The List

This weekend's projects were a little overly ambitious, all because of a list I thought of while on break at work. I didn't plan on actually accomplishing everything on it, just wanted to have a guide of what we should probably be doing as the next steps in the house process.


So this list...


1. Install carbon monoxide detector
2. Prime bedroom/trim
3. Paint bedroom/trim
4. Take down shelving unit
5. Plant garden
6. Make compost bin
7. Goodwill run/donations
8. Finish mulching


All doable in a weekend right?!


Saturday morning started off with the typical run to Lowe's and Menards to get supplies to kick us off (thank God they are both within two miles of our house). As of right now, we are super hating the fact we have no supplies and every trip we make is larger than we expected. We estimated this trip for paint and primer $40. Actual price after buying brushes, an edger, paint, primer, paint trays, painter's tape, ect. $160 (yikes!). Luckily, most of the things we bought we will be reusing as we repaint the rest of the house, it just was a huge pill to swallow.


The best finds were actually the all the new green products for painting walls. Who knew? There were two different types of paint trays, the Bio Tray and Earth Plastic™™. Bio Tray is made out of recycled pulp fiber and Earth Plastic™ is recycled plastic. Both trays are 100% biodegradable. The drop cloth we found called EcoDrop™ is also biodegradable plastic. The method o mop sweeper duster sheets are made from corn and can be composted. They fit perfectly on my Swifter Sweeper and did a way better job. I'm definitely going to look into their other cleaning products.


When it came to paint type I chose to go with Olympic Premium since they have zero VOCs and has little to no smell. According to the EPA, VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds are emitted as gases from certain solids or liquids. VOCs include a variety of chemicals, some of which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. By choosing a Zero VOC paint, I am cutting down on indoor and outdoor pollution. Not to mention, the cost of the paint is very reasonable compared to some of the other brands I investigated.

The first thing to get done with the bedroom was tear down the old installation book case. It was awkward and massive and not really doing much for the room. Strangely enough, it was just screwed and nailed to the wall, nothing was really holding it into place other than that. It was really fun demolishing it. Max went to town with the crow bar and I took the claw hammer and just whacked away. I even got a sweet karate kick in to get the last piece out.

Bookcase installation before

Max and I tore a piece of the carpet back to get a better look at the wood floor underneath and found that the original remodel was pretty half-assed. Instead of putting a decent board down between the two old room and sealing it, who ever did it just put a few pieces of scrap wood in and poured plaster over the top. We were both a little baffled.

Although the windows are fairly new, Max caulked the inside of the window casings to keep some of the old insulation from poking out and to prevent drafts and moisture from seeping in.

In case you need a little help on how to do that:

I also noticed if I was going to paint the trim at all and have a hardwood floor later (that is our plan) I had to rip the carpet up to get down to the bottom of the trim. I originally wanted to just pull up all the ends and keep the carpet down as a drop cloth while I painted. Unfortunately, that was just not going to work. I didn't realize the carpet was tacked down all around the room with little wooden planks and there was going to be no way to get the painter's tape down there.


I ended up having to get the carpet out of there and then manually going through and tearing up all the tacks and nails too. So that was the first thing I did not plan on this weekend was tearing up the carpet. So after about 6 hours of work and it was already 6 pm we were ready to finally start priming the walls. I finished priming about 10 pm. 

For all the things we have been discovering that were messed up, somethings were great. I found that someone had installed foam insulation on the outlet on the outer walls of the house. Hooray for more energy/money savings! If you don't have them installed already, they are very inexpensive, can be found at most hardware stores and are easy to install just by unscrewing the cover and sliding it underneath.

Sunday was mostly spend painting and running errands. The old trim was so dry it soaked up the white paint like a sponge. I ended up going over most areas twice just to get the coverage I wanted. The wall color as you may recall from our poll winner was Lunar Eclipse, which was a warm gray.


We ended up not painting about a third of our room since there was a little snag in my idea of just painting over the paneling. There was a giant hole in the wall from where the dry wall was messed up. This prompted us to just wait and just tear the paneling down and fix all the dry wall before we painted.

Boo you hole

So after about 21 hours of work in two days we went from this:

To this!

Until we can get the wall fixed, I am called the bedroom Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde. I purposely faced my bed this way so that I could wake up and not see the messed up wall. Eventually, I want to put the bed under the window by the closet with long curtains flowing down each side of the bed and reverse the reading area to the area where the bed is now.

P.S. Doesn't my little chair just look great!


Going back to the list, these were the things we ended up accomplishing:

1. Install carbon monoxide detector

2. Prime bedroom/trim

3. Paint bedroom/trim

4. Take down shelving unit

5. Plant garden

6. Make compost bin

7. Goodwill run/donations

8. Finish mulching

Overall, I would say it was a very productive weekend! Not to mention the things not on the list we got done.

9. Windows caulked

10. Carpet ripped out

11. Air filter replaced

12. Carpet staples removed