Confession time- I have no idea what day it really is… forty, forty-one, forty-two? It doesn’t really matter anyway, I’ve started keeping track in weeks not days. So here we are at the end of week six.
The house actually looks livable now. All the rooms are painted and gorgeous! I’ve spent the last few days working on the bathrooms and the rest of the family has been working on replacing outlets, installing fans, and replacing lights.
While this should be the quick part of the job almost every update lately has taken three times longer than expected. An older house has lots of quirks and we are finding all of them.
We installed fans in most of the rooms, but in one room there was a clump of wires in the ceiling. After the fan was installed they realized that it didn’t work on the switch (like it had previously).
The finally fixed that problem and re-installed the fan only to find out that the fan works but several of the outlets now don’t work. Fun stuff folks, fun stuff.
I’m painting all the vents, but somehow in the process of taking them down the screws were put somewhere in the house. Somewhere meaning a very secret place that no one can remember. Now we are on the hunt to find the screws or just buy new ones so that we can get them off the floor and back in the ceiling.
The nice thing about having concrete floors right now is that I can work and paint on them and I don’t have to worry about getting anything on them. I’d much rather paint inside than outside in the dark with the bugs.
I’m almost finished with my inexpensive bathroom renovation. The walls and ceiling are painted, a new light is up, everything has been cleaned off from the texturing, and I painted the trim and started to lay a new floor tonight.
I forgot to paint the mirror in this bathroom. In fact I forgot the bathroom needed a mirror until my dad asked where it was. I need to find it in the garage so I can paint it tomorrow.
Tonight we were changing out the faucet in this bathroom and during the process we had a small flood. Not only that but dh stuck his foot on the still wet trim so I need to fix that tomorrow too. It felt like one step forward two steps back this weekend!
These are minor set backs, but I’m starting to feel the pressure to get done. We get our stuff delivered in two weeks and the house will need a good cleaning before we move in.
I’m also renovating my bathroom on a dime. As you know, this is the bathroom of many mirrors. I really don’t want to mess with taking them down so after some research I’ve decided to paint them.
Like most of my projects I spend far too long reading blog posts about how to do things before I make a decision to do it.
To my surprise there were not too many tutorials sharing how to paint a mirror. I did find one and they recommended purchasing Insl-x Sxa-110-04 Stix Waterborne Bonding Primer. I couldn’t find it at Home Depot, but Amazon had it so I ordered a quart.
I taped around the part of the mirror I wasn’t painting and got to work.
I’ve put two coats on so far and I’m not convinced I can actually paint a mirror.
I had some sections get a little funky and almost bubble up. I think it is because I went over it a few times on the first coat. It seems like you have to do one coat, let it totally dry, then put on another coat. Don’t try to fix your first coat right away, fix it on the second coat.
Since it was still wet I was able to wipe it with a damp paper towel and remove the primer. I’ll check it again tomorrow, hopefully it won’t wipe right off when it is totally dry!
The vanity is not in great shape, but replacing it is not in the budget and since we are hoping to do a major renovation of this bathroom in a few years I don’t want to spend the money on a vanity that might not fit in the new bathroom.
I’ll probably put contact paper down on the base of the vanity since spraying it with Killz didn’t improve it, although it does smell like Killz now instead of the other smell.
The outside of the vanity had been painted a shiny black.
I’m painting over it with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Pure White. The nice thing about chalk paint is that you can paint over anything without any prep. It usually covers in 1-2 coats.
The black semi-gloss is a different story. It takes about four coats to get a nice finish.
Since I already had the spray primer for the vents I decided to spray a drawer. The left side of the drawer is primed and then painted with one coat of chalk paint. The right side of the drawer is just primed.
Using primer on the vanity was definitely a better choice. I think it will only need two coats of paint now. The outside of the vanity is almost ready for wax, I think it is turing out really well.
I don’t want to spend more than a couple hundred dollars on both bathrooms, and so far I’m under budget.
The first wall of cabinets went up tonight. Woohooo! I can’t wait to have a kitchen again! I still haven’t decided on a backsplash yet, any suggestions?
Floors go in tomorrow! By the end of the week it will be almost livable!
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This is part of our ongoing renovation project for our new home in Florida. Our goal is to be done by Thanksgiving or else. Follow the daily accounts of our real life during this DIY renovation process here.
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