Battlepaint Galactica

As mentioned by Spouse, Galactica is blue.  The walls in that room were awful.  Now they are awfully blue.  For a while, I was convinced it was also greenish...I'd felt like we'd made a mistake and made the room a dentist's office's colors.  Now I think it is mostly an "under the sea" shade of blue.  Spouse is Princess Ariel and I am Sebastian.  

Princess Ariel tore up so much linoleum in the kitchen.  Honestly, its as if that flooring wronged her somehow, and she was out for some serious Khan-esque revenge.  Now it is all gone, and hopefully our own personal ownhomership Genesis device will come through and create life...from lifelessness....

(FYI, our own personal ownhomership Genesis device is gonna be some dude who comes in and refinishes the floors.)

Also, the closet is awesome!!!

Galactica is a shade of blue

Here are a bunch of pictures from the past week. Huge thanks to Carol and PJ of course.

I guess the only pictures that need some brief explanations are 1) me with a power saw cutting the plywood and vinyl flooring in the back patio, being helped by PJ and 2) the new closet!

1) Basically the kitchen floor has several layers and we got them all up, with the exception of the tar glue stuff and that will happen soon. I always look this crazy when working at the house.

2) PJ built a closet in the back bedroom and it's awesome.

Also some pictures of doug painting the upstairs hall and the back bedroom. We went with this pale blue that might bring to mind the last time you had fish n chips in a wee shack at the beach. Feel free to send old lobster pots and captain's wheels for the decor.

All in all a very productive time. The carpets will be pulled up soon and that will be a profound transformation I think.

One of my many areas of expertise

Hi!

We are taking a day off from the house to attend to our other dwelling and to watch this awesome episode of the Office where Michael throws Jan a baby shower. I think the baby's name is Astird.

This is what I learned today: we are going to have a grueling time pulling up the kitchen floor vinyl/plywood/linoleum/tar paper. But! The payoff should be worth it: restored old pine floors from like way before you were born!

The back bedroom is almost all de-wallpapered. It probably needs some drywall treatment though, parts of the plaster are in very bad shape.

Sometime in early April the carpets will start to get pulled up. That should change the landscape pretty seriously! I really can't wait.

Painting pictures

Pittsburgh to the rescue!

My parents have driven from Pgh to assist in the home demovation. They are very handy. They seemed shocked at how wrecked the house is now, after two weeks of constant wallpaper removal. Dad just stood staring at the wall in between the kitchen and living room for about five to ten minutes, trying to figure out what to do with it:  "Can it be spackled? Can it be sanded? Can it be painted? Can it just be removed entirely? Can we just get in the van and go back to the 'Burgh and forget about this busted S. Philly rowhome?"  

Seriously, though, I'm really glad they've come...the amount of work to do was starting to feel overwhelming.  With them around I know stuff'll get done!!!  We've asked them to be in charge of getting the living room ready for painting.  There's a lot of sanding and probably a fair bit of drywalling too.  I will from now on call it "drywailing".

About 10 days in...

The good: wallpaper is disappearing, the heater was serviced, the plumbing is fixed and we found an electrician guy and a floor guy.

The bad: wallpaper on the ceiling, damaged plaster walls, a million sq feet of wall to wall to be pulled up, painting.

The ugly: the kitchen.

Here and below are pictures we took over the weekend and on Monday. You can see the place is just getting messier and messier! But a lot of wallpaper is gone!

Pipes

I will put some pictures up soon because today we got lots of new plumbing in the basement. This means it is now safe to flush the toilet.

We also took down more wallpaper. Despite this almost daily assault on the walls, an infinite supply of the stuff remains in most rooms. Doug has the living room under control, but upstairs is still seriously coated. And maybe you could say I've got a decent headway on the stairs and hallway, however that would be politely ignoring the wallpaper on the high surfaces and all of the stuff lurking behind the wood paneling and drop ceilings. Yeah, purple wallpaper is peeking out from BEHIND the bizarre hanging grody ceilings. I am trying very hard to act like that's no big deal.

The one truly easy part today was the cherubs and laurels wallpaper in the bathroom. It pulls down in enormous pieces, and I got most of it off in 10 minutes.

Today was the first night of Philly Beer Week. We almost went to a bar to celebrate but it was too packed and we were too tired to try. We did have some good takeout fish from Ippolito's on 13th and Dickinson for dinner and luckily had a few Pacificos in the fridge.

Punchline

A bit of Futura would look so good...

Style-wise, the choices that the previous tenants made would be perfectly suited as the background over which the credits would be placed in a Wes Anderson movie:

 

Sunday Gooey Sunday (Part II)

Apart from the wallpaper stuff, some other stuff happened today. Like we realized that the pipes hooked up to the toilet leak a whole lot. When you flush all this water comes spilling down the plumbing and into the basement. Ugh. Its both gross and annoying.  

On the plus side, some friends came over and saw the place.  S____ knows a lot about home repair and gave us a lot of tips.  She immediately grabbed a hammer and pulled up the linoleum in the kitchen.  There were three layers of green linoleum (with some plywood in between some layers) and then wood floors.  The one deepest down is the coolest. In the picture below, its the one on the left.  Its got some weird blue and red speckles in it and I think it was originally installed when Djedefra was building up the Sphinx: 

Sunday Gooey Sunday

11:00AM:  I hate wallpaper removal

1:00PM:  Okay, if I don't score the opalescent top layer of the stuff so much the stuff comes off a bit easier.  

2:00PM:  Using LOTS of M-1 wallpaper removal gunk on the lower paper layer really makes this stuff come off a bit better...

3:00PM:  Now that I have seemingly mastered the subtle and profound art of wallpaper removal, I've got to say I could see building a career around it.  I mean, its just SOOO satisfying when you get a 6 foot long section of paper to come off all in one piece.  The "ssshhhhhsssk" sound of adhesive peeling off the wall is to me like I imagine it would sound if the Vienna Boys Choir performed the entire of London Calling:  majestic but simple, a transcendent testament to the working man. Also there are some surprisingly funky moments.

4:00PM:  I hate wallpaper removal.