McBerkoBlog

This room was actually finished several weeks ago. Many thanks to Bill's mom Nancy and his sister Mary for all their help on this room and the second bedroom!! Floor refinishing and some furniture is all this guest room needs.

Remove carpet and pad Remove particle board over floor Remove trim Remove paneling Remove sheathing under paneling Remove million nails left in walls Remove light fixture Remove ceiling tiles Remove million staples left in ceiling Remove old closet Remove insulation Frame new closet Move outlets from waist-high to normal height Spray insulate everywhere light comes through the exterior walls Rehang windows where ropes to weights had broken Insulate walls Drywall ceiling Drywall walls Mud, sand, repeat ad infinitum Cough up a lung from inhaling dust from sanding Prime Mud, sand seams that still show Paint Damn! Mud, sand a few more Re-prime Re-paint Re-hang door so it's not 3 inches above the floor Trim doors Trim windows Apply baseboards Apply crown Nail set 1,000 nails in the trim Putty nail holes Prime trim Paint trim Caulk Hang new ceiling fan Paint closet doors Hang closet doors Hang closet shelves/rod

Some people love paneling. I mean, they seriously LOVE paneling. So much so that they would rip out hand-crafted plaster walls in order to see this smooth, fake wood on every surface. Maybe the plaster walls were cracked and they didn't want to deal with it? Maybe they thought paneling would be cozy, like a lodge or log cabin? Maybe it was just a hipster thing to do once upon a time? It doesn't surprise me that people who love paneling this much also have a corresponding fondness for shag carpet. Mauve shag, blue shag, even orange shag - we had the whole rainbow. This first bedroom at the front of the house featured lime green shag over particle board over original pine, that cozy paneling over other particle board, and acoustic tiles stapled (lucky us) to the ceiling. Unlike many old houses, it did have a closet, albeit a strange tiny but oddly deep closet, I guess so you can hang no more than 10 of your really, really wide garments. Can you blame us for wanting to destroy thi...

You didn't hear it from me, but buy stock in Home Depot and Lowe's now. Throughout most of 2008, they had disappointing performance as the real estate market, and then the entire economy, tanked. In late 2008, however, a few stores in central North Carolina reported huge increases in sales, enough to bring both companies back into solid profitability for the fourth quarter. The outlook in 2009 is good, since sales have been consistently high with no sign of slowing. Manufacturers and wholesalers of many products, including drywall, paint, and tools, are surprised by the turnaround. Arnie Smith, VP of Sales for Jubilee Joint Compound, Inc., says "We're not sure what's happening down there near Raleigh, NC to cause this, but we're not going to look a gift horse in the mouth! We'll keep shipping our joint compound to the stores as long as it keeps flying off the shelves."

Emailing pics or sending links to SnapFish was getting tiresome, so welcome to the McBerkoBlog! This will hopefully be an easy way for me and Bill to share updates about progress on the house, provided we actually take some time away from working to post. Immediately after closing, we started tearing stinky old cat carpet out of the entire place, hoping to find decent wood floors underneath. Lucky for us, there were nice oak floors throughout the first floor. The second floor was way cooler, if you ask me - various widths of old pine boards. To get to those pine floors, however, we had to remove the particle board nailed in every room. (Ask Steve what a fun day that was.) After ripping out the carpet, we did a quick paint job on the kitchen to make it temporarily livable (an expensive kitchen redo will have to wait a while!). We then decided to start the first real projects - 2 bedrooms and the living room. At this point, it's been about 3 months and we have these 3 rooms done. Ano...