This Old House

Our house has become a bit of a conversation piece so I had a great idea to do posts called ‘This Old House’ staring our latest projects!  My husband was of course was greatly amused by this, not really he hates having his photo taken!

So today on This Old House, we’re doing skim coating, stripping paint, and hanging a ceiling fan!  Can you feel the excitement!?  My whole plan was to skim coat the entry way and strip all the paint off the bathroom window and paint the window.  Well what I didn’t realize was stripping dozens of layers of paint off a hundred year old window is not easy.  In fact it took me the majority of the weekend, and I only got one coat of skim in the entry way, but we’ll get to that.
First, lets start with hanging a ceiling fan.  It’s important to have a ceiling box in the ceiling, thankfuly we were thinking ahead.  Next…assembly.   Cody diligently labored away and eventually got it put together, he even read the directions!

Then you vicariously hang it from the ceiling while assembling wires.  Surprisingly he didn’t ask for help at this point!  He did however scold me for taking a picture of his armpits!   And then you have a beautiful ceiling fan.  It adds so much to the room doesn’t it?  Isn’t he handy?  shhhh, but I’ll rent him out for house hold duties if anyones interested!  

Now skim coating.  You ask ‘what the h*ll is that?’  Has anyone has ever lived in a home with horrible texture on the walls?  That was our entire house, horrible glopping texture.  I’ve skim coating everything but the front entry.  So here it is.  The nasty texture that someone decided looked good.

So now what do you get rid of it?  Lots and lots of drywall mud.  A large trowel and even more elbow grease!

But sadly the bathroom took FOREVER, and I didn’t get very far on this part.  So stay tuned for the end on this project.

So without further hesitation, the thorn in my side.  The bathroom window.  

Looks harmless right?  Just a nasty color of beige.  Except that it’s been painted so many times there is no longer any detail in the trim.  So perfectionist that I am, I decide that it needs to be stripped.  (I’ve also decided that every piece of trim and window in our house needs to be stripped too).  My darling brother told me a gel solution you paint on will allow you to just strap the paint right off!  Sounds to good to be true doesn’t it?  It was.   It did help scrap some of the paint off, but only about 2 layers at a time.  So with about 10 layers of paint you can guess how many times I put this crap on the wood.  Then it’s not exactly a clean process.  The goop makes the paint almost go back to it’s liqud state, except it doesn’t quit make it, instead it become EXTREMELY sticky.  Needless to say, I got it down to about 2 to 3 layers when I said to hell with the rest.  I’ll give it light sand and paint the damn thing and call it a day.    Not great but better then the following in progress photos.

I can almost see wood in now!  Our bathroom was once, hunter green, berry red, baby blue and about 5 different shades of beige.  I’m going to paint it white.  Novel idea huh?

So that about raps up this episode of This Old house.  Not the most educational, but hopefully at least slightly amusing.

Stay tuned for more episodes to come.  We have projects EVERY weekend!

An Unexpected Long Stay

My brother and his girlfriend decided a few months ago that they would come out for New Years.  Great fantastic, we’ll go skiing and have a great time!  Well I think it’s been the trip from hell for them.  They left a day late because Krista got sick just before they left and needed to go to the doctor before they left.  They then stopped for the night in Nebraska and continued on New Year’s Eve, with a scheduled arrival of 1pm.  They arrived at 7pm.   You might guess it, but they had car troubles.  They broke down just over the Colorado Nebraska boarder.  So after towing, talking to several people, and renting a car they finally made it to Denver.  It wasn’t till two days ago we found out what was even wrong with the car.  Best case scenario it gets fixed.  The worst case is they tow it all the way back to Minnesota.  We still don’t the know the final outcome and probably won’t till Monday night.  What a mess.

We then went skiing on Wednesday.  Fantastic weather, warm and a little powder left even.  But poor Nate and Krista had altitude sickness all day and didn’t even hit the slope once.  Note to anyone coming to Denver to ski, drink lots and lots of water!

So with them being stranded here, we’ve had the chance to show them Denver.  And they’ve decided to move here!  The 60 degree weather was a big help too!  Here’s a few shots of us out and about. 

Cody playing with our new point and shot camera we got for Christmas.

And by far my favorite shot I’ve ever taken of a landscape.

Belated Christmas

So now that it’s January 6th I thought I might post a few photos from Christmas.  At least it’s not July right?

This was my first Christmas away from my family.   It was a little sad and very different, but it was still good.  Here’s my father-in-law reading the paper Christmas morning.  Can you tell where we were for Christmas?

He also plays Santa for the neighborhood kids.  I don’t think this little girl was to sure of the scary dude in red.  I don’t blame her, this guys a little hairy!

We also went out to the reservation where Cody’s grandparents live.  Literally in the middle of NOWHERE.

And what is there to do out in the middle of nowhere you might ask?  Well shoot prairie dogs of course!  What could more exciting then that!  Don’t worry he’s little out of practice and failed to shoot any unsuspecting vermin.

I hope your Christmas was as relaxing as ours was.  And don’t forget those New Years resolutions!