Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The family room: Part I



Yes, that is a window from the living room, looking into another room. A bit weird. It's going to have to come out of there at some point. The room is an old, traditional sunroom. Windows all around the room, and white tile on the floor. Actually, we think the tile is just painted-over stamped concrete. Who knows.

We think this is going to be a great family room/TV room until we take the plunge and finish off the unfinished basement. That's going to take some time for us to get there, and with our two kids, we need a family and kids zone. The tile/concrete is not in the least bit cozy. So, we found a "low-cost" carpet to tide us over in there for a while.

And did I mention the wall paper? Yeah, it's not cute. A bamboo motif of some sort. We decided this will be the first room to really dig into so we have a place to hang out in the evenings.

It our haste to get at least one room done, we decided to try to get the wallpaper down and paint before the carpet was installed (today). The first layer of wallpaper came off pretty quickly. And then...surprise! Another layer underneath, plus the added benefit of it all being held up by nothing more than tack board. No plaster, no drywall. Hmm. Interesting.

I figured I'd try to patch the areas where the tack board was, and then paint over the wallpaper. Great idea, except that not only did the wallpaper buckle, it started peeling more in certain areas.


My darling husband thought it would be fine, but I knew deep-down it wouldn't. I decided to call in some experts, who all gave me different advice. After a very calming trip to Standard Paint and Wallpaper, my new best friend is Andy. Andy verified that my best choice is to strip it all, then paint with an oil-based primer, then float the seams on the walls with mud, prime it again, then spray a texture spray on it....THEN paint it.

We'll see what happens! The good news is, there is carpet...and now I'm going to take the night off for sanity.


Monday, March 15, 2010

In the beginning....



There was carpet. Crap carpet. And a lot of it. So the day we got the key to the house (Tuesday, March 2nd, at around 4:30pm to be exact), Sean and my dad ripped it up. All of it. Our new neighbors were somewhat in awe of the ripping. I made a great first impression by bringing beer and pliers to rip up carpet tacks.

What you are seeing here is my darling husband pulling out the big tacks from Coleman's soon-to-be bedroom.

But, that was the first night. It seemed uber important to pull it all up. Didn't happen. The Stella Artois tasted great, however.

The following photos help document the action of the evening. I should have taken more...


My dad, Denny, sweeping.



The remnants of carpet tacks.

It's about time...


I know, I know...I promised I would document it all. It's been a bit crazy this past week, and taking pictures has been my downfall. Our new house in Yakima - 303 N. 22nd (otherwise known as Linden Way) has so far been pretty darn great. The real estate flier called our house a "grand lady" just waiting for the right family to bring her back to her old glory. She is grand, indeed. A classic colonial, built in 1924. Poor thing has been pretty neglected, though, and I am really excited to make her shine.

Aside from being empty and very echo-ey, I can envision what we want. The trouble is going to be getting there, because it's basically going to be me during the week, and me and Sean during the weekends. In other words, it's going to be slow going. But, exciting at the same time. With that, I give you...The Russel's Redux!