malshag!org

I started the flooring installation on Sunday afternoon, and after doing the living room we barely had enough to complete the kitchen installation. Some of the pieces were defective, but I pieced together a Frankenstein floor with no flaws. If we could do it over again, we would have bought the best laminate we could afford, instead of settling for some of the cheaper grade.

When all was said and done, I was able to fit everything together in a way that we literally were down to two and a half pieces left over.

We did, however, learn from the living room experience, and bought a much better grade underlayment. It made a big difference in the classic laminate tapping sound, and I believe will be better in the long run.

My only real complaint is that I should have bought kneepads. It may be just that I’m not eighteen anymore, but by the time evening rolled around and I was finishing up, my knees were bright red and bruised from moving around the floor in that position for seven hours.

Last Wednesday was Mike the contractor’s last day for the week, everything was all set to begin our DIY portion of the remodel. E put a coat of Kilz primer on the walls and ceiling. We opted for the latex primer instead of oil based due to the fumes and our eleven month old, and it turned out to be a bit thinner product than we had hoped.

We then spent the first part of the weekend putting up a few base coats of flat white. It began to look like a real room.

Our next step was to level the floor to prepare for the laminate installation. There were sections where the subfloor was replaced, and other sections where the cabinets had been built into the floor. All were missing the linoleum that was under the old laminate. Since the difference in height was so striking, we opted to rip some strips of luan paneling and adhere it to the subfloor with some Liquid Nails.

Kitchen remodel progress was put on hold this week, everyone got quite sick. E got sick, L got sick, Mike got sick, the electrician got sick, and finally I got sick and wound up at the doctor. We all decided to pause on the work, rather than keep giving sickness to each other.

The end of last week showed great improvement. All the walls are up, the ceiling was patched, the cutout to the living was constructed, and by the time Friday rolled around everything had mud and tape.

Next order of business is to sand everything and replace sections of the subfloor damaged by water.

This is so exciting I have to post mid-afternoon. After two and a half years of living with a half demolished side wall, we now have a wall and ceiling.

Our contractor friend, Mike, started yesterday morning. The first order of business was to survey the state of affairs, and then start building out the little eat-in bar wall. When he took out the sheetrock, we discovered that the previous owners had chewed off the bottom two inches of the support beams, to make more headroom in the walkway between the kitchen and the family room. You can see it in the top right of this photo:

We are hoping to put a small countertop on the built out wall. Mike is going to put in a support post when the wall is built out, to prevent the beam from sagging any more than the 1/8″ it’s already begun to sag.

After spending the first day doing a lot of planning and deciding, he and E called it a day and I arrived home from work to face the evening’s task. Yes, we scraped the 1980s popcorn ceiling.

We had seen a lot of DIY jobs call for wetting the popcorn using everything from hot water to a 10:1 vinegar and water solution. None of this would work for us as the popcorn had been painted with enamel, effectively sealing it from any tampering. We decided to do it dry, and bought one of these:

Mike showed us how easily the popcorn came off with a putty knife, which gave us the idea to do a straight scrape and sand job. After scraping the bulk of the popcorn off, we went through with pole sanders and sanded down the remnants. The result was a ceiling that looked only slightly textured. We are very pleased, and the whole job including taping off the entryways with plastic sheeting took three hours.