Chez Larsson

Scraping - The Story of My Life

I don’t know if you remember but I spent my last summer vacation scraping the old house. Guess what? I’m at it again. At the new place.

 

This house stood vacant for almost two years and prior to that the old lady who lived here was too poorly to do much at all. So I’m doing it all over again.

 

Luckily I only need to scrape the wood and only need to clean the rest before repainting. All that yellow is going and the whole house will be white. And yay, I removed the horrid brown/dirt/orange striped awning. I have a new one in the basement waiting to be installed.

 

Some of the wood is in pretty bad shape, like this piece right here. Here it’s already received the cleaning and scraping treatment but I also sanded and filled the crack with plastic padding. Love that stinky stuff.

 

 

 

On the balcony things were pretty bad. I don’t think anyone had tended to pretty much anything up there for eons. I had the new wood planks laid by the contractors right before we moved in because I was honestly afraid to step on the old ones in fear of falling right through.

 

 

The ceiling needed a bit of TLC too as you can see. Oh, I have yet to go into that attic space! Here’s hoping there’s something exciting up there and not just dust.

 

 

 

All the windows need to be partially re-caulked too. Luckily I’ve done this so many times now though so it’s no biggie.

 

 

My sweet next door neighbor Kerstin (actually I have such great neighbors everywhere around me) said that she removed the banisters when repainting hers some years ago and since I much prefer to paint on solid ground as opposed to on a ladder I removed mine. Pretty scary up there on the balcony without I can tell you. But it does make things so much easier.

As for the left side of the house I’ve realized that I won’t be able to paint it myself. It’s way too high. It doesn’t look too bad but behind that flower bed and black railing are stairs to the basement and there’s really nowhere safe to place the ladder and besides mine (a double one) is too short. I’ll call in some contractors and see if they can help me out.

So, today’s to-do:

* Prime all exposed wood.

* Prime all inset walls.

* Add new window caulk where needed.

To be continued.

The Bathroom Before and After

So, after that sneak peek of the bathroom yesterday I thought it’s about time I show you a before and after.

That’s the before above if you didn’t guess it already.

And drumroll! The after :

 

Yay! It’s white, shiny and I love it. More details tomorrow.

~

Ps. That shower curtain is actually just the lining which usually hangs in the tub. Still haven’t decided on a fabric for the outside. Will show you as soon as I’ve sewn it!

The Kitchen

 

Tadaa! The kitchen!

 

 

 

Please excuse the lateness of this post. I’m officially pooped. I was just saying to Wille how I have so much to post about but no time to write and edit photos. I get up at the crack of dawn on weekends and get on with stuff but there are just too few hours in a day! Also I have major internet issues and have very patchy online access. I spend at least an hour a day on the phone with the broadband/internet/phone/TV people. Frustration! I’m posting this at work this morning because I had wasn’t able to upload my Live writer written post yesterday and couldn’t upload photos to Typepad. Arrrghhh!

 

 

 

Anywho, this is my kitchen. It’s all IKEA and my contractors did an amazing job finishing it after IKEA forgot (!) to organize the construction of it. Duh! Good thing I have my contractors who stepped up and gave me a much better kitchen than I ever expected to have. Electrical outlets galore, recessed spotlight, you name it, I have it.

A couple of eyesores still; the dishwasher door is still missing because they were out at IKEA (and will have to wait at least another month…) and I’m waiting for my lovely fridge to arrive, hopefully this week.

Other than that, what can I say? I love it.

Oh, can't remember what it looked like before? Here's how:

 

:)

 

Spray Painting Sucks

So I bought this gizmo and thought it would save me time painting the basement. Um. No.

 

First of all it took FOR EVER to tape off any areas where I didn’t want paint. And then it took FOR EVER to spray. Yay. Not.

 

In the end after a FULL DAY of painting a tiny room I was done but still not happy with the result. I’m not saying this isn’t a good tool because it probably is for other projects (I’ll try it on doors later) but for painting walls with emulsion I’m MUCH happier with my paint brush and roller thank you very much.

Ps. I left those areas above unpainted on purpose because cabinets are going there. But come to think of it, if I’d rolled on the paint I’d have done those too…

Wille's Room so Far

Here’s how Wille’s room started out. Original (not on a good way) blue linoleum tiles on the floor and a nondescript wallpaper. Lovely light though!

 

 

During the Easter weekend I tore up those tiles which were attached to Masonite boards which were nailed into the pine sub floor.

 

Here I could get a sense of what the room will look like. Wooden floors, light colored walls.

 

 

I painted the wallpaper white. I know a lot of you are against painting over wallpaper but in my book it’s ok. It’s a quick fix and although there are lines where the wallpaper overlaps it’s MUCH better than to live with the ugliness and wait until there’s time and energy to rip it off and start over. That could be months or even years. I don’t think Wille wants to wait that long. I know I don’t.

 

Yay! I finally made a decision on the flooring for all of the upstairs and the kitchen. I’ve gone for oak floors (as there’s oak in the living room downstairs) and I chose to go with a different pattern than downstairs because I realized I wasn’t going to be able to match it completely anyway. The floor is Kährs Linnea Wide Ek (oak) City. It’s a slim board that can’t be sanded but I chose it because there will have to be a difference in height in the living room and kitchen and this way the difference will be less than if I went with a thicker sand able floor. I went with the same for upstairs because it was easier that way and it saves me a few bucks that they can use off cuts from upstairs downstairs.

 

And here it’s being laid. I love how there will be no thresholds and the whole floor upstairs will be one big thing. EDIT: I'm not laying the floor myself, I had my contracters do it. I have laid this type of click floor in the past though and it's easy but I don't have the time this time.

That’s Wille’s room so far!