Post 5: Texture

Rule number one of texturing.  What you don't want covered in texture, cover in plastic.

Rule number two, find a way to make covering everything in plastic fun!

We bought the plastic tarps all rolled up around the same time we figured out how to take a bunch of pictures really fast on our camera!  Thus, the GIF image above with me almost hitting Alan with the plastic tarp!

My dad lent us his hopper to use when we told him about our wall-papered home.

We bought some wall texture mix and a drywall mixing paddle from the hardware store and were ready to go!

In case you've never done this before and are dying to, you mix the wall texture mix with water using your drywall mixing paddle (that attaches to your drill) in a 5-gallon bucket until it's a milkshake consistency.  Then, you scoop the mix into your hopper and attach to your texture gun and air compressor.  Turn the compressor on and start spraying the texture!  (We practiced outside on some cardboard for a while before we were brave enough to spray the walls -- I recommend that!)

We also recommend putting down a tarp for this project -- don't texture your floors!!

In no time, Alan finished texturing the entry-way.  Now we just needed to wait for it to dry.  On to paint!  Click here to see the paint color we chose and our adventure with 16-foot ceilings!

For more on texturing, check out our dining room transformation!

Post 4: Out with the 80s!

So, about this wallpaper...

What can you say about this wallpaper? 

You could say it has nice straight green stripes...

You could say it has a pleasant gold border...

You could say it really brings out the age and story of the house...

You could even say it resembles a nice pair of men's flannel pajamas...

You could... but we won't.

This wallpaper needed to go.  We knew it from the moment we first stepped into this house.  This entry-way needed brightening up, and peeling off that green paper was step one.

We started by taking off all of the hardware from the walls.  Whoever installed the wallpaper added a lovely trim piece to finish it off.  We plan to paint our entry-way the same color as our living room, though, so this dividing piece was not necessary.  

I thought that I would have no problem pulling this piece off the wall...

But I quickly discovered that it takes a little more strength and tools that what I had.

Alan had no problem removing it, though!

On to wallpaper -- I can help with this part!

My mom mailed us these tools to use when she found out how much wallpaper our house contained.  It must be a motherly thing to help your children out of wallpaper, because our first housewarming gift was this wallpaper spray from Alan's mom -- these were our tools:

Step 1: Score your walls.

We used the wallpaper scorer that my mom mailed us to cut holes all over the wallpaper.  Sidenote: this made a HORRIBLE sound.  Like, nails on a chalkboard horrible.

I know we don't have a picture to prove it, but I did help Alan score the wall.  He was much better at it than I was, though, so I volunteered for the next step.

Step 2: Spray wallpaper gel all over the wallpaper.

I got right to work with the wallpaper gel spraying down the walls.  Not to sound wimpy, but my wrist got really tired!  

We made sure that all of the paper was good and damp to make it as easy as possible to peel the paper off.

Step 3: Wait 15-20 minutes.

Here's a picture of what our walls looked like after they were sprayed down:

Step 4: Start tearing wallpaper off the walls.

For this, we used the razor scraper my mom sent us.

Starting in the middle of the wall was tough because we couldn't find an edge piece to get under, so we moved to the corner instead.

Success!  In just a few minutes, Alan had taken off our first piece of wallpaper!

We split the walls and worked on this together for about an hour...

... until all of the green was finally down!

We were done!  (I thought)!

Alan pointed out that we had only removed the top layer of the wallpaper.  (Can you believe that there are multiple layers?  That is not fair!!)

The back layer that was glued to the wall was still stuck.  Alan was worried that this would be much more tedious work than it was to remove the green layer, but we got right to work with the same steps as before.

Step 5: Re-score the walls.

Step 6: Re-spray the walls.

Step 7: Wait 15-20 minutes.

Step 8: Use the razor scraper to start tearing the back layer off of the walls.

Unfortunately, we didn't have two razor scrapers, and Alan was kind to let me use the one we had.  He used a large spackle knife to take wallpaper off of the walls.  (It didn't work quite as well, but you can see on our floors that he didn't let that slow him down!)

*Sulak Suggestion

We highly recommend investing in a spackling knife if you plan to do any type of home renovation.  Not only is it great for patching walls and ceilings with putty, but it also comes in handy when you're cutting in a corner with paint, scraping old texture off a wall, removing wallpaper, and many other handy tasks!

Alan's premonitions about the second layer were right on target.  It was glued all over, so the paper came off in little tiny strips.

*Sulak Suggestion

We quickly discovered that the more damp the sticky layer was, the easier it was to scrape off (and in larger pieces).  We started by using a damp wash cloth but ended up using a spray bottle of water to dampen an area and then scrape off that section of paper.  This made our job a HUNDRED times easier!  Once an area was damp, we just started scraping and the back layer of paper came off in sheets!

Make sure your wallpaper is nice and damp when you are removing it.  Spray down a section right before you are going to begin scraping it off the wall and the paper will come down in larger sections and much easier!

Talk about a mess!!

I will say that I really wish we had put a drop cloth down before we started this part.  Wet wallpaper on your floors is not the best combination -- later on we spent quite a bit of time learning how to remove wallpaper from tile!

*Sulak Suggestion

Put a drop cloth down before you begin removing wallpaper to save your floors!

Step 9: Sand down the walls.

To finish off the walls before texturing and painting, Alan wanted to make sure that we had a smooth surface to work with, so he went back over the walls with sandpaper.

Finally -- we are wallpaper free!  (In the entry-way, at least).  I already think it brightens things up -- maybe we'll just leave it like this!  (Not!)  Click here to see how we textured the room to get it ready to paint!

For more on removing wallpaper, check out our dining room transformation!

Post 3: Master Bedroom - Paint Fixes Everything

Before we moved in, our master bedroom felt much too old for us.  Purple walls and lace curtains weren't going to cut it..

Not to mention stained glass windows. Fortunately, these we're stickers...

...stickers that peeled right off!

Purple was not exactly in our color scheme.  The dark walls, beige trim, and dim lighting left the room a little too dark. We needed to brighten things up a bit for our taste -- but this was nothing a little paint couldn't fix!

We got right to work patching holes.

 

  

We were going to paint the room beige to lighten it up. Not only were we not sure if one coat of beige would mask the purple paint, we also were worried because the purple was a much shinier paint than what we were using to cover it. (It was more of a semi-gloss and we were using an eggshell.)

We chose to prime the room first with Killz to ensure we wouldn't have to use two coats of our beige paint. 

It really went pretty quickly -- I cut in the corners while Alan rolled the walls. 

*Sulak Suggestion

Notice we have the windows open now. Killz is extremely potent, so it's important to make sure you have good ventilation. We really should have worn masks too! Everything smelled like Killz for a few hours after painting -- not good!!

The next evening, we retuned to the house to apply the beige coat of paint. We decided our system worked the night before, so I cut in the corners while Alan rolled the walls.

  

While cutting in the corners, we noticed that the purple paint was peeling away from the walls where the walls met the ceiling. 

 

We were a little concerned about solving the problem quickly before move-in, so we forgot to get good pictures, but you can kind of see it here.

Unfortunately, painting over this didn't make the old paint stick to the walls.  When we peeled the old paint off, it not only exposed a crack along the top corner of the room from when the foundation shifted, but it also left a seam several paint coats thick along the top of the wall. Painting over this didn't hide the ridge of paint. 

So, maybe paint doesn't solve everything...

We discussed our options and decided we had three:

1. Learn to tape and float drywall and then texture over the corner before repainting

2. Install crown molding to cover the corner completely

3. Leave it as-is and say we wanted to expose the rich history of the house

Okay -- option three was definitely out. That left us with drywalling and crown molding. They both seemed equally difficult for us as rookies, and crown molding seemed to be the option that would most enhance the look of the room, so we decided to go in that direction.

We didn't have a miter saw and didn't want to purchase one just yet, so Alan picked up a miter box from the hardware store. 

 

Without a miter saw, it was going to be much more difficult to cut the corners of the crown molding, so we found some corner pieces to use instead. These were pretty handy! You nail them into the corners of your room (of course, they have to be square corners -- fortunately, that's what we have) and then you can butt the crown molding right up against it without having to cut difficult angles. 

 

Once the corner pieces were all installed, we measured the length of the wall between the two corner pieces and cut the molding to fit. 

We recommend using a table or saw horses to do this.
The floor is really hard on your back and on your tarp.

Per my dad's suggestion, before beginning this project, we invested in an air compressor that came with several nail guns to make putting up the molding much easier and faster.  Otherwise, we would have had to glue the molding up and use a hammer and nails to keep it up there -- that would have taken ten times as long.  Thanks Dad!

 

We purchased a pancake compressor without wheels, so we wheel it around on a small dolly.  It came with two nail guns and a staple gun!

 

We had to match two pieces of molding together along each wall because the walls were so long. Alan did an awesome job getting the two pieces to sit against the wall and the ceiling at the same angle, and then we caulked between them to hide the seam. 

 

 

The molding was finished!  Alan caulked around everything and sanded it down, and then we painted all of the trim.  

If you're interested in more on crown molding, visit our dining room project here!

We had a lot of touch-ups this way, so we decided the next room we painted, we would paint the trim first and then the walls -- we'll see how it goes!

Remember that dim fan?

That had to go.  We actually replaced it with a fan from our dining room.  We really liked the fan that was in there, but prefer to have a chandelier in the dining room, so this was a perfect steal!

The fan was antique brass, though, and we are changing fixtures and knobs to oil rubbed bronze.  Not to worry!  We bought a can of oil rubbed bronze spray paint, took the fan apart, taped, sprayed it, and voila!  (We also flipped the fan blades to the other side.)

 

 

We replaced the light covers with some simpler ones we found at the hardware store and installed the "new" fan to replace the old one.

A few late nights, some elbow grease, and a couple new tools later... Voila! We have a new room!

Before

After

Don't worry -- we plan on painting the door white soon!!

We think the room turned out great!  What do you think?

Check out our next project where we take down some awful wallpaper in our living room and brighten it up with paint and texture!  Click here for more!