The room formerly known as the Pink Room

You may recall that we live in a house that has a BRIGHT PINK room. You may also recall hearing me say that I saw the PINK ROOM in the photos of the house way before we bought it, before we had even seen the house, and I said "I can't live in a house with a pink room." We bought the house anyway, and I figured we'd change it immediately. But for numerous reasons, we had not gotten around to doing anything about the pink room. For one thing, it's right in the middle of the house, making it a bit of a hassle to take care of such a project. For another, the room is old horsehair plaster with wallpaper, and then paint over wallpaper, and then a wallpaper border over that. It was going to be a project. A big one. And today, that project began.

Here are a few before shots. I'm not putting a whole lot of them up here, since I think most of our readers are well-acquainted with the pink-ness in question. If you're not, take a gander at some of the older posts (like this one or this one) or at our flickr pages, where you're sure to see shots of the pinkness in action.




If you're wondering about the wallpaper that was under the hot pink you can check out a small patch here:


Last night we emptied the room of all its worldly possessions.


Every other room in our house is now over-stuffed, and things are a bit nuts, but the pink room was empty, and ready for the arrival (at 7 am today) of our plastering team.

We're very happy with the work Brian Daly and his two workers did for us today. He was recommended to us by our good friend Matt, who's quite an expert carpenter and house restoration expert. The coolest part of the job was the fact that two of the guys wore stilts to do the job.

Our ceilings are 10 feet high, so this was kind of necessary. Lucy was fascinated by the stilts. I think she would have preferred to stay home from daycare today to just watch them working.

Here's a mid-project shot:


The drywall (before it was covered with plaster) was this dark blue-gray color, and we actually liked the way it looked. We're thinking of a dark slate blue as a possible color for the room (but we really have no idea what we're going to do color-wise).

The last time we did a drywalling project was for Lucy's room, but back then, we actually demolished the plaster. That was an incredibly dirty and trash-producing job, and we swore then we would never do such a thing again. This time, we sensibly decided to just put the drywall right over the plaster, making it an easier job for us. It did make things a bit tricky though, since the wallboard had to go on top of the bottom molding. We could have removed the molding, but this too would have been quite a project, and quite possibly would have ruined some of the molding. We think it turned out pretty well.

We're especially pleased with the ceiling, which had a lot of cracks in the plaster and is now nice and smooth:

Here you can see some of our nice, sharp corners:


As you can see, there are still some PINK spots, as illustrated here on the medallion. We're hoping to be able to paint over them. The guys did a nice job of trimming the drywall around the medallion, and bringing the edge right up to it. A few pieces broke off, so the guys suggest that we spray paint it, since it's in pretty delicate shape.

The room is filled with dust and smells funny, but we're pleased with the job. We have to wait at least a week, and probably two, for the plaster to completely dry before we can paint it. So we have a pretty much empty room in the middle of the house, which Lucy is really enjoying.

Do you have a color you'd like to suggest for the room formerly known as the pink room? Do you have a new name we can call the pink room, besides "the room formerly known as the pink room"? We look forward to hearing from our devoted readers!

By the way, I wrote most of this post on Tuesday, but didn't have a chance to get it finished. So all the "todays" here refer to Tuesday, June 23rd, for those of you documenting and keeping track of such things.

Drywall Complete!

Yesterday Francisco finished the sanding and finishing, and this morning two guys arrived to clean up the mess. They even vaccuumed the stairs! We have walls! And we can paint them! It's very exciting. Here's what it looks like:


And here's today's catalogue of things we still have to do in this room:
--prime the whole thing

--paint the ceiling

--put up trim around doors/windows

--paint the walls

--deal with the mess that is the new built-in/old built-in area: As we discovered, there was an original built-in shelving unit behind the newer one. We've ripped out the new one but left the old one in tact. We just need to figure out how to fix the moulding around the little old built in, as well as deal with the floor in the area that was the new built-in. We're also thinking of covering this little nook up so as to put in shelves for the entire length and width of this area.


--replace baseboard: we ripped out this section of baseboard, and then decided NOT to take out any more baseboard. We'll need to put a fresh piece in here, which might be a bit tricky. It's clear that the floor here was put in AFTER the baseboard.


--fix/replace baseboard: This is one other section of baseboard that we messed up trying to rip it out. I imagine we'll need to cut it back to where it's complete, then put in a new piece, routing out the spot for the electrical outlet.


--baseboard top trim: we're going to need to buy and install the pretty top part of the baseboard that will go above this flat piece. It will hide the line where the drywall meets the baseboard (where in some spots there is a pretty big gap!)

--paint the steam radiator: as you can see, it's not in terrible shape, but will need some scraping/sanding and then a fresh coat. I've been reading that spray paint is the way to go (and that's also what we did at Ian & Elizabeth's house).


--re-install overhead lighting fixture in the room and figure out lighting for the closet (there's a wired-in flourescent tube one in there now).

That's all I can think of for now. I'm very pleased with how it looks.

Drywall Project, Day 3

There was further mudding today, and it's really looking good. Check it out: