Our New Old House

Well, here it is, folks!  The reason I haven’t been writing many updates to my blog (aside from the appalling lack of work I’ve gotten done around the house) is that I’ve been putting together this lovely new home for my blog!  Please take note, update your links, and please excuse my dust, because like everything else in my life, the site is still under construction in some spots.

Lots of good exciting stuff coming soon, though.  For example, I was surprised with a houseful of furniture!  Also, I get to use spray paint soon.  Oh, and we’ve been drawing graffiti on our bathroom wall.  Lots of good things to look forward to.

So see you next time!  Same Bat time, NEW Bat website!  (That sounded cooler in my head.)

I enlisted Brandon’s help this weekend in mixing plaster for me while I put it on the walls. Eventually he started putting it on the walls himself, so that part got boring, but together we finished patching all the cracks, holes, and corners in the front bedroom.

Pictures!

My first corner!

Kind of blotchy after wet sanding.

See how bad our corners are? This one has fiber tape over it.

Gosh, is that how my hair looks from the back?

I’m not particularly proud of how this corner came out. I’ll sand it down a bit and add another smoother layer.

Ok, enough about the plaster. Let’s talk about the weather! It’s been cold here! So cold I can’t think up a colorful simile with which to describe how cold it’s been. (Leave me a comment if you’ve got a good one.) Anyway, it was a great opportunity to show just what a difference plastic sheeting can make when you’ve got leaky windows and worthless storms.

Here we see a window with plastic sheeting intact. Notice: NO FROST! That means no warm, moist air is leaking out into the frigid outdoors, and no frigid outdoor air is leaking inside.

Now let’s look at a window on which the integrity of the plastic sheeting has been compromised by the claw of a scheming cat.

And in other news…

I FOUND MY SCRAPER!!!

See if you can spot it in this photo:

How about now?

Yes, folks, the scraper was INSIDE Brandon’s bicycle. How it got there I’ll never know. But I’ll tell you, the only way I found it was by buying three new scrapers of the exact same kind that very morning. (Still sale priced at Menard’s, btw.) After I’d safely tucked them away in my tool box where they belong, the prodigal scraper glinted at me from inside the bicycle and we were tearfully reunited.

If I can stop hiding things from myself, this house may actually get done someday!

Don’t adjust your set, you’re still at Our New Old House written by Kelli and Brandon about our bungalow in Des Moines (with occassional appearances by Zoot and Scratch, our cats!)  I just got tired of the fixed width of my previous layout showing up all scrunched to the left of a widescreen monitor.  This theme will expand to fit your monitor.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be customizing some of the CSS to make it a little more homey.  Like most of my recent projects, I’m a total newb at CSS so if you notice any glaring and embarrassing mistakes, please drop me a line. 

Other than that, look for the same sardonic wit, quixotic optimism, and random drivel you’ve come to expect from the doorstep of 1622 York St. 

I’ve made a little more progress on the walls in the front bedroom.  It’s a slow process and I’m maybe working a little too meticulously.  I worry that I’m trying to be a perfectionist with these walls.  One of my fellow housebloggers at This Old Crack House is crazy for smooth walls and I may be sliding down that slippery slope.  It starts with patching a few cracks before priming.  It ends with applying a skim coat over the whole room and agonizing over every tiny ripple and dent.  I’m not there yet, but I can see it from here!

 I did my first corner last night.  Pictures are coming soon, I promise.  All the corners in this room are cracked and separated.  Structurally, the walls are sound, it’s just that nobody repaired the plaster that cracked as the house settled, so the cracks have just been growing under layers of wallpaper for 50 years or so. 

 Like I said before, I’ve never done this plaster thing before so when someone recommended using a wet sponge to smooth the plaster after it had dried, I figured I’d try it.  A sponge didn’t really do much, but a regular kitchen scouring pad worked great.  Nate, my friend!  Why are you submitting your lungs, your eyes, and your roommates to the dust of dry sanding?  Wet sanding is the way to go, bro!  Maybe dry sanding is faster?  Anyway, there will be no dust angels in my house, at least not from plaster dust!  Maybe I can make paint chip angels when I start stripping the woodwork.  (shudder)

I did a corner over the door last night and it turned out pretty good!  When I started getting sleepy and frustrated, though, I put away the plaster and worked on taping the rest of the cracks in the room in preparation for plastering later.  I got almost all the taping done last night so I’ll have a jump on things when I get back to it this weekend.  We’re supposed to get a snow storm so it’ll be a good weekend to stay inside playing with white powdery stuff.

 Let’s see… what else have I been doing around the house?  Oh, I’ve been stripping more paint off the door in the basement, getting Brandon’s help on getting the paint off one of the registers using ammonia, and perhaps most dramatically, continuing my quest for a razor scraper.

 Those cheapo utility scrapers just aren’t cutting it for me anymore.  So on my last trip to Menard’s I picked up a better quality, slightly larger hand held razor scraper.  I got it home, tried it out, found myself perfectly satisfied with it, and promptly LOST it somewhere in my house!  I don’t know what could have happened to it!  Somewhere between pausing in scraping the dining room floor and stepping into the hallway to get the broom and dustpan, I put it down somewhere and haven’t been able to find it since.  Brandon helped me look for it all that evening.  We continued the search the next day.  We overturned every item in our house, looked in all the least likely places.  I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster we looked in the refrigerator!  It’s still missing.  I may have to buy another one until it turns up.  I hope they’re still sale priced at Menards when I go. 

That’s it for my update for now.  Happy Wednesday, everybody!

This weekend I finished scrubbing the walls in the front bedroom and finally got to start patching nail holes, cracks, and imperfections.  For the small stuff I used this lightweight spackle stuff.

It was totally fun to work with. It had the consistency of marshmallow fluff!

Patching nail holes was super easy!

Now you see it…

Now you don’t…. or, WON’T after I paint.

After I did all the nail holes and imperfections, the room looked like it had a bad case of the chicken pox covered with calamine lotion.

Since I was having so much fun patching things I decided to take a stab at repairing the larger cracks. Keep in mind I’ve never done this before, so if I look a little petrified in my photos, that’s why. Someone at Menards recommended this self adhesive fiber tape. It seemed pretty easy to work with and I had the set of cracks over the door taped in no time.

Brandon had some fun playing with the macro setting on my camera.

And then he had some fun playing with the color enhance setting on my camera.

Wow, with that color enhance thing, all the little cuts and knicks and raw spots on my hands really look awful!

I’ve never worked with plaster before, so I took some time mixing it just right. The Country Crock tub Brandon emptied earlier while making his awesome mac and cheese worked great for a plaster tub. It took a little while to get the hang of applying the plaster. And I didn’t know how fast it would start to harden! Holy cow that’s fast!

More pictures later of the sanding and the biggest challenge, the cracked corners! I hope to get started on those tonight.