VIB Chronicles

Walls are going up

at least in one of the spare bedrooms! we finally got around to finishing up the drywall box-out for our A/C vents. I spent last couple of weekends with joint compound and mudding and taping knives (I have learned so much!).

 

It was a bit difficult at first, I kept getting air bubbles in the tape and couldn’t get the compound to spread evenly, but I eventually got the hang of it (or so I thought)

With the next layer of compound it became apparent that air bubbles managed to hid in the tape and were making themselves all too apparent.… Read the rest

That will be it, folks

the dryer is here. delivered by home depot, actually ahead of schedule for once.

its the same brand as the washer, but that’s about where the similarities end on the two models. the washer is prior year’s model, so can’t actually get the same dryer. i can’t say i am overly enthused by the combo look, but at this point i just don’t care enough to spend any more time on this.… Read the rest

Ready Strip

The good news is that the peel away did an excellent job:

so much so that layer of paint just came off with the wax paper. awesome, since it takes only 2 minutes. but, since i ran out of peel away i decided to give a try to another product that i got for free from craigslist (someone was done renovating)

Ready Strip! The goo that came out of the bucket looks straight out of goosebumps novels

I decided to do just one plank in case it didn’t work that well.… Read the rest

Fireplace decision

first a rant – i am loosing patience with tumblr, its slow, its down half the time, and the queue feature simply cannot handle more than one timed request. it simply publishes al your posts. we were on vacation for a week, but no one would have noticed if tumblr didn’t screw up. ugh. any expert out there on how to switch content to blogspot or wordpress?

now.

for all my huffing and puffing about wanting my estimate now, we decided to put the fireplace off.… Read the rest

French doors are a royal pain in the butt

Ok so the perfect patio door that would allow lots of light through was stripped, painted, and re-painted. and then it was time to weatherize.

an important step to block rain and wind from coming inside. so sergey got some clear silicone gel for me, loaded it up into one of those gun squirty things, and told me to go for it:

basically its fairly easy – press on then gun, squeeze out the silicone, smooth it out, wipe off excess with paper towels.… Read the rest

Transom – Finished (almost)!

And yet, much remains to be done. like the molding (thankfully we got some very similar molding at the brass knob warehouse). but for now, here’s what happened after peel away layer 1, 2, and 3 failed to take out the gazillion or so layers of paint covering the transom. I gave up on perfection and decided to sand the transom, rosettes and the top portion of molding.

I did use my sander, although I did resort to sanding sponges to do crevices.… Read the rest

Transom Adventures: take 2 & 3

After second application of peel away was removed, and the transom was scrapped for a few hours, it looked worse, if that’s possible. half the molding missing, probably did not make appearances better

 

so back to putty peel away

the crevices in all their (rather gross) glory, after the third round of peel away. discouraging isn’t it?

 

and the overall take — which i decided would have to do for sanding:

… Read the rest

Transom Adventures

With the plan to put in a new patio door, it made sense to tackle the transom and molding around it. One of the features that sold us on the house is the amount of original woodwork intact – moldings, rosettes, stairs, banister, wood paneling, transoms. All covered by layers, and I mean layers, of paint.

I don’t have a very good before shot of the transom, I was so anxious to get to it.… Read the rest