18 Days and Counting ~ Guest Room Redo @ The Ranch

Day 1 - Saturday I moved all but the bulky or heavy pieces of furniture out.  

Day 2 - Sunday scrape popcorn off of ceiling and begin the long slow process of removing the wallpaper. This is the 4th room in this house I have removed wallpaper from and I still have 2 rooms to go. The master BR was pretty easy, it was a grass fiber fabric type and really soaked up the vinegar laced water. The small laundry room and hall took days. No amount of perforating, sanding, steaming and crying would get that paper off it was some sort of vinyl stuck on with what looked like wood glue mixed with Elmer's glue. It came off in emery board size pieces. This part was the most daunting because it was very similar wallpaper and I had a tight schedule.

JD Scraping off the popcorn

It took JD about 45 minutes to get the popcorn off. He told me he was starting and I walked out to the garage to get my pole scraper and by the time I found it and came back in he was almost half done!

About 10:00 am I started on the wallpaper. Luckily for me a friend came by about 2:00 and helped for a few hours. She had brought us dinner so I didn't have to stop to cook. I worked until about 8:00 and had almost half the room done which sounds impressive but included the closet and door walls so, not so much.

JD pulled off all of the baseboards and molding.

End of Day 2

I should mention this was a budget makeover. We did about 90% + of the work ourselves and wanted to stay at about $800 or less. At the end of day 2 we were still at labor only, zero expense.

Day 3 - Monday JD went off to work and I spent the day between filling orders and packing boxes for my Etsy shop and scraping wallpaper. By late afternoon I had about two thirds of the room done including the biggest wall! JD came home and we took out the rest of the carpet and much of the padding. We felt pretty good but had encountered a few problems.

1. The closet doors which we were going to keep temporarily as we knew we wouldn't get the new doors built in time had to go. The framing out of the closet was done by someone who must not have owned a level or any proper tools. The track was ruined because of poor installation and the framing being off. It was decided after trying to reset the track and doors after having removed the track to get the carpet and pad out it was a waste of time. About an hour wasted.

2. The walls needed a lot of work. I knew from the other rooms that the former owners had wallpapered because they didn't want to finish the walls. This room wasn't as bad as some, but I would need a full day or more to fill, sand and smooth the walls.

3. With the closet going south we figured we would not get the ceiling done in time for our guest. 

15 days and counting ~

Guest Room Redo @ the Ranch

So PJ was coming for Christmas and was pretty much going to have to sleep on the couch or in my vintage trailer "Ethel". At first I didn't think much of that because I was so excited she was coming! We hadn't seen each other since I visited her last Christmas... 

Also, Ethel is also know around here as "The Guest House". Some guests love Ethel so much they take "first dibs on Ethel".

Ethel

A little over 2 weeks before she was due to arrive on Christmas eve I realized that it was ridiculous that we didn't have a comfortable place in the house for a single guest due to every room being either under construction or being used as storage for stuff removed from construction rooms. Sigh.

This house has nine rooms and six are in various stages of either "renewal" or "total makeover". Double sigh. Worse, some of it has been under construction for much longer than most would consider normal...

So on 12/6/14 eighteen days before PJ was to arrive I decided that we were going to have a decent guest room for her to stay in!

This is what that room looked like on 12/6/14

You cannot tell in this picture how horrible the wallpaper is and the wallpaper border isn't shown. The carpet is at least 14 years old. The ceiling is icky popcorn. 

This had been my office for years and I hadn't done anything to it. It was as is from when I moved in. It was a room I went in, did my business and went out closing the door. In the greater realm of well laid plans I always thought this room would be the last to get done.

What had changed besides PJ's impending arrival was I never liked this room as an office. One of the two windows was under the patio cover. Dark except for a couple months in the winter (shown in this pic, looks so bright). The other was a western exposure that every afternoon was unbearable from the sun. I pretty much never opened the blinds on that side. It was perfect for the guest room because most guests only sleep in there! 

I had moved most of my office to a corner of my bedroom and frankly I was much more comfortable there.

The light was better. The mood of the room was somehow better. I was more productive here. Perhaps because this room was mostly done and I LOVED it! 

Next post, 18 days and counting...