Small wins. I'll take them.

 

This past week, we've worked on several projects, including the bathroom. We've taken out all of the wallboard, and the dropped ceiling in the bathroom, uncovered a previously hidden door,  and got rid of the ugly tub. We'd just pulled the tub outside, and some 'scrappers' came by and asked us if they could take it for us.  Yes, please!  It was a heavy iron tub, and they had all the straps and muscle they needed to take it away. Win/win. 

We've selected some waterproof vinyl planking for the bathroom in a medium grey color. A white vanity with a light grey top, and a 48" shower with a glass enclosure, all ordered from Lowe's.  Yet to select and purchase is the dropped ceiling, which needs to be a kind that's appropriate for bathrooms (not like the  moldy stuff we took out), lights, insulation, wallboard, paint and fixtures.  The plumber is coming this week to rough in the plumbing.  

I took the previously hidden door downstairs to remove the cracked and bumpy paint. We'll plan on painting the side of the door in the bathroom, but it's got so many layers of paint, you can't see the nice molding detail.  Alas, as I was using my heat gun to strip the paint, I had a thought.  The paint that was falling was inordinately heavy.  I realized it was most certainly lead paint. Guess what? You're not supposed to use a heat gun with lead paint, as it makes lead vapors. I'm waiting for my half face paint respirator, but had an N95 mask on, but that's just not enough to beat lead.  After some research, I discovered I can wet sand the paint, at least to get it smooth, and then just cover it over with another coat. Either that, or call abatement folks, but I cannot imagine this will be the last time I need to figure out what to do with lead.  I'm going to see if I can come up with a better DIY option.  So the door has 2 strips of paint removed, and is awaiting me to purchase wet sand paper and get back to it. 

Nook in bedroom

The room we're sleeping in has a fireplace that juts out, creating  48" x 12 " recesses on each side of the fireplace.  We've put a dresser on one side, but this side was empty, once we got rid of more boxes. I realized that a few things we needed to store would fit nicely there. First, we both have backpacks that are filled with our shower and gym stuff.  Without a working shower, we've been going to the shower at the Carnegie Athletic Club, 2 blocks away. Bonus is that we get to the gym several times a week!  We also needed somewhere to hang up towels to dry. SO..

I washed this area, to try to get rid of the coal dust dinge. I also used my wallpaper removing scraper and solution to remove the lumpy, painted-over wall paper on the 12"x12" wall, to the right of the recess.  

It worked great until I realized that the wallpaper and paint were put on top of wall board, not plaster. So after stripping off the paint and wallpaper, I was left with a gnarly soggy paper-covered section of wallboard.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it smooth to paint over. Possibly with some primer... 

Here's the final nook, complete with an Ikea bookshelf, some 3M Command hooks for the towels, and two hooks at the bottom for backpacks.  

This is not going to be a final finished project, but it will help us organize things while we whittle away at our list. 

A small, but successful project.

Next we worked on this funny space to the left of the main staircase. Originally, the space provided access  from the front door back to the kitchen, but it had long since been covered over with some 1970's paneling. There was a tenant in the first floor, and the second and third floor tenants used the main staircase, so they needed to provide some separation and security. In any case, the divider was way back towards the kitchen, creating cavernous and unusable storage on the foyer side, and no storage on the back kitchen side. 

We started by taking out the existing panelling wall, and moving it about 3' towards the foyer side, and framed it in. You can see how dark it is, with all the lights on, John needed to wear his headlamp to see anything back there.  

Then we put in two closet rods, one on each side. 

Below is the closet space we created for John's stuff.

And here's space we created for a front hall closet. 

Both of these spaces were better illuminated with some left-over Ikea lights, and we made a wonderful discovery that made the lights just work perfectly. 

See in the picture of the hall closet how there's a hanging light, and on the wall to the left is a switch?  Well... We have loads of nob and tube in the parts of the house that haven't been renovated, so we can't just swap out lights, or add a light here or there.  But we discovered these amazing wireless outlet gizmos.  There's a box you plug in to an outlet, and then you plug whatever you want controlled in to the box. Then you put the wireless switch wherever you want.  Voila! We were able to 'wire' a light for both sides of the new closet without actually having to wire anything. We had outlets that had been upgraded with better wiring, so we'll use them, and these wireless switches to get around having to wire things before we're ready. 

We also added one of those magic switches in the bedroom. We'd previously taken off the ceiling light to put in a ceiling fan, only to discover stiff, black nob and tube wires, and no junction box. So we still don't have a light in the bedroom. But now, we have a fancy wireless switch as you enter the room that turns on an outlet at the other side of the room where a floor lamp is plugged in.  Magic. 

We were also able to get the 'guest room' settled, as our 2nd floor tenant moved out last week.  I cleaned the carpet and windowsill, and it was ready to fill.  John's moved his office to that room, there's a spare bed, and a couch and tv.  It's almost ready to put pictures on the walls.  Given the scale of everything else to do, I'm going to call that room done!