Walls and Trim

Once everything was out of the office, we could finally get started on the minor renovations we had planned. We knew we wanted to take this opportunity to refinish the floors, which badly needed it, before the new furniture gets in the way and the kid arrives. It doesn't really make sense to do the floors for just one room, so we decided to redo the entire upstairs at once. But before we have our floors refinished into beautiful, fabulous floors, it makes sense to touch up all the paint to ensure that nothing gets dripped on them in the future. So, what was a small project of just touching up paint in a couple spots in the kid's room, turned into a major project of patching walls, touching up paint, and fixing up all the trim upstairs.

Step 1. Patch  & Paint the Walls
When we first moved in, I quickly painted all the walls to get rid of the really horrendous colors that we inherited from the previous owner. Because I was in a hurry, I didn't do a very thorough job. So, I went back to take the time now to patch cracks and holes. In all of the rooms, there were cracks along walls and at the tops of the doors and windows that formed as the house settled over time. I quickly patched them with a light coat of mud, and then painted.

patching cracks in the bedroom

Our house has been wired for cable several times, so there were a bunch of cables and outlets that didn't actually connect to anything anymore - so I pulled all of those out and patched the holes.

one of many useless cables running through the upstairs that got pulled out

patching over one of the old cable outlets in the green room

After I had patched and painted everything, I realized that the store had mixed the wrong color for the green room. So we had to take a second trip way out to the suburbs to get a new can of paint for the green room, and then I repainted again.

ak. definitely not the right color in the green room

after another coat of the right color - looking good again

Step 2. Replace the Outlets

An ongoing project in the house is to replace the nasty old yellow outlets with new bright white ones that disappear into the white trim. Since I was repainting the trim anyway, I figured that now was a good time to do it. I just flipped the circuit breaker, unscrewed the old outlets from the wall, and then carefully moved the wires from the old outlets to the new white ones, putting the wires in the same relative places as I went. Now all the outlets upstairs are new, white ones.

Step 3. Fix up Trim
Once the walls were in good shape and the new outlets were installed, I started working on the trim. First up, I removed anything that needed to come off. I pried off the shoe molding, which will prevent the floor sander from covering the whole floor. I pulled out any remaining useless cable and phone wires, and then I scraped everything to get rid of old caulk, flaking paint and other gunk. I then carefully swept and wiped everything down to get rid of paint chips and dust. Then I caulked to fill in all the gaps and cracks, using a caulk gun to run a line of caulk along anything that needed to be filled, and using my finger to smooth it. Then the trim got a new coat of white paint, and the walls got a quick coat of wall paint to make a smooth line along the edge of the molding. Sidenote - caulk is important for filling in gaps and making things look finished, but if you don't paint it- it attracts all the dust and hair in the house and quickly looks disgusting.

Before: a bad spot in the green room

After: caulked & painted, shoe molding removed

Step 4. Remove Lead Paint in Kid's Room
So while I was working on the green room, the hallway and our bedroom, R was focused on the new kid's room. Our house was built in the 1910s, and lead wasn't removed from paint until 1978 - so we knew we had lead paint in the house. For added safety, R decided to take on the project of removing the paint from the trim in the kid's room. (Apparently he chewed on his windowsill as a kid- so this was personal for him). We bought a whole bucket of enviro-friendly stripper, and he started slathering it on. Not surprisingly, it turns out we have dozens of layers of paint on the trim, so it took him three different passes to get the window nearly bare.

stripper doing its thing on the window trim

Between the fumes and the mess, we decided this wasn't the best approach. So we picked up a heat gun (which is basically just a super powered hair dryer), and he used it to finish the window and remove the paint in the door frames.

husband finishing up the window with the heat gun

Once he was done, I came in and caulked and painted the window and closet door frame. In retrospect - removing the paint wasn't a great idea. Stripping the paint made a huge mess and was probably more dangerous than just leaving it in place and covering it will a new coat of fresh paint. Maybe a better answer would be to remove the molding altogether and replace with something new - but that's expensive and feels wrong in an old house.

Anyway - now we are finally done and everything looks great. We stayed up late a couple nights getting everything finished up. This was a monster of a project that ate away several of our weekends. It was completely back breaking and totally thankless-  the kind of project that no one will notice once it's been done. Already it's hard to remember how cruddy it looked before, now that everything is so much cleaner and sharper now. But we finished in the nick of time- the floor guys get started today, and we couldn't be more excited. More on that soon!