Texture all gone!

This is what the little mess of textured wall above the door looked like when we last saw it.

[In-progress: Good bye, texture!]

It took another three coats to smooth out even the last bump of texture and create a smooth finish like the adjoining drywall. At this point I'm not sure I really want to skimcoat the remaining textured walls in the house. Ripping them out and replacing them with drywall sounds much more appealing and potentially faster than trying to cover up the texture. We'll need some time to think this over, I guess.

[More progress: All nice and even. I also made sure that all adjoining areas
received a thorough dusting of fine drywall dust]

Anyways, once the area was mudded smooth and had time to dry completely, it was time for a quick sanding and a coat of primer. If you forget to prime freshly mudded drywall you end up with spots that "flash". These areas will reflect the light differently and drive you insane. Really. Ahem ... not like I know anything about that. So yes, priming is a must.

Fresh coat of paint and voila - all done!

[After: Mission accomplished - texture eliminated]

I put the drying time between coats of mud and then some to good use and tackled a few other projects in the entry hall to get'er done! 20 days 'till Thanksgiving! How much trim can I possibly paint accomplish in 20 days? Guess we'll find out!

Texture is overrated

According to some smart interior design books there are five design elements:

1. line


2. form


3. space


4. color


5. texture

Frankly, when it comes to walls and ceilings, texture is way overrated and a serious pain to get rid of. Ceilings I can deal with, but textured walls ... not so much. Here at the Ugly Duckling, we have to deal with some textured walls, namely the wall of our staircase, the upstair's hallway and the dressing and master bath aka the former upstair's kitchen, reflective of the design choices of the '80s when the Duckling was, once again, turned into duplex.



I don't mind the textured ceilings so much. It's sort of a sunburst design, and since our ceilings are painted a bright crisp white the texture is hardly noticable.



The walls ... ehh. It's not bad bad. It's just ... I don't know. Weird. Like furry wallpaper. Or green wall-to-wall shag carpeting. Painted Woodlawn Colonial Grey, it's, again, not bad bad but skimcoating it definitely made it onto our project list quite early. Little did we know what we were talking about though our contractor mentioned it'd be "quite a pain in the -you-know-where".



I figured before tackling a big area like our stair case I could practice my skimcoating skills on a small piece. Like that area above our current entry door.
Since that door had been the door to the upstair's unit opening up directly into the enclosed staircase, it had also received the knock-down texture treatment. After we restored the original floorplan, ripping out the wall separating the staircase from the room that was then a bedroom and is now a vestibule again, we had clean smooth drywall for most of the walls except for a small rectangle right above the door.




Awkwaaard.

Here's a close-up of the transition between textured wall and plain drywall, just to make it really obvious.

Super awkward.

Husband wasn't perturbed by it one bit but it kept nagging me. So, after finishing the trim work in the dining room, I decided to move into the vestibule next and to tackle that odd textured rectangle. Better to get over and done with the drywall dust.

The process is rather simple and straightforward: load your mud pan with drywall compound aka 'mud' , slather on and smooth it over. Let it dry. Rinse and repeat.




The 'rinse and repeat' part surprised me. Sure, several thin coats are better than one thick one, but I was simply amazed about just how many coats and how much mud I needed to skimcoat this small area nice and smooth.

Here's an in-progress shot where you can see the white areas of already filled-in texture and the darker grey areas of the raised parts that aren't covered yet.


Uh-mazing.

This also meant that each coat needed its own drying time and it wasn't something I could just finish up in one afternoon or evening. So you're being treated to two entries for a project that measures 2 feet by 3 feet. Hilarious, isn't it?

Needless to say I did put that waiting period between drying coats to good use in the entry hall. Unlike many other couples, we started with the bedrooms and worked our way into the public rooms (usually the master bedroom seems to be last to get any kind of update). I'll update you over the next couple of days to show you what's been happening in the entry hall here at the Ugly Duckling.

Hook'em up!

The other day, on my way to pick up the Little Man from school, I used the chance to drop into TJ Maxx. It's been forever since I last had had a chance to mosey through the aisles of this store, especially since they closed their store closer to us and moved it out closer to the Beaches, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

There were a couple of interesting home goods to be found, some sparked ideas for other rooms but in an effort to not get carried away, put unnecessary strain on our house budget and stay focussed on the current project area (well, okay, areas), I window shopped for the most part and only scored two really cool hooks for the bathroom which were on the "to buy" list!

Yay me!

Back at home I couldn't wait to grab drill and drywall anchors with screws to get my new hooks up and at the wall! The husband and I each own a bathrobe and those needed a dedicated space!

Tools of the trade: drill and screw.

Making a guest appearance later: level and pencil

Aren't they pretty???? I love love love our new bathrobe hooks!
They came in at $3.99 a pop and they are quite heavy.

I quickly drilled two holes, hammered in the dry wall anchors and screwed in the screws that the hooks hook into and I was done!

Now our bathrobes have a dedicated place and we have a chance to keep our sweet master suite a little tidier! No more bathrobes lounging around where they shouldn't.


Hooks fit for a king and a queen ;o)


And here's a sneak peek of the "closet project" (don't mind the yet unpainted door frame to the dressing room and the equally unpainted plinths of the closet door frame - I will get there eventually): the open doorframe is one side of the former teeny hallway between the upstair's hallway and our then kitchen, now master bathroom. I have to paint the door frame and then hang the door and it will become a closet for towels and other bathroom paraphenalia!

For that huse "negative" aka open space in the middle of our bathroom I'm hoping to find a nice traditional rug in washed out vintage-looking beiges and browns rather than a blah bath mat and maybe add an ottoman for convenient seating [for like when you're brushing teeth :o)]. I'm also on the hunt for baskets and some charming old wire organizer, all to warm up our crisp and clean white bathroom. And art and window treatments. Good thing Calico Corners is having a Sale coming up next week!

Happy Halloween!

Wishing everybody a spooky, scary, candy-filled and safe Halloween!

We'll be going trick or treating tonight in the 'hood enjoying the hayride a family is organizing for the neighborhood kids. Hopefully this morning's drizzle will have stopped by then.

Oh, and if you enjoyed the vintage Halloween card above, don't forget to swing by at Jacksonville's Karpeles Manuscript Library to see their Vintage Halloween exhibit with photographs of Halloween costumes, postcards and invitations from the time of Springfield's hey days! We dropped in quickly during yesterday's SMG's Halloween Party for the kids in front of the Karpeles and had a great time checking out what Halloween decor would have looked like when our Ugly Duckling smelled of fresh paint and plaster (for the first time).

Preston - Pronto!

The husband and I have begun working on a few projects that are taking a bit longer while not giving much of 'meat' for daily updates. What with work being ca-ray-ay-zee going on two weeks now and the Little Man taking Karate lessons twice a week, Cub Scouts and my Vampire Diary quality time on Thursday nights, I'm a little hardpressed to find some spare time.

Sure, I can find some time to dabble with projects around the house but obviously not enough time to download pictures, upload them to blogspot and post about it. Booo :o(

But don't fear! DIY woman is here!
And projects are continuing at the Ugly Duckling!

Case in point: the master bathroom.

After finishing walls, updating electricity, updating plumbing, painting, trim out, installing doorframes, a vanity, a claw-foot bath tub and a toilet, I have now added *drum roll*

Accessories!

I shopped around online before settling on Moen's "Preston" series in chrome for our bathroom. It' s simple, yet softly curved lines mimic our vintage style faucets and the price could hardly be beat. In case you hadn't noticed, we are very budget conscious. I'd bought Moen in the past and we like the quality. Thanks to Amazon Prime, our packages arrived within three days of ordering, free of charge. Joy!

I'd ordered a double towel rod, a single towel ring and a toilet tissue holder which I installed with the Little Man's help.

We gathered our tools




measured, leveled and installed the mounting brackets. For the toilet tissue holder we had to adjust the screw placement or else we'd have permanentely screwed a drawer closed. We'd deliberated over whether to buy one of those freestanding and magazine hoding toilet tissue stands but in the end I felt a regular holder screwed into the side of the vanity made more sense. All I could think of was ending up doing business with the holder waaaay out of reach ... oy!


After installing the mounting brackets, all you had to do was slide the fixture base over it and screw it tight.

Pretty, no? And functional to boot! And so civilized!

The double towel trod was a little trickier to install and definitely called for a second pair of hands which is where the Little Man came in. While I held the pieces together, he leveled and marked - DIY kid in action! I love the look and how it's keeping our towels in handy-dandy reach when stepping out of the tub.


There you have it: Our Master Bathroom in its current state. Still pretty bare but we're getting there. We have begun using it on a more consistent basis ever since installing the accessories which - all together - make it feel so much more complete. The towels courtesy of my Mom are probably not going to stay in this bath room. We're generally aiming for a softer vintage look (hard to tell from that stark, crisp black and white contrast, hm?) but I wanted towels on the rods when taking the picture. Yaaaaah, staging ... kind of hard with no window treatments, no rug and no art. We'll get there. Really. Some day soon. And I promise you'll hear all about it.

Halfway

After a mighty crazy week at work, my DIY spirit was hiding underneath the covers for most of this weekend. It was rather content to do some things I didn't have time for during the week like

• 




• read a book
  
  




• whip up and eat a batch of delicious home-made caramel dip (recipe here)

• muck about in the veggie patch

By Sunday afternoon, the laziness wore off a bit and the DIY spirit started to perk up its ears. We gingerly poked at a couple of projects

• messed with the old gate (it's the ol' chainlink fence gate but it's better than having to roll part of the fence itself back and forth, gate-style) and halfway got it done. We're missing a hinge and nobody wanted to drive out to the Blue Box to pick up the missing part. Yet.
  



• 
  
  probed the upsatirs hallway closet and decided it was time to start that project if we ever wanted a chance of clearing out the library which has become a sorry catch-all for everything and the neighbor's our cat.

And then found out that we're going to have lovely guests for Thanksgiving - our FIRST Thanksgiving at the Ugly Duckling - and decided to kick our DIY spirit into gear again to wrap up a few more of those almost finished projects in time for the holidays. God helps us :o)

With the jamb firmly in place, I finally got to tackle the pretty part: the door casing. That's the fancy schmancy name for the trim that goes around your door frame. I'd picked up two 1x4 boards, 2 plinths and a piece of trim called a "stop" to mimik the existing trim in the house.

Lucky for me, no miter cuts were required for this project!

First up: the plinth. That's the decorative part at the bottom of the door frame. For the most part, the plinths in our house have very little decoration - some our just plain pieces of wood wider than the trim - and so the ones I found at the Blue Box fit the bill quite nicely: they have a little bit of carving which mirrors the top of the baseboards and the price was right too.

After installing the plinths aka nailing them into place, the sides of my door casing came next. All I had to do - thanks to the ingenius design of historic trim in our house -was measure the distance between the top of the plinth and the upper edge of my door opening, cut my boards to size and nail those into place as well.

I'd bought a length of plain "stop" trim to cap off the sides, just like on all the original door casings in our house. Since our bathroom and dressing room are a later addition to the house (years ago, a previous owner added a second story to the originally one-story part housing our kitchen), the ceiling is quite a bit lower as you can see. Thus, the husband and I are musing about bumping out the ceiling for a vaulted and airier headspace. It's not as bad as you'd think - especially since we painted everything white, both rooms feel light and spacious and you notice the low ceiling more like an afterthought.

A short length of a 1x2 board tops it all off. Voila! - historically accurate looking door casing. Oone side down, one more to go!

This whole project didn't take me that long. Of course, now we're back to the basics of caulking between boards and filling in those nail holes, priming and painting. It -never- ends, does it?