Middle Bedroom Has Started
Well, we’ve finally done it–we started work today in the middle bedroom. After I bought the house, I had originally planned on that to be the first room that I restored. At the time, it was filled with junk from the previous owner’s son, whom she had kicked out of the house a while before I bought it. I first got rid of all of that, then started to clean it out. The first thing to go was the disgusting carpet. Conveniently, I was able to just toss it out the second-story window in the room, then drag it to the trash outside, without having to carry it through the house. I then started on the wallpaper, learning the ropes with the different stripping methods. It was fun.
At some point shortly thereafter, one of my sisters was looking for a place to stay for a little while. I agreed, as long as she and her boyfriend could help to continue stripping the wallpaper in the room. They did get most all of the wallpaper off, but then I couldn’t really work in there while she was staying there. The project was put on hold.
After my sister got herself situated down in Baltimore, the room became a storage room for all of the stuff that didn’t have a home anywhere else. This practice continued after I met (and subsequently married) my beautiful wife Jenny.
As of a few weeks ago, the room contained the ladders and restoration tools and supplies that we’ve been using on the first floor, paint and paint buckets, a huge old wooden glider chair from the 1970’s that was left here by one of my sisters (I’d swear that thing weighed 400 lbs., but I know it doesn’t), my old dining room table and chairs, a collection of old and broken vacuum cleaners, various pieces of infrequently-used audio equipment, a couple of headboards that one of our neighbors rescued for us from the crazy neighbor across the alley who was throwing them away, PLUS Jenny’s old dining room table, some of the furniture from Jenny’s old apartment that she had before we got married, a few bags of old clothes and blankets from Jenny’s old apartment, and all of the other “stuff” necessary when one lives alone that we moved from her old apartment, including kitchen ware, picture frames, occasional tables, vases, two small television sets, etc., etc., etc.
Jenny recently went through the room and sorted most of the clothing that was in there. The stuff that was usable but unneeded went to Goodwill, and most everything else found a new home. There were a few remnants that didn’t get sorted, but it was a huge improvement.
Today, I began the task of cleaning-out the rest of the room so that we can get working on it. The electronics, audio equipment, and some of the housewares that we knew we were going to keep were moved up to the attic for more appropriate storage. The furniture that we know we’re keeping was moved temporarily into the hall–a good bit of it will move into the guest bedroom, which is what our current master bedroom will become when we’re done with and move ourselves into the middle bedroom. The bits that Jenny and I still need to sort through were moved into the back bedroom. The junk in the room, including a bunch of stuff that I had put in there because I didn’t have a good home for it at the time, was sorted into a keeper pile and a trash pile. The three things I kept were put away into better places, and the huge trash pile was loaded into boxes and carried downstairs (along with the broken vacuum cleaners).
By that point, I was tired and pretty much done for the day. Left in the room at this point are a few pieces of furniture that we want to offer to my youngest sister as she looks for an apartment. There’s also the giant 1970’s chair, which I don’t feel like moving until my sister is ready to take it to her apartment. There were also a few things that I wanted to ask Jenny about before I moved them, so they stayed there until I could talk to her about them. Those items included the two TVs, a small round table that I knew we had discussed but couldn’t remember her plans for it, and the headboards. Also staying were all of the restoration tools and supplies, and the paint. I know that we’ll eventually have to find a better home for the paint, but it is staying there until we decide what colors we’re going to use up there. We have paint left-over from the living room and dining room work, so we might use some of that inside closets and the like.
Well, it doesn’t seem like it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of moving stuff and dealing with dust, so I was done pretty early. The good news, though, is that the room is mostly cleaned-out, now, and I know what I need to do to get it ready for work to start on the walls. Jenny and I decided to go ahead and strip the woodwork, too. We like the way it looks in the living room so much that we can’t help ourselves. We’re going to be extra-careful about the possible lead issue, of course, but I think that we were able to do a good job containing things on the first floor, so we’re going to repeat the process in this bedroom.
The good news with this room is that the majority of the wallpaper is gone. There is some adhesive left in some places that was hard to get with the “old” method that I had been using with the Dif, so I’m sure that getting that cleaned-up with the “new” method will go quickly. There is a lot of woodwork in this room to cover, though, so that might take a good portion of our time. There are also some odd electrical issues that we’re going to have to deal with in there, including a “jumper” running along the wall from one outlet on the outside wall to another outlet on one of the inside walls. I’m not entirely sure of that wire’s purpose, but it has to go. I’m hoping to fish some new wires up through the walls and into this room. I’m not sure how reasonable of an expectation that is, but I want to try. This might be a good excuse for me to get one of those tiny gooseneck cameras that I can put into the wall cavity through a small hole so that I can look around at what I’m working with before I start trying to make bigger holes. I think we’re also going to have to bite the bullet here and run some of that wiremold-like conduit on the walls to get power where we want and need it. I don’t want to go cutting trenches through the plaster if I can avoid it, and the wiremold conduit is easily reversible. There are also a few plaster issues in the room that we’ll have to contend with, the biggest of which is a patch of the skim coat that looks like it detached from the rough coats around the chimney in the room. That space is only a small area, though, maybe four inches wide by a foot long or so.
My my.. lots of stuff to do ahead of us, but it will be nice to concentrate on the woodwork for a while and not have to worry about the walls too much. I took some “before” pictures with all of the stuff still in the room. I look forward to taking some more after I get the rest of the stuff out of the room, and it is finally in an empty state and ready for work.
jonathan
