Category: upstairs

work on the upstairs apartment

starting plaster

This weekend we did quite a lot. The old anaglypta, while quite nice, was rather badly damaged, and had so many coats of paint, it was difficult to see the pattern. janeen took some photos (the color was white — something funny with the incandescent bulb made it look orange…)

so we bought some new anaglypta wall paper, but have to remove the old stuff first. a multi step process. at first, we tried using the heat gun. slow and messy. then i attacked it with a scraper. the paper separated in the middle leaving a layer of paper on the wall. we then used wallpaper remover to get down to the plaster.

removing the paper that was still stuck

above right, janeen painted all the walls with pink plasterweld. she kept finding more loose paint, and so eventually almost every square inch of walls had been scraped clear of paint. i think janeen made two full garbage bags full of paint scrapings from this one room alone. i sanded all the walls and ceiling, and washed the walls and ceiling with tsp.

hallway ceiling with plaster washers for support

here you can se the state of the ceiling. all the little dots are plaster washers. i probably put up more than 200 plaster washers on the ceiling and on the walls. in the pictures below, i’m adding tape along all the cracks. took a long time to tape around a circle. lots of little pieces of tape.

this is the first of three skim coats of lighweight joint compound that i put on the ceiling. it’s starting to look more even.

we then finished preparing the walls for plastering, and we plastered the wall between our hallway and the entry hallway. janeen likes the shadows…

making and repairing holes

countdown to grandma: 10 weeks.

look at what mathew did to my carefully painted wall! he needed to get to some wiring for downstairs and we also needed a way to insulate the last wall upstairs.

inside the crawl space were these really old wooden “Shell Aviation Gasoline” boxes, and i was thinking they could be lost treasure or some cool vintage artifacts… nope, just bits of broken plaster and construction debris.

and downstairs, more new holes! this was actually where the old ceiling medallion used to be. don’t worry, we’ll plaster over it.

and part of the never ending wiring project included the alternate entrance. this is where we’ve got rotten wood from a leak and mathew found dead termites… he replaced a lot of the wood and made it more weather proof. (right) i’m not sure, but i think this is a light well between our house and the neighbor’s house that i’ve never seen before!

(left) i don’t know what mathew is trying to show us here… (right) even though mathew’s only wearing a t-shirt as he’s finishing this door frame, it’s getting COLD out!

here i am attaching gypboard to patch holes that were made in the wall. i even added some insulation near the alternate entrance. mathew’s goal for next weekend is sanding, prep and plaster!

a delayed post

here’s what happened last weekend…

on saturday my parents came to help with paint prep, sanding and painting in the downstairs living room.

(left) the primer is white so the room doesn’t look that different yet… (right) on sunday we started working on the foyer. i stripped paint on the outside of the living room door trim.

(left) months ago mathew had agreed to refinish a teak table for mark’s new cafe. since we’ve got too much on our plates these days, he had mark and his girlfriend atsuko help out with the sanding and polyurethane.

mathew started demo on this corner of the foyer. there was a leak that damaged the wall and trim. mathew spent the rest of the day reworking bad/dangerous wiring.

here is the picture rail covered in many layers of paint. i uncovered lots of white, beige, red and gold! but this paint wasn’t coming off as easily as upstairs and the trim in the corner was damaged beyond recognition so we’ve decided to replace the picture rail in this small room.

sorry for the boring post…

plaster and trim

last weekend it was time to plaster the final wall in the downstairs living room.

mathew sands the plaster used for filling holes.

say good bye to the modern art…

plaster begins. and voila! [there are no “during” photos because i was running around fetching water, mixing plaster, rearranging the ladder and platform, and scraping buckets… but we’ve done this so many times now that you get the idea…]

(left) touch-up plaster on the ceiling and above the picture rails. (right) the window trim i stripped and sanded last weekend.

more trim stripping.

mathew attaches the window trim.

(left) and even more trim stripping. (right) window trim in place and a reflective new plaster wall (to the left of the window.) you probably don’t know it, but this small bit of wall, to the right of the window, is possibly our most dramatic change in the entire house so far. there had been a leak at the upper right of this window, causing water to leak into the wall (for years?) that eventually broke through the plaster leaving a huge ugly hole. of course i don’t have any “before” photos… but if i did you would be seriously amazed by the change that has taken place. either way, mathew did a really great job on the repairs and the new plaster in this room.

a hot friday

the outdoor temp gauge read 100 degrees this afternoon! i had lunch with my grandmother in the richmond district this afternoon and our neighborhood in the mission felt 10-15 degrees hotter.

mathew’s aunt karin and cousin sylvia have been visiting from england. they drove up with daniel today and mathew took the day off work to hang out with everyone.

afterwards he got back to work on the house. i found him cooling off on the scaffolding and using his new toy (some sort of power nailer.)

new additions

our furniture finally arrived!

we’ve been waiting over a month and a half for these 3 pieces.

how does a vegetarian household end up buying a leather loveseat? (especially when we both agreed before going to the store that we didn’t want leather?!) leather sofas tend to be shorter in height, an important factor when considering our narrow entry, hall and stairway.

and the “grasshopper” chair almost didn’t make it up. it had to be carried through the downstairs kitchen, up the back, exterior staircase and then through the bedroom window, which mathew removed in desperation.

last weekend

hey everyone, i’ve been really sick and mathew has been really busy with his job, so here’s what happened last weekend.

the bathroom vanity now has drawers!

because of my lack of electrical knowledge i had a bit of a dangerous shock while stripping paint… my paint scraper slipped and must have hit something inside of the open outlet and there were huge sparks. (left) can you see the scorch marks at the lower right of the outlet? (right) and see that crater at the lower edge of the paint scraper? the sparks made that! luckily i was wearing gloves, a respirator mask, glasses and headphones. mathew says because it sparked against the outside of the plug, this is good because it means the box is grounded.

(left) meanwhile mathew was outside grinding off the bits that hold the useless mini half-gates at the bottom of our stairs. (right) and inspecting what the next steps will be for the cracked plaster wall in the living room downstairs.

a lot of the electrical outlets in this room were added more recently by a really BAD contractor. they were all placed at varying heights in the baseboards. they installed them by chopping out parts of the baseboard and then filling in the space with plaster. NOT pretty (see my scorched outlet photo above.) mathew is planning on putting them above the baseboards and then replacing the missing trim. (right) and while mathew and i are busy with demolition, scraping, sanding and general chaos, our friend and temporary downstairs tenant, mark was dancing tango with his girlfriend atsuko in the kitchen.

mathew up a very long ladder trying to uncover the reason for a leak.

(left) here i’m sanding to expose covered cracks in the plaster walls. (right) proudly standing next to my ugly work.

where did the weekend go?

sunday night mathew and i were both wondering where the weekend went. we both felt like we got very little done. but in looking at these photos, we sure kept busy.

(right) mathew took the drywall off the outside of the bathroom so he could wire an outlet into the inside of the medicine cabinet. (right) attaching a veneer strip to a vanity shelf.

(left) medicine cabinet with a hole cut for the electrical outlet. (right) our sonicare toothbrush, the reason for the outlet.

i spent the entire weekend stripping paint off trim in the living room downstairs.

drawers for the upstairs bathroom vanity.

years ago mathew had read about drilling holes in glass and was excited to finally get to try the technique on our medicine cabinet mirror. (left) he enclosed the area with a wall of putty then filled it with water to keep the glass cool to avoid breaking it.

he said the process was really slow, but it worked! (right) with knob attached.

a productive weekend

i had an early start upstairs on saturday and painted a couple of coats over the weird paneling (that will eventually be removed.) my parents came over to help downstairs. together they pulled up the top layer of linoleum in the foyer.

when i finished painting i went downstairs and my dad moved into the living room to remove the window frame, picture rail and baseboard from the water-damaged wall by the window. i helped my mom to remove the fiberboard and linoleum “rug” that was under the linoleum. this floor originally had a linoleum “rug” with a painted red border, a layer of fiberboard, 2 layers of different patterned linoleum and a layer of carpet. i guess the idea was, “if it’s ugly, cover it.”

in true turtle + mole fashion, “it has to get ugly before it gets pretty.” (left) my dad removed all the trim around the window so that mathew can figure out where the leak is coming from and then repair the plaster wall. (right) mathew spent saturday down in his workshop making the frame for our medicine cabinet mirror, trimming and finishing shelves for our living room and other things.

on sunday i finished pulling up the fiberboard and linoleum “rug” (pictured left.) isn’t that the weirdest thing? now it’s just unfinished wood with a painted red border.

i spent a little time in mathew’s workshop personalizing an aluminum strip that will go on the inside of the medicine cabinet mirror frame. cool, huh?

(left) mathew making drawers for our upstairs bathroom vanity. (right) paint stripping begins in the downstairs living room. the smoke alarm went off after 5 minutes, at least we know it works!