Copy and paste

One of our favorite DIY blogs to read is Young House Love. Today they posted about de-wallpapering and painting their bathroom, and it's basically a better recap of us doing the same thing (including using Kilz Premium Primer). Of course, these guys have made a living off of renovating and blogging about it.

Now if only I could copy and paste their staircase makeover ... or installing hardwood throughout their brick colonial ...

Coming soon, a detailed project list, a condensed house tour page, and hopefully some bathroom progress. But this Saturday we get a our MOVE ON!!

a few steps behind, but leaping forward

When we set out to repaint the master suite, I kind of thought of the project as painting a box. A really big box, sure, but a box. But it seemed like a simple project, with some extra work on the trim. The bath and shower rooms would add to the complication, but I figured we'd be done with the painting portion of updates.

Ha.

As of Saturday morning, we had 3 walls second coated, one wall one coated with some spots needing cutting in, baseboards painted, and the shower room caulked and de-wallpapered. My ambitious timeline? Blown. Out. of. the. Water.

There are several reasons for that:

1) Work & sleep

2) Family & friends

3) Keeping our sanity

4) Our own mistakes/inefficiencies

None of these are bad reasons for skipping out on project time, and I need to remind myself of that (while still keeping us on task). Mike has been, ah, diligent about making sure I don't burn us out. This isn't an HGTV weekend makeover. We don't have a full crew of contractors overhauling a room (and those rooms are often not completed for the big reveal). This is our home, and we'll be here for awhile. What's the rush? We've only worked in the house a couple of work nights and cut ourselves off by 7:30 to give us time to clean up and drive back to the apartment.

So, to help us make some progress, Mike's dad came over on Saturday morning to prime the wallpaper-free shower room. By the end of the day, we had all the bedroom walls painted, the baseboards caulked, and half of the touch-up work done.

Two walls of the upper trim still need a fresh coat of paint, the trim on the doors and windows need refreshers, and I plan to recaulk and touch up the trim on the fourth wall (where the lamps are in the before shot). But I think I'll just touch up and caulk and visit with the other trim later.

Meanwhile, Mike's dad knocked out the shower/toilet room with two coats of primer, and it's totally transformed the space. It's too tight of a space for a good shot, and we have a step stool in the shower, so I didn't try to squeeze in there for the progress shot.

Before. How about that green/gray and beige wallpaper?

Primed

We went ahead and primed the trim, since we know we'll be painting those whites, but we held off on the cabinet over the toilet and the window until we decide if we want to paint those or not. They are more involved, project wise, and we figured the window would be a summer project. We forgot to tape off both woodwork and it didn't matter - Mike's dad cuts a clean line!

Buckling down, Mike and I decided ton Valspar's Gravity for the bathroom paint. We sucked it up and bought the kitchen and bath paint for its moisture resistance, and while it's significantly more than regular paint, we figure it's a small enough space that we're hoping one bucket outta do it. The Olympic kitchen and bath did not register the VOC content on its bucket, so we went with the Valspar zero VOC. Online, Olympic does list their kitchen and bath as zero VOC. Oh well. Shoulda put it on the label, folks. But this will also give us a better idea of the two paint brands, and we figure the shower room is where we should get the "better" stuff.

Meanwhile, we've got the rest of the bathroom taped off, the old swatches primed, and we're ready to rock out the bathroom! Well, at least Phase 1.

Insert joke here

At 4:30 on Sunday, we called it a day, and we'll even call it a victory. We got to the house bright and early intending to caulk, second coat 3 master walls and first coat the 4th, and get started on trim work. We're happy to declare we checked off everything on that list, more or less.

We started off with caulking the shower room, including filling the gaps between the trim and bare walls. Please enjoy our collage.

Basically, tape off where you want your caulk lines to be, caulk it, run a wet finger over it to smooth it, and then pull up the tape. It's best to do this in sections of only a couple of feet, or at least that was the case with us. The caulk dried fast (you can paint within 40 minutes), so we had to do little sections at a time. The bottom corners of the shower stall were the worst, because so much of the grout had fallen away, so we were basically shooting in the gaps before filling the top. Not as pretty as the clean trim lines, but it gets the job done. Plus, since we'll be painting the trim white in the bathroom, we figure it'll still fairly blend.

Mike and I took turns. He did the awkward shower stall, I did the shower room. Then he spackled the damaged areas of the wallboard, because apparently along with being awesome at taking down wallpaper, he is also great at spackling. He'd spackled the holes left over from the wall-mounted lamp shades in the master, and after painting, you're hard pressed to find where they once were. He's officially the spackler of this household. Maybe I should get him a t-shirt.

While I caulked, Mike applied the second coat on three walls and started on the fourth. We didn't cut in yet, because I wanted to do the trim when mistakes would be consequence free. But as we tidied up this afternoon, it felt like we'd made some progress and were back in control after the wallpaper got its revenge. Huzzah!

Accent troubles and lessons learned

The master bedroom is not yet complete. The original plan was to paint 3 walls in Olympics Cozy Corner, which Mike is rolling in the above photo, and then paint the fourth wall, the bed wall, in Admiralty (the dark swatches). The colors do look fantastic together, and we felt the oversized master was a great place to go bold. But as we threw on a bigger swatch to see how we still felt, and feeling the walls coming in with the new paint, we had reservations.

1. The room is already darkening, in a good way, so would this uber dark wall have an adverse effect?
2. Cutting clean corner lines is difficult. Any mistake is going to be shouted out to us. Every. Single. Day.
3. Coordinating furniture would become more complicated.

It was the latter two issues that gave us the most pause. If we didn't like the accent wall, we could always prime over and paint. Yes, it's time and money, but we were willing to try it out. But the more we inspected the corners and thought about how we'd have to decorate, we felt less and less excited about Admiralty. We may still incorporate that color somewhere, even in this room, but we didn't want all of our decorating and furniture decisions to be dominated by that wall.

So, all corners and walls will be "Cozy."

But in this process, we realized we are doing things reverse order. What we should have done was paint the trim first. Why? We could tape a little above the trim, caulk in the gaps, take up the tape, and then not really fuss over clean lines, because we'll just paint over mistakes with the wall paint. By doing the walls first, we have to basically prep twice. And progress has slowed. Now we have to allow the walls to cure enough that we can tape over it in order to caulk and paint the trim. 

Lesson learned? Paint your trim before your walls. Grumble.

Wallpaper Strikes Back!

Well.

The day started with the grand plan of finishing off the master bedroom and hopefully caulking and/or priming the master bath.

We got rolling:

Olympic's Cozy Corner - Less purply in real life. We loooove this color.

We paused before doing the fourth wall (the bed wall), because we were going to do an accent wall in Admiralty, a navy blue, but as will be discussed in a later post, we eventually decided against it. But we needed to let the swatch (around Mike's head in the photo) dry before priming over to continue on with the wall.

So, we decided to get going on the shower room, which had been stripped of its wallpaper all the way down to the wallboard.

Or so we thought.

Mike had the misfortune of delivering the bad news. There was still a layer or two (or three) of wallpaper glue. We'd let the room be for several days, and in that time, it seems the walls decided to show their true colors, or rather their scales. I probably resembled a cartoon character with steam coming out of my ears. Lucky for me, Mike took on the challenge, since he is basically a wallpaper whisperer.

With just a sponge loaded with warm soap and water, Mike gave the walls a good bath and scraped with a plastic putty knife. He could get big, long peels when he hit good spots.

Have to say, ladies. Nothin' hotter than a man conquering wallpaper glue with a smile! And, yes, that peeling stuff is all glue.

The wall is basically a schizophrenic nightmare (apologies to anyone actually suffering from the condition). Along with the basic wallboard, there are areas with paint, along with glue and wood stain (whenever there is woodwork nearby). But it's like there are 2-3 different types and/or layers of glue, like it was applied differently at different times ... but there was only one layer of wallpaper. Plus, you have the random swaths of paint. Perhaps the original builders/owners couldn't decide between beige and wallpaper? Whatever.

On the bright side, while sopping the walls, we've managed to clean some of the dirty grout on the floor tiles. We're leaving the fan running all night as a moisture precaution, since we are concerned about soaking nearly bare walls and it dripping down in the cracks between the trim and the wall. Mold, anyone? I do have a mold treatment/prevention spray that I've done around the cracked shower grout, but that won't get behind the trim. I think we are going to make sure everything is dry before we start slapping caulk and primer around.

Speaking of caulk ...

Along with wallpaper glue bringing things to a screeching halt, I had a bit of a "d'oh!" While Mike was battling glue demons, I decided to try out a little DIY trim trick on the no-longer-accent wall. Our trim is not in fantastic shape. There are gaps between the trim and the wall that paint can't fix. A favorite DIY trick is to lay painters tape in two very close rows to make a clean line to smooth caulk in the joints between the wall and trim. If you're painting trim white, this also creates a crisp, clean line to make that whole cutting in thing a lot easier.

I'd already purchased some tub and tile caulk and figured it'd work just as well on the trim. It went pretty slick. As per other DIYers, I taped off, squirted it on, and then smoothed the caulk out with a wet finger and pulled off the tape while it was still wet. It looked fantastic and was a salve to the wallpaper burn. 

As we packed up for the night, I suddenly realized all my gaps were showing again. o_0

Cue Luke Skywalker screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I ran my finger over my disappearing work. The caulk was there, smooth and beautiful, soaring over the offending gaps. Then it hit me.

I'd used paintable but clear drying caulk. 

Bugger.

It's not the end of the world. We're painting the trim anyway and can now paint over the gaps, but we'll need to tape again to keep that clean line. Sad but true. So, we bought some white caulk on the way back to the crash pad to use on the rest of the trim, and we can still use the clear caulk for filling in cracks in other places before painting. Not all is lost, and now we know it really does dry clear. 

So, today was definitely a setback, but we learned stuff. I guess that's how it goes. Grumble.

De-radiating your laundry room

Yellow is often associated with cheery moods, sunshine, daisies, butter, omelettes … you know, good things. There are good yellows and bad yellows. The yellow in our laundry room was a sickly yellow that radiated. It bounced off the beige floor and made that glow, too. And not in a happy way. So, naturally, this became #1 on our project list.

They call him Mellow Yellow (that's right) ...

But to be fair, the laundry room was also our first project because our new washer & dryer were set to be delivered on Dec. 30. Painting a box is a lot easier when you don’t have to paint around other boxes.

The laundry room is also our designated lab rat. It has cabinets and trim, and since we are considering painting the kitchen cabinets and trim elsewhere in the house, the laundry room seems like a logical place to try things out. If we mess up, it’s no big deal. It’s the laundry room. A nice one, sure, but we don’t plan to parade people through it or enter it into competitions.

So, we had to choose a wall color that neutralized the yellowness of the floor, brightened the room in a healthy way, and didn’t clash with the gray W&D moving in. Originally, I was going to choose whatever color we were going to use in the master bath, just to bring some cohesion to our wall colors and not have 20 different paint buckets sitting around. The swatch in Olympic’s Harbor Light seemed the best contender, and while I selected it for the laundry room, it did not win in the master. That one is still to be determined.

Habor Light in the center

Young House Love primarily uses Olympic Premium in their homes, because its zero-VOC and low odor and, even better, their colorants are now also very low VOC. You can buy zero-VOC paint and then cancel out the benefits when high VOC colorants are added. We would up with Olympic Icon, which is also low odor and zero VOC, because according to the Lowe’s rep, they are phasing out the Premium line (supposedly they are the same thing). We went satin for the finish for some wipe-ability but not super gloss.

While throwing up swatches, we realized just how powerful the not-so-mellow yellow could be, so we bit the bullet and primed with Kilz Premium, which is a low odor and low-VOC primer that also contains stainblocking properties. I’ve read several DIY blogs that have used it for priming their trim and cabinets, so we figured one to prime them all was the way to go.

First order of business was to cut in with the primer. Initially, I used a 2-inch, angled stiff brush as per all the other DIYers out there but have since bought a 1.5 inch angled brush that I feel works much better. The 2-incher (both Purdy) was just too thick, IMHO, and I made more mistakes with it.

Btw, cutting in gets tedious. It is the longest part of project. Rolling is a beautiful breeze. You see me rollin’? I be smilin’. (Yes, I know that doesn’t fit the song. Pssh.)

In cutting in, we experimented with taping versus being very, very careful. Taping means you can go faster and not freak out, but if you have bleeds, you’re kind of SOL. Also, while priming the walls, we didn’t think MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST PRIME THE TRIM TOO BECAUSE THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE. No. We taped/cut in all around that trim, primed the walls, painted them, and then primed and painted the trim. Side note: Mike is claiming he told me to prime both together. I have no memory of this. But apparently I was "in a mood" so he "let it be."

Live and learn, folks. If you’re priming the walls in a room you’re going to prime the trim - GO NUTS! Get sloppy with that brush (just not on the floors, plzthx). Oh, you got some on the trim? Give it some more! You know it wants it.

Anyway.

Primed and ready

When the first coat of Olympic went on, I liked it. But a few hours later, I was getting a bit frustrated, because some yellow was poking through in a way that looked like it was repelling the paint. As in Harbor Light just couldn’t handle the cosmic rays. There’s no such thing as a one-coat paint, I told myself.

And it’s true. The second coat went much better and proved to be all we needed. I love the color, especially how it neutralizes the vinyl floor, so now I don’t even want to replace it. I’ll just throw a cute rug down and call it good.

So, then it was onto the trim. We primed with one coat, and then painted two coats of Valspar Ultra in Ultra-White Semi-Gloss. It’s also a low-odor, zero-VOC paint but supposedly higher quality. We wanted to experiment between the two different brands from Lowe’s and see which we preferred. Olympic Icon is around $5 cheaper per gallon than Valspar Ultra.

I found Valspar a little more difficult to work with. It was thicker (more solids for better coverage), but it seemed to dry too fast. I’d reload my brush and try to continue and then the recently applied paint felt gummy while trying to blend it with the fresh strokes. The first coat looked like enough in some spots and not-so-much in others, probably wherever the primer was thicker. The second round was more consistent (just like the walls with Olympic), though I still had the problem of the paint acting up between brush loads. Mike pointed out our opinion might change as we get our technique down.

I do love painted trim in this room, but the experience does give me pause before other main level rooms, such as the kitchen, halls, or dining rooms. It’s a tedious and sometimes curse-inducing process. We’ll finish painting the trim in the master (looks like the P.O.s only did one coat), and probably do the trim in the other bathrooms, but that should keep us busy for awhile. We also need to figure out good stop points before starting something in rooms that connect.

Please don't mind the camera phone shot for the after. I left the camera at the house and we haven't been back since ... eek, last year! Back to continue painting the master bright and early tomorrow!

For now, I actually don’t mind having the cabinets as dark stain. I think it gives the room more interest. But we will likely still experiment on them before painting in the kitchen, because those cabinets are too nice to ruin on a learning curve. So, someday there will be more updates in this room, but for now I’m satisfied to let it be.

Now the before and after, for full effect:

Btw, the tale of finding a washer and dryer is something for another day.

Taking down wallpaper ... Not fun, but knee surgery is worse

Wallpaper. I've heard horror stories. So, while we waited for closing day to arrive, I trawled the Internet for advice on taking down wallpaper and asked people about their own experiences. Everyone had different advice (much like the Internet), and no one had a good experience, where it just peels off. No wallpaper unicorns, folks.

So, I basically had a 3-prong game plan (more on that shortly) by the time we came to the walk through. While scoping out the master, I noticed a bit of toothpaste green popping through the green-flecked beige wallpaper in the shower area. Hopeful, I slipped my nail under the tear and gave a tentative tug. A good inch of wallpaper came right off, not even leaving the adhesive behind.

Cue maniacal laughter - cut short by Mike's "You can't do that!"

Right. The house wasn't ours yet, so this was mild destruction of property. But the wallpaper deserved it, officer.

Anyway, I was hopeful. Maybe we did have unicorn wallpaper with magical peeling properties. But it was highly likely that this was just a spot that hadn't been glued as well as the rest. Or maybe it was a cold spot or something. I crossed my fingers for a unicorn.

Credit Zazzle

In case you do not have a unicorn on your walls, there are some methods you can use to take down wallpaper. There is no magic bullet. It all depends on what wallpaper was used, if it was prepped properly, and how long it's been on the wall. So, you really don't know what's going to work until you try. Internet, you were not comforting there.

1. Steamer. Basically, you steam the walls to get the paper all good and soggy and then peel it off. Sometimes you still need to scrape with a putty knife, or you can damage the wall if you over soak.

2. Spray the wall with a mixture of hot water and vinegar or hot water and fabric softener. This method may involve getting a wallpaper scorer or peeling off the first layer, because most wallpapers now are water resistant, and the whole issue is neutralizing the adhesive underneath. But scoring can damage your drywall or plaster, so I was hoping not to go this route.

3. Use a DIF spray or gel. Again, you need to score or remove the first layer.

We didn't have a steamer, so I was hoping to try the vinegar and water mixture and that the first layer, if it not all of the paper, would come off. I bought a putty knife to help get stuff up.

On move in day, while answering nature's call in the main floor half bath, I noticed a corner of the wallpaper bubbling up. So, naturally, I pulled it up. It came right off! Holy cow!

But not so fast. The striped panel peeled off because it was paper on paper. Further pulling revealed that it was leaving the adhesive layer completely behind. Womp womp. But now we have a new ritual of taking a tug each time we use the half bath. The adhesive layer is in such great shape I'm tempted to just prime and paint over it, but I'm not sure how well that'll work out. Maybe I'll try a small section and evaluate.

Anyway, the goal was to tackle the master bath first before we fully move into the house. That ... was less victorious. The border in the bathroom pulled right off and left the adhesive layer behind. The shower room on the other hand was a mix of beautiful clean peels down to the wallboard and stubborn shreds and strips that required the Piranha spray I got for Christmas from my mother-in-law (thanks!). To control the drips, I would spray and then spread the gel around with a sponge.

This method seemed to be working. Once the paper was soaked, I'd scrape it up with the putty knife. But timing was tricky - it would dry so fast that you couldn't really spray large areas and hope to get to it all. I also brought up the top layer of the wallboard in some spots. I figure we'll smooth caulk over those nicks and sand it down before priming and painting.

We pulled and scraped in between paint runs in the laundry room. The worst part was actually the border in the tub area. It was not coming off well, even with the gel. Then the other night as I was working on the trim in the laundry room, Mike asks me if I can come upstairs and help him with something.

"Notice anything different?" he said with a big grin.

It took me a moment ... but the border was all down. Apparently I'd married a wallpaper master. Or, as Mike put it, I wasn't using the gel thick enough.

So, we're officially done with de-wallpapering the master bath. Still have the two more bathrooms to tackle, but that's down the road.

Master bath plan:
1. Rip up the carpet
2. Lay down tile floors (Mike's trying to talk me into radiant heat)
3. Paint walls
4. Caulk shower area
5. Paint cabinets
6. Frame in mirror
7. Swap out hardware

Also, while we had friends over, our builder buddy realized that the wall between the tub and the bedroom wasn't original. As in, at one point in time, the bathroom was open to the bedroom. We're glad someone closed it off. Not our cup of tea.