4100 Updates Week Two (Monday – Thursday)

Monday my mom and I spent a couple/few hours over there- she cleaned out (vacuumed) the heat registers, took the shop-vac to the floors where all the nails and staples were pulled, and helped clean up the wallpaper debris that was on the floor.  I spent my time measuring the range and cabinet in the kitchen so I could shop later for some solutions (see previous post).  Then I pulled all the staples from Bedroom 2, took all the closet doors down, and worked on pulling staples from the stairs.  I also swept the loft bonus room.  Jim spent a couple hours after work pulling more staples & nails from the floors, got everything off the stairs (!!) and took a stab at getting the tiny wallpaper debris off the walls.  Total hours spent that day between all three of us: 7.5

Tuesday my mom covered the daycare for a couple hours so I could go to the ReStore (Habitat for Humanity) and Parr Outlet to look at base cabinets.  Parr has a promising looking solution for $325. That’s assembled and finished- painted white and ready to install!   It’s a solid slab drawer style, nothing fancy.  It only has 3 drawers instead of 4, but it meets our dimensions requirement.  I didn’t take a picture, but the drawers are a flat slab style, nothing fancy.  Once we learned that replacing the cabinet IS a viable option, Jim went over after work and tore out the cabinet between the range and the fridge.  

Yay for the tile backsplash and tile flooring being left intact and still perfect!

While Jim did that, I met with a second drywall guy, his bid was about the same price.  He suggested we do it right and pull the wallpaper off the upstairs loft rather than mudding/skimming over it.  So after he left, Jim and I spent about 2 hours pulling wallpaper from the hallway side of the wall.  It was a slow process.  Of course the backing was left behind, but the paper was off.

Yes, there is drywall mud on top of the wallpaper.  Geez.

Total hours spent that day between the two of us:  5.0

Wednesday my sub called and let me know that she had the afternoon free if I wanted her.  I had called my first drywall guy (Baltazar) earlier in the morning and asked him to reconsider his price.  I let him know that we had done a lot of prep work for him already- peeling the wallpaper off Bedroom 2 (so he can patch and texture it rather than having to install new sheetrock over it), and we’d peeled the wallpaper off the upstairs loft (the hallway side at least).  He wanted to see it again before comitting to a price, so I met him over there at 11:30.  We agreed on a price and he said he’d get started THE NEXT MORNING!!  Oh boy.  And he confirmed that yes, all the wallpaper and backing really should be removed from the upstairs.  My mom came over and the two of us worked for about 2 hours, peeling wallpaper from the loft bedroom (inside) and I used the steamer to scrape the paper backing off both sides of the wall.  We only worked as high as we could reach and called it quits by 2:15 in the afternoon.

Jim went over after work to peel the paper up the rest of the way.  While he waited for me to arrive, he peeled the caulk from around the bathtub- yuck.  He also pulled off some sticky goo that was left behind from a shampoo dispenser, and there were some decorative plastic glued on tiles in random spots- so he scraped those off, too.   When I got there, we got busy with the wallpaper backing/glue removal.  It went fast- I used the steamer, he used a water sprayer, we scraped and scraped and were completely done with it in just over an hour!

Home by 9:00pm!   Total hours spent that day between the three of us: 9.5

Thursday Baltazar and his crew did their first round of work- scraping off the gunk from the Master Bedroom, skimming the main bathroom, taping the corner and skimming all the damaged walls and funky areas in Bedroom 2, and taping and skimming the upstairs loft room (hallway side and bedroom side).

Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of the bathroom to show how bad it was, and I’ve already shown you the scope of the work needed in Bedroom 2.  But if you don’t recall the damage in the Master Bedroom…. this is what it looked like:

There are three of those giant globs- each about 12″ diameter- the photo does absolutely zero justice in showing how big and thick and globby they are.  He originally thought he might need to cut the sheetrock out and start over, but he was able to scrape those globs off and start fresh.

What I especially love about Baltazar is that he’s a perfectionist and will tackle areas that need improvement- even when they are on different walls!

I arrived at 11:30 to tackle installing a coded deadbolt (so we don’t have to leave hidden keys for workers!), and tackled removing the calendar quotes from the attic room.  I’m so sick of scraping paper off walls!  Ugh!  

And this stuff is literally GLUED on with something suuuuuper strong.  Steaming them hasn’t worked, fabric softener hasn’t worked, hot water hasn’t worked.  This time I opted for scrubbing them dry with a copper coiled scrub pad, that didn’t work either.  And there’s so many of them.  On three of the walls….and two of those walls are TWENTY feet long!

We told Baltazar that we WOULD like him to paint the Family Room ceiling.

He said he’d have his crew do that on Friday so I needed to go get 2 gallons of paint for them to use and have them there by morning….so I scattered off to pick up paint and find a solution to the sticker quotes.  The “paint expert” at Home Depot said that nothing will take it off if we can’t get underneath them.  I told him I’ve tried scrapers, wallpaper shredders, sprays, a steamer, it just ain’t budging.  He suggested a citrus spray that they use there to clean the HD racks (when they remove price stickers, this stuff cleans the residue left behind).  I bought a bottle and went back to the house to give it a go.  No luck.  Well, I mean it HELPED but I haven’t made any more progress REMOVING them.

Baltazar said at this point he would just sand them down, primer them, then retexture the whole room (because there’s so many it would just be better to retexture the whole thing).  Of course, if HE does it, he wants $200 for that.  So I’ll keep plugging away and see if I can make progress.

The only time I spent at the house was during daycare hours….I think I put in about 2 hours.  OH, but I did  make some serious progress on the cabinet doors!  All the fronts have had their holes filled and sanded and re-grained.  Check it out:

We decided we would take the night off- we need to hit up Costco and do our Superbowl party planning, etc.

OH, but I have outstanding news!!  I went to Parr again on Thursday (taking in my drawer sample) and discussed options with them.  The rep there brought in their actual custom cabinet guy to look at it and he said there’s no way…that a router to do that type of edge doesn’t even exist now.  So that means we’ll have to have a completely different set of drawers.  BUT, A BRILLIANT idea hit me…. there’s only 4 other drawers in that kitchen.  What if….what if we could reface those 4 drawers to match the new drawers in the new cabinet?  I had taken a drawer front off one of the smaller drawers so I could take it in with me.  The existing drawers have the front built right in, it’s not a separate piece that is added on to a drawer box.  If you take the front off, the box only has three sides.  I raced to the rental house and put the 3-sided drawer onto the guides and slid it shut- and YES!! It goes all the way back!  All we’d have to do is cut the current drawer faces so that they act as drawer boxes instead of drawer fronts, and order new faces and screw them to the drawer boxes!