Painting the fireplace, for reals this time

I scraped up all the vinyl tiles from the basement floor and it looked like there was nothing else left for me to remove from the space, so I could finally paint the fireplace.

There's no unpainting a fireplace, so you have to be really really sure you want to do it.  I was sure.  But first I had to remove Hall and Oates. I was terrified there would be dead animals or something sinister (like SPIDERS!) in the grate.  I removed the screws and got my prybar and popped Hall off.  Then I scurried back super fast.

There wasn't anything terrible in there.  There was something pretty good, actually: one of the missing bricks from the right side of the fireplace!  Sweet.

 

I vacuumed the bricks really thoroughly to get any loose grit or mortar out.  I used a little TSP to clean the front bricks that were looking charred, though it didn't seem to do much.  Then I just grabbed plain old white latex paint and started painting from the top down.

I used a regular brush instead of a roller because the fireplace is made of clinker bricks and what looks like pumice stone.  The surface is very porous and uneven.  According to classicbungalows.com, "Clinker bricks were the result of wet bricks being placed to close to the fire in the kiln, resulting in bricks that were darker-coloured and in either ‘melted’ or ‘exploded’ shapes. The surface texture of the bricks could range from glassy to pock-marked from the uneven heat. Richer, darker colours of the ‘clinker’ bricks were another welcome result from the extra heat."

The funny thing is that I was absolutely sure I wanted to paint the fireplace.  When I posted the pictures on Facebook a friend told me they were clinker bricks, something I didn't know previously.  All of the sudden I felt despair over what I had done.  They were historical! Used in the Arts and Crafts movement! Now the only thing that could restore them was a sandblaster.

Drat.

But I think it's going to be okay.  Next weekend we are installing the laminate and hopefully it will start to feel less like a basement and more like another room in the house.  I want to do something like this over the fireplace to warm up the space.  

 

Source: Young House Love

And of course I'll hang Hall and Oates.  And the disco ball.  Too much?

Happy dance!

It came! The CanvasPop likeness I ordered of Hall and Oates came!

I still think the shipping rates are egregious, but it looks *really* good.  Highly recommended.

Unearthing the basement floor

Removing old vinyl tile from a basement floor is fun stuff.  Oh no, wait, what's the opposite of that?  It's the opposite of fun stuff.

 

It feels good to get this old mildewy stuff out of the basement, but I wish getting it out didn't make my wrists so sore and my hands so blistered.

 

People actually pay a lot of money to make their concrete floors look like this.

I would gladly give it for free if someone would remove the rest of the tile for me.

How to paint your fireplace

Do you want to update your grimy old fireplace?  A coat of paint is a good option, particularly if you're never going to use the fireplace for fire.  These bricks would look lovely with a coat of white paint.

Before you start you'll want to make sure that you put all the paint cans you've ever used (empty or full) in the basement, regardless of whether you'll need them. You'll want to trip over these later, especially since you'll be wearing contacts that are the wrong prescription, making walking a little tricky.  That's just the price you pay so your glasses aren't fogging up constantly with a ventilator mask on your face.

You'll also want to plan a dinner party for the evening.  Decide that morning to make homemade bread, despite the fact that you've *never* made an edible loaf of yeasted bread before.  Tonight will be different.

You'll want to remove the tack strips that surround the fireplace hearth, lest you accidentally kneel on one of those upward facing nails.  They were left from when you removed the carpeting.  Grab your handy floor scraper and start to loosen the rotting wood.

Accidentally take out half of a hearth stone with the floor scraper.  Whoops. 

You know what?  You never liked those that much and they aren't original to the house, so let's just get rid of all of them.

Some of the vinyl glue-down tiles popped off when you were scraping, so just scrape a few off around the fireplace.  You'll want to leave the rest alone because scraping up all the tile in the basement would be crazy.  

Shhhh . . . did you hear that? That was your friend Carrie, screaming "ASBESTOS IN THE VINYL TILE!" from a mile down the road.  But it's okay; you're wearing a mask and you're only removing a couple of tiles.

 

Crap.  That looks like water. Just a little bit, but water nonetheless.  Decide to switch to pulling up the tack strips that run along every wall.  

But first, run upstairs to do the first kneading of the bread. Finally read the recipe in full and realize that it requires FOUR rises and the bread won't be ready to go into the oven until 8 pm, never mind that you need to cook the chicken and the veggies too, all at different tempuratures.

Add "baguette" to your shopping list and return to the basement.

VERY IMPORTANT: put on the grimiest pair of work gloves you own so that you're sure to leave the highest number of smudges and smears on your freshly painted walls.  If something is worth doing, it's worth doing three times because you couldn't be bothered to be careful.

 

Wedge your prybar under the rotting wood and try to wrench it free from the basement floor.  Ding the drywall you so painstakingly mudded and sanded and primed and sanded and painted as many times as possible.  Once you finally have all the tack strips up, scrape some more tile from the SW corner of the basement, realizing that there's water in other areas, too.  

 

Realize that you really should scrape up all the vinyl tiles and put down some sort of sealant before you install the laminate flooring.  Sweep up as much of the vinyl tiles as you can and get them outside because they probably contain ASBESTOS, OH MY GOD, ASBESTOS and then use your shop vac to clean up all the debris you left.  Try to clog the shop vac as many times as possible.  

Hint: it's more times than you'd ever think possible.

Spray a bleach solution on the exposed concrete in the worthless hope that this might take care of any mold issues in the basement.  The hallmark of good home improvement is a smelly house, especially if you have guests coming over that night.  

Marvel at your updated fireplace.  Isn't it lovely?

The baguette?  It was delicious.

More progress on the basement

I'm finally at the point in the basement where I can paint. Huzzah!  The previous owner installed ceiling boards that remind me of carriage doors.

There's a lot of molding, all of which needs to be painted with a brush. As a result it takes five times as long. You probably did something fun for your three-day weekend, like go to the coast.  I did what I always do on long weekends: I covered myself in paint and went to the Home Depot without brushing my teeth or hair first.  It's just how I celebrate.

Have you really looked at the artwork on the fireplace?  It's amazing!  People have a lot of opinions on who it is--Beavis and Butthead, Hall & Oates . . .

I'm still trying to figure out what they were saying to each other.  I'm hoping it's something along the lines of, "Isn't this a lovely home, Daryl Hall?" and, "Rightly so, John Oates! Nary a ghost or critter here!"

I recently won a $25 credit at CanvasPop from Apartment Therapy.  CanvasPop takes your digital image and renders it on canvas, like a real painting.  I decided to have Hall & Oates committed to canvas.  I think they're worth it (though just barely--shipping was an unholy $14 for one rolled up canvas).

But back to painting, I had heard you want to use a saturated color in low-light areas like a basement because you won't have natural light to play it up.  My friend Mary has recently finished out her basement and used a lovely saturated seafoam color in her laundry room.  I loved the color so much she gave me the paint can so I could have it recreated at the paint store.  When I called the place where she had it mixed they told me it was $55 per gallon.

I just about fainted.  $55 per gallon?  I needed two gallons!  No way, nuh uh.  I firmly believe you get what you pay for in paint, but for $55 a gallon it should paint itself onto the wall AND mix me a martini while I watch.

I went down to Miller Paint instead and asked if they could color match it using Acro Pure as a base.  Acro Pure is zero VOC, low odor, and has an anti-microbial built into it.  Basically it's perfect for painting a basement with minimal ventilation.  The guys at Miller Paint were great and I'm happy to say that I didn't have another color-match mishap like I did with the dining room.  Lesson learned: get your color matching done at Miller Paint, NOT the Home Depot.  I had a coupon from my Chinook Book that was buy one get one free.  So I got two gallons of custom color paint for $31.

The coverage is great and the color is richly saturated.  The photos really don't do it justice.  I would absolutely use this paint again.  Two coats and I was good to go.

 

 

I'm still trying to figure out what color to paint the inside of the alcove.  It's presently white, but I think I want to do a chocolate color.  Then I just have to scrape the glue down padding, install the laminate my amazing parents bought me for Christmas, and this room might be usable.  Then I can move onto outdoor projects like the fence that's falling down in my backyard.  If good fences are an indicator of good neighbors, I am that homeowner with all the junkers on the lawn and the constant visits from the police.  But more on that later.

Mysteries in the laundry room

When I moved into the house I needed a lot of electrical work.  This is what my electrical panel looked like.  Wires sticking out, no cover . . . just a tiny bit hazardous.

Luckily I have a friend who is an electrician and would work for a reasonable rate (and access to the food in the kitchen cabinets).  He did a couple of really awesome things without my asking, like putting a motion sensor on the light in the laundry room.  So if I'm carrying a basket of laundry there's no fumbling with a chain in the dark--the light just comes on.  After five minutes without motion it turns the light off.  It's awesome. 

Fast forward to now.  A few weeks back I started noticing that the light would be on when no one had been down there.  I noticed that the dryer hose had popped off the window vent and figured that must have triggered the light to go off.  Some contractor had told me that, in the hierarchy of venting, rigid metal ducts are best.  They accumulate the least dust and lint resulting in a lower fire risk.  The only problem is that I couldn't get the stupid hose to stay connected to the window outlet. I kept finding it like this:

I kept applying more foam tape and the stupid thing kept popping off.  I finally decided to screw the pieces together.

Bingo!  Why didn't I think of that before?  The only problem?  The light was still going off.

THE LIGHT WAS STILL GOING OFF.

My roommate and I had a very serious conversation about the light (we had both noticed it and gotten freaked out); my roommate solemnly informed me that it could be a ghost.  I was worried it was a mouse or some other critter.  I hunted around for signs of critters: droppings, nests, chewed stuff . . . but found nothing. 

So my latest theory concerns the old stove downdraft.  My house didn't have a stove hood so the previous owners appeared to have one of those stoves with a downdraft that vented through the kitchen floor.  There was a hole in the kitchen floor with a duct attached.

 

That hole was covered by the underlayment for the Marmoleum and I repurposed that duct into a vent for my portable AC unit in my bedroom.  But in the winter the duct was just hanging out doing this:

My theory is that it gets windy outside and air comes shooting into that duct and into the basement, causing the duct to swing.  I should have remedied this long ago.  I'm letting cold air into the house and basically left a fun slide for critters wanting to get into the house.  Like SPIDERS, OH MY GOD, SPIDERS.  Or mice.  Or whatever. 

So I took the cover off the exterior of the house . . .

. . . cut some of this stuff I found in the basement to fit . . .

. . . screwed it in and replaced the cover.

I'll keep you posted about the light.  I really hope this stops the light triggering because I don't want to consider the alternatives.  Like ghost-rats.

Edited to add: I did finally get a cover for my electrical panel.  It feels slightly less dangerous doing laundry beneath it now.

Progress in the basement

Sigh.

The basement. My albatross.  When I bought the house the basement had been drywalled and taped.  The seams had been mudded but they needed to be sanded.

I hate sanding.  Really, really hate it.  I had primed the drywall but the corners needed to be taped and mudded and sanded and primed and sanded and painted and sanded . . .

You can't just leave rough corners like this.

You have to get some of this.

And some of this.

You smear some of the joint compound on the corner and then affix the corner bead.

Then you wipe away the excess compound and let it dry.  Then you have to put more compound on top of that, trying to make it as smooth as possible.

Then you let that dry and sand and sand and sand.  Did I mention I hate sanding?  Then you try to remove as must of the dust from the drywall as possible and then slap on another layer of primer.

It takes professionals no time at all to do this process.  I just watched a TV show where these pros came in and did a whole room in two hours.  It was beautiful.  I felt so lame.  This took me THREE WEEKENDS.

But I'm finally at a point where I can start painting.  I love painting!  Once I'm done painting I can scrape the foam padding off the floor, install the laminate flooring, and then install the disco ball.

Oh yeah. I own a disco ball. 

Adventures in plumbing or why you should never use Drano

My parents came to visit me for the weekend and to see the house for the first time.  It was awesome.  They flew out on a Monday morning and I took the day off so I could go to breakfast with them and then unwind from the busy weekend.  I planned to do laundry and then watch a lot of DVDs in bed, maybe read a little.  I went to breakfast with them, raked my yard, and started a load of laundry.

My washing machine has a good old-fashioned hose that hooks over the side of the utility sink in the basement.  So all the lint and hair and general yuckiness that comes out with the gray-water goes down the sink drain.  In one of my last places, a 1920 Victorian, our basement sink was constantly clogging because of this.

My basement sink has always been slow and one side was essentially clogged.  With my laundry chugging away I decided to snake the left side of the sink a little.

Big mistake.  I have no idea what I did but instead of a slow drain I now had a blocked drain.  Like, really really blocked.

Backstory: this incredibly heavy cement sink has a lot of cracks in it.  When I moved in I used Drylok to patch the cracks.  Drylok is a cement-like product that dries quickly and can be used on active leaks.  It dries so fast that you better have everything ready to go before you add water or you'll end up with a paperweight in about two minutes. Back to the clogged sink, I decided to grab some Drano from the store.  It worked when we lived in the Victorian, it would work now, right? 

It didn't work.

It turns out Drano melts Drylok. It melts cement!  IT MELTS CEMENT.  So I had two full, backed up sinks that were now leaking Drano and water all over my basement floor.  It was like a nightmare.

Once all the water had finally drained out the cracks, down the floor, and into the floor drain (thank heavens that didn't decide to clog), I knew I had to take the P-trap apart and break up whatever clog was there.  I had a metal snake (just like this one) but I'd never used it before.  I took the P-trap apart, hoping that the clog would be IN the P-trap.  That would be really easy to fix.

It wasn't in the P-trap.

It was about four feet into the drain.  I had a really hard time getting the snake past that section.  I had to poke a little, twist the snake, poke again, hoping I was finding a weak spot in the clog.  Then I tried to rasp the snake back and forth along the clog, hoping to break it up.

This is the part where I tried unsuccessfully to break up the clog using just my hands and the snake.  It didn't work and I ended up telling the roomie, "Don't do laundry," going to work, and attacking it the next day.  Long story short: you need to spin the snake to break up the clog.  I used my cordless drill.

Feed the snake in gently, past the clog.

 

Attach the end securely to your cordless drill and start spinning, slowly at first.  I spun the whole length of the pipe, then moved the end of the snake to where the big clog was (you could still feel it in there, pulling on the snake), and spun it again.  All sorts of gunk came out with the snake but I won't post pictures because this is a family blog, but know that it was all very dry-heavey and sort of fantastic at the same time.  Then I put the P-trap back together and ran gallons and gallons of very hot water down the drain.

 

Hallelujah! 

In doing some research while my sink was slowly draining Drano and water all over the basement floor, I learned that This Old House recommends the following plan of attack with clogs in old houses:

1. Plunge the drain.  This will often break up whatever is down there enough to flush it away.

2. Snake the drain. 

3. Flush the pipe with copious amounts of hot water.

4. Call a plumber if these things don't work.

Nowhere do they ever recommend using Drano.  LISTEN TO THIS OLD HOUSE, ya'll.

Uses for an undead boyfriend

I've been reading the Twilight series recently. I never got around to reading the fourth book, so I reread the first three.  If you've been living in a cave, the Twilight series is a tweener juggernaut about a vampire boy in love with a human girl, written by Stephenie Meyer.  She's a terrible writer but the underlying story is fun and addictive.  In her mythology vampires don't sleep during the day and can basically pass as human most of the time.

And you guys, her vampires are made of glitter.  GLITTER!

Ms. Meyer could write a lecture series on Knowing Your Target Audience.  The only way preteen girls could eat up the story more is if Edward (lead vampire boyfriend) rode in on Zac Efron.  Actually, that might be a very different story, one that a mormon like Ms. Meyer probably wouldn't write. 

But better than the whole glitter thing I found myself thinking about what I could do with an undead boyfriend.  While I was getting my beauty sleep and otherwise preparing myself to be a productive member of society, my undead boyfriend/husband could be priming the basement for me.  What else is he going to do--watch me sleep?  That's creepy.

 

Because painting a basement? It sucks eggs.  There's just no venting it sufficiently. Vampires don't breathe, so there would be no reason to worry about wearing a mask or risk of cancer.  While he took care of the basement I could address more important activities like getting a haircut and eating cookies. 

I was at work this week, waiting for my oatmeal to cook and flipping through the Sunday ads, when I saw that drywall primer was on sale.  I took this as a sign from the universe that I should prime this weekend.  I should have ignored the universe and watched movies instead.  First coat:

Second coat:

 

I still need to paint the ceiling, the edges, and throw on a third coat to the walls.  Then I need to finish all the edges where the drywall meets and basically fill in the cracks and gaps that are EVERYWHERE in the basement.  And then deal with the flooring.  I sort of want to throw up my hands because I'm not a babysteps kind of girl.  I like staying awake for 48 hours straight, working on nothing by coffee and granola bars, and getting shit done.  Not only do I lack the funds to finish the basement anytime soon, but there's so much labor to be put in.

Universe, get on that vampire boyfriend!