Sergio's Week Off

Kitchen ceiling : FIXED!

Wallpaper : (MORE!?!) Stripped!

Here's our very first gas bill. Awww....how cute...it even has my name with the new address!

Here's my mom cleaning off the soot from the walls. Finally, those are ready to paint.

OLD PIPE....

NEW PIPE!

NO LEAK!

Here's what the front rooms looked like with the curtain boxes....

Here's what they look like now!

PS --- Its not snowing in that picture (above). The camera is just really dirty. Yucky.

Painters have been working hard

And here's my mom again. She stripped all of the woodwork on the windows in the kitchen. She's sleeping on the couch right next to me, now. She's so tired!! It was a two day job. (Thanks Mom!)

We don't need no education ... The Wall

Hi! Remember me? I'm the non-structural wall separating two different rooms.

Sergio and Russ** (my dad) started taking this down because we have a leaking pipe. Up until now, we haven't been able to locate the pipe....

My Dad

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More work...

And finally....VICTORY!
PS : the pipe is in the lower right hand corner...leak found...not fixed :(

KITCHEN CHANGES!!!

Here's the sink after some wallpaper scraping....



x


Then, we took the light down from the top of the sink. Electric looks a little fire-hazard-ish, but our electrician is coming this week to fix that. Plus, don't worry--we have a fire extinguisher.

There's masonite board behind that sink. We took that off, risking the unknown about what was underneath.

The Unknown--
Now, the sink needed to be covered up to avoid getting messy. Here's what was underneath that masonite...scary.

We have to replaster that big hole in the wall (obviously).

The wooden boards underneath are staying.

Once we took down the cupboard over the stove, this patch of wallpaper and paint appeared. It is actually numerous layers of wallpaper covered by paint, and then covered by wallpaper again. The paint was so strong, I honestly think it could have withstood a nuclear bomb. Fortunately, it did not withstand about 10 hours (I'm not kidding--just for that patch) of chipping, steaming, soaking with DIF, chipping, steaming....Victory finally came.

Once we finally, finally stripped all of the wallpaper, we took down the masonite all around the room. We exposed (you guessed it) more wallpaper (see below). Wow! Only this was older, yuckier, and stickier.

We also exposed more wood! (Hooray!)

Interestingly, the wood had a very dark, charcoal film on it. We think there might have been a kitchen fire long ago, and the masonite was put in place to cover the damage.

This picture (below) really shows the layers of wall.

Here's my husband, looking for something to do. I made him clean the fridge out.

Another picture of the wall...all of the wallpaper is gone now. Plus, I've been stripping the paint on the windows. They've been repainted so many times, that the edges aren't rounded anymore. Were trying to either restore the wood (if its nice) or just sand it down so that it looks sharper once its re-painted.

AND finally...the only part of the house that doesn't need any work--the backyard. We just bought the table and chairs at Home Depot. The previous owner had planted all sorts of bulbs and we've been loving watching everything pop up from day to day. Its soooo cozy back here.