Happy Monday! I hope everyone is staying warm and safe in the wintery weather. It’s a bitter ten degrees right now with a good inch of snow on the ground. Pretty to look at, not fun to be out and about in.
In the three months I’ve been married to my husband, I’ve learned how to replace windows, replace rotting out studs, skim coat a wall, do basic wiring (beyond what I already knew), and just this past weekend how to put in a different kind of flooring than I’ve done before. Most importantly, I’ve learned that my husband and I can do work like this without any fighting and can laugh when one of us makes a mistake.
This week I’m going to talk about the weekend project that we’ve been working on for the past three weeks: The master bedroom of my husband’s house. My first full room project with my husband, I have to say it turned out quite well.
The room now sports two new windows (and a few new studs in the wall where the old windows leaked and rotted everything), lots of wall patches, a basically new wall on the window side by the time we replaced all the bad Sheetrock, new ceiling light/fan, new paint, new flooring (from old carpet to bamboo) and new blinds.
The most memorable task was unquestionably replacing the first window. We had to pull off crumbling Masonite boards, fight a few thousand ants (and run out of ant spray), poke at more wood rot than my husband anticipated, and by noon I had at least a four foot hole in the bedroom wall. I think we made three trips to the hardware store that day, but by dark we had the new studs, some new insulation, and a new wall put back up. The bedroom looked a little worse for wear with chunks missing around the window and all that insulation poking through, but we got it done!
I had the most fun doing the flooring. Now, a bit about me is that my two favorite jobs in the construction/re-model world are walls and floors. I’ve refinished the hardwood floors in my own house, I hired for the sanding, but the rest (pulling the carpet, staining, poly-urethane coats) was all me. I’ve also put in floating floors. But this bamboo floor has taken the cake! The nail gun for this thing takes a mallet to hammer in these long staples. And working the planks together is also a favorite thing of mine. It’s hard on the knees, or arms if you’re up for hammer time, but makes fast progress unless you’re at a doorframe.
Our fun oopsie moments include when I measured a board upsidedown for a doorframe cut, and when my husband taped the walls for caulking the trim. When he pulled off the painter’s tape… the wall paint came with it. Husband swears he’s done it this way before no problem, and the paint was two weeks old, so we decided the painter’s tape was just lousy and in the future I’ll handle all trim work. I also lost count of how many staples we had to pull out because I didn’t hit the nail gun hard enough. Not a ton, and my husband did it a few times as well, but it cost us our steady groove.
Next up: The house remodel continues with the fixing up of the second bathroom, followed by the hallways, living room, kitchen and basement room. There’s also outdoor work yet to be done. We have about twelve weeks left before we begin trying to sell the place. Wish us luck!
Have fun!
– Abby
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