Guest Room - Day 3

Yesterday I removed the carpet from the large closet and began stripping the entry door. Kind of a slow day. It's interesting to look around upstairs it looks like much of the trim and doors were salvaged from other properties. For example the bedroom door and one of the other doors upstairs have a double bevel edge on the panels.

While most of the others have a single bevel.
It also appears that the bedroom door once had a rim style lock instead of the current mortise variety. There is a hole about an inch from the edge of the door that was patched with a dowel at some point.

Guest Room - Day 2

Well it's the end of day 2 the paneling is all down and the carpet om the room is all up. I decided to pull up the carpet because when I get into the stripping I don't want to pull out a carpet sodden with stripper later on in the process. I figure in the past 2 days I've taken the room back about 40 years.

I figure it must have been pretty comical for all 5 feet of me to be carrying these 4 x 8 sheets of paneling down the stairs and hoisting them into the dumpster.

Tomorrow I'm going to remove the carpet from the large closet and start stripping some trim. Rather than starting on the windows I'm thinking of starting on the door instead, since the floor will need to be refinished anyways I'm thinking about doing it in the room itself.

Guest Room - Day 1

Just finished up Day 1. I got the ceiling tiles removed and the furring strips down. The furring strips were probably the most difficult part. Many of them had a lot of nails located all in the same area. Good news is the ceiling looks to be in relatively good condition, although wallpapered of course. I did make kind of a cool discovery. Around the light fixture there is an oval outline. I suspect that at some point the room had a fixture similar to this.


I removed a couple sections of paneling. My goal was to get all of it down but I also neglected to consider the furring strips which was the most time consuming part. This is what was hiding under the paneling. It looks to be the same wallpaper that was in our bedroom except in blue instead of red.

Tomorrows goal is to get down the remainder of the paneling and to get the first window apart.

Home Improvement Week 2009

Due to the crappy economy I am required to take a week of unpaid time off this year. So I've decided to make the best of things and tackle the guest room, the current price holder for the ugliest room in our home. Current goal is to remove the paneling and ceiling tiles and to begin the process of reconditioning the windows by getting the frames and sashes stripped. Hopefully I'll be able to get more done but without knowing the condition of the underlying walls and ceiling it's difficult to know what kind of challenge awaits.

Stairs Updated Photos

Chris installed the final trim for the stairs this past week here are the updated pics.

Here are the stairs with the yellow paint and the repainted grate.

Here is the new attic entrance. Sure beats the heck out of that old piece of paneling.

Back into the game

It's been awhile but we are back to working on the house. We did do a few random projects over the winter. Chris worked on getting his workshop set up and I finished up the door for the bathroom which was one of the hold overs from the kitchen project. I'll have to post about that one later as it was necessary to do some minor repairs to get the bathroom door in order.

This most recent burst of home improvement mojo is due to refinancing, a 2% drop in interest rate was just way to good to pass up. Especially when the mortgage lady thinks the kitchen remodel may jump up the home's value by 10,000. We shall see, but at any rate I want the stairs to be nice and complete because every little bit helps.

Anyways on to the pictures.

Here is what the stairs looked like in March of 2007, it's frightening but this project has been going on for 2 years. Yikes! I guess we let this one spiral a bit out of control.

And here is what they looked like after the removal of the paneling and carpet. Not bad but the tack strip removal and years of carpet encapsulation definitely was a bit rough on them. On a side note look at those awful kitchen walls. It's true what they say it definitely gets worse before it gets better.

After stripping, cleaning, sanding, and 3 coats of Waterlox over the past 3 days they look like this. I'm pretty excited that whatever the next project it won't involve hanging out on the stairs.
Paint will go on over the course of this next week. I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be nice to finally have this wrapped up.