I never expected that the smallest room in the house would take so much time, work... and emotion...*sigh*.... Amongst the many things I was dreading in cleaning up the utility/laundry room is Christmas.

Christmas decorations and ornaments, that is.  I've got boxes of them, piled up above the basement stair cover in the utility room, and a few sitting on the top stairs to the basement, never actually carried down to store last Christmas.

Like many people, I have a difficult time throwing out faded, worn, and even broken Christmas decorations because every one of them has some sort of sentimental memory involved with it.  But I live alone, my 5-foot tall plastic Christmas tree is WAY overloaded, and I don't need 20 square feet of space being taken up by stuff I use only once a year, regardless of how much it may mean to me.  Heck, half the time, I only get about 1/3rd of all my stuff actually out and about each year!

So I tackled culling the Christmas stuff by dividing it all into three piles: "Broken and can't be fixed," "In good shape but not sentimentally attached," and "I'm so attached I want to be buried with this."  In other words, trash, sell at the next yard sale, or keep.  The goal was to get all the tree lighting and ornaments into one big plastic box, and all the other decorations into another box, culling a total of eleven loosely and badly packed, unorganized boxes into only two boxes. A tall order, indeed.

Like much of my house, some of the stuff I have is just plain ridiculous.  Why do I have SIX unopened boxes of tinsel, when I *never* use tinsel?  I own dogs, they love to eat the stuff, you know the result of that if you are a dog owner!!  On the other hand, just looking at the tinsel brought up hysterical memories of Daisy, the dog I grew up with, running around the house with tinsel hanging out of her you-know-where... we kids got such a kick out of that, when we weren't completely grossed out!  Thankfully, tinsel isn't made out of poisonous lead anymore...

Onward I traveled through Christmas Memory Lane... boxes of little one-inch round glass ornaments I bought with my first tree in my first apartment when I was 18...all of them, the color coating has fallen off of, most of them, the metal hanger loops have rusted or broken... I've not actually used them in a decade, easily, why do I keep them?  Sentimental...but they are trash.  Time to make room for new stuff, right?

A sprig of dried, authentic, Misletoe.  HAHAHAHahahahahahaha!!!!!!  ROFL!!!  I've not been kissed in what, two years!?!  Right, I'm going to keep THAT - NOT!!

A large amount of static window cling decorations, never used because, well, to use them, requires I clean the windows! Who wants to do that in the cold of December?  Oh wait... they cling to the INSIDE of the window...drat, that excuse won't work anymore... I'll keep them.  Besides, they don't take much space.

Another item, another rush of memories... A silver, Jade and Onyx pinky ring, handmade by a young Navajo I dated briefly back when I lived in Mesa Verde some 15, 16 years ago...shamefully, I cannot remember his name, but he meant so much to me at the time... the ring is here because I made a ornament out of it some years ago, when the silver became worn so thin it was nearly broken through.  I'll keep this.

What the heck was his name?

Miles, literally, miles upon miles of plastic beads, used to decorate the bushes in front of the house I rented in Tallahassee around 1985... some converted to door beads a few years ago, but otherwise never used since... tons of purple garland, now faded pink, purchased in 1989 and used to decorate the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of my studio apartment in Washington, DC...

Quick break to chase Binky around the house, he got a hold of some loose tinsel!  Retrieved before consumption, fortunately :)

Continuing on through the boxes... ornaments engraved with my name and the year purchases by my Mom as I grew up, the paper-mache stocking ornament I made together with other travelers far from home, strangers become temporary family spending Christmas together sharing our favorite holiday recipes in a youth hostel in Melbourne, Australia back in 1991...hand-carved wood ornaments made by a roommate in San Franciso... pewter ornaments made by a close friend now long out of touch in Hawaii... it continues on as I examine each item and pile them gut-wrenchingly into the keep, trash or sell pile, as appropriate. 

Ahh, I remember now! His name was Eric!  I wonder whatever happened to him...

Eventually, right around 3 a.m., I reach my goal of combining and repacking all my sloppily packed Christmas treasures into just two boxes, and in fact, I have some room to spare.  I move the sell pile to the front porch, adding it to the ever-growing pile awaiting the next yard sale... my neighbors wonder if my porch will ever be empty again! Each precious treasure is actually packed far more securely than it was before, well padded, awaiting unpacking again in a just a few short months to be displayed proudly like each Christmas before.

The only question remains whether these delicate treasures will be next be unpacked in the house I now live, or a new home, a new home for a new dream, the dream of owning my own home, completely debt-free.

The Utility Room, Day Two: Flooring Dilemna, yet again!

One of the many small projects that I've needed to deal with since the day I bought my house ten years ago is the broken floor linoleum in the utility room.  Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure how best to approach the issue.  The floor and the door to the back room are at EXACTLY the same level...over time, as the ancient 1950s-era linoleum has swelled with humidity and dried with arid weather, it buckled and was chipped away at by the door.  Directly underneath the linoleum is this weird hardboard stuff, kinda like compressed cardboard, probably under that is wood flooring.

Although I know I should just tear the entire floor out, I really don't want to do that...I've had enough issues with tearing out floors in this house!!  I can't just simply tile over the bare spot, because I can't match the existing stuff (which is actually kinda nifty looking), and the door would just simply chip away at it again over time.  I can't cut the door shorter, because then there will be a gap letting cold air in under it - which would defeat the whole super-energy-efficiency thing I've got going on in this house, what with all that blow-in insulation and other stuff I've done over the years. This house is SUPER efficient - I spent only $190 on heat for the entire winter last year!

Anyway, I thought about simply pulling up all the linoleum, and just painting the hardboard...but that would mean moving the washer and dryer, which is nightmarish, as anyone whose ever moved a washer and dryer before knows.  And besides, Lord Only Knows what can of worms I'll open up should I tear into yet more flooring in this house!  Besides, painted hardboard ... very cheap looking!

So what I decided is this:  remove a small amount of the linoleum - just the traffic area, partly already missing, the rest previously covered with small amount of carpeting by me because it is severely cracked and buckled.  Of course, make sure I dispose of it properly so I don't get yelled at by the garbage man again for possible asbestos contamination like I did when I pulled out the old linoleum from the bathroom years ago.  It's a small amount, I do have a top-notch respirator mask now, I know how to pack it up and where to bring it to dispose of now, too :) 

Then pull the hardboard out in that same traffic area, so the overall floor level is lower.  Replace it with some of the leftover stick-on vinyl tiles from the kitchen, and put a metal threshold-thingie along the existing linoleum where the washer and dryer is.  The washer and dryer will end up on flooring that is about 1/4" higher than the traffic area of the floor, which actually isn't a bad thing at all.  This way, there is no exposed broken linoleum, no door chipping away at the flooring, it'll look clean and maybe even professionally done, and having that black-and-white tiling extended from the kitchen through the laundry room should look pretty nifty, especially with the bright white washer and dryer :)

The Utility Room, Day One: Bad Memories

The utility/laundry room.  I've been dreading this fix-up.

It's not that the room needs a lot of work, it's just that the work that needs to be done is a pain in the ass, and worse, reminds me of an episode in my life I'd rather forget: my electricians.

You see, about 7 years ago, I hired two guys - a father and son - to rewire my entire house.  The son was married to one of my best friends, and both he and his father were licensed electricians.  I hired them party to help them out, and partly because everyone in town said they were the best. 

Besides, they were willing to work here in Calhan, whereas just about every other electrician I called wanted an extra $400-$600 just because I was "outside" their normal working area (Colorado Springs).

Well, as is true with most any major house repair or remodelling job you do...nothing goes the way you plan.  In my case, because both the father and son had full-time jobs, they were working on my house during the weekends.  Of course, they didn't show up every weekend... what should have taken oh, 3 or 4 weekends at most, stretched into a full year.

Then, the son and my best friend split up.  This divorce became worse than the War of the Roses or Kramer vs Kramer - I wish I was exaggerating!!  Because the son felt I was "taking sides" because I stayed friends with his now-ex-wife, he and his father dropped my job completely.  Simply refused to finish it, leaving me with quite a mess.  The entire situation got VERY ugly, and was much the stuff of gossip around my small town...

It's not that the work they did wasn't done well or correctly or to code - it was - the problem was the job was HALF DONE, and no other electrician I called would finish the job.  They all wanted to start from scratch, and of course, charge me a premium because I'm so "far away" from their normal work areas (about 35 miles) they all wanted to charge me a premium.

Well, I'd paid the father and son $800, out of an estimated $1700 total cost to rewire the whole house.  Best estimate I received from one of the few willing electricians to finish (actually completely redo!) the rewiring was $2340.  Since at the time, my business had just failed (to add insult to injury!) it wasn't a price I was able to afford.

So now I'm stuck with a house that has been half rewired.  Half the house going to the new circuit breaker box, half the house going to the old.
Which, to be honest, isn't a problem... the electricity works fine, and at the time I bought the house ten years ago, there was only one code issue with the electricity: Part of the house still had the original 1928 knob-and-tube wiring, which meant I could not put insulation into the walls or the attic, was a potential fire hazard, and was a code issue.  So when I decided to get that knob-and-tube wiring replaced, I decided to go ahead and just replace the remaining wiring throughout the house, which all dated to the remodeling done in 1958 (but wasn't considered a building code issue). 

I always wanted to add a BUNCH of extra outlets, as most rooms only had one outlet, I wanted to install a whole-house surge protector, outdoor lighting, and run power to the garage.  The garage had power at one point, but a prior owner pulled it out when a tree knocked the line down and never reinstalled it.  I also wanted to install a larger circuit breaker box in anticipation, at the time, of eventually building an extension onto the house.  Thought it would be prudent to have that set up at the time, so I wouldn't have to deal with swapping out circuit breaker boxes in the future.

So the father and son electricians did get all of the knob-and-tube wiring replaced, and did a mighty fine job of it, I must admit.  They got the front bedroom, which I use as an office, wired with tons of extra outlets, like I wanted.  The power lines to the ceiling fans in the office, living room, and master bedroom were all replaced, along with the line to the front porch light.  They even replaced and reattached the meter to the side of the house - something that was done completely wrong and missed by my original inspector - and arranged for the electric company to replace the line from the pole to the house (which was actually attached to the gutter - wrong!!)

But... they never finished the wiring in the bathroom, so the new GFCs don't work.  They never rewired my bedroom, the back room, the utility room, or the basement, most of which is using 1958 wiring, which is fine, but much of it isn't grounded.  Same in the kitchen - some of the wiring is grounded, some is not.  They did dig and run the wiring to the garage, but it's not hooked into the circuit breaker or live in any way. 
So I sit here living with two different circuit breaker boxes - the old and the new - and part of the house is modern wiring, and part of it is older wiring but not a code issue, and part of the older wiring is not grounded, but isn't considered a code issue unless I actually start to work on it!!  The code issue is complicated due to grandfathering of the work the father and son team started on - at the time, no building permits were required - and grandfathering of the existing 1958 wiring... grrr... you get the idea, it's complex.

In a nutshell, the power works fine.  It's considered safe, if not necessarily up to modern day standards.  It will pass inspection, but having two circuit breaker boxes (plus a third in the garage that isn't attached to anything) will cause questions.

And to make it worse, much as I would love to just tear the whole thing out and get it entirely redone... price quotes now are in the $2500-$3000 range, including redoing work that is ALREADY done, that is ALREADY at code (actually exceeds code), because I can't find an electrician willing to come in and just rewire the parts of the house that are still using the 1958 wiring!! ACK!!!  Not that I could afford it... but seriously, to do the rewiring that remains to be done, should be able to be done for less than $1000.  Not that I can afford that...but it is something I am prepared to grant as part of the house purchase when someone makes an offer.  Meaning, I'm willing to provide cash back to bring the entire electric system up to date at closing.  An expensive buyer concesion, but one I've accepted I'll likely have to make... really sticks in my craw, it does.

So anyway, every time I go to do any work in the utility room, I see those two circuit breaker boxes.  I see the never-finished damage to the drywall above the circuit breaker box, done when they rewired that whole thing.  I see the gaping hole in the floor where the line now (properly) goes, heading to the meter. And I'm reminded of a very ugly, very frustrating, time in my life.

On the other hand, now that I've fixed the wall and floor, I have less reminder of that time in my life!

The Living Room...egads!

[caption id="attachment_165" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Living Room, south wall, before."][/caption]

Initially, I thought all I needed to do was declutter, clean, repaint the white walls and ceiling, and even though the carpeting was NOT wall-to-wall, just clean it up.

Well... of course that's not what happened!

First, the easy part: I sold the recliner and couch, which did NOT match and were totally the wrong size for the room, at my yard sale,
and replaced both with a 2-piece used sectional in pretty good condition I got totally for free from the Pikes Peak Community Action Agency.  Carl over there was so happy to have someone take it off their hands (taking up a lot of space in the Free pile!) that he arranged for someone to haul it the three blocks to my house! Granted, it took an entire bottle of Febreeze to kill the musty smell
of it, but it looks great, I think, and the dogs LOVE it.  Especially Coco, who can still get to her favorite sleeping corner in the house
by simply walking behind it, but Binky can't cause he's too big - so she now has a place which is totally Binky-free!  She's quite happy
about that :)  Although she wasn't happy about the commotion I made tearing the living room apart, I think I've been forgiven.

All the steam cleaning in the world (and various chemical agents) would not take the black paint stain out of the carpet.  I really debated about removing it, because it does help keep the room warm during the winter and it was a pain to get it into the living room to begin with, but at the same time, showing a house with a carpet that is one foot two small on two sides for the room, that doesn't meet up at the kitchen arch, is seriously stained, and frankly, rather tatty looking, just ain't going to work.  Next-door-neighbor had given it to me when he replaced the carpeting in his house, his daughter's 2-year-old son was the "artist" who painted on it, and despite that, I really did like having it in there.  But it had to go.  Removing it was a pain - it's big and heavy - but by cutting it into
smaller pieces, I was able to tackle that job relatively easily.

I knew the wood floors would need some work... they've become pretty worn, but fortunately, they're oiled floors.  That means I don't need
to sand and deal with expensive, life-threatening urethanes and all to get it to look good, I just need to get some Tung nut oil and reoil
 them.  But of course, *NOBODY* stocks traditional Tung oil anymore! All the so-called Tung oil products at Home Depot and Lowes are just
urethane and varnish products with a touch of tung oil in them!  I did find an old can of tung oil in the garage, probably dating to the 1950s when the floor was last properly finished, but it only had a small amount left in it.  I did use that - it was barely enough to do a very, very light first coat over the floor, which did make a big difference (parts of the floor, especially in the traffic areas, are practically bare), and found a place on the 'net that sells proper, pure Tung oil for about $17 for a half- gallon, which should be more than enough for me to do another coat or two in the living room, and also touch up the office floor when I pull the carpet out of there. I'll order it when I next get paid, and finish the floor then.  Some areas will need more than a few coats to get them to even out and match the rest of the floor, but that's okay with me.

[caption id="attachment_169" align="alignright" width="108" caption="Starting to re-oil the floor"][/caption]

There's several reasons I'm sticking with the original wood floor treatment.  Tung oil is completely natural - it's the oil from the
Tung nut - and has a very pleasant, somewhat-peanutty, odor.  You don't need to wear respirator masks when installing it, and can even handle it with bare hands if you really wanted to.  I can't, because I'm still somewhat allergic to nuts, but latex gloves does the trick. An oiled floor, if it becomes damaged, doesn't require you to refinish the entire thing - just sand where the damage is, and then brush some
oil on it till it matches.  The oil blends right in to the existing area.  The more you oil it, the darker and shinier the finish.  You don't need  anything special to clean or care for it - can wash the floor with simply water, and should it get worn off (like in the case of my floor), just brush some oil on, and lightly hand buff it, and you're done.  Finally, I'm using it because that's what's always been used on the hardwood floors in this house: tung oil.  Never a touch of stain, never any harsh chemicals :) Of course, there is one downside: it takes about two days to dry out enough to move furniture back on it and walk on it without sticking, and about a month to fully "cure" (get hard), but I don't mind that.

The walls turned into a nightmare.  When I first started to paint them, the existing paint started to peel off!!  Apparently the last time this room was painted (which was probably around 1984!), either extremely cheap paint was used, or the surface wasn't prepared right - likely both.  I knew I was going to have some problems covering all the yellowed and stained walls, but the existing paint just simply falling off the wall wasn't a problem I was prepared for.

Fortunately, there was a simple solution: TSP, the same stuff I used on the tiles in the kitchen!  Ya know, that big box of TSP I bought
about ten years ago for like $4 sure has come in handy more than I can count!  I had to scrub all three white walls, AND the ceiling, with
TSP, and even sand some places.  Lots of spackling was needed, too, then I could finally paint.  It took three days... sigh... I hate
painting ceilings!  And parts of the room still need another coat of paint, but that will wait, also, for payday, when I can buy another
gallon :)  Still, the walls are nice and white, the ceiling reflects too much light, but it looks good :)

I sold the dresser I was using as a TV stand, and repurposed the wood shelves I used to have in the middle of the kitchen.  I stained the
wood shelves with a woodstain mis-tint I picked up at Home Depot for $1.00, and trimmed it in "black leatherette" contact paper.  Yes, I really love contact paper :)  I did the same to the dvd-stand just left of the door, so it looks like a matched set of furniture now.  I removed the shelving behind the door that I had all my "back up copies" of dvds (read that the way you want *grins*), as my realtor has suggested that having piles of "back up" dvds laying around the living room for strangers to comment on may not be a very good idea...   They are now boxed up.  I pulled out all the wiring I had from the living room to the bedroom and office, and replaced it with a used wireless media networking system I picked up at Goodwill for $7.75 ...that way I still can stream any video or music I want from the living room to the office or bedroom or back to the living room, but no longer have a bunch of wires hanging out all over the place!  I unhooked the home theater sound system speakers from the wall, and just have them neatly sitting on the shelves around the tv... do miss the true surround sound of having the speakers placed properly, but it
still sounds good.  Besides, wires draped over the windows just isn't very attractive :)

I've only rehung two pictures, although I think the corner behind the sectional looks too bare now, I think it's better than making new
holes in walls I just spent what feels like a year patching to hang more pictures. :)  I'm leaving the mural on the arch wall as it is (although I did finish painting the flowers, and cleaned it)... I'll offer to paint over it to whoever buys the house if they want me to. I love it too much to paint over it while the house is still mine :)

So there you have it... Laura's new, nice, clean, neat, ready-to-show, living room.  Sure, still a few things to do ... some touch-up paint,
floor needs more oiling, ceiling fan needs cleaning, finish the molding around the front window, and a throw-rug (currently hanging on the fence after being hosed down and cleaned) to lay on the floor, but it's done.

Here's the best part:  Total cost: $45.11

Tung Oil, $15.95 with free shipping (will use in office later, too)
Gallon of White Paint, $7.44
Blue wood stain, $1.07
"Black Leatherette" Contact paper, $5.95 (will use in office later, too)
Yet more spackling, $1.95 (I should just break down and buy the big jug)
Two new end tables, from GoodWill, $5  (they were still in the box, unopened! Only one in the picture, the other one will be placed by the door after I finish the floor)
New (used) wireless media streaming center from Goodwill $7.75

Sorry the final photo is kinda warped looking... I'm still getting the hang of the panoramic photo feature :)

It echos, just like the kitchen :)

[caption id="attachment_171" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Living room, done"][/caption]

The Kitchen, Done.

[caption id="attachment_138" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Backsplash wall before."][/caption]

Backsplash wall after

 

Took another two days to replace the 1960's contact paper on the shelves, clear out more stuff from the shelves, figure out a place for the microwave which turned out to be too big to fit under the cabinet left of the sink like I wanted to, but it fit on the right side of the sink, and a few other small things. 

Moved a small 1960's era table and two 1970's era chairs from my back room (the junk room) to the kitchen, so now it is a proper eat-in kitchen complete with a walk-in pantry :)  I think it will show a lot better when I list the house.

My dogs hate it.  Before, I had a carpet runner between the back door and the archway to the living room.  Now, it's all clean, slick, shiny vinyl flooring... walking on it is no problem.  But if they try to run on it to go scare some poor squirrel out of the backyard, barking all the way, they slip-and-slide and loose all grip on the flooring.  It's actually very funny... think a drunk trying to walk on a ice skating rink :)  Poor pups!!  It's hysterical watching Binkie get halfway across the kitchen, then back up, and go through the living room, office, bathroom, and master bedroom, circling all the way around the house, to get out the back door!  I keep telling him if he would just WALK instead of RUN across the floor, he could save himself some time!  Coco's like 15 years old, so she pretty much never runs... the floor doesn't challenge her at all, yet she also walks around because she just doesn't like the way it feels on her paws, best I can figure.  Lassie the Cat isn't real fond of it either... but Lassie almost never goes through the kitchen anyway, preferring to get out through my bedroom window :)  Boy is he going to be pissed when I close that down for the winter!

Reminds me, that's another thing to add to the "to do" list:  Fix the doggie door, so it will securely latch.

[caption id="attachment_140" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Pantry wall before"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_148" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Pantry wall after"][/caption]

All told, not including the break one weekend for another yard sale, it took eight days to get the kitchen into shape. 

My total expenses were $69.72, for new electrical outlets and light switch, ice maker hookup and water line cap, white paint, PineSol (used the whole bottle!), contact paper, painter's tape, and new door handle for the back door.

The "before" pictures, sigh...scary stuff...be afraid, be very afraid.  The "after" photos  I made using the very nifty featured called "Make Panoramic Photo" in Vista's "Windows Live Photo Gallery"  program.  You take a bunch of different photos, and it will "stich" them together, to make a panoramic photo.  It actually works quiet good, although some of the alignments are a bit off - honestly, my wall's not split like it shows in a few of these.  But I thought they gave a much better idea of the finished kitchen.  Well, almost finished... I still have to clean the ceiling, mop & shine the floor, replace a light switch, a few minor things that I'm not worried about right this instance.  Anyway, here they are, enjoy!

 

[caption id="attachment_147" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Orange wall, after."][/caption]

 

 

 

 

The Kitchen, Days 4 and 5: The Pantry Wall Continued

These last few days have been spent dealing with the rest of the kitchen floor and finishing the pantry wall.  Underneath where the refrigerator was, in front of the pantry door, the floor had buckled due to water damage caused by a mouse chewing through the water line to the ice maker about six years ago.  Some water had seeped around the edges of the linoleum in the pantry at the time, causing water to get under the flooring.  But I thought at the time that some judicious hole-drilling would minimize that problem, and by drilling holes, most if not all of that inter-floor-layer water would drain to the crawl space and out.  Which, in fact, it did.

In and of itself, I wasn't too worried about the buckling, either, since I thought it was just the linoleum flooring that had buckled, and knew over time it would eventually lay back down flat, especially with the heat of the refrigerator on top of it.  Well, as I discovered, of course that didn't happen.  I cut into the 1980's layer of linoleum, hoping I could just do some trimming of it to get it to lay flat then cover it up with the rest of
the stick-on tiles I had from when I first covered the floor some eight years ago.  Well, below the 1980's layer is the 1970's layer of
linoleum, of which below that is a layer of thin plywood, sitting over the 1960's layer of linoleum.  (I swear every owner of this house has
added a layer of flooring in the kitchen, myself included!)  When the flood of water from the mouse-chewed water line seeped through those holes I drilled in an effort to avoid water spreading between the layers, desiring for it to just drain out, I inadvertently exposed that plywood to the water.  It buckled.  Bad.  No quick cutting and splicing here, damn it.  A few screws to "pull" it down to the subfloor won't work, either.

By the way, the main reason I didn't just pull the entire kitchen floor up when I recovered it eight years ago is simple:  Linoleum flooring prior to the early 1980s contains asbestos.  I already created a hazardous waste situation when I remodeled the bathroom
nearly ten years ago.  Back then, not knowing better, I actually pulled all five layers of flooring up in the bathroom, three layers of various linoleum, two subfloors, and a layer of 1950s Tri-Bond plastic tile (man did someone love that stuff ... it was and still is all over this house!)... I'll never forget the panic I caused my garbageman at the time when he saw a trash can full of asbestos-laden, broken-up, loosely piled ancient flooring in the can!  (Never had a garbageman knock on my door, red-faced and hysterical, shouting at me, "What the hell are you doing!?!"  Granted, he used a much stronger curse word than "hell"...)  Somewhere around here I'll have to dig up the warning letter I received from some government agency or another (can't remember which) about proper handling of hazardous waste... never had a garbageman report me to authorities before, either.  Don't ask how much of that crap I may have breathed in at the time... I don't know. Fortunately, it was a small bathroom, only 5x6 feet of flooring (five or six layers thick) was removed...

Anyway back to the kitchen floor.  I did get lucky, as the buckling ended at the plywood layer.  The 1960s and below layer weren't buckled; I would only need to deal with this one area of buckled plywood.  Unfortunately, there was no way to just screw the floor down where it was buckled, hoping to suck it down to the subfloor and level it out.  This wasn't something that I could just ignore, either, because every time I open the pantry door, it rubs the floor there and almost gets stuck.  No way to add my layer of flooring and still open the door!  Plus the pantry will be (is now) a high traffic area, so this particular buckle is noticeable, very noticeable.

Fortunately, I happen to own more power tools than most men.  A fact that has both weirdly excited and deeply disturbed more than one
boyfriend over the years.  Pulled out the handy-dandy RotoZip, cut just the plywood layer out, limiting myself to just the area that was buckled.  Placed a few decking screws here and there to reduce the lesser buckling in the area, and went to grab the bucket of self-leveling cement that I know I have out in the Garage of Doom to fill in the hole I just created so the floor isn't 1/4" lower there.

Damn it, the stuff has dried rock-solid... that bucket's been in the garage for at least six years!! It shouldn't have dried out!

Grrr... let's try some thinset mortar.  If it's good enough for ceramic tiles, it should be good enough to level out this hole... nope.  It has dried solid, too, and it's only 8 or 9 years old! Starting to regret the decision to try to get everything done using only stuff I already have on hand... *sigh*...

Well, I could use spackling paste... nah, that's not a good idea :) Not only would it take a week or longer for a 1/4" thick layer of
spackling paste to dry, it'll crack and crumble under repeated foot traffic.

Ahh hah!  The Garage of Doom does contain a solution - silicon caulking!!  Fortunately, I've got tubes of the stuff - I stocked up a few years ago when some home improvement store or another went out of business, got it for like 50 cents a tube! (Pack Rat Alert!) Of courses I can't find
the dang caulking gun, I own three of them (don't ask) and can't find a single one... but no worries.  It's not like I'm needing this to be
a nice, fine, line.  I just tore open the tube and used a putty knife to spread it out, reminding myself it doesn't need to be perfect, just needs to be good.  (I may not have inherited my mother's neatness, but I sure did inherit her  perfectionism! *grins*)  Caulking is flexible and waterproof, so it'll do the trick perfectly. Some bleach on the patches of mold (fortunately, dried and dead mold) that I exposed, and let it all dry overnight. 

Well, actually, as it turns out, it took about three days for the silicon to completely set and dry.

After the silicon dried, I put down the rest of the stick-on floor tile, actually have enough left over that I could retile the floor in the pantry.
 I think I'll stew on that for a while... if I cover the pantry floor, there will be NO extra tiles left for future repairs, should any be needed.  I think I'll leave it as a future owner option to use that spare tile for the pantry or not.

The kitchen is almost done.  I just need to clean up the mess I made doing all this work, clean the ceiling, move the table and chairs in, and it's all done and ready to go. Probably hang some sort of picture on the wall above the table, it's kinda stark looking there.  It is so decluttered, it actually ECHOs in here!