The Brad Hole

We closed on our house back on March 10th, and moved in on March 26th. That gave us 2 weekends (and a few long nights) to get some stuff done before moving. Here's a brief list of what we did, mainly so I can reference it in the future when I forget.

First, with the help of Maureen, we de-popcorned the ceilings in the guest room, my office, Beth's office and the master bedroom. This was a very messy job, and we had a casualty during the process - the "good" water sprayer broke halfway through. However, we were helped considerably by gravity and latex paint. The old ceilings had been painted over with a thick latex paint, and for the most part everything fell down in big sheets once it was sufficiently saturated.

Once each ceiling was stripped, we then went and smeared on joint compound, giving it a sort of faux-finish look. I dunno if the style has a particular name, but it looks kind of like the venetian plaster style. Additionally, in every room but the master bedroom, we applied the same effect to the walls. The joint compound we used for the texturing took roughly 1-2 days to dry, so it really affected the timing of our schedule for these rooms. The girls did a lot of this, and they started to get a little stir crazy. Maureen even gave names to blobs of joint compound that landed on her shirt. OK, so we had a few more casualties when she washed her shirt and said goodbye to the blobs. Circle of life, man, circle of life.

Anyway, retexturing the walls was more a necessity than for aesthetics, as most of the walls were really beat up. In my office, for example, the door had been kicked in, the frame broken and the wall behind the door punctured by the prior doorknob. They had replaced the door, but apparently during its absence, they must've tacked up a sheet and used it, as there were eighty bajillion tack holes above and around the door frame. Resurfacing the wall made that all go away.

Once the walls and ceilings were retextured, we repainted them. We managed to get two coats in Beth's office, but ran out of time to apply a second coat to the walls of my office. We also still need to finish the trim details in both my and Beth's office.

We had my dad help out for a little bit and managed to remove the old door frame and install a new one for my office. This wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. However, I still need to add a few finishing nails, caulk the seams and repaint the frame and door (they are primered, but not painted).

During the last week before moving, we had most of the dirty work done, so it was time to hire professionals. We had a plumber come by and install a water pressure regulator. Our pressure was 110 psi and apparently it shouldn't be above 80. Since this house had a slab leak beforehand, we figured we'd rather not press our luck. We also had him fix one of the handles in the master bathroom vanity (it was completely non-functional). Interestingly, when I called to book the plumber, they wouldn't quote a price over the phone, only when the plumber arrived. Thus, I was a bit surprised to discover that just installing the pressure regulator cost $450. Oy.

After that, the Merry Maids stopped by to give the house a good cleaning. The existing cabinets were pretty nasty, and the bathrooms were in dire need. Plus, we managed to get the tile and carpets crapped up with dust and plaster bits from our wall work. After them, we had carpet cleaners pay us a visit. They did a remarkable job considering the state of the carpet They also offered to clean the saltillo tile scattered throughout, but at a quoted price of $900, we passed. ;-)

Orthogonal to this, we had a landscape guy come by, install sprinklers for the front and back, plant 3 new trees and remove a sandbox on the side of the house that was roughly a foot above the grade of the foundation. We also had an AC guy come by to ostensibly repair the evap, but he basically told us that both the evap and AC units were in scary shape, and the evap was going to be prohibitively expensive to repair. His advice was to run the AC until it breaks, then replace the whole thing with a more efficient unit.

In between all this, there were a few minor handyman tasks that I took care of. First, I had to cut the cabinet above the fridge so ours would fit. In the process, I nearly set the kitchen on fire. I had a Black and Decker mini reciprocating saw which I was using. Turns out that the blade gets pretty hot, and if you keep it in one spot for too long, things start to cook. :-) In my defense, I think it's kind of hard to tell the difference between smoke and sawdust when you're plowing through wood in a cramped space.

I also tried my hand at fixing some cabinet doors that wouldn't close. By using a hammer and hitting the hinges caveman-style, I was able to fix them. I also replaced (or in the case of my office, added) doorknobs and locks for most of the rooms. There are still a few remaining, but the bulk of that is behind me now. We've also replaced the showerhead in the master bathroom, re-orange-peeled a few wall patches, replaced/rehung two shower curtains, and added a window overlay (cut into 18 separate squares) on our front doors.