That was an old picture...although we are trying to keep with the less is more theme and leave our hoarding lifestyle behind.

 

Nice updates!

 

Thanks brah

 

What are you tackling next?

 

Cabinets! Gogogogo

 

Patching a bunch of holes in the plaster walls to get ready to repaint the living room, dining room, hallway.

Probably going to paint the spare room first, before I paint the whole rest of the house, since it's a small job.

 

Just stumbled on this thread. Great updates to the house.

Oh my that kitchen though. I have no idea how you lived with those colors for 5 years. What was she thinking.

 

Thanks Jason, I literally just tolerated it as best I could, I was waiting for things to calm down in my life so that I could deal with it. The last few years have been a non-stop whirlwind of crap. However, every single time I would walk into that kitchen, my blood pressure would rise because I hated it so much. It's nice to walk in there now and actually enjoy the look of the kitchen for the first time since I bought the house. I actually go out of my way to clean things and do the dishes more frequently just because I don't want my kitchen getting too messy

 

I can't imagine going through hating part of where I live for 5 years. Glad you finally can enjoy that part of your house again.

 

Nothing real exciting, but I got rid of my old dishwasher (on wheels) and a recliner out of my basement, and my buddy and I decided to do some rearranging in my garage. The area in front of my ack had 2 bumpers, my old acura bumper and my new fresh painted Toyota bumper taking up tons of room, so we hacked up the acura bumper with some tin snips and threw it out.
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We covered the Ack, and put both of the WW Lips that are going back on the car in the spring, and the painted Toyota bumper on the roof, since that's going on the truck in a month or 2. Never thought I'd store parts like this

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We were then able to utilize the space on the pallets in front of the Ack to actually store things that were in the way in the garage.
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bumpers should not be stored on top of other cars

 

Would've been hilarious if Ack bubble-wrapped the car.

 

Not hurting anything

My buddy's original idea was to lay the bubble wrap on my roof and then the bumper, I'm staring at my car cover like... No

 

 

What about THAT poster?

 

Haven't hung it yet

 

Interesting choice of words.

 

 

 

Busy few days, first the small stuff. My buddy gave me this brand new chandelier because he "didn't like the bulbs"
Before
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I didn't either as they were way too bright, so for $20, problem solved!
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Now this light is tolerable, still bright, but not the power of the sun bright
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I changed out 7 more light switches on Friday, 2 in my bedroom,
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1 in the office, 1 in the spare room, 1 in the hallway, and 2 in the bathroom.
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My walls have taken a beating over the last 7 years, between playing ball with my dog, and my new dog chewing holes in the plaster, the hallway needed some serious work.
Here's the corners of the walls between the kitchen and hallway.
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I didn't take a before of the holes my dog chewed in the plaster, but here it is after 1 coat of patch. The 2 big patches on the top is where he chewed into the wall, he's a douche

For another prime example of my ex's painting skills and stupid ideas, check out the beautiful dark wood border trim that she painted with white ceiling paint, which has since been worn off by the dogs playing
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And yes, the wall's dirty, I already scrubbed it twice before patching. It's getting primed and painted once the sanding is done.
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And now for the big one... Probably 5 or 6 years ago, we had "snowpacalypse" which dumped multiple feet of snow, and caused lots of structural damage around Pittsburgh. I didn't have too many issues, but when the ice/snow melted off of my roof, it ran down the back of my siding, and found it's way in through the bottom of the window. It bubbled out the plaster with a big blister full of water, which I then popped with a knife, and drained out to prevent mold, etc from growing in there. Well, here's the remnants, this is in the far corner of my bedroom near the powder room. I took LOTS of before shots here, since it was a bigger task.

Here you can see the bottom of the blister, and the damage left behind
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Closeup action
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So I started prying back the plaster with just my finger, and made a nice hole, then we started with the scrapers.
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You can see that the frame is rusted, and apparently had leaked before this
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Here you can see mesh, and a difference in the plaster, clearly someone had tried to patch this before...
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And here's the culprit... No one bothered to seal this whenever the window was put in. This hole literally goes all the way outside to behind the vinyl trim. You could feel a rectangle sized line of cold air coming straight through the wall. This is where we believe the water got in. You can see that there was also mesh patching over the hole, but they did nothing about the hole behind, just tried to plaster it over
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Here's the aftermath of the demo.
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Since I didn't have spray foam insulation since we weren't expecting this giant hole, we mudded around the hole, but left the hole exposed for the future.
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First coat of mud on, we tried to texture it a bit to match the textured plaster around it.
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We originally tried mixing plaster of paris to use plaster to repair the plaster walls, but my buddy had never used it before, and after several youtube videos and mixing failures, we went with what he knew and had used in the past.
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I got a can of Great Stuff spray foam insulation, and filled in the hole as best I could. I also filled in a hole near the floor where someone had tried to run a cable line to the outside and just left the hole. We trimmed back the excess in order to smooth it out to mud over, these are after we trimmed the excess off.
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More pics to come...

 

 

Good repair. Are you going to seal the outside with some type of silicone window caulk?

 

Window probably needs reflashed...

 

Yes, once it's above freezing...

 

Nice progress! Those old light fixtures..... Glad to see them go!! Makes a HUGE difference even if replaced with budget fixtures (which there is certainly nothing wrong with that! I'm all for cheap! ).

 

Nicely done, man...can't believe you sat on that for so long. One thing I learned as a homeowner...water and fire, don't fuck with. Fix it immediately before it costs you big bucks. I'd guess the intrusion didn't stop at the sill...I'm hoping your walls aren't fkd on the inside!

 

Thanks man, it definitely made a significant improvement just about everywhere in the house. It's nice to see small things like this add up over all.

That was my fear as well. We were not able to see any indication or remnants of the water on the outside, and the only place we found that the water could go was that channel, so hopefully that's it, I can't see any other evidence on the internal wall other than that spot where the water came through. And mind you, this was 5-6 years ago and has not reoccurred since :knockonwood:

 

I actually commented to my buddy last night how nice it is to have brand new light switches and not be afraid I'm going to get shocked when I walk into my bedroom. Last night, we repaired the arm on my recliner and put a slip cover over it to hopefully protect it from the dogs

 

Awesome, man...wow, sounds like you had a lot of things you wanted to get to. I'm like that too...domino effect. I'll sit on it for a bit, then once I get something done, I get motivated and knock everything out.

 

Oh yeah, my buddy has been a huge help as well. Last night we were talking about prepping and painting the living room, dining room, and hallways. It's gonna be a lot of work, but we want to get it done before I get carpet put in, in about a month. Can't figure out a color though. Last night after we fixed the chair, I went beast mode on some fish tank filters

 

good work.

Might I suggest you stick with the gray family? Yes, there are at least 50 different ones of them, and I lean toward the greenish gray ones...

My wife knows color, I used to shy away from it, but she is adamant that the walls should be very subdued and the way you spruce and accent is with colors you add to the room in the form of pillows/artwork/furniture. She said it's a lot easier to swap out a painting for another entirely different look, instead of having to keep repainting the walls.

 

I've been thinking a light gray would look pretty nice and stand up to the abuse from the dogs and such better than the off white I painted it 8 years ago... My buddy has a whole 5 gallons of beige, but I'm not really a beige fan. We're thinking to do the spare room that color so I can see what it looks like before I make a decision

 

Don't cheap out, buy the paint. You'll regret another 10 years staring at a room you hate the color of!

 

never thought it mattered, but boy does it...to walk into a room where the color is soothing and visually pleasing rather than a room with a color you don't like. Odd how the mind works.