rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Love that...

Yumcha

Majofo

moo moo!

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Alright, here goes... As if I didn't have enough going on in my life with the crazy project outside, I also took a week off to prep and repaint the main floor of my house. Living room, dining room, entry way and hallway. Here's some befores.

Dining Room
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Living Room
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Entry way
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Hallway
You can see all the patching that had to be done on that wall, it was a mess
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The majority of the work was repair and prep. We literally spent 2 or 3 days just doing the prep work. My buddy patched and mudded all the dings and holes in the wall, there also were a few major issues that had to be addressed. There was a large settlement crack in the center of the ceiling right where the center joyce runs through, there also was a number of smaller spider web cracks that appeared to be from old water damage that needed dealt with as well. Here's a couple befores.
Here's the crack, ignore the sand marks that my buddy left, they're not related to the crack.
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I didn't get any befores of the ceiling before we ripped the plaster out, but here's the part that needed fixed, looks just like my bedroom wall, doesn't it?
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both together
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So after we cleaned up the area, we started mudding
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The larger hole got crack shot, the smaller crack got drydex
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All filled in, first coat
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And sanding
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My buddy also removed my door bell because the switch no longer worked, and we decided to fill in those holes and just to get a wireless one going forward. So I tested the wires to ensure that they weren't hot, and then cut them, taped them off and shoved them back into the wall.
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The same time that we were doing that prep, I also replaced all light switches and outlets with brand new ones.
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Next step, we palm sanded every inch of the ceiling, and every inch of plaster on the walls. (like I said, LOTS of prep)
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The ugly 80's ceiling fan was also a victim, we started to take down the fan blades, and I decided that it was not going back up, so we burned the fan blades, and tore down all but the light piece. (my oh shit I better take a before picture)
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97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

The dining table, coffee table and end tables were all removed, the china cabinet and my ice boks ended up in my living room for the duration
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So my buddy who painted professionally always likes to work top down, so we painted the ceiling first. We used 2 gallons of this on the ceiling, it came out amazing, especially after sanding the swirled ass nasty plaster down
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Next, it was on to the rest of the house. I bought 3 gallons of Behr Premium Ultra Primer in 1, I was not very impressed with it, but I love the color. This is the same color that Michi used in her thread a few years back, and she was the one that convinced me to use it, it's called Koala Bear. The hard part is the cutting in, we literally spent 2 days cutting in and recoating because the paint didn't cover as well as expected.
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We started in the hallway, and we're off... Here you can see the ceiling painted
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The least fun thing to cut in was the entry way
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Living Room
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Hallway all done!
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Dining room as it's being rolled
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Covered!
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Entry way and living room
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Covered!
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Dining room painted
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Living Room covered, you can see how sharp the ceiling looks
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Closeup of the new light switches and the Koala Bear.
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We rerolled all the walls again because we weren't happy with the coverage, I am planning to call Behr and complain about the lack of coverage.

The last part was the baseboard trim, my ex, remember the one who painted my Ronald McDonald kitchen? Yeah, she painted my stained wood baseboard with latex white ceiling paint 7 years ago, and it looked like hell after years of dog abuse. I plan to replace it down the road, so for now we just repainted it with the dark gray that we used on my kitchen accent wall. It's actually almost as dark as the original stain was before it was painted, so we basically just undid what she had done.

Hallway
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Dining room
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He also did the outer door trim because it was also painted white for god knows what reason...
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The last step was to replace all the switch and outlet covers. I used nickel plate covers for the light switches, and oversized white outlet covers for the outlets. Here you can see the nickel switch cover against the Koala Bear
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I also bought all new vent covers to match the one that I did in the kitchen
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That's it for now, I'll try and get better after pictures once the carpet goes in, but that's still a few weeks out because of the mud pit in my back yard. As you can tell by the paint stains on the carpet, we didn't really care about the carpet. My buddy did use a straight edge to do all the trim, and kept putting the paint down on the carpet, so he made himself a reminder
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Yumcha

Holy crap...you're going all-in on this...outside and inside, dude. You must've been saving up for awhile.

Are you replacing your carpet too?

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

25 tons of top soil being delivered today

Yumcha

That's alot of dirt.



K. Fess up. You killed Moog and the other regulars in the hockey thread and need all that to bury them, don't you? DON'T YOU!??!?!? *shakes Ack*

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

I know nothing about what you speak

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Hey donkeaayyy...
are you selling your house?
or you dating someone that wanted to live in a not man cave bach pad?

you seem uber motivated!

chill_dog

New paint looks great! I remember using Behr at my old house...like you, I loved the colors but wasn't impressed with the coverage.

Acura_Dude

Very nice! Behr does have some nice colors. It could be a lot worse. Ack could've used Glidden. Worse paint ever.

Besides iirc paint colors can be matched now between different brands. Idk how you feel about sherwin williams but they should be able to match behr's koala bear color. Speaking for future reference since you're almost done with paint.

My mom's entire house was painted with glidden paint. Nice neutral colors, but damn it's not worth the money. 1+1 paint as well. Took more paint than expected, plus I still say the guys that painted should have primed the walls first. occasionally I'll find places that have peeled or just chipped.

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Neither

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Just seems like a ton of projects you probably put off for a long time. Loving to see it coming together though.

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Yeah, I definitely had no intention on taking all of this on at once. It just kind of fell into place that way. Once I got started on the kitchen, and other projects, it just kind of picked up steam. The backyard project was completely unplanned and just kind of fell into my lap with the right guy and price so I went with it. Once both projects are done, I really don't know what I'm going to do with myself

maharajamd

iTrader: (1)

I find that when the project ball is rolling it's often best to let it roll as far as it wants to. Lol.

Plus a lot of projects may be slightly dependent on each other. Especially with painting. It's so much easier to prep everything and do everything all at once.

I've tried a lot of paints at our new house after three years. I'll never NOT use Sherwin Williams again. Just wait for the 40% off sales and buy what you need.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Yeah, I agree...a lot of ideas take a back seat in my mind...then I get going and have done some research and have tools out and connected...fk it, let's do that too and that and that...

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

That's a lot of what this was. I was using light switches and outlet 10 packs that I bought back when I bought the house almost 8 years ago. I intended on swapping all of them before we painted the first time, but my ex was so impatient, that I only got half the house done. So, I made sure to take care of all of it this time during the prep to make sure that everything was done right this time around. My ex painted over all the light switches and outlets, so it was quite a project to get them all off and swapped, but in a way it was good that I waited, because she didn't paint over all my new outlets

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

And the whole idea and inspiration to paint this part of the house stemmed from how good the kitchen project that my buddy and I did came out

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Here's a couple better afters of the walls, figured I'd get these out of the way first before I go back to the outside updates
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You know you're a bachelor when...
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rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

I was also gonna add that...how once you make one thing look nice, it makes it sorely obvious when some other area looks like dookie.

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

I didn't take very good befores of my hallway and living room like I did with the kitchen, but the walls were freaking trashed lol

thoiboi

Why people (some contractors included) insist on painting over outlets, switches, covers, etc... I will never understand

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Me either, and the people who owned my house before had painted over them already. Needless to say, I've gone through a lot of razor blades undoing this crap

maharajamd

iTrader: (1)

Now about all that trim... Lol

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

It's painted for now, it's not going anywhere until the carpet goes in

thoiboi

Any ideas as to what type of carpet you're thinking of putting in?


And a more pertinent question: does the carpet match the drapes?

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Alright, so some serious progress this weekend.

My first of 3 truck loads of 25 tons of dirt came on Friday
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Landscaper sent this to me, you can see the dirt piles still in the yard to the right, those are no longer there
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More and more backfill
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The main part of my yard is nice and packed down from weeks of the bobcat running around
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They started working on the step downs and building the end column.
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Dirt piles gone! Back into the hillside, and the column being built.
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Saturday, another pile of dirt...
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From my front porch, you can see the 2 different piles of dirt
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On the other side of my yard, looking at the wall steps and down the line where the fence will go
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More backfill behind the wall, this time with top soil
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The column built, minus 1 gap that would be filled in after the stone was cut
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The wall stepping down toward the street
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Step down on the other side
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And finally, the caps!
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And the cap for the column, this thing is freaking heavy! And you can see the gap that he filled in with the cut stone
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Stepping up with the caps, every other cap had to be cut to fit, they all were glued with masonry glue
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Mr. Foreman back on the job...
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Inspecting the column.. Don't pee on it!
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Had to run out for a while, while they finished putting the caps on, came home and they had started the next project
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Early morning shot, I like waking up to this.
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The wall is DONE!

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

I'm sure a number of you are curious as to why we buried the wall, well... According to the township, anything that's visible over 4 ft requires a $2k stamped engineered drawing. All the civil engineers do is use the same Versa Lok software that we used to design the wall, and then slap a stamp on it. In working with the building inspector, the only way around this was to bury part of the wall. It won't stay like this, we are going to do a mulch bed around it, this was just a temporary solution until we get the fence permit

Also, we intended to take the wall further down toward the street, however because of township regulations, the column could not be over 3 feet and needed to be see through, so in order to avoid that, we stopped the wall a few feet shorter than we wanted to not be in violation of township regs

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

It's all picked out and ordered, I think I posted a sample pic of it a month or 2 back, not sure.

Always

wndrlst

Looks like you're gaining an impressive amount of usable yard space.

Are you putting in a firepit?

CCColtsicehockey

The wall looks awesome Ack. Can't wait to see what next step of the project they started on.

You are making me think I need to do some landscaping projects to my place with all this work.

Yumcha

Looking good...the Great Wall of Ackland, we shall call it.


I'm still positive fdl, Moog, and wstevens are buried somewhere in those holes you dug.

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Yes and yes

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

I hope Humpty doesn't fall off the wall...or he might start dancing.
Looking great, Chris...seriously awesome to live through this with you and the pictures. Thanks for sharing.

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Thanks man, it's nice to be able to share projects that I'm so enthusiastic about with people that enjoy seeing this type of stuff

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

i know the feel.

97BlackAckCL

iTrader: (6)

Well, the next piece is done, it's a bit larger than I intended it to be, but hey, if you want a fire pit built out of Versa Lok stone, you gotta go big or go home I guess. This sucker is over 5 ft across in both directions, and is a perfect square.
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They had to cut a number of stones, like the one square in the middle, as well as all of the end caps to be 45 deg angles on both ends. They came out awesome
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This is the only Versa Lok fire pit that any of us had ever seen, and it's now a permanent fixture in the middle of my yard
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They covered all the base gravel with some of my dirt. Once he grades, it will look more like it belongs there.
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It's a good thing I like building big fires