More Demo and Planning: Day 8

It’s been one week since we closed on the house. Throughout each day I go from feeling like I haven’t done enough to feeling like we’ve done a ton in a short amount of time.

Then I go out and look at the overflowing dumpster and realize we’ve done quite a bit in a week.

Today we spent a lot of time finishing up projects and planning. We had to pull up tack strips throughout most of the house and many times the nails did not come up. Today we removed the rest of the nails as well as a few remaining tack strips and some stray molding.

In the dining room there was border paper over wallpaper over wallpaper under board. The problem was that when I removed the wallpaper the part right next to the chair rail didn’t come off clean. It was actually jamming down into the chair rail pushing the chair rail away from the wall and creating a wallpaper filled gap.

We were able to remove the chair rail (without damaging it, yay!) and I was able to remove enough of the wallpaper to smooth out the section under the molding.

We also removed another mirror, this one over the fireplace. I think this is the last of our mirror removals.

This one came off with a lot less wall damage.

In the family room there is a sliding glass door that leads to the room that will become the mud room. It had mirrored blinds covering the door. (I was wrong- one more mirror to remove!)

We removed the blinds today. We are eventually planning to remove the doors and create a wall with a small door, but that won’t happen until later on.

My dad and I took a trip to Home Depot today to figure out what types of tools we need to rent to remove the tile and thin set from the floors.

We have this rubber type covering on the family room floor. (see above photo)

We bought some chemical solvent that might work, but if not it will mean renting some crazy machine and removing the black unidentified stuff.

I also picked out my lights for the kitchen. There are the same lights I had in my other kitchen. I really like them and they are only $13 a piece. We mapped out the lighting plan on the ceiling. I’m still debating between five and seven of these lights. I bought seven just in case.

Amazon sells Globe Electric 4-Inch Recessed Lighting  in a ten pack for less than $11 a piece. If you need a bunch I’d save some money and order from Amazon.

Finally, we are still dealing with wallpaper. I had a painter come today to give me an estimate for the interior of the house. While I LOVE to paint, painting all the walls, ceilings, doors, closets, etc is too big of a job for me to tackle all at once and the house really needs to be painted.

Anyway, I asked him for tips about the wallpaper and basically he said just keep doing what I’m doing. I really wanted to get some kind of magic trick sort of idea from him but I didn’t get one.

I’m trying a few things out this week and will update you when the wallpaper saga is over and I’ve figured out how to conquer the beast.

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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.