But, Where Do You Keep All of Your Things?

Bathroom storage is a biggie. In all of the infomercials of people in dramatic black and white reenactments spilling their toiletries all over the bathroom floor or in House Hunters when a couple is tripping over each other trying to both get ready in the morning, they all exasperatedly exclaim how they need more storage in their bathroom. We've all been there, amiright?

I try my hardest to live minimally and own as few makeup products as possible, but we all have stuff to store. Without a vanity to hide all of our things in, we carved out a nice spot in the corner of the room to store all of our goodies.

To revisit, here's the layout we played with during the design stage (the finished dimensions changed a bit).

See that chunk of space at the end of the tub in the upper right corner? That pocket is the answer to all of our storage woes. The 6.5" deep space became what I call "wet storage" and is accessed from the shower/tub. The 12" wide section is our "dry storage" that opens into the main part of the bathroom. The goal was to create as much hidden storage as possible so things didn't sit on the sink or the edge of the tub. Also, I'm one of those people that decants my shampoo into an unbranded bottle aiming to see as few product labels as possible - sorry toiletry brand graphic designers.

With these terrible photos, you can see how the whole thing came together.

Before the storage unit construction began, the window was sized, the subfloor was rebuilt and prepped for tile, electrical was put in, rough plumbing was installed, walls got cement board, and the floor was tiled.

When we were interviewing contractors for this project, 85% of them said that adding this storage unit was a bad idea. They said that the weight of the tile would pull on the cabinet and the only way to prevent it was to make the unit super strong by building a wall between the tub and the shelves, which would only leave 5” of usable storage space. I refused to accept that, and the contractor we ultimately hired agreed that my cabinet dreams could indeed come true.

Well, the bathroom remodel wrapped up two years ago and the storage unit is in perfect condition! 

Kim and Scott of Yellow Brick Home did a similar cabinet at the foot of their tub awhile after we installed ours. They used the wall and pre-made cabinet method - but did so much better a job than any of those doubtful contractors could have done. Either route works!

A big part of what made this cabinet strong is we opted to permanently install the shelves, rather than adjustable boards that we can move up and down along pegs. The permanently affixed shelves hold the whole piece together from top to bottom. I don't have the luxury of resizing the cubbies, but that's perfectly fine for our needs.

We also took the cabinet all the way to the ceiling. Which is storage heaven, and gives it extra rigidity being tied into the floor, ceiling, and wall.

The wet storage earned marble shelves to create three cubbies to rest shampoo bottles. The marble sits on top of the row of tile and gets wedged in on all three sides by the second row atop the slab.

Here she is - two years later and still going strong.

The original plan was for the shower niches to be 6.5" deep, but I found a remnant slab at a local stone yard that was 8" deep, so why not! Each shelf varies in height from 8" to 14" tall to allow for different sized bottles. The whole recessed niche is 19" above the edge of the tub so its low enough that the bottom shelf can be reached while soaking in the tub, yet not so low that we're bending down to grab things while showering.

I talked about the tile in this post, but I just have to point out this detail at the bottom of the cabinet with the base tile wrapping underneath the door. Love.

The bottom shelf is 23" tall to allow for the toilet brush, plunger, and cleaning supplies. The rest of the shelves are 13" tall. It's the perfect size for these baskets and this modular acrylic storage. With 17" of depth, I can fit 24 rolls of toilet paper easily within reach. Any deeper and it would be hard to reach anything in the back of the shelves.

The concealed storage and the tucked away shower niches give all of our toiletries some privacy. Yet, whenever guests ask "Where are all of your things?!" I proudly open up the cabinet and pull back the shower curtain to reveal the shampoo bottles. Which kinda defeats the purpose of designing a hidden niche and a concealed cabinet. oops!

You can read about all the rest of the bathroom elements by clicking the button below. Then, subscribe so you can follow along when we add another bathroom to the house in 2019!

One Room Challenge Week 3 - How To Install Picture Rail Molding

I'm back for week three of the One Room Challenge! If you're just tuning in, I'm mid-way through transforming an unloved spare bedroom into a cozy, moody space. Last week, the room underwent a metamorphosis with radically different paint in a deep green. This past week, we tackled installing the picture rail molding.

If you're unfamiliar with one of my all-time favorite old house features, picture rail molding is a narrow piece of trim that runs the perimeter of the room near the top of the walls. My house's picture rail molding sits atop the door and window frames. Some homes have the molding closer to the ceiling where crown molding would go. If you're in an old house with crown molding that doesn't quite touch the ceiling, then you may just have a picture rail! This lil' piece of wood trim has a notch at the top that allows you to put a small hook over it from which you can hang a frame from a wire. This is oh-so-handy because you never have to put holes in the wall to hang artwork. It saves me from patching holes whenever I want to change pieces - which is a big deal for someone that has major art indecision. It's also great for an old house because you don't risk damaging the plaster (that we all know I'm a fan of) by pounding a nail into the wall. (Side note, hammering plaster walls can really damage them so I always use screws rather than hammering a nail if I ever put anything into the wall). The living and dining room still have their original picture rail molding, but the rest of the house was stripped of their decorative trim at some point over the years. It's my job to put it back!

Enough about why I love this molding, let's get into how to install it.

Supplies:

• Picture rail molding

• Tape measure

• Level

• Studpop for plaster walls or traditional stud finder for drywall

• Paint, primer, and brush

• Sanding sponge

• Miter Saw

• Nail gun and nails

• Putty

• Caulk

• Picture rail hooks (from Rejuvenation, House of Antique Hardware, or vintage)

• Wire, rope, chain, or ribbon (of appropriate strength)

The first step is to find molding that fits with your home. The profile we bought was the closest we could find to the existing molding that is still intact in select rooms. If your home never had the molding originally, or you don't know what it looked like, you can research profiles for colonials, victorians, etc. to find what would have likely been in your home. If you have a unique profile and can’t find it at any salvage shops, online retailers, or specialty wood retailers, you can have a blade custom made so wood can be milled to match your existing profile. Finding someone local that does millwork can help you to either make a custom blade to cut your profile or even see if they have one already made.

The brand new molding has such crisp edges, but the existing trim in the house has a softer edge, so I took some sandpaper to each of the planks to give them a less brand-new look. The piece on the left is right out of the package, and the one on the right received a light sanding. Can you spot the mild difference?

After smoothing the edges a touch, I primed each plank with my go-to primer while Ross drafted up the plan of lengths and angles we would need.

We measured each length needed, and noted the direction of the cut. Drawing it out on a floor plan helped us keep track of where each cut would go, then labeling the backside of each piece ensured we didn't get any mixed up.

The trim spans the perimeter of the room so it sits on top of the white doors as well as the green walls. I could have painted it all white to match the trim, but I decided to match the trim color to the surface color it would sit on. So, door and window pieces would be Simply White and the wall trim would be Salamander. Once we had a plan, Ross cut the pieces, while I gave them a couple of coats of their corresponding paint color.

Once we cut all of the pieces, we did a dry fit. Using a level and several hands, we held up multiple pieces to see how each piece would fit against the next and how that would fit with the next and so on and so on. With old walls that aren't totally square, we had to sand down the edges a little, and we had to pull a few pieces from our spare cuttings.

Since the molding would need to hold the weight of heavy frames, mirrors, or whatever I choose to dangle from the trim, it needed to be darn strong. The only way to do this is to nail the trim directly into the studs. Since plaster walls are constructed with wood throughout their backsides (learn more about old walls here), a traditional stud finder (the electronic ones that beep) won't work. THE best way to find studs in plaster walls is with this handy $10 tool. Seriously. It’s the best.

Once you find a stud, measure from that stud a distance that you think your studs may be spaced out. Common distances are 16" or 24." My house has studs 16" apart, so I used blue tape to mark each stud. You could repeat finding each studs with the handy tool, but this is more efficient. This is one of the few occasions when I actually use blue tape on walls.

After we found the studs and dry-fit all of the molding, came my favorite part. We quadruple checked level before I nailed in each piece into the stud. We used this cordless electric nail gun that was such a beauty to have around because it was free of needing a noisy air compressor. Not having the buzzing compressor noise ongoing in the background made the cha-chunk sound of the nail gun so much more satisfying!

It felt great to finally cap the door with trim it always should have had. The doors are grateful to get their hats back.

After all of the trim found its home on the wall, I retraced our steps to fill in all of the nail holes with putty, and cleaned up the seams with caulk. Two walls had long stretches without interruption so they needed more length than the 8' trim piece, so we had to sister them together. My trusty putty,  caulking, and another coat of paint erased all of the blemishes.

I'm still finalizing the artwork. Until then, the hooks will rest patiently on the trim.

And there you have it! That, my friends, is how you add oodles of charm with a few pieces of wood. Oh, and I jumped the gun and put the couch in the room already. I'm in love with these colors.

If you're here because of the One Room Challenge, I hope you'll subscribe to the blog to get future blog posts in your email! Be sure to follow along on Instagram, too!

One Room Challenge progress:
Week 1 - the before, the inspiration, and the plan
Week 2 - paint, paint, paint
Week 3 - how to install picture rail molding
Week 4 - sourcing the artwork
Week 5 - refreshing a chair
Week 6 - the reveal!

Make sure to check out the other room transformations that are coming along swimmingly! So many featured and guest bloggers are doing amazing things!

Taking The Bathroom Down To The Studs

I've been distracted with working on week 1 and week 2 of the One Room Challenge (this week's update coming Thursday!) so I've left you hanging since first introducing you to the bathroom remodel. Sorry! But, we're back and headed into demo.

As a refresher, here's what the bathroom looked like.

Since most everything was leaking, rusting, failing, sinking, or otherwise not super pretty, nearly all had to go. But as an old home lover, original features don't get ripped out that easily. Only a few elements had been there for a century. The original medicine cabinet would need patching and cleaning, but it could get freshened up to be a real stunner. The hardwoods were original but were rotten beyond repair rotten and couldn't be salvaged. The bathroom door and trim were original and would definitely stay. So, those keepers would get saved, but  the rest of the bathroom would go.

That tubular thing in the crawlspace is our HVAC, but it reminds me of the dragon in The NeverEnding Story.

Isn't a wall of exposed lath so pretty? It's like my very own Agnes Martin installation.

It isn't uncommon during remodels to demo only select parts of the room. You don't always need to pull all the drywall down and demo into the attic and crawlspace like we did. Yet, demo only happens once, so it's the only chance to expose everything and repair anything. With evidence of bigger problems, and knowing the plumbing has been there for a century, we didn't hesitate to take everything out to start from scratch.

A contractor that I interviewed to do the project proposed putting the new floor tile directly on top of the existing hardwood. Let me count the ways that it was not a good option. 1. Adding tile on top of existing flooring would leave a perfect place to stub my toe walking into the bathroom with the floor an inch higher than the hallway. 2. The hardwoods and the subfloor were visibly rotting, so adding a new floor atop certainly wouldn't resolve that issue. 3. The plumbing would have never been revealed to see how corroded it was.

Yum.

Thank goodness we didn't heed the advice of that contractor because those 100-year-old pipes were at the end of their life. We also found that the vent pipe had a big crack down the back of it.

Also, inside of the exterior wall, we found a beehive. A hive! 

I suspect that the bees found a hole in the exterior wall and started to build their home, only to get locked out when someone noticed the buzzing and sealed their entrance. I saved the honeycomb but have yet to find a use for it. Any ideas?

Even though we spent a bit more time gutting the whole room, we've gained so much peace of mind having fresh materials. I realize most renovators know that the advice to layer new material on top of failing material isn't the smartest move, but if you ever had any doubt, let this be a lesson. You just might find a beehive!

For more bathroom progress, click the link below, and then subscribe for more - I’ll be adding a new bathroom in 2019!

One Room Challenge Week 2 - It's All About That Paint

The biggest transformation for the One Room Challenge's makeover of the den/guest room is the paint. And we're getting into it first!

I had loads of inspiration and lists of paint colors that had been used successfully in multiple spaces. I was trying to marry the wall color with the blue velvet couch that I planned for that room to give it a dark-on-dark upgrade without making the room look monochromatic. As a reminder, here's the before, inspiration, and design plan.

Clockwise from upper left we have Salamander by Benjamin Moore, Hunter Green by Benjamin Moore, Pine Grove by Clark + Kensington, Tarrytown Green by Benjamin Moore, and Narragansett Green by Benjamin Moore.

I painted swatches on the back of a foam core presentation board, since I already had it on hand (I use it as a reflector for photos) but you could instead buy the paint sample boards at the paint store. I was quick to rule out a few colors, then painted my favorites on the wall. By the end, Salamander won our vote.

While rolling on the paint in broad strokes provides immediate satisfaction, my painting specialty is cutting in the edges. I don't use blue tape to get crisp edges, rather a steady hand and some trusty tools.

I use the HANDy Paint Cup whenever painting edges, when I need to be more mobile than a gallon of paint allows, or when I'm working with small amounts of paint. This convenient tool fits in your hand, has a magnet to hold the brush, and cleans up so easily (just let the paint dry in the cup, then peel it off - so satisfying!).

The Wooster Shortcut paint brush is perfect for cutting in. I'll use almost any 2" angled brush for the job, but this lil' one is so comfy with its rubber handle.

When scooching around on the floor to paint the edges on the baseboard, a kneeling pad is a must. I use it for gardening, painting, tiling, etc. While I don't think you'll find this crouched painting position recommended on HGTV, it works for me.

In addition to the walls needing a couple of coats of paint, the baseboards hadn't been touched since before the floors were refinished. They were scuffed up from the sander and I just left them like that for two years. A nice coat of Benjamin Moore's Simply White was all they needed to look their best. The baseboard, three doors, and a window all needed some paint love. Lucky for me, I had the S-Town podcast to keep me company during the hours and hours of painting.

After a weekend's worth of cutting in, I'm swooning over the freshly painted room. The green is so pretty and has a velvety look when the light hits it mid-day. At night, it's nearly black - which is just what I was going for.

Next week, I'm tackling the picture rail moulding installation! Come back over the next few weeks as this room gets a total overhaul. Don't forget to admire the work of the featured and guest bloggers participating in the One Room Challenge!

If you're here because of the One Room Challenge, I hope you'll subscribe to the blog to get future blog posts in your email! Be sure to follow along on Instagram, too!

One Room Challenge progress:
Week 1 - the before, the inspiration, and the plan
Week 2 - paint, paint, paint
Week 3 - how to install picture rail molding
Week 4 - sourcing the artwork
Week 5 - refreshing a chair
Week 6 - the reveal!

Bathroom Plans

Last week I shared some of the inspiration for our bathroom. The collection of images made a few must-have elements pretty clear: subway tile with dark grout, moody walls, hex tiles, marble, and period-appropriate finishes.

SOURCES: paint / medicine cabinet (ours is original) / faucet / hex tile / sconce (ours is vintage) / cabinet latch / pendant (ours is vintage) / register (ours is vintage) / subway tile / grout / console sink

We had a pretty good idea of the plans for the bathroom, but small tweaks were made over the course of the renovation. The below designs were drafted early on, so don't take these measurements as an exact blueprint of the finished product. Rather, a starting point for where we were headed.

The layout of the existing bathroom had no reason to be changed. I like having the toilet tucked in the corner, the sink has ample room around it, and the tub configuration allows for storage at the foot of it. Many bathrooms like this are only 60" wide which gives the tub just enough room to fit wall to wall. Since we had another foot of space, we could have gotten a longer tub to stretch the length of the room, but we opted to make two spots for storage, seen in the upper right corner of the above image. The little square that measures 6.5" deep is accessible from the shower. A perfect place to nestle bottles of shampoo without having them on display.

The 13" space on the right is a cabinet for toiletries, refill bath products, cleaning supplies, and more. I think it's my favorite feature in the whole bathroom.

The window shown here is a sizable improvement from the existing one, but we ended up going even bigger!

Because the sink is floating in between the toilet and the tub, I didn't want a traditional vanity. I think vanities are really pretty when they look like built-in cabinetry as an extension of a wall. But on their own, vanities can look like boxes floating in the middle of a room. Thus, we opted for a console sink that visually opens the space. Sure, we gave up storage, but I'm a-okay with that. Neither Ross nor I own a lot of products for primping, so the storage at the end of the tub is perfectly adequate for us.

Other than a few tweaks, those are the plans for the bathroom! If you want to jump two years into the future, you can see the finished bathroom here and here and here.

For more bathroom progress, click the link below then subscribe so you don’t miss out when I add a bathroom in 2019!

Hashtag Bathroom Inspo

You asked for it, so the bathroom remodel is next to share!

Since we were putting a new bathroom in an old house, I wanted the design to pay homage to the old house charm. I'll never know what the original bathroom looked like before we got our hands on it, so the design options were vast. Should I do classic black and white or colored tiles? Bold or understated? Authentic period pieces or reproductions? Simple or a bit more eclectic? Entirely vintage or a mix of old and new? Minimal or snazzy?

Here are a few of the spaces I took inspiration from when designing our bathroom.

Source: Apartment Therapy / Mandy's Handsome Bath Reno

I love how soft yet high-contrast this feels. A clawfoot tub is also oh-so-dreamy. We ultimately weren't able to incorporate a clawfoot soaker in our bath remodel, but maybe there will be room in the next bathroom that we hope to add on.

Source: Amber Interiors

Don't even get me started on my love for floral wallpaper. This Ellie Cashman paper is gorgeous. The pedestal sink is such a perfect way to show off wall details.

Source: Clay Squared

This sink with the look of turned legs is so quaint in the best way possible. The tile is understated but filled with detail. There's hex, a variation on greek key, a pencil liner, decorative cap, and subtle cove base tile. The chair-rail height tile surrounding the whole room was a must-have on my list.

Source: New York Times / The Makeunder | John Derian

A painting in lieu of a mirror is fine by me. The tile work here is far simpler than the detailed profiles above, but it exudes character. I adore how the aged sink legs and worn tub coexist with the new hardware.

Source: One King's Lane / Tour Alison Cayne’s Stunning West Village Townhouse

That window is perfectly gigantic. If privacy were no issue, I would have installed a window the full size of the wall.

Source: Remodelista / A Brownstone in Brooklyn, Reborn

That retro green tile is to die for, but it's all about that recessed soap dish.

Source: Unknown

The moody wall color was definitely a feature worth stealing. I think I need to add more artwork, though, because this is the bee's knees.

Source: Apartment Therapy / Liz and John's 1926 Sears Craftsman in Phoenix

Why do moody walls when you can do a moody ceiling? I love how this bathroom has a bold and modern feature without sacrificing the traditional tile. 

Source: Dierdre Doherty Interiors

Storage is key in small bathrooms, so why not borrow space between the studs for recessed cubbies? Our final bathroom design allowed for this, but in a slightly different variation.

I borrowed an element from each of these bathrooms, and the many others on my Pinterest board to create the bathroom that's perfect for us. Stay tuned!

Refinishing Our 100-Year-Old Oak Floors

Refinishing the hardwood floors was the last step in remedying the odor issue. Once all was said and done, the smell disappeared and the flooring was revived – win win!

As a reminder, here’s what the flooring looked like.

The 100-year-old rift and quartersawn white oak was actually in pretty great condition throughout most of the house. However, the urine stains (the dark spots seen above) and termite damage warranted repairs. Plus, there's no better time to restore the floors than when not living in the house - you’d have to move eeeeeeverything out off the floors otherwise.

The very first step was to make a mess. All drywall, painting, and bathroom construction (stay tuned!) occurred before the flooring crew set foot in the house. There's no sense in making that oak perfect and shiny, to then drag a bag of demo debris over it. I've heard professional painters say to paint after floor refinishing because dust can get into the paint, but I sided with the hardwood guys that said to paint first. It makes so much more sense, I mean, I've been known to drop a cup of paint from the top of a ladder.

Oops. Thank goodness for rosin paper. Once I was done spilling paint, the sanding process could begin.

That freshly sanded oak makes my heart skip a beat! I also have a crush on this sander. Ain't she a beaut? Looking back, I think that retro pale green influenced my kitchen cabinet color.

The floors had previously been refinished, but in the back of the closets was the original wax finish. It was pretty dull, but there's something so special about finding a part of the house that hadn't been messed with over the years - even if its a small bit of dingy flooring. Below, you can see the wax finish transition to the glossy polyurethane before getting sanded down. Also, note the termite damage.

All of the boards that were brittle from termites gnawing on them had to be replaced.

It's no surprise to find a few boards that are beyond repair, but the bummer was discovering that termites had eaten through the subfloor, too. It was so chewed on that I could easily poke my finger straight through to the crawl space. Half of the master bedroom flooring had to go. This is where I can't stress enough the importance of house maintenance. This back corner of the house was termite heaven because of the moisture that built up in a non-vented crawl space. There's also no record of termite treatments after 1982. People, these are BUGS inside of your floors/walls/furniture/etc. Get them out before they do this!

Local suppliers were out of the same type of flooring we have (2” x 1/2” rift and quartersawn white oak) and tried to convince us to use plain/flatsawn wood. We insisted on using the same type of cut as the existing flooring, and even though it delayed our move-in date, it was well worth the wait. Once the matching hardwood arrived, it had to acclimate to match the house's humidity.

During the acclimation time, we brainstormed how to finish the floors. The sanding did wonders for the small stains and scuffs, but the urine damage was still noticeable and would stand out even more when coated in polyurethane.

I was prepared to stain the wood a dark shade in order to hide the stains. But at the last minute, Ross made his biggest design contribution to date - he declared, "no stain!"

The ghosts of urine blemishes remain, but we couldn't be happier with the choice to keep the white oak light and natural.

After an application of wood putty and another few rounds of sanding, the floors were coated in an oil-based satin polyurethane. The finish is just shiny enough without being glossy, and its amber tones add to the patina of the 100-year-old wood. Choosing to do oil-based was in my goal of keeping with the history of the house - giving it the warm amber look and using finishes customary from years ago. But I kind of which we didn’t do the oil based poly and instead left the wood even more pure in it’s lighter hue. It’s okay, though!

We hired out the project and spent about $5k on the whole process. It was well worth it considering we were in a rush to move in and had lots of other things going on. But, I do yearn for the day when I can refinish floors myself! The Grit and Polish shared how they refinished their floors themselves and included the cost to do so here.

Once the flooring was complete, it felt like a whole new space - almost ready to be lived in. But before moved-in, there was still so much more to do. Which of those projects do you want to hear about next? The bathroom remodel? The kitchen update? More odds-and ends?

Wall Redux

Before I get into why the walls needed repair (other than to remedy the smell), I'll kick off with some old house wall 101 on plaster and lath, which is a common construction for lots of American homes at the turn of the century. There are so many other great resources that cover other wall materials and styles such as gypsum board, shiplap, etc. Turn to Chip and Joanna for all things shiplap, and refer to This Old House for all things old homes.

Wood laths are strips of wood about an inch tall that are installed horizontally and attached to the wall studs with small gaps between each strip. The plaster is then coated over the lath with a trowel and pressed into the lath until the plaster oozes between the gaps and hooks onto the back side of the lath. Imagine sloth fingers hooked over the edge of a bucket. The funny looking fingers are the plaster and the rim of the bucket is the lath. Did you click that link and "accidentally" watch 45 minutes of sloth videos? I sure did. Let's get back to the walls. This is what the back of a plaster and lath wall looks like. See the sloth fingers?

Once the plaster hardens and gets a few finishing coats, you have a wall! This construction has many perks adored by old house lovers. Unlike modern-day drywall, plaster and lath is quite thick and therefore is a great sound barrier and provides decent insulation. I particularly love how it feels more solid than drywall. It feels substantial and does nice things for the room's acoustics. When Daniel of Manhattan Nest reworked the walls in his bedroom, he doubled up two layers of 1/2" drywall to mimic the goodness of a thick plaster wall. He gets me.

All this is to say, I love my plaster walls, and would much rather repair them than replace them. The bummer with plaster is that after a few California earthquakes and 100 years of the house settling, the plaster can crack and even pull away from the lath. We had this issue in several spots, plus some pretty bad patch jobs, and lots of chipping.

The original texture was really sandy, and the previous attempts at patches were like extra coarse grit sandpaper. I was told this wall texture was created by grinding up walnuts and incorporating them into the plaster mix. The walnut consistency wasn't my ideal surface, but the old house purist in me felt we needed to keep that original texture. Once we determined that the best way to get rid of the smell was to skim coat the walls, I was glad to be able to replace the walnut walls with a smoother finish. 

Remember when I mentioned the phenomenon of "well, if we're going to do that, we might as well do this?" Well, I did it again. Since we knew the walls and ceilings were about to earn a beautiful new coating of texture and new paint, it was the perfect time to tear them open. Enter: electrical.

Here's my brief old house electrical 101: Knob and tube wiring is a pretty interesting technology made up of ceramic pieces that route the electrical wire through the walls. However, this type of wiring isn't grounded, and often can't handle modern appliances and electrical needs. This, plus the potential of a fire hazard makes this a feared technology - so much so that many home insurance companies will charge more if your house has even a little bit of this outdated wiring system. Old houses get a pretty bad rap for their old wiring, but many operate with knob and tube just fine. Our house was 90% K&T, with the other 10% being really poorly spliced additions that were more dangerous than the original electrical. The shoddy modifications and the lack of sufficient outlets led us to redo all of the electrical. 

Running new electrical through existing walls is some sort of magic trick that electricians humbly do for you. Through their sorcery, they manage to run new wires throughout the entire house and only leave a few holes behind.

Because I'm (sometimes) an old house purist, I knew that if we had to cover up the original plaster, I wanted to be sure that it was recoated with old fashioned plaster. That is until I got bids that cost as much as a Toyota Corolla. So, I changed my tune and decided that a thin coating of drywall mud would suffice.

I called a few old house neighbors to ask them for referrals to retexture all of the walls. A block away lived an older gal named Holly who when asked for a referral replied, "Are you home now? I'll be right over." No more than 12 minutes later Holly was waltzing through my front door with a paper bag full of her preferred drywall tools: a trowel, a taping knife, a mud pan, joint tape, a multipurpose tool, and joint compound. (I'd also recommend a hawk, but it bothers her wrist). Without hesitation, she took the pointy end of her multipurpose tool and carved a gash in the living room wall along the seam of the major crack. She narrated her process of cutting a v-shaped crevice in the line of the crack which would provide more surface area for the new compound to adhere to. She then filled in the crack with joint compound, layered it with joint tape, then smoothed it over with more joint compound.

With the gash in my wall and the tutorial from a woman that restored her house with her own hands, I was inspired and confident that I could retexture the walls on my own. So, I started scraping anything that was lose, and began carving into the cracks.

That multitool (seen above) was a dream. It was able to dislodge any loose pieces and I could carve into the plaster easily. The scraping process was cathartic and I even managed to get a few family members to scrape the walls with me. Thanks, guys! With Holly's confidence in me and that tool, we scraped, and scraped, and scraped until the walls looked like this.

I'd say it's finished - if I were going for a medieval French chateau look.

The process of scraping one whole room was very time-consuming, and my hands were beaten up after scraping against the sandpaper walls. (I know, gloves. Live and learn!) I was losing patience with the scraping and decided to tackle the retexturing process. Since I was just starting out, I kicked off my hours of retexturing in the closet where I could experiment with different techniques without care of how my clothes would judge my inevitable mistakes.

The process is quite simple once you get the hang of the wrist movements. I used Holly's recommended mud pan and a small putty knife to fill the big holes and cracks, then layered them with fiberglass mesh tape to add strength that would prevent cracking again. Once everything was patched, I used a trowel to scrape the walls so I could knock down any high peaks in the texture. Then, I used the joint compound mixed with a touch of water to coat a layer over all surfaces. The idea was to use enough mud to fill in all of the valleys in the texture to bring the recessed portions to the height of the peaks but not so much that you're caking everything with an inch of drywall. I worked in the closets late at night so I lost track of time and the ability to judge the quality of my work, but I'd say it turned out pretty nicely - for a closet.

I really enjoyed working with the drywall mud but I was losing energy. I was retexturing walls while also doing lots of other projects on the must do before move-in list and I wasn't moving as quickly as I hoped. The wall texturing was necessary to complete before the floor refinishing, so I was risking slowing down the progress of the rest of the renovations. So, we hired it out, and I'm so glad we did. It was completed perfectly by the pros, freed up my time to work on other projects, and ensured that all wall surfaces were completely covered up and free of smells.

The crew skim coated everything in a very light skip trowel texture to make the walls almost completely smooth. The ceilings had their fair share of cracks, and due to the horizontal nature of ceilings, they tend to crack perpetually. To prevent this, the ceilings earned fresh pieces of drywall that won't crack or peel.

Once the crew was done, the walls needed to dry out, then they got a healthy coating of primer, then paint. Picking a paint color is always tricky, and white is a particularly easy color to mess up. Take these paint samples below. They all looked white on the swatches, but when compared to each other, their undertones pop and it's easy to see which ones are too blue, pink, and brown.

After the walls got a fresh skim coat of new drywall mud, I started to fancy their new hue and found myself color matching to the drywall color. Thus, we selected the swatch on the far right, Sail Cloth by Behr. With my time freed up not doing the drywall install, I was able to paint all of the ceilings and walls before move in with the help of my mom. Thanks, mom!