Starting the downstairs bathroom

Things have been supper busy. I have been spending all daylight hours and into the night cleaning and painting. Then painting and cleaning.

This one coat paint stuff still needs more than one coat which is super disappointing. The guys at the paint section of the hardware store didn’t believe me so I had to bring them photos. He took one look at them and gave me a big discount and future contractor pricing on the rest of the paint. Which was a bit of relief for the budget.

Am almost done with the downstairs bathroom and have the first coat of primer on that downstairs red and silver bedroom. 

Thank goodness the downstairs bathroom was painted BEFORE they put in the wallpaper. Since the builder never put in an exhaust vent to the outside, some of the wallpaper toward the top of the walls was peeling making the removal that much easier. And thank goodness again for that wallpaper steamer. It really was worth every penny. 

The bathtub faucet was dripping pretty steadily and appears to have been dripping for some time. Over the years the drip had warn a rust spot into the bathtub that is now no longer repairable and is on the verge of leaking into the sub floor. I found a really great handyman who is both supper nice and honest by asking around at the local hardware store. 

Since I can’t move or replace the tub on my own, he not only replaced the tub, but patched the tile as well. It looks good, not super beautiful as we could not match the tile exactly, but not bad. Now with the white subway tile around the base of the new tub, kids can use it as a drawing spot for soap crayons.

To fix the faucet so the new tub would not get destroyed the way the last one had been, I took photos of it with the smart phone and brought them to the hardware store to find the part needed to stop the leak. 

The guys in the plumbing department where great. They told me exactly what part to get and the special tool to use. Since the gaskets are in there by compression, that tool was worth it. When the old part came out, it just fell apart in my hands. No wonder it was leaking so badly. Cleaned out the bits of the old part and put the new one in. Worked like a charm.  Now the faucet in the shower works great and won’t destroy the old tub.

The thing is, for 60$ (which includes the special tool), this could have been repaired years ago and the tub would be able to be saved. Now I have to spend about 800$ to replace the tub, re-tile, and fix the faucet.

Fired the Handyman

Yesterday, after talking to my husband about the handyman, I called the realtor.  Had to tell him that we both had a lot of reservations about his handyman.  He said that he was a good guy and was he planning on coming by that morning but the final decision on using him to do the work was up to me.  He said the guy gave him an excuse of some sort of emergency which is why he didn’t show up or answer his phone the other day. 

Around lunch time I took a break from the painting and sat down on the stairs to grab a bite to eat.  Looking outside the front window, I watched the handyman’s truck pull up.  He pulls up to the curb in front of the house next door and sits there for a good five minutes (had a watch and timed him).  Nobody leaves the truck or moves a window.  It just sits there.  Then he drives away.  Odd, but am quite frankly at that point in time I am too busy to really even care. 

That evening, his helper that was with him when he first came over, comes by and tells me that he has my glass for the windows in the back of his car but needed to be paid first.  I told him that I wasn’t the one that hired him and that the realtor already has the funds to make payments.  He was very upset, and very jittery.  I told him that I was sorry he was having problems with his guy, but I was not the person he needed to talk to.  He got more upset.  This next morning I called the realtor and told him about the visit last night and about his guy never coming to the door.  Told him to please tell his guy to never come to the door and I would find my own handyman.

By now, the upstairs is clean (ish) and painted and ready to show.  My back and feet and hands are so sore, but at least those rooms are presentable.  Just need to clean the upstairs windows and the carpet and it’s ready to go.  Also need to start asking around for a handyman.

The Not So Handy If He Doesn't Show Up Man.

Just when a second coat of paint is in the first bedroom, a second coat of primer in the second bedroom and a first coat of primer in the upstairs bathroom, things get interesting.

The realtor came over.  We walked around the house while we waited for the handyman to show up.  He gave a few opinions on what needed to and not to be done.  All of which was on the to-do list except for one.  It was to put a lock on the water heater.  I didn’t agree with that and asked him what happens if the tenant needs to relight the heater.  He told me that tenants weren’t smart enough for that. (Seriously, if a tenant isn’t smart enough to relight a water heater, they don’t need to be living in my house.) I agreed to put a clasp on the water heater cabinet to prevent kids from playing with the heater, but that the adults needed to be able to relight the heater so I wouldn’t have to pay him to come out and do it at an extra expense.  

After a while of waiting for this handyman, the realtor got board and started making phone calls and then said he had to go. 

The handyman never did show up. 

Later that evening, I got a call from my husband. We talked about what was done and what still needed doing. There was now a third coat of primer in the second bedroom, a second coat of primer in the upstairs bathroom, and started to clean the game room. The paint in the game room looked ok, so the only thing needed was a lot of cleaning with elbow grease and some Simple Green. 

Apparently, the handyman had called my husband earlier in the day to discuss the costs of hiring him to work on the list I gave him when he was here. (He didn’t mention that he never showed up for his appointment.) He gave my husband his prices in labor and in material costs. They talked about the house. They talked about prices. My husband told him that I can pick stuff up for less money so all we needed was the labor. Then this guy tells my husband, “I know a great place to get paint for real cheap. It’s where contractors take all of their overages to sell, and some of it is even stolen.” 

Yeah, this guy is a creep.

Prime, Paint, Clean, Mud

Two more coats of primer are now on the walls of the back bedroom.  The pink and green can still be seen as the colors bleed through.  Now I am not sure if it is really bleeding through or the bright colors have burned into my eyes.

The sound of a train woke me up the other night. I am so not used to hearing trains.  The bed got moved to the downstairs to a clean portion of the living room.  This way there is only one room in the house that is a disaster area.  Now it is a big room full of tools, supplies, stuff, things, and me.  The rest of the house is free and clear for rehab.

After all that primer I started putting the real paint in the bedroom.  My husband and I talked at great length about the color.  We didn’t want to go stark white.  Plain old white is boring and blinding all at the same time.  So found a nice neutral cream to off white color called Dove White.  Then ran to the home store and picked up a couple of 5 gallon buckets.  Decided to spend a little extra on a paint and primer in one since I can still slightly see the pink and green through the primer. 

Put some more mud on the upstairs bathroom.  It’s going to take a couple of more coats of mud to be smooth again.  So now there are two rooms drying, it’s time to start to prep the dark blue bedroom.  The color in here is almost black and the kids did some silver paint graffiti on the walls with lots and lots of stickers.  So, back to the TSP.  Scrapped off all of the stickers,cleaned the walls, and finished masking the room for that first coat of primer.

About halfway through the clean-up of the front, dark blue bedroom realtor called.  He said that he was going to be in town tomorrow and had set up a meeting with the handyman.  We set a time when we could all meet and then it was back to work.

Drywall Disaster

After all the handyman drama, it was time for the second coat of primer on the back bedroom. It amazes me how painting can be so simple, yet so time consuming.

While that was drying, time to start pulling down the peeling wallpaper from the bathroom.  The people who put up the wallpaper on the first three walls did a great job.  They painted the walls before putting up the paper and they sealed the glue to the wall and all of the edges really well.  All it took was some time with the steamer on a seam and it started to peal right off.  The wallpaper steamer was worth every penny.  No scoring or chemicals needed.  Just a little soap in the water, which is more for me than the wall paper.  Held it down on parts that don’t want to peel off for a few seconds and off it comes.

The problem area is that back wall.  It’s the part that is pealing and looking bad.  Started by trying to peal a top corner of the wall paper and the entire side of drywall came down.  No mold or mildew.  Just a drywall chalky mess.  Apparently who ever put the wallpaper on this wall did not paint the drywall before putting on the wallpaper.  Then the wallpaper absorbed steam from the shower and soaked it into the drywall itself, destroying the paper and the drywall.

Lesson learned:  Always always always put a good coat of protective paint on drywall BEFORE putting up wallpaper.

It took a whole lot of time spent on just scraping, pealing, and carefully removing as much nasty paper as possible.  Then all of the holes needed patching and some new drywall put in where it had been disintegrated.  After that, the first coat of mud and then let dry.

First coat of Primer.

The realtor called a couple of hours after the handyman left.  I told him our little of meeting and that we all needed to get on the same page.  He agreed and reveled that this was not his normal handyman.  His normal handyman passed away recently and we are apparently a guinea pig for this one.  He said he would call him and set up a meeting so we can all get together to go over what needs to be done.  He also gave me the code so I could get the keys our of the lock box.  Now I can lock up the house and go grab something to eat.

After grabbing much needed food and coffee, the rest of the day was finishing up the cleaning and putting on the first coat of primer in that bedroom.  It is so nice to get that primer on.  Kind of cleans up the walls.  Am using a one coat primer, but can still see the colors bleeding through, so looks like another coat tomorrow.  Hopefully the one coat stuff will work better in the other rooms.

With the first coat of primer on in one room, it was time to start working on the upstairs bathroom.  Know it sounds silly, but the first thing was to clean the entire bathroom.  This is so I have a cleaner place to work, it allows the painters tape to stick to surfaces, and will make the clean up from the mess I am about to make painting that much easier.   

After the bathroom was clean, it was late and time to hit the sack.  Literally.  The bed is a sleeping bag and pillow on a blanket on the floor. This time I was awake enough to pull out the Therm-a-Rest and put that down for some padding.  The sleeping situation is not going to change until I get home.