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Fresh off the heals of updating/renovating our previous house and getting it on the market, we jumped at the opportunity to purchase another house at significantly below market value in an older, established small neighborhood. We knew/know the neighborhood quite well as my son's Godfather lives here and we've been coming to their house/neighborhood for years for Halloween, football parties, shrimp/crab boils, and all sorts of fun stuff. Houses are going on the market quietly before "officially" going to sale and basically, the neighborhood kind of recruits people to buy. Most "new" people already know people in the neighborhood and people know the people moving in before they buy. There's a good mix of people - from blue collar types to professionals to a guy that owns a couple Burger King franchises. People are always outside, they maintain their yards and houses, and everyone knows everyone else. A good number of kids ranging from 3-14 years old. Beyond the neighborhood, there's a few reasons why I was extremely eager to get this house: 1) Roof is only 2 years old 2) The previous owner spent a pile of cash on a brand new 18 seer air conditioning system (in and out). All aluminum construction (to avoid dissimilar metals). Smart thermostat, 2 filters plus hepa filter plus UV lights for air purification. It's seriously quite nice. 3) Top notch stainless appliances in the kitchen that together cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $8,000 to $10,000. 4) The insulation in the attic was replaced about 3 years ago. Further, the attics (over main house and garage) have all had plywood floors, lighting, and outlets installed for additional storage 5) Big garage This is going to be a long term project, with some immediate goals over the next week: 1) Scrape popcorn ceilings, skim coat, prime, paint (house is 2550 sq ft) 2) Demo painted over wood paneling in den, hang drywall, mud/tape, prime, paint (den is 19'x18.5'). The only reason I'm going to do these items NOW is that the house is empty. I don't want to have to move furniture a couple times to do the work I want to do. Rather than pictures at this point, here's some video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjvdExAvsmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDteQ9jBx78 Tonight, I'm going to start scraping ceilings. Initially, I'm going to do the master/master bath/closet, my kid's room, the hallway, den, and kitchen. At some point, I'll be taking a crowbar and hammer and ripping out the wood panel in the den. I'll take that opportunity to replace the insulation, reposition the outlets, and replace the door going to the patio. It's going to be a long haul, but unless something unexpected happens, the wife and I expect to stay here the rest of our lives.
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Mar 27, 2015 15:42
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 08:19 |
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Popcorn on the laundry room ceiling has been removed: [Timg] http://imgur.com/GY4I86g[/Timg]    Not a difficult job, just messy. Using a hot water/soap mix and a 10", it came off quite easily. The difficult part is going to be smoothing out the rough spots with drywall compound. And my mudding skills are, shall we say, subpar which is why I'm starting in the laundry room. There is definitely an art to it.
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Mar 29, 2015 14:40
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I don't think you can nest url tags in timg, and you definitely need the file extensions in there. Ceiling looks good!
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Apr 1, 2015 04:57
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Posting from a tablet and pulling links from the imgur app probably screwed it up. But thanks! Will make a big update/effort post maybe tomorrow but... Over the course of the last four near 20 hour days, the wife and I have: Yanked down over 500 sq ft of wood paneling Moved power outlets Moved coaxial and phone outlets Hung, taped, mudded, sanded 18 sheets of drywall Scraped popcorn off near 2500 sqft of ceiling Mudded, sanded near 2500 sqft of ceiling Tomorrow is cleaning every floor, wall, and ceiling of said 2500 sqft house with sponges and tsp Friday is priming said drywall and ceilings Saturday is painting of said ceilings and den with new drywall Sunday is cutting, priming, painting of trim and crown molding Take the week off from home renovation, then hang trim and crown molding, finish putting in new fans and lighting, then move in. Then we take a break, then commence to working on the rest of the house. I figure at that point, we'll work on one room every couple of months. Proud of the wife. She's been a trooper. Almost there...
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Apr 2, 2015 05:43
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Wow that sounds like alot of work scraping all the popcorn off the ceilings. I smoothed all my popcorn ceilings last year but I just got some of this stuff: http://www.diy.com/departments/gyproc-quick-dry-powder-jointing-filling-10kg/35736_BQ.prd Just did two coats straight on the top of the popcorn, no priming/keying/scraping/anything. Sanded it down after with a big block and job was sorted. I'd highly recommend it. I'd never so much as filled a rawl plug hole before but it wasnt that hard to use at all and finishes really well. Moving my phone socket and TV & Internet coax boxes are next on my list actually, was it just as easy as taking out the old ones and punching down the wires into the new one? Ahdinko fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 15:55
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Scraping the popcorn really isn't that bad - but that depends on whether or not it's been painted at any point since it was put up and how long ago it was. What I can recommend is the following: 1) Shut off your A/C system. Pull the fuse if you have to. 2) Make sure the room/house is empty. 3) Get at least 3 mil plastic and put on the floors. Tape the edges as best as you possibly can. 4) Get at 1 mil plastic and tape the walls. Have the wall plastic overlap the floor plastic so everything falls in 5) Get a garden sprayer and wet the ceiling and work in 5'x5' sections. Not too much otherwise it could damage the drywall underneath and it turns into a oatmeal consistency mess. The water is to help scrape it off and mitigate dust. I would routinely spray/mist the plastic on the walls and floor to further help trap it. 6) Use a good sharp scraper, about 6" or 8" ought to do it. Keep the edge clean to minimize gouging. 7) Let the ceilings dry, and with a bright light being projected at an angle, look for rough spots. Fill in screw/nail/gauge spots and mud/sand accordingly. If you're smart with your drywall compound and use small amounts, you can effectively sand with a slightly damp sponge. Go small and increase as you go. Allow suitable dry time. 8) When done, pull the plastic off the walls, fold into the plastic on the floor and toss it. Even with all that plastic and taping and water, you'll still have dust. It's unavoidable. I recommend a TSP wash down of the walls with sponges. 9) Prime the ceilings with a good quality oil based primer. I'm partial to Zinsser over Killz. It's more expensive, but worth it, IMHO. I don't ever go cheap on primers and paints. Benjamin Moore paints are all that will ever go on my walls and trim, with Sherwin Williams being a second choice. And I'll never use a primer and paint in one. My experience with it has never been positive. 10) After it dries, recheck with a light, and smooth where necessary 11) Paint with ceiling white. I used flat as a semigloss will show every single hump, valley, mistake, etc. A 12'x12' room, or about 140 sqft of ceiling, can be scraped in less than an hour. The time sink is the prep work but will pay HUGE dividends at the end in terms of clean up time and effort. If you have someone to help you tape, all the better. For the gang boxes, i replaced all mine and at most, moved them one stud either direction. There's no better time to do it than when the drywall is off. I also replaced all the insulation on the outside facing walls. I wanted to put sound insulation up as well, since we have a pretty decently loud home theater system with 2 400W subwoofers, but it just wasn't in the budget. Some pictures! Wall with 1982 painted over wood paneling:  Wall with paneling removed (different wall, but whatever):  Wall with new drywall installed:  Ceiling time! With popcorn:  After removal, slick, prime, paint:  It was a metic poo poo ton of work, but I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. We are still cleaning, though. Even with the precautions we took, it's still a mess. We had planned on scrubbing the house anyway, we're just doing everything twice. Every quote we received for the work we wanted done was in the $5,000 to $7,500 range. We did it for about $1,000 to $1200 over the course of 6 days. We're still cleaning and have the floors and 7 rooms to go (4 bedrooms, two bathrooms, walk in closet). The laundry room, kitchen, dining room, foryer, and hallway to the bedrooms are done (minus floors, of course). I've just run out of steam and days off. Tide fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 16:45
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Who's the horny toad?
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Apr 8, 2015 01:45
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Ahahahaha I have no idea. Pretty much every wall had something written on it. There were also "for a good time call xxx-xxxx" on pretty much all the drywall on the other side
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Apr 8, 2015 02:21
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Tide posted:Ahahahaha I have no idea. Pretty much every wall had something written on it. There were also "for a good time call xxx-xxxx" on pretty much all the drywall on the other side Was it a good time?
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Apr 8, 2015 03:31
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As much as I wanted to call the number, I elected not to
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Apr 8, 2015 03:43
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Wrong thread
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Apr 8, 2015 03:44
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All rooms cleaned except hard core deep cleaning of the floors. Have cleaners for those set up Wednesday. Tenatively, schedule for the rest of the week is as follows: Monday night - walk through, making a long term update task list for after move in. Try and figure out why one room has decided it doesn't want power. It worked a couple days ago, but now, despite multiple resets of the breaker, no power at any outlet. Tuesday - Paint den, paint trim and crown moulding for den Wednesday - floors being cleaned Thursday - set up TV, internet services Friday - movers scheduled, weather permitting Saturday - moving rest of current house into "new house" Sunday - clean old house to prepare for our tenants that are moving in next week-ish* *I'm also a landlord now. God help me.
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Apr 13, 2015 21:46
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HIRE A MANAGEMENT COMPANY. Seriously. The cost is worth not having your phone ring at 3am for broken poo poo, and they generally have contacts with maintenance companies for major stuff that needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW. As for the powerless room, get a contactless AC detector (whatever you call them). Remove the switch/outlet plates, figure out where the power has died. If every single thing in there is dead, it's time to open up the panel and see if the wire has broken or backed out, or if the breaker crapped out. More than likely though, everything is wired via backstab, and the first or second device in the chain failed. It's also possible the neutral for the circuit came loose somewhere, but that's more likely to result in really strange voltages (anywhere from 0 to 240 depending on load on a neighboring circuit - do you get power back in that room if you turn on, say, the electric oven? use a cheap lamp with a low wattage incandescent bulb for this, not anything you care about). Count on the circuit covering more than one room. Also look for a hidden GFCI somewhere, like the garage, a bathroom, laundry room, outside outlet, etc. Depending how old the house is, it may have been legal to tie into a GFCI in a completely different part of the house (my 1994 house, for example, has a GFCI in the garage covering all of the outside outlets and bathroom outlets, and has a hidden GFCI in the master bedroom closet for the jacuzzi bathtub in the master bathroom). randomidiot fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Apr 25, 2015 |
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Apr 25, 2015 08:54
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I thought about going thru a landlord agency but decided to give the first rental a go myself. We will see... As far as the dead room goes, I figured it out. That bedroom is on the same circuit that the back patio and flood lights are on, and the circuit was 'broken' at the switches in the den that I had not reconnected after putting up the drywall  It's all good now, just slowly putting crown molding back in the den for now.
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Apr 25, 2015 14:01
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Crown and shoe molding is up. So is the trim around doors and windows. Taking a bit of a break from that before caulking and painting as I am burned out to the nth degree. So this past weekend, my son and I took off to go fishing all day. He couldn't wait for me to get the boat in the water before trying to get a fish to bite:  Also, dogge says HI 
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May 5, 2015 22:42
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Had a bit of a storm the other day. Lost the Comcast modem, router, UVerse gateway, UVerse TV receiver, the doorbell, and my garage door opener The tree it hit. Probably a 60+ year old pecan tree:  At the rental house? The stove/oven. Yay!
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May 20, 2015 02:29
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