Grover: Week 12

I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses.  Check out more about this flip, Grover, or check out posts about our last flip HERE. I always underestimate the time it takes to properly patch holes and caulk wood working projects so they look pretty and not home-made.  I can finally, however, proudly announce that all my major tasks in the bathroom are DONE!  I still have to finish painting the new bathroom closet door and install that, and the plumbing needs to get finished up (which I am smart enough not to touch myself).

Look!  There's even a light fixture and a mirror!  I hear those are things that are usually in a bathroom.  You'd think there should be a sink in there too or something....

But that's not the only room that's been changing this week.  Let me give you a hint

Sayonara stinky kitchen linoleum!

Here's a flash-back to the floors that were there at the beginning of the week.  Continuing the hard wood into the kitchen was the right plan.

In the basement, the electrician's been busy too.  I keep forgetting to show you, but there's a shiny new electrical panel in the garage.

I'm not looking forward to getting started in the basement.  Not only will sanding and painting this lovely paneling be a beast, now I have several holes to patch.

Dear homeowners: please NEVER install your own wiring from a hidden junction box that you cover illegally with ugly paneling.  Your home will thank you.  And so will it's future owners.

On top of all that, I probably spent half of my week on craigslist.  In addition to staging furniture for Frankie, I'm heading out to pick up a Restoration Hardware chandelier for Grover's dining room for the paltry sum of $50!

Happy almost weekend!

Board & Batten Beginnings

In an effort to make a would-be VERY VERY long post into just a very long post, I'm breaking up my Board and Batten tutorial into 2 parts.  Welcome to part 1! After ripping down the old, damaged, ugly blue wall tile in this latest flip, the bathroom walls were in sorry shape.

Walls like that leave only 2 options: tear them down and start over, OR cover them up.  Last flip I went with the first option, so this flip I decided to have a bit more fun with woodworking.

The planning is the most time consuming, brain consuming, and tedious part with lots of math.  First I planned how high I wanted it.  There was no science to it- I knew I wanted it high to cover all the wall damage and picked a tile grout line to align it with so it didn't feel arbitrary.  It ended up somewhere around 6 feet, but as long as it looks good to the eye, the actual measurement doesn't matter.  If you look closely at the beautiful image below, you can see my horizontal planning pencil line.  I also made sure to plan out where I wanted my verticals to be- I wanted one at the mid-point of the mirror and divided the wall accordingly.

After a trip to Home Depot to look at my wood options, I decided to use 1/4" thick sheets of plywood for my 'boards' and lattice pieces for my 'battens'.  The formula that I decided on for the trim pieces was a base board topped with a 2 1/2" wide lattice piece.  The top would also be the 2 1/2" lattice with 1 3/4" lattice for the verticals.  Here comes the fun part- math!  Lots of measuring and figuring helped me determine how much I would need, then I bought a little extra in case of user error.  Not that that would ever happen....

I find projects like this to be a lot of fun in all seriousness.  It's like designing a puzzle, then building said puzzle, with the result being a pretty room.  I get to use my brains and brawn!

Once I brought all the wood home, I started with the plywood.  I cut it to size, then 'dry fit' it in the space.

Prior to install, I decided to prime the pieces, so that put off install for a bit while I waited for them to dry.

A bit of construction adhesive and a finish nail gun is all that's needed to install.  I recommend painting the walls behind first too, in order to minimize touch-ups and detail painting.

Looking better already!

Next I installed the horizontal pieces starting with the base boards that I pre-painted.  I didn't want to have to try and cut in with paint at the floor, or any difficult areas, so I made the decision early on that any piece that would be touching wall, floor or tile would get painted before installing.

After the base and adjacent lattice horizontals, I installed the top trim being extra special careful to line it up with my intended grout line and to keep it level around the room.  I had levels of a few different sizes that I was using, but the best tool is your eyes-  level or not, it needs to LOOK right, so step back often and make sure nothing's looking wonky.

Verticals next!

I measured each piece individually to make sure everything fit properly.  I'd say this part was the most happy-dance-inducing because as I installed the verticals, every last bit of ugly wall behind disappeared.

As always, perfection with these steps is pretty much impossible (not that I don't try!!).  No house , not even a brand new one, is going to be totally level and square, so gaps are inevitable.

Luckily, caulk and paint are pretty much my best friends when it comes to wood-working projects.  To quote my grandfather: "caulk and paint make a carpenter where he ain't."

This is where I leave you with part 1... stay tuned for part 2 and near finished bathroom next Monday!!

Grover: Week 11

I hope you enjoy these weekly updates as I learn to navigate through the business of flipping houses.  Check out more about this flip, Grover, or check out posts about our last flip HERE. I pretty much spent my entire week in the smallest room in the house- the bathroom.  Luckily I don't have claustrophobia and the progress is finally making a difference!

Last week, when I showed you the bathroom, the ceiling had been patched and primed, but the rest of the room was still in shambles:

This week?  The ceiling is painted, the upper walls are painted, the floor is grouted and the new wall board and batten paneling is at about 50%

Simply covering up the damaged walls makes such a difference here!  Today I'll be installing the rest of the paneling, then, time permitting, painting the entire shebang a nice, semi-gloss white.

At last my blue tile looks finished with a light warm gray grout- it just needs one last scrub.

I know there are still those who don't get my blue tile, but allow me to elaborate.  Although it's new, it honestly looks like it could be original to the house.  That was the goal here.  There's nothing original in this house aside from the dining room built in which is getting a small update.  I felt that the bathroom needed this "original" element to give it a sense of history.  Yup, crazy house-whisperer here.

10 points for you if you noticed what else is different in the bathroom (although it doesn't count if you already know from facebook or instagram)

New windows!!

Although the old windows were vinyl replacements, every. single. last. window was fogged up- which means that the seals were all broken.  Most of the windows now look almost exactly the same as the old ones, just clearer and less foggy.  One window looks a bit different, though.

Where there once lived broken casement windows....

now lives a big, bright, unobscured picture window.  You'd be shocked how much more light it lets in the room!

Next step in here is to get rid of the light-sucking maroon wall color.  All in due time.

Although new windows do make me happy, I'm still excited over the bathroom progress!  Now that I can see the paneling, my brain is already thinking about how to style the finished room.  Always one step ahead apparently!  Despite my brain getting ahead of me, I'm documenting the whole board and batten process and will be sharing it in a future post.

I hope you have some fun projects planned for the weekend!  Fingers crossed that we may get at least one nice day out of it.