Ceiling and wall painting, final floor prep

Short blog entry this time around.  Is there much that can be said about painting?

Friday night, we painted the ceiling.  We used Zinsser ceiling primer and paint in one.  I figured since we already primed the ceiling, and it started white to begin with, a second coat of primer/paint in one would be equivalent to a second coat.  The paint goes on slightly pink, so you can see where you've already painted.  Slightly is probably an understatement, as the pink was so faint that it was very, very difficult to see where you'd already painted.  The glare from a light ended up being a better indication of what was painted and what wasn't.

Saturday morning, we started on the walls.  We went with an eggshell finish of Behr Seasoned Salt.  We didn't tape along the ceiling, we just painted it in by hand.  I think that ended up being far superior, as every time I've tried taping off areas, even with the good tape, paint ends up underneath it.  That, and tape is ridiculously expensive.

Immediately after the first coat, the paint looked terribly uneven.  However, as it dried it evened out.  We put on a second coat that afternoon.  It seems like no matter how careful you are with one coat, your roller still ends up missing in spots.  The large white areas will be covered by tile and cabinets, we're not that inept at painting.

Sunday, I removed the final 70 or so nails that were embedded all wonky in the floor, presumably from the chisel passing over them and knocking them flat.  I scraped the ridges off the nail holes, and put down floor patch to level out areas where the previous linoleum had been chipped up.  That stuff stunk bad while drying.

Next up, cutting and fitting the underlayment!

Final drywall prep and priming

With the recessed lights in, and the final layer of drywall mud applied, it was time to get the joints sanded and smoothed out. 

Knowing how much of a mess construction can be, particularly drywall dust, we've had temporary plastic sheet "doors" installed in the 2 doorways leading to the rest of the house.  In addition, I saw great reviews on Amazon for a product called Sand & Kleen.  Basically, it's a special sanding head (uses regular sanding screens), hooked to a hose that's hooked to a bucket of water, that's hooked to another hose going to your shopvac.  Drywall dust gets sucked into the the bucket of water where around 95% of the dust ends up as sludge in the bottom of the bucket. 

Supposedly, if you're good at drywall, you have to sand very little.  Unfortunately, I'm not.  I did the majority of the "heavy" sanding with the Sand & Kleen, and it captured the vast majority of the dust that came off the walls.  Even with my little 1 gallon Shop Vac, it was strong enough to keep the sanding handle stuck to the wall.  I emptied the 3 gallon bucket twice, each time it had about 3/4" of solid sludge on the bottom. 

Here's a cool panorama of our kitchen post sanding.  There's some weird artifacts from stitching the individual pictures together.

I did the final smoothing with dry sanding sponges, so there was some dust there, but not nearly as bad as it would have been.  Once it was done and cleaned up, and the existing painted walls scuffed (for better paint adhesion), it was time to prime.

Priming was scary to me.  Not being skilled in drywall, priming to me has the finality of, "all of your mistakes in the drywall will be forever displayed here."  In particular, the U-shaped area of the ceiling where I got "lazy" and just filled in the missing areas from the soffit, rather than pull the whole ceiling down and deal with the mess of insulation.   I suppose if it was really that bad, I could go back and do another layer of drywall.  Thankfully, I think it came out pretty good.

The mold resistant drywall behind the sink took 2 good coats of primer.  I used Zinsser 123, which according to the can, would stick to just about anything.  After getting paint on my hands and trying to get it off once it dried, I believe it.  All told, it took about 1 3/4 gallons to prime the kitchen walls and ceiling. 

Next up is painting.  Our color is Seasoned Salt from Behr, which oddly isn't on their website. 

Recycling and Recessed Lighting

As the project has continued, I have been saving any scrap metal that could be recycled.  This morning, I decided that I wasn't going to be removing any more recyclable metal, so I took it down to the local recycling facility. 

They don't pay for steel, but they do pay for aluminum (I had 12 pounds), brass (1 pound), copper (24 pounds) and stainless steel (15 pounds).  I was expecting maybe $20, so I was quite happy to leave with a check for $62.43!  On the way home, I swung by Harbor Freight for a cheapie air stapler that will hopefully last me at least long enough to put the new floor in.

With the old floor removed, and the drywall continuing, I needed to address another large part of the project looming over my head, quite literally:  lighting. 

In the old kitchen, we had one recessed light over the sink, one hanging pendant-style light over the table, and two old and ugly ceiling lights.  We replaced the sink recessed light with a new one, and were planning on removing the two ceiling lights and replacing them with four recessed lights, and replacing the existing pendant with a different pendant light. 

For the recessed lights, I knew I didn't want incandescent.  I wanted compact florescent or, preferably, LED.  Menards ended up having a sale on their LED recessed retrofit bulbs, which is an LED bulb and trim ring, in one. 

They look very nice, have a soft white light, and are surprisingly bright!  5 year warranty, and they're dimmable, even better still.

After finally figuring out how the bulb unit was supposed to mount in the recessed light (duh), we determined that they're bright enough, we thought we could get away with two recessed lights replacing the two ceiling lights.  And, rather than a pendant light over the dining room table, it might be nice to have a "clean" ceiling, and use a recessed light there instead.

I was quite happy about that, as it meant I was able to re-use the existing holes (after enlarging them), and not have to fish any new wire in the ceiling.  It also meant I was able to return two LED units and recessed lights, saving a couple dollars.

One of the old ceiling lights was mounted with a ceiling fan hanger, so I did  have to go up into the attic and rip that out, unfortunately.  Other than that, the recessed lights (remodel style) went in rather easy.  Pop the LED kits in, and other than the under-cabinet lighting, my lights, and more importantly, the electrical, is DONE.

Floor removal - Done

After a few more hours of work Tuesday night, the last of the nails were removed from the floor.

• 48 hours of total work to remove
• ~200 square feet of underlayment
• ~15 minutes per square foot
• 18.5 pounds of nails
• 324 nails per pound, that's ~6,000 nails
• 30 nails per square foot

I'm pretty sure the installer got paid by the nail.

Wednesday, we went to pick up the underlayment and the flooring.  The rolls ended up being a lot smaller than I expected.

That's the large roll, 12' wide by 23' long.  The new 4x8 sheets of underlayment are on the right side of the picture.  The old underlayment is that pile on the left.

Because all we had seen was the small in-store sample, we were eager to see what the floor actually looked like.  We unrolled the small roll (12' x 6'), and are very happy with how it looks.

Like most of the work I've done in the kitchen, it's stuff I've never done before.  Flooring is no exception.  I was very intimidated to work with such a large roll, and really, really didn't want to mess up installing the floor.  The manufacturer calls for S-288 adhesive, or S-289 releasable adhesive.  Doing some research, I found that the releasable adhesive has an "unlimited working time".  Meaning, you roll on the adhesive, let it get tacky (45 to 60 minutes), put your floor down, and go over with a 100 pound flooring roller.  Didn't get the position right?  Pull it up, it's pressure sensitive.  Don't like the floor in 10 years?  Pull it up, it's pressure sensitive.  I guess it's primarily used for apartments, where tenants move out and new floors get put down on a semi-regular basis.  It seems like it will work great for me, a novice floor installer.  As popular as Armstrong Flooring is, and as many places there are that sell it...  very, very few places sell the adhesive.  Once I tracked down someone that actually sold it (The Andersons General Store) and saw how much the adhesive costs, my guess is it's because other companies adhesive is much cheaper.  $60 for 1 gallon!  Home Depot sells another manufacturers adhesive for $27 per gallon, but their adhesive doesn't cover as much area ("up to 190sq ft" for the Home Depot vs "250-325 sq ft" for the Armstrong), and would have required 2 gallons.  6 of one, half dozen of the other...

Thursday night, I did another coat of drywall, this time with a 12" knife.  It's looking pretty good at this point, I'll probably sand the walls and be done with them, but do one more coat on the ceiling to get a better old ceiling/new ceiling match.

What lies beneath...

It has been about a week and a half since the last blog entry. I was in the middle of drywalling, and since I knew the floor we were ordering (Armstrong Chamblis 2 Slate Block Bronze, if you're wondering) would take 2 weeks to arrive, I thought, "We should order that so I'm not sitting around after finishing the drywall."

Ha.

So Sarah and I go to Home Depot to order the floor. The rolls are 12' wide. Most of our kitchen is around 11' wide, but there's a small section 5 1/2' long that's about 13 1/2' or so.  2 feet of that 5 1/2' will be covered by base cabinets.  Unfortunately, to ensure proper seam/matching/whatever, we had to order 6' x 12', or 72 square feet extra, to get the ~6 square feet we'll need.  Awesome.  At least we'll have enough extra to do the mud room (maybe) or bathroom.  Someday.

Old floor.  Ugh.

New floor.  Oooo.

So we order the floor, and the salesperson, who used to own a flooring company with her husband, asks if it'll be going over the existing floor.  We said no, we would be removing the old vinyl floor, we didn't want the increased height.  (Apparently you can put new vinyl over old vinyl, but we didn't want to do that.)  "You're going to need to replace the underlayment."  Huh, okay. I naively assumed that I could pull up the old vinyl floor, scrape the old glue off, put new glue on, and reuse the underlayment (1/4" plywood).  So we finished our order, went over and looked at the underlayment.  Not bad at all, $11 for a 4x8 sheet, and it looked nice and good quality.  All we had to do was rip up the older underlayment, and put the new stuff down.

Ha.

I go home, rip up a bit of the vinyl, and realize I probably never could have scraped/sanded/whatever to reuse the old underlayment.  Remember, totally naive about floors.  Then I started prying up the old underlayment.  

Huh.  (No ha this time.)

It seems that the floor is a sandwich, starting at the bottom, of:

3/4" plywood sub floor.

3/4" plywood underlayment.

Quite thin super groovy original 1964 linoleum floor.

1/4" dry and splintery plywood underlayment.

Early 90's vinyl floor.

This wouldn't be a problem at all if the installers of early 90s floor had installed the underlayment like normal people, and not the evil, spiteful people they were.  The 4x8 sheets of underlayment are nailed every inch around the perimeter, and every 2" across the sheet itself.  Every inch around the perimeter of a 48x96 sheet would be...  288 nails.  Every 2 inches across the reset of the sheet would be, ignoring the perimeter rows, 22 rows of 46 nails each...  Over 1000 nails there.  Almost 1300 nails total for each 32 square foot, 4x8 sheet.  I just spent several minutes checking my calculations, and even after all the work we did, that still seems like an excessive number.  Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.  Assuming the calculations are correct, taking into account the 2' where there was no floor under the old cabinets, that's still almost 200 square feet of flooring...  Approximately 7200 nails.  We're saving them and going to weigh them to get a better estimate.  

It gets better.  They're not wimpy little nails.  They're nice, 1 1/2" ring shank nails.  And the best part of all?  Removing the nails is the easy part!  Yes, that's sarcasm.

The nails are so close together, that it's difficult to get anything under them to pry up the wood.  A pry bar or chisel will occasionally work, but usually, the wood just shreds.

Evil, evil floor installers

I realize after an hour, that I don't have to worry about sitting around idle while we wait for the floor to arrive.

Little by little, the underlayment goes away.  Tuesday night by myself.  Thursday night with Sarah.  Friday night with Sarah.  Saturday all day with Sarah and her dad.  After 34 man-hours of work, this is what we had left:

The rest of Saturday and Sunday were periods of pain and rest.  Monday night, after another 10 hours of work (3 people, 3+ hours each), we're done ripping all the old underlayment up.  44 hours total.  Another 2 hours of prying up nails, and our floor will be clean and ready for the new underlayment.

Wouldn't you know it, I got a call from Home Depot this morning, that our floor is in.  Pretty good timing.  Just have to get the old floor debris moved/cleaned up first, before I can get the new floor in the garage.

This was taken about halfway through the floor removal, so the pile is larger now.

When I install the new underlayment, I'm going to staple it every 2" around the perimeter, and 4-6" across the rest of it.  I wont be evil to the next people who tackle this floor.  Once that's done, we'll install the floor, prime and paint the walls, and then be ready for cabinets...  Getting there!

Taping and mudding, Round 1

Thursday night, Sarah and I set out to tape and do the first round of mudding.

Using the mix-it-yourself mud wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.  The bag only gives directions/amounts for the entire bag.  We mixed half an 18 pound bag (weighed with a bathroom scale!).  A full bag calls for 10-12 pints of water, so I mixed in about 5 pints, let it soak in for a minute, mixed with my drill for about a minute and a half or two, and the consistency seemed fine to me.  We were good to go.

First, I went around and filled gaps or missing areas of drywall around the windows, particularly from the removal of drywall around the old window.  You'll remember for a long time, I wasn't sure how to finish around the old window, let alone the new one.  After filling in the holes, I stapled vinyl corner bead around the windows, and mudded around them.

Like most of the kitchen, this is a new experience.  Hope this turns out alright.

Not bad for the first coat (in my opinion).

Sarah went around mudding over screws, and filling in any gaps between panels.  Then she went around and taped the seams.  We used yellow self-adhesive fiberglass mesh tape because my dad recommended it.  Seems to work great, mud gets into the mesh, and because it's yellow, you can easily see if you have enough mud on it or not.

I mudded the ceiling gaps and screws.  I then used 2 pieces of inside corner bead (metal backed paper) before finally running out of mud.  I expected to have mud leftover, go figure.  Still need to tape some seams and mud over them,  along with the other 3 pieces of inside corner bead.  That will be for another day.  Saturday, actually.

Insulation inspection and more drywall hanging

I called and scheduled the insulation inspection for Friday.  The inspector called me and said he'd be there at 1:30, which he was.  Looked at it for a few minutes, told me I needed to plug the holes I drilled in the top plate for wiring, to prevent the spread of fire.  Passed me anyway, and at this point I'm down to 2 inspections, both final, and both able to be done at "any" time.  Meaning, none of my inspections are preventing us from doing any and all further work necessary to finishing the kitchen.

With that, Saturday morning, my father-in-law Kevin came over and we finished measuring, cutting, and hanging drywall on the walls.  It's finally resembling a room again!

A ceiling! And WALLS!

The last 2 inspections we have are final electrical, and final building. Final electrical is to confirm that all the outlets and switches are hooked up correctly. Final building is in my case, from what I gather, where they confirm that all the other inspections were approved, and that the building smoke detectors are installed correctly.  For other, larger permits, they would check to make sure handrails and banisters were correct for your steps, etc.  

Before I start taping and mudding and finishing the drywall, I decided to finish all of my electrical work, just to make sure that all of my wiring is indeed correct.  Were something to be wrong, I'm still at the stage where I could take out (a ton of) screws and access the wiring.  I'm happy to say as of Monday night, all outlets and switches, and the new recessed light over the sink is installed, tested, and working.

Also, since opening the wall in the kitchen exposed the tub valve, I installed an access panel for any future maintenance needs.

Open, with the adhesive clamped for a good hold.

It will be mostly behind the stove, and a few inches behind a new cabinet.  It's just a single cabinet on the end, so future removal shouldn't be too much of a chore.

I finished installing drywall around the new window.  I'm semi-sort-of winging it here, but it makes sense to me, so I'm just going with it.  I've got my corner bead left to install, and all the mudding, but I think the window should turn out well.

I call this composition "Taped wall, phone, and cat on a chair."

There's the south wall, and it's taped and ready for mud.  Most of the rest of the drywall wasn't put up as carefully, and there are 1/4" or so gaps between panels that I need to fill with mud first, before taping.  That will have to happen as-we-go.  Tonight (Thursday night) is mudding night.  Scary mudding night, because for the first coat, I'm using the recommended setting-type compound (mix it yourself) rather than the premixed in a bucket, which I am using for the other coats.  I bought the 210 minute stuff, so we'll see how it goes!