(left) on saturday my mom replaced the missing carpet tack strips in the bedroom. (right) while i stripped door paint in the garage. mathew and my dad went to pick up wood trim and a new marble vanity top.
it’s funny, while working on the house, building materials often remind us of food, usually desserts, chocolate, frosting, ice cream, etc. (left) as i was stripping paint it would come off in bunched up, wrinkled piles. (right) they looked a lot like pale cadbury flake bars from england. except ours are crunchy and lead flavored!
meanwhile upstairs (left) my mom sanded the wainscoting while (right) my dad cut and installed carpet padding in the bedroom.
(left) mathew cut and installed the baseboards in and around the closets and added new door trim. it doesn’t match our original 95 year-old trim but it’s similar enough and mathew enjoyed how easy it was to cut and install. (right) on sunday morning mathew and i installed carpet in the bedroom. this carpet was previously in the living room, it was in really good condition so we held onto it and since it was larger than this bedroom we were able to reuse it. my grandmother doesn’t like carpet, she has trouble walking on it. but she’s mentioned falling out of bed once or twice and she likes to watch tv really LOUDLY so we’re hoping the carpet softens things.
first we laid out the whole carpet and pieced together the closets. using a rented carpet stretcher and knee kicker mathew attached it to the carpet tacks around the perimeter of the room. we used a self-adhesive fiberglass tape for seams and joins, we hope it holds things together! ideally you should use heat-activated seam tape but our local store didn’t carry it.
(left) my dad prepped and plastered this strip of wall near the kitchen entrance. (right) my mom continued sanding wainscotting.
(left) my dad brought his carpet cleaner and cleaned the entire carpet until it looked brand new. (right) mathew created a plywood top for the bathroom vanity that will hold the sink and marble top.
how the carpet and bedroom looks now.
the kitchen cabinets with handles.
and the filming continues next door and in our driveway… mathew talked to our neighbor last night and found out that it’s not a rap video but a “documentary” about him. the film is being made by british film students and will be shown in november at a london film festival. (above) after it got dark they had a generator powering a bright light shining into our neighbor’s bedroom; this went on for a few hours. the light was to simulate the sun shining as our neighbor is waking up in the morning. funny documentary, filming morning at night… where the sun usually rises on the other side of the house…
