Monday, February 8, 2010

one project, which creates many more

many years ago, we decided to create a family room, bedroom and powder room in our basement, along with the laundry room.  it seemed like a great idea at the time but left us with no space for storage.  now that the girls are gone, that bedroom has become the all-time junk room.  i decided to re-do it so i could have a home office as well as organized storage for special dishes, pots, serving pieces, cake stands, etc.  also for wrapping paper, bob's hunting gear......

my original thoughts were that i would clear out the room, clean it real good, put shelving from the shop down there and i'd be good to go!  possibly take me two or three days, at most!......as we were removing stuff, there appeared to be mildew on the outside north wall where the bed was placed close up against the wall.....i absolutely freaked out!.....i called two drywall experts to have them give me an estimate on replacing the drywall in that section since i was convinced we had black mold and it was all toxic!.....i didn't happen to mention any of this to bob---why bother him with this!......

(i didn't know how i was going to get "rid" of the mattress, boxspring and hutch base that were in the room....i called salvation army and they said they would pick the items up and asked me if there were any stains on the mattress---no, not any.....so my dear friends lugged all of this out of the basement and stacked it neatly on the deck ready for pick up, along with bags of books and games.......the salvation army drivers came and took everything--except the mattress, boxspring and hutch base!!!....

i then called the city and they told me they would remove it for 25.00 per item!.....and, all items had to be placed right by the curb!....so, again, my dear friends came to cart all of this from the deck to the curb for the "expensive" pick up......)

the one drywall man told me he would replace it but wouldn't guarantee no more mildew returning.....the second drywall man told me it was just surface dirt from some moisture, could be cleaned  and there was no need to rip out the drywall.....when bob learned of what i was doing, he showed me, by digging a screwdriver into the wall, that it was white underneath and that the "mildew" was most definitely just on the surface of the wall and could be cleaned.....

so, armed with bleach water, i scrubbed....then i purchased tsp solution at the hardware store and washed the walls again.....then i painted them with kills.......then i started to patch.......the girls had hung so many things on the drywall over the years and there were holes everywhere!.....i had never patched before, so it was trial and error but i did a pretty good job!.....in fact, bob asked if i had had someone come in to do it for me!.....

i decided to remove the carpeting since it was musty and twenty years old....so i made arrangements for that to be installed....then i figured i would paint the room before the carpeting was installed.....i found the niftiest thing on sherwin williams---you take a photo of your room and upload it and then you "paint" it---that way you can see what your room would look like!....i had so much fun with that!.....

so, now the room is painted, the old carpeting is removed (thank you, dear friends!) and tomorrow the new carpet is being installed.......one more glitch, though.......when we had the bedroom done originally, the man had built a desk/vanity for barby and bob and i were going to remove that this morning before we ripped up the carpet-----that took over an hour as it was built and then apparently assembled on site and screwed into the walls.....the screws were stripped!.......i asked bob if he would like to become a house flipper in the next life----i won't share what he said!