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The Bedroom Chronicles Pt. 2 – What now?
With the drop tiles, track, and all the scrap wood removed, the husband and I had to stop and weigh our options. It was obvious why there were drop tile ceilings, now that we had seen first hand the condition of the plaster. I thought I had better pictures of the ceiling but apparently, that is not the case. Shocking, and honestly, a little frustrating. Can nothing in this house be simple and easy? (As Christy has so expertly phrased it, my house needs Jesus, plain and simple.) That left us with the dilemma of what to do next. Given the state of things, neither I or the hubby were…
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The Bedroom Chronicles – Part 1
To give you a bit of backstory, we have been meaning for some time to move down from the 3rd floor which is a converted attic space. That’s where our bedroom currently resides. With no central A/C, summers have become a nightmare with temperatures on the 3rd floor easily reaching 100
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Planking – what NOT to-do
It is no secret that I am an avid admirer of just how clean planking looks and how it has the power to transform a small misshapen nook of a dining room into a light and open space. Four years ago, we decided to embark upon our first DIY-Planking escapade and two years later, with a lot of breaks in between, we were finally able to enjoy our success. Was it perfect? Far from it but from the picture below, it’s hard to see the imperfections as they just added to the charm. Despite the unexpected issues we came across, after thinking ourselves newfound experts thanks to endless blog tutorials…
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Problem-solving on the fly – Not this again!
“Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?” “I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen.” -Groundhog Day – 1993 It’s always nice when things fall neatly into place, but quite often it seems that will not be the case because the house throws you a curveball or three and suddenly it’s as if you’re stuck in the Groundhog’s Day of home remodeling. Since we started on this house 3 1/2 years ago, we’ve learned more than our fair share of lessons the difficult way. Not for lack of trying mind you, more so due to … what we will call a lack of information.…
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Paintbrush in hand and here we go!
It’s been a busy few months for us at Parkside. Life just keeps rolling by (brakes anyone?) and we’ve been hard-pressed to keep up with everything going on. At least now that the holidays in full swing, I have a moment, albeit a very brief one, to stop and play a bit of catch up on all these projects. Our biggest update to the house in recent weeks has been painting. It’s only taken 3 years to get to this point but it’s finally happening! That’s right – we PAINTED. I’ll let you have a moment to let that news sink in. (Technically we did paint a couple years ago…
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Spackle & Sand 2.0
It’s day #22,147,895 of remodeling here at Parkside. As of late, it’s been a seemingly never-ending repetition of spackle and sanding. We’ve just started in on our 4th? 5th? 5-gallon bucket of drywall mud. The drop cloths are being washed for the second time in a week and my floors are covered in a fine white dust from sanding which makes me wonder if they’ll ever be clean again. The hubby and I spent a good portion of our weekend working in the hopes that we’ll get one step closer to painting (the paint that’s been sitting in our someday-rec room/current storage of whatever room since Memorial Day weekend.) And while…
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Living the spackler’s life
Progress on the house hasn’t been booming. We hit what I’d guess would be a lull or maybe a slump after vacation and now we’re slowly crawling back out. Slump aside, I’m starting to feel like we’ll never get past the spackle and sand phase of the renovation. Ceilings, walls, patch here, more walls. Someone save me from the madness! Our current project – the one we’ve been at for awhile now – is corner bead spackling. The corner beads are pretty much all mounted so now the task of mudding over to make them smooth and even with the wall. It’s not SO terrible really, just a slow process…
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The Joys of Corner Beading
Okay ladies and gents, this week’s lesson is on corner beads! While it sounds like a super fun craft activity, corner beads are a staple in home building. Apparently they are used to protect the outside corners of your drywall. Now I grew up in the 80’s where people used plastic exterior corner guards so I didn’t even know that these existed until this year. Vinyl corner beads seem to be the way to go nowadays so we jumped on board the trend train and a-wayyyy we went! They’re actually quite easy to install, messy but easy. Whereas metal corner beads need to be nailed or screwed into the wall,…
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Wall Skimming 2.0: More lessons to learn
So 20 YouTube videos and 2 skimmed walls later, the hubby and I are total pros at this now. If only. At this point, I’d say we’re semi-capable DIY-ers who are having lots of fun with our hands-on learning. Here’s a list of things we’ve learned so far: 1. Consistency matters. There doesn’t seem to be a set formula for determining how much water to mix into the drywall mud i.e. 1/2 c. water to 1 g. of drywall joint compound. YouTube and DIY blogs have recommended the thickness be somewhere between mayonnaise and creamy peanut butter. Real talk here: I love that people are using condiments as a reference for mud thickness. I mean, how…
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Floor Money, Floor Life – Part 2
So. Floors. More specifically the carpeting. I apologize for the 4 million pictures on my last post but it was necessary to show exactly how things were. It took us an extra week but we finally have gorgeous new flooring and carpeting. It was supposed to be a back to back install. Vinyl one day and carpet the second. Instead there was a slight weather-related hiccup with getting the carpet installed. Plans. Heh. Why do we even bother sometimes? Carpet install day arrived, pouring rain and all. The installer team was concerned about delivering in the rain and us not having a space available (at the time) to cut the carpet indoors. We…
