Weekend work: Goodbye carpet, wallpaper, and stage

We had a pretty busy weekend. From after work Friday until about 6 PM on Sunday we removed wallpaper, carpet, the stage in the living room, had some wall texturing applied, and began painting. We also purchased some appliances from Lowe's and I managed to finance some Diet Mountain Dew. I don't have to pay for that soda for 12 months now.

So we finally got the wallpaper off of the office wall; I'm estimating that between the two of us we've spent something along the lines of 15 man-hours getting everything removed and cleaned up. The big problem that we had with this terror-wallpaper (the great wallpaper fiasco of ought-nine) was that it was glossy. I'm guessing, and this may be due to the exorcism required, that this gloss was the spit of Beelzebub, the devil himself. Once we got the glossy part off and we applied water and an iron we eventually pealed off the backing and the paper itself.

The other bedroom, on the other hand, came off like a dream. Here's a short video of the relative ease:


Wallpaper being done was a huge relief (we finished Saturday evening). Before that we spent Saturday morning tearing up carpet and that heavy duty stage (thanks Jeff and Roberto) in the living room. The carpet came out easily while the stage, well the stage was rough. A couple of hammers, a giant prybar, a circular and reciprocal saw and a few hours of rough labor and the living room was clear.

After that Tom, our ceiling texture guy, put new texture onto the ceilings we de-popcorned and some of the drywall that was un-texturized. It took Tom about half a day to finish up but the results were great. After he finished the texturizing I was set up to seal the ceilings and drywall with some Oil based primer, specifically Kilz. Kilz is used to seal up drywall and texture (itself basically spackle) so that any water based paint won't pull out a stain or color in the drywall. Basically we need to do it or all our pretty paint will end up discolored.

Finally with the help of Christina's sisters Elizabeth and Veroncia we got a real good start into painting, completing the office (save for the ceiling).

So that pretty much sums it up; we're looking to handle odds and ends this weekend, start seriously packing, and getting a new frige. Hopefully this upcoming week is a lot slower and easier on the joints than the last.

Take a look at some of our photos here: