Happiness is a project complete!
And boy, are my knees happy that the flooring in the spare
room is done. As am I!
The poor spare room has been under renovations for a year
and a half. Admittedly, I have been
picking away at it. Now that there is a
light at the end of the tunnel, I think it’s time to abandon picking and start getting’
her done! The looming deadline for
completion isn’t conducive to procrastination anyway.
In seven short weeks this year’s round of house guests will
begin with my niece coming to stay with me while her parents are away. My daughter and grandchildren will also be
here around the same time. The Ostara
bunny will be dropping in for the first time in ages and ages and there will be
feasting and egg hunts and fires and labyrinth walks and a general celebratory
welcoming of Spring. A functioning spare
bedroom is going to come in handy.
It all started in October of 2011 when I had the bright
notion of fixing up the spare room, getting rid of the painted over wall paper,
the old carpeting and bringing it into the 21st century. I thought that it would be a relatively
simple renovation that would be done in a few months (even picking away at
it).
Wallpaper had been painted over with a bright green latex. It took weeks to steam it all off. |
Under the 35-year-old carpet was this nightmare! |
As it was, it took weeks to steam the wallpaper off the
walls only to discover that the wall was in terrible shape and getting it to a
paintable state was not going to be easy.
I finally had the brilliant idea to texture the walls. Never having done that before, I had no idea
that it would involve several tedious steps of preparation to achieve. Before I could even think about working on
the walls, though, I had to pull up the carpeting. What lay beneath it was a veritable nightmare! There was no way that I could just lay new
flooring over it. It was a mess. I wanted to cry.
Having reached and passed the Rubicon, I had no choice but
to carry on. So I filled and sanded, and
filled and sanded. And filled and sanded
some more. Every time I thought that I had
found and fixed all the bad spots, I’d turn around and find some more. For such a little room, the walls were
unbearably mangled. Even now, there are
a couple of nasty spots in the closet that I now plan to cleverly hide with a
well-placed closet organizer.
Once I’d had my fill of the filling and sanding, I had to
prime the walls – with oil-based primer!
Yuck! I hate working with
oil-based paint. Finally I could start
applying the texture. It went really
well and I was thoroughly pleased with the results. But then I had to prime again. With more oil-based primer. More yuck.
At last, I could put some colour on the walls. I chose Sassafras, a delightful medium green
to match the stitching on the incredibly fun and funky blanket from India that
I bought just for the spare room. Painting the textured wall took forever. And a lot of paint. I really don’t mind painting at all, but this
was proving to be an enormous job. I was
beginning to think that the retro 70’s look wasn’t so bad after all.
I wasn’t at all sure that I liked the colour of the
walls. It was darker than I anticipated,
much better suited to a feature wall than to an entire room. I turned out the light, shut the door and
decided to sleep on it.
After a good night’s sleep, the colour didn’t seem all that
bad. Once the flooring was in and the
trim on and some curtains up, it would be fine.
Right?
This brought me to the flooring. The only way to solve the problem with the horrible
mess was to install a sub-floor right over the top of the whole thing. Two and a half hours and four sheets of
Enstrong later, I had accomplished just that.
It looked more like a jigsaw puzzle with all the weird angles and
notches and my not-so-steady hand at cutting, but it was way, way better than
what was there originally. On to the
flooring itself.
I chose Drop and Done vinyl flooring. What a fabulous product this stuff is! You just put it in place and that’s it.
Honestly, though, another six hours on my hands and knees measuring
and cutting and fitting was enough to know that this is definitely not a career
my wrists and knees could ever be paid enough to do. I ache all over.
Much - MUCH! - better. |
But what a happy ache it is!
The floor looks great and the paint looks fantastic with it.
There is one minor hurdle in getting through the next step, though. I don’t quite have enough money to buy my mitre saw to cut the trim with. So, I’ll have find one to borrow for now.
Very nice work.
ReplyDeleteWow - fabulous job! And isn't that vinyl flooring just the best! We put it in the trailer this year, and love it!
ReplyDelete