Strap on your helmets and safety goggles!

Things around here have certainly picked up pace! I am both thrilled and freaked.  Thrilled that we’re seeing progress. Freaked at some of the mess that happens. But no pain, no gain, right? Right?! Either way, things are about to get a lot messier around here so I’d better get used to it. It’s time to put our backs into this project, to really get ‘er done, as they say. So here we go. Full steam ahead!!!

As Banjo Boy and I were reshaping our agendas in preparation for this spring’s construction madness , we came to the conclusion that it is not worth our time to spend a single additional moment scraping down ceilings like we have in the past.

The ceilings have to go. It will be so much easier.

And so they’re going.

This Friday we’re having a dumpster dropped and we’re going hog wiled with demolition. We’re gonna fill that dumpster with former ceiling material, as well as any other building crud that needs to go. The upstairs bathroom floor, the kitchen floor, the downstairs bathroom, all the trim and baseboards (which, by the way, was installed by the previous owner with bathtub caulk!). It’s all going out the door.  In fact, Banjo Boy is working on the downstairs ceiling right now in order to access some ducting that needs repair!

Before I show you more pictures of our house torn down to the studs and crud flying every where…. I wanted to show you a success story so you don’t think that all we do is tear stuff down. Yes, that’s right. We can actually finish a room!

We finally finished the 2nd upstairs bedroom.  It went from looking like this:

And this:

To this:

Isn’t it nice? No more stalactite-ceiling!  Doesn’t it feel… calming?! Soothing? CLEAN?!  Here’s another shot. The curtains had not yet been hemmed….

Here’s a close up of the trim we designed, made, and installed ourselves. It was a relatively easy process (once we invested in a nail gun), and when we ripped the wood ourselves with our table saw… our custom trim was less expensive than even the Home Depot ready-made trim. It’s based on a crasftman style, and I like it because it’s clean and elegant looking. Well… it’s clean and elegant looking once it’s painted. It’s only primed in the picture below.

These shots of the trim are actually from the 1st bedroom/office that we finished. I don’t have a great picture of the entire room, but you can get an idea of it here. We used painters tape (the blue tape) to prevent dripping… but honestly, if you cut in with a small brush when you paint, you can still get a very clean line and not spend so much $$ on painters tape, which can definitely add to your painting costs. It takes patience, a steady hand, and a careful eye…. but I think it beats dealing with that tape, which you still have to battle with when you put it down and take it up. Ugh. Can you tell I don’t like painters tape?

We haven’t yet decided if we’re going to do this trim throughout the entire house or just upstairs. We will definitely keep the craftsman theme and the trim around the doors— but it does take some time to assemble the trim (it’s 4 separate pieces that need to be cut and pieced) and it might be more efficient to run an elegant but even simpler baseboard throughout the rest of the house. Thoughts?