Starting the Master bedroom

Well we decided to give the Living room a break for awhile and start on our Master bedroom. We thought that having a finished bedroom would be better for us, so that we can move in sooner. The easy part is that the walls are all flat with no bumps, so that means no compound. The bad part is, that the walls still need to be cleaned sanded the trim needs to be stripped as well as the windows, the carpet needs to be pulled up and finally the hardwood floors need to be refinished! Should be a breeze, well hopefully we can get a breeze, since our A/C is awol right now, but that is a different story...

An easier way to strip?

I had looked online for ways to strip paint (I temporarily gave up on the walls) and came across a message board where people talked about The Silent Paint Remover. Basically it uses a quartz bulb to heat up the paint and that the paint should come right off. So instead of buying one of these $465 behemoths, (actually it's pretty small in size). I decided to try an experiment with a quartz heater, for way way cheaper. I bought mine off of Amazon.com, and had it shipped to me. When I got the package I was amazed at the size way bigger than the picture looked. It probably weighed about 10 pounds as well. So I turned it on and put it against some painted wood. After a few seconds I could see the paint start to bubble! Amazingly it worked.... until I realized that it would take me lots of steroids to sit there and hold this heater up while I try to strip with one hand. I could see how the method would work but decided that buying the $465 machine was out of my price range, so I used my chemical stripper instead. Maybe I will ask for it for my birthday or look for it in Ebay.

First weekend of HELL

You know how people say that, you need to experience renovating a house to know what it's like, because there is no way to explain it? Well I went through my first weekend and boy was it not the way I thought. Me and my wife had a master plan of what we would do and how long it should take. Caking the wall with compound should take no more than a couple days.... WRONG!! It took way more and it was hard as crap. Oh well that's what you learn about housework. After putting 2.5 tubs of compound on the wall, we realized we weren't the master plasterers we thought. It was so wavy and bumpy and not smooth at all. So we decided to start sanding it with sand paper. That was probably the hardest thing to do with no real show of improvement. We basically wasted a day just to make huge amounts of dust fly into our faces. But while we did that I also stripped more of the window and stair case. At least there was some improvement.

More compound!!!!!!!

Today we are still putting compound on our living room walls. It is not as easy as I thought and when I look at all the walls I just dread thinking about doing this. I hope the walls come out perfect, if not then I might break something!

Anyways while taking a break I decided to put some stripper on stair and one window. The stripper I use worked well but very messy. I also tried the heatgun, but that took longer and was way harder to use, so I am stinking to the stripper. I am thinking about buying some soy-gel and trying that out since I have heard good things about it.

Start of the Renovation

Well we decided to start our renovation as soon as possible. So today was our first day of trying to make our new "old" house better. Our first attack were the walls in the living. Why the living? I have know idea, maybe because it was right there when we opened the door, I don't know. Anyways all of the walls downstairs had this weird textured covering and we wanted smooth flat walls. So we decided to flatten the walls. We figured we could either sand the wall down or try adding some kind of compound to the wall. We went with adding compound. So here we are today adding compound to the wall and flattening it out with our drywall knives. Needless to say it is going to take us the whole weekend just to spackle the wall with compound.

Here I am trying to smooth out the compound on the wall, it is not that easy.





















Lita helping out while I take a break.

Pics of house

Here is a few pictures of the house:

Front and side picture of my house, as you can see the previous owner had already put new siding on all 3 sides of the house. I intend to keep what's left of the original and strip the rest.











This is my ghetto backyard, no grass what-so-ever, just weeds. Guess my dogs will have to get used to it.

Our first house!

Today is the day that me and my wife, Lita, close on our new (old) house.
We live in Jacksonville, Florida, home of the most recent Superbowl. Here in this city, we have 2 historic districts, one which is Riverside/Avondale (which is really 2 historic districts put into one) and the historic district of Springfield.

When me and my wife first decided to buy a house, we wanted a house in Riverside/Avondale. There the houses were large and gorgeous, all historic and right next to the river. The only downside is that a house with a total square footage of 1200 ft, cost roughly around $150 - 200,000. Now that might not be much to you, since Jacksonville's real estate is actually very cheap, but to a couple like us it was too much. We needed something bigger at that price. So we said farewell to Riverside/Avondale.

We then came across Springfield, which our realtor showed us. Our realtor, Reggie, actually lives in Springfield. He showed us around and at first we were at awe at all the historic 2 story homes there, but the downside was that the neighborhood looked a little iffy, if you know what I mean. It was in the downtown area and literally walking distance from our work. But we had our doubts.

After 4 months of looking at houses and turning them down, my realtor showed us a house and we loved it. It looked to be a four-square with a wrap around porch, updated plumbing, electrical and had a/c. It had most of the original woodwork, but had carpet and tile installed throughout the house. I lifted part of it up to find the original hardwood flooring. So after many days of thinking we decided to bid on the house. To our amazement, the offer was accepted and brings us up to this point today, where we signed the paperwork and officially had ourselves a home.

Since this is our first home and first renovation project, we know that it will take awhile and we will most likely do things wrong, but hopefully this will be a great learning tool and maybe in a few years we will be renovating another home in Springfield.