Finally Redecorating the Living Room

In our remodeling journey, the overall motivation here is to refinish the floors before baby comes and soon begins crawling on them, but first, we have to fix the walls and ceiling and paint them. You see, the living room has been left mostly how we found it upon taking ownership of Humphrey House. There have been a few small changes, but nothing major. There were however several things needed:

• We had long ago removed an air duct due to structural concerns, but never patched the hole.
• The thermostat needed moved out of our dining room into the living room
• The ceiling needed some serious patch attention after a work above
• We never were able to insulate above/below the bay windows (finished a day ago).
  

The floors turned out to be in great shape, and before the final coat was applied, we had Sustain-a-building come back and repair the walls and ceiling, patch, prime, and paint them.

Deciding on paint was an interesting experiment that involved many trips to our local Benjamin Moore store for samples. It was interesting to learn that they are slowly phasing out all high-VOC paints, so all of their paints for indoor use will soon be low or zero-VOC. We will be using the Benjamin Moore Natura line which is zero-VOC paint to keep our indoor air healthy, especially with a pregnant woman in the house. But we eventually settled on a color called Silver Minx for the walls in the Living Room.

Brandon's crew came and did some great work, and painted the ceiling a flat white, the ceiling trim (already painted) a semi-gloss white, and the walls the green/blue. Someday it would be nice to strip the crown molding in this room down to the original wood and refinish it, but now is not the time so we reluctantly added another layer of paint to it.

The wall paint color is interesting - it appears light blue in daylight, but changes to light green at night. Pretty neat.


In this last photo, you can compare the wall on the left with the first photo in this post above and see that the gaping hole where an air duct used to be is now patched in. I actually spent an evening using SOY-Gel stripper, a nice product that performed well. I had some pieces of matching trim from the old kitchen in the garage (thank god I saved them). One coat of the stripper and a few hours later, the layers of paint easily came off. It still took a fair amount of time to scrape the boards in detail and clean them to be stained, but this made patching the wood where the air duct used to be pretty easy for the Sustain-a-building crew.

At long last, the Living Room is ready for the finish flooring.

My Favorite Stripper is Now Soy

In our continuing quest to spruce up Humphrey House in advance of the Green Home Tour, we're finally getting around to attaching the trim in the first-floor bathroom. While we had removed a lot of adhesive off the original porcelain tiles last spring, there was a slight haze in spaces (noticeably, in the grout). So we took one last stab at it with a new product, and I can happily say, I'll never use another stripper again.

Last month at the Illinois Renewable Energy Fair, we ran into a vendor selling Soy-based industrial cleaning products. One in particular that caught my eye was a Soy-based stripper called Soy-Gel, manufactured in Bloomington, IL. Knowing we had a front door we may want to strip the paint off of, we purchased a liter for $20. Not only is it environmentally safe, but it has very low VOC's when compared to other stripping products, meaning it won't burn a hole in your nose when working with it.

After we purchased it, we decided to paint and not strip the front door. So when i was staring at the bathroom floor one day, I realized that may be a perfect place to try out the soy stripper. I brushed a layer of the gel stuff on the entire floor and let it sit for a few hours (Label said: The longer it remains on surface, the better). After a few hours, I couldn't hold it anymore (and neither could the in-laws who were staying with us), and I went to wipe up the jelly stripper.

As soon as I started rubbing a paper towel across the floor, the gel turned yellow, indicating the gel had lifted up residual adhesive glue. And let me tell you, there was a lot of it. Apparently much more than I had thought. It must have been hiding in the grout! In any case, the floor cleaned up very nicely and the old tiles don't look nearly as aged as they did before. Best of all, there was no lingering smell. Once I washed the floor, any traces were eliminated.

I think this is one of my new favorite products, and I still have half a liter left to use! Hmm.. what to strip, what to strip...

(finished floor)

Getting By With A Little Help From Our Friends

Sometimes Jay and I just sit and marvel at the willingness of our friends to help us on Humphrey House. It's really amazing. You know you have the best friends and family you could ever want when everyone is ready to pitch in like this. I'm more than a little moved by their generosity and goodwill, if you can tell.

Either that, or everybody just wants that trip to Jamaica REAL BAD. :) Seriously, tho, this weekend we had just an amazing WEEKEND WARRIOR TEAM.

Jason's maternal grandpa, "Grandpa Duck," is a tough old guy who runs a handyman business in the city. He came out to assist in some serious window construction, and will be guiding us (who am I kidding, he'll be building it) in the reconstruction of a new stairwell. Grampa Duck rules, and guess what kids, he does one helluva mean "Donald Duck."

Props to Marsha for making the five hour train ride (10 roundtrip) from Carbondale to refinish our front door (among other things). She's my soulsisterfriend from WAY back - the person I've known longest in my life! - and a bit of a slavedriver to boot. It was 97 degrees in the shade, and this girl was outside, in full sun, with JEANS ON, slathering stripper on our new front door (which we discovered had been painted tan, yellow, burnt orange and fugly babyshit yellow before you got down to the beautiful oak [?] beneath) for over FOUR HOURS. Actually, I lost count after that. But it looks AMAZING.

Scott continued working on his "dirtiest guy in da house" reputation by removing the remaining plaster and lathe walls around the staircase, thereby making it the most dangerous space in the house! Scott was, as usual, covered head to toe in black soot. I think I'll start calling Scott "Burt" ... I think that was Ms. Poppin's boyfriend's name in "Mary Poppins." You know, the chimney sweep? :)

It's a long fall from the 2nd floor to the basement ... it's so creepy now walking upstairs and seeing the floor of the basement with every step you take. I think we're making a ban on treks upstairs till further notice. At least until we get that waiver Julie was talking about....

My brother Matt & his fiance Erika also came up and joined in the fun this past weekend. Matt worked on installing the windows, while Erika (a self-proclaimed victim of "project add (attention deficit disorder)" took on a few jobs in the course of the day: stripping with Marsha (woo-howdy!), then stripping the table with me, then peeling off the hideous great-great-grandma-died-in-her-sleep-in-this-bedroom-20-years-ago-and-we've-never-touched-the-room-since blue wallpaper in the bedroom/family room area.


All in all, an incredibly productive weekend. THANKS TO YOU ALL - we'd still be running in circles in a panic in the basement without your help.

SEE THE PHOTOS FROM THE WEEKEND HERE!