25 gallons of primer later...

December 26th, 2013

This is our newly constructed ceiling.  It's made out of unfinished pine and although it is beautiful just as nature intended, it's a little too cabin in the woods looking for our house design, so just like the walls it gets a nice coat of white.

We spray it with primer with the paint sprayer and then two coats of Glidden White on White satin paint.

 

And just to make sure we get every surface white, we spray primer on the basement floor.  Why?  Good question, because when you go to buy carpet they will ask if the floor is primed.  Priming gives the carpet glue better adhesion, it also acts as a waterproofer since cement is actually porous.   And we already had the sprayer out and filled with primer so it was a great time to get it done. 

Aarrrr or you'll walk the plank.

December

 December 28th, 2013

 It's hard to see what this is but it's a plant ledge over the staircase in our house.  And it's really high, pretty sure no plant will be surviving up there.  Well, we have to prime and paint the stairs.

So we rent this aluminum walk plank thingie from the local Menards.  Yes, you can rent a death trap for only $0.50 day.   I don't understand why they rent DIYers with no business doing a tight rope act one of these.  They didn't even offer life insurance to us, wonder why?

Now I might be going on a ledge here, but that is dedication to decor.  I shimmed out there and painted the stairwell.  Not sure how often the decorations in the plant ledge are getting updated.

I'm dreaming of a white Chirstmas takes on a whole new meaning.

December 19th-27th, 2013

The priming marathon begins.  It has us 6 full vacation days to get every room primed.   We start off by patching any holes in the whole and fixing any blemishes, sanding that down, then dry mopping the walls to get the dust down, then wiping them down with tack cloths, vacuuming everything, floors, outlets, windows.

 

And then finally taping off the ceilings.

And covering all the windows and doors with plastic.

We borrowed my brother's scaffolding which really comes in handy with our ceilings.

Then we broke out the paint sprayer to apply the primer.  I picked up a Graco MagX5 refurbished unit online and boy was I glad I did.

Our master bedroom is the first room primed.

Seem easy, right.  Well, we actually can only use the sprayer to get the primer

on the wall and had to follow behind the sprayer with the roller and back rolled.

 There all white.  But we're not done yet...

Garage cleanup and priming.

December 16th, 2013

It's warm, unseasonably warm, like in the 60's in December warm, so we figured it's our only opportunity before spring to paint the garage while it's relatively clean and empty.

So we empty it out.

Buy some primer.

And get to priming.

Looks better already.

Then we wash the floors and buy some paint for the floor in a Pewter color.  Well, I start painting and it looks more like baby purple than a gray.  So we stop, except then it gets cold the next day, too cold to continue work in the garage.  So I guess painting will now wait until spring.

Sanding the subfloors

December 14th, 2013


So before we start dust removal, we create some of our own.

 By renting one of these, a floor sander.  We needed to sand the joints on the subfloor before we can install the wood floors later and what better time than when the house is already full of dust and it got a lot of the drywall mud off the floors.

This is what a strip of floor looks like after you sand.  The green lines are joints between the subflooring.

The Dust Bowl 2013

December 14th

The drywallers have left and we finally get to start really working on the house.  Now new houses are dirty, very, very dirty.

This is our new friend.  In fact, this one doesn't survive till the end of the dust extermination and we have to buy a larger one.  You think your newly drywalled house will look awesome, it really will look like this.

This corner, heavily mudded.  We've got some cleanup to do.  The picture is so grainy because there is so much dust in the air.

And this, I'm pretty sure there is a whole outlet under there.  At least I remember paying for a whole outlet.  We have to go around a cut out the tape and scrape the mud out of the outlets.

 And vacuum out all of them as the dust will get into your paint and it's better to remove the dust now then later when the electricians come back and dump all over your floors.

See, that's better.

And get yourself a bucket of this.  I like this kind as it goes on pink and turns white as it dries.

And you need some of these.

Because you're going to have a lot of stuff like this to fix.  Here the drywallers left cuts in the drywall that isn't going to be covered up by the switch plate.  We spend about 6 days cleaning dust, fixing drywall, and priming before the dust finally settles.

Tada....drywalling finally done.

December 8-10th, 2013

The upstairs ceiling is finished and the blow-in insulation gets, well, blow in.  Yay, which means the drywallers get back to business.

Remember this hole we made to put a in recessed dryer vent.

Fixed.  Look, you can't even tell we cut a hole.

Mudding going on everywhere.

More heaters drying the mud.

A big box arrives, can't be my Xmas present, it's too early.  Although, I was really good this year...

It's the fridge I ordered during the Black Friday sales.  Too bad it goes back in the box to keep the dust out of it until the kitchen is ready.