The house…is it done…? Can I come over…? What’s going on with it…? Where are the pictures…?!?!?! …please *pretty smile*
E-mails, texts, tweets, questions…where, when, who, why…
I get it. I get it. I HEAR your calls! LoL (I’m not REALLY laughing out loud, I just got up, and haven’t had my coffee yet…*looks at you through crusty eye boogies* <- you’re welcome for the visual by the way *is quite proud of myself for that*).
So, originally I was planning on talking about the house as I finished each room but TONS…and I do mean tons (not in weight…I don’t know how much you all weigh) of you have been asking for updates. So here I am, to please the masses, grease the wheels, take you on a ride, show you the money (well really lack of…houses are expensive!).
I will try my best to point you to the actual product I used, pictures etc…but feel free to message me if you’re curious about something. So what’s first…
You heard about my move in, but that took time. What was I doing prior to the big move? Lots and LOTS of scraping. *shows my muscles….and bruises*
But first….before pictures. I was so mean. I gave you one measly picture of the front of the house and one of the garage full of stuff. That was enough for you right? 😉 Yeah, didn’t think so. Behold…the before the project starts masterpieces:
First things first… Everything…must…go…Not like throw away go, but moved…you get a storage place, you get a storage place… everything gets a storage place. That is: the bedroom in the basement. You see the boxes from the dining room pictures? Everything in there is my grandma’s. So my mom and I spend an entire day wrapping, and packing things and then my dad helps to move things down into the basement. Packing everything like an expert level of tetris into a tiny bedroom. So that now, the rooms are empty and ready for move in right?
Sure if you like the smell of old lady, popcorn ceilings and things that probably haven’t been washed in at least 1o years.
Task #2 find out if the popcorn ceilings have asbestos. Fun fact, popcorn ceilings put in before 1980 have the potential to have asbestos in them and as much as I wanted those popcorn ceilings gone, I REALLY didn’t want to give my lungs the wonderful treat of asbestos. I like my lungs…they’re nice to me…sometimes…
So how do you test for asbestos…?? You can just direct send it to a lab, but with lots of investigating I discovered that it was kind of expensive (and by kind of I meant HOLY SHNIKES!). What I inevitably chose was an Asbestos kit (the link to purchase the kit is attached to the picture below…go ahead…try it 😉 ).
This way you end up paying for the kit itself (which basically contains a plastic bag and an envelope to mail the sample) and paying for the sample to get tested. The kit I bought at an ACE hardware store for about $12 and the sample to get tested was about $30. Which may seem expensive but most of the other options were a lot more. Then, you just take off a piece of the popcorn ceiling, put it in the bag, mail it, and get your results in about a week to 10 days.
Waiting was WAY harder than I thought it was going to be. Excruciating, tedious, patiently (ok ok…not so patiently), waiting. I wanted to get started RIGHT NOW! Yesterday…the week before.
FINALLY the results come in. There is <1% of material that makes up asbestos and as long as I wear a mask I’m good to go. LETS. DO. THIS.
Now…how do you take off popcorn ceilings? Water, dish soap, a sprayer, and a scraper. Essentially you fill the sprayer with water and dish soap, spray the ceiling down until it’s wet but not soaked, then use the metal scraper to scrape away. Sounds messy right?! Definitely. Do I decide to put plastic on anything to catch everything I scrape onto the floor? NOPE. Because guess what…the carpet is going bye-bye anyway. Scrape…scrape…scrape.
Do you know how long it takes to take off popcorn ceilings? WEEKS. Hours a day for weeks. Now MOST of the time it should come off relatively easy, except this was painted over, and plaster underneith, which means after scrape scrape scraping…I had to scrape scrape scrape some more with a TINY little one inch scraper….so…tedious….I could die. Here’s a couple of pictures during the process:
Good LORD that took forever…and I was getting bruises on my shins from the step ladder. Which there are FAR more fun things you can do to get bruises on your shins. *pauses* ok…that’s not how I meant that…stop it…stop giggling.
Once we were FINALLY done with that..the next step. ALL. CARPET. MUST. GO. Don’t get me wrong, the carpet was generally in decent condition. But I LOATHE carpet. I’m much more of a rug person. Carpets are so much work. When I first checked everything out before starting the project I noted pretty dang good hardwood floors under the carpet. Upon taking everything up there is one corner with mild water damage. After a nice happy sanding (cause sandings can be happy).
What happens next? I wanted most of the bedroom to be finished before I moved in. A sanctuary where after a crappy day (cause I have those…sometimes a lot) I can just relax, take a deep breath and cuddle with my blankets. Now that the popcorn ceilings are off I can paint right? NOPE. ALLLLLLLL the walls, and I mean ALL are textured walls. Was that a thing back in the day? I feel like it must have been a thing. The bedroom ceiling did not have popcorn on it, but it is textured. So that needs to go away… like a lot… Sandpaper: Check. Sander: double check. That’s right, sanding the walls and ceiling with a hand sander. My mom had the pleasure of this job…mostly because like I said earlier…I like my lungs…sometimes. I have some respiratory issues and dust and I are not close friends.
When that was finished it was time to wash down everything in the room so it would be dust free. NOW I can paint. But…what color? For those that don’t know me… I’m AWFUL at making decisions. It’s a form of torture I frequently bestow myself. Like hey I have nothing to do for 3 hours let’s make ONE SMALL decision on something. It took some time. But I came to a small epiphany… instead of trying to design the whole room at once, pick an item I knew I wanted in the room (in this case my comforter) and design it around that. At some point you’ll see the comforter for now…you get to see the room’s progress.
I decided to go with a blue/grey color since my comforter is like a teal/brown. Sherwin-Williams: Jubilee <– click me to see the puuuurdy color. All of the trim was a natural wood stained a dark brown color. Which, I’m also not fond of. So that I decided to go with Sherwin-Williams: Pure White. The doors to the closet were also natural wood. I removed them and haven’t replaced them yet. Here’s some pictures so you can see the paint in progress:
After painting and getting the trim done it was time for simpler things like furniture, rugs, curtains, lights. The light you see above is an old ceiling fan. I hate ceiling fans. So I fixed that. Wayfair is my new friend. After digging around the light section for a little bit I found this beauty: 
It looks very unsuspecting in the picture, but I fell in love with it. Here it is up in the room, both the light itself and the light it casts on the walls…I get TONS of compliments and everyone always asks if it’s the paint on the walls. It’s the fun light!
After the light was put in place I was pretty close to move in time. I know right?! Anticipation was KILLING ME. Last things. Curtains, my bed, and a rug. The curtains and rods I bought at bed bath and beyond. I bought a double rod, then bought sheer curtains that had these see-through branches on them from BranchBrook (<—click here to see). Then on top of those curtains I put a white/grey branched curtain called Alton Print (<—click here to see). While I was doing these things I was working on my bed. I already had a partial wood and metal bed frame in storage. Know what happens to a metal bed frame when it’s in storage for almost 5 years…? Rust…
So MORE work. I sanded the bed frame down, washed it, then spray painted it brown. It didn’t have to be perfect so I didn’t go with the exact color the posts were. Just enough so you couldn’t see the rust on the frame. Nobody was going to be looking down at my bed-frame anyway. Finally the rug. I also got this from Wayfair. I’m like a Wayfair junkie at this point…this was the beginning of my habit. I decided to go for something sturdy but light. It’s an ivory/blue but upon reading the reviews it has a purple tinge to it which honestly turned out perfect. Here’s the rug on wayfair:
After that, all that was left was to get a brand new mattress and move in. 🙂 Here’s what the room looked like just before I started moving all my stuff in:
Next step…movin on in! Does that satisfy your picture craving? LOL I will have plenty more to tell… Sorry I’ve been invisible the last few months. December, January, and February where busy, WTF just happened kinda months. I have several blog entries in progress which hopefully will be finished shortly. But for the time being…enjoy the house pictures. Next I’ll talk about projects, junk finds, a new couch, and the dining room adventure. I know you all can’t wait… I can just hear the fingers typing all the emails and goodies/requests/beggings I’m going to get. Come at me…I’m ready! And no… we are NOT there yet. 😉
The Adventures of A Sarcastic Introvert 