The guest room's secret

Bill took a week of vacation time to get the guest room finished. It's not quite there, but it's close. Very, very close. I am excited to share the pictures with you once it's complete.

Last week, we made our trip to the big box store to purchase supplies. While there, a nice employee asked if he could help us with anything? We were looking at scrapers for the ceiling so Bill told him that we're frustrated by how difficult scraping the ceiling has been and how "they" make it look so easy on tv. This employee told us the secret.

I'm not going to share it with you because I think more people need to know.

Popcorn ceilings over plaster are easily removed by spraying the ceiling with warm water.

That's what this man told us.

At first I was skeptical. Really? Some warm water in a spray bottle? It turns out it makes sense. The ceiling is likely a latex based  application; with plaster underneath that the latex will need to be loosened up a bit. Water will do the trick.

When we got home that day I found an empty spray bottle, filled it with warm water, and started spraying the ceiling. I let it sit for a few minutes (okay, really more like thirty seconds, I was impatient to see if this was really going to work) and started scraping.

The bad popcorn/textured ceiling scraped right off. Underneath was a beautiful, smooth plaster ceiling.

The longer I left the water to soak, the easier it scraped off of the ceiling.

Bill and I scraped the entire ceiling in four hours. Sure, there were a few cracks. It is plaster in an old house after all. However, Bill worked his magic on the cracks and got it primed and painted. The results are stunning! I cannot tell you how excited I am to have a smooth ceiling.

I only wish we had known that trick when we re-did the home office.

I wonder if we got lucky. Will the other room ceilings scrape off that easily?

Are we ready to tackle another room?

Not for a year or so. It will be our bedroom next, and that has wallpaper that has been painted over so it's going to be a process (on the walls and ceiling, yes and the ceiling has texture over the wallpaper).

In the meantime, I'll work on the hallway to get that finished (our built-in linen closet has been neglected, so it's time to knock that off the list).

But for now, we still have the finishing touches to work on in the guest room. Stay tuned!

spring catch-up

I am just now catching up on the blogs I like to read.

Bill and I are getting a lot done around the house these days.

Well, I'm not today. I'm not home. I'm at church playing Wedding Coordinator (I'm not really playing, it's my job).

I have been working on the hallway. I have as much paint removed as I can reach. Tomorrow, I will create some sort of ladder/scaffolding across the landing so that I can reach up near the ceiling.

Once that's finished, we'll move on to priming, then painting the hall.

Bill has been finishing the doors. He has one left, the door to his office. He may have it ready to hang tomorrow.

All of the outdoor furniture is out and ready to be used. And it has been used as nice as it's been here.

Today isn't very nice though. It's cold (maybe it's in the 50's) and rainy. Here's a picture from a few weeks ago to help cheer you up. It's our Sand Cherry tree in bloom.

freeing the bathroom

We have liberated the bathroom.

It wasn't really under any kind of restraint, other than it had a door.

Did you catch that? It had a door. Well, wait. It still has a door. The door is what's been liberated. It's been freed from its hinges. And layers of paint.

Bill took the door off the hinges and took it to the basement. There he coated it with eco-friendly paint remover. I continued removing the paint off the trim in the hallway.

We're removing the paint, wait for it, so we can paint.

There are only so many layers of paint you can put on before it no longer looks good. Especially when your house is from the 1920's. That, and the last few layers weren't really done well. It was as though the owners were in a hurry to sell the house and sort of slapped on some paint in places that needed it. The problem with that is it shows. In a bad way.

So we're working on removing it. Then we'll paint a nice fresh coat. It will be purty.

In the meantime, for a short while, we don't have a door on the bathroom. It's sort of liberating in its own way.