January 29th - Gutting the kitchen
Last week, I had somebody come by and help me lug the applicances down the stairs and out to the truck. He also helped me lift off the countertop from the larger of the two base units and move it to the living room. Just a little bit of dirt behind the old fridge and dishwasher, eh?
Today, I took on the task of removing the smaller countertop and both cabinet base units. I had to carefully remove the larger base, as the water supply was still on. If I wasn't going to re-use the base units, it would have been a simple task to take out the Sawzall® and tear it to pieces.
With the large base unit out, I scraped two layers of vinyl from the floor - the original 1970's layer that was glued to the underlayment and a layer of 12" self-adhesive vinyl tiles. I also found serveral holes in the drywall from plumbing repairs as well as some poorly made patches from whenever the electricians ran a dedicated circuit for the dishwasher. Using similar techniques as in the bathroom, replacement panels were cut, spliced in and "mudded".
Speaking of mud, some time was also spent making progress on the bathroom and master bedroom mudding efforts. A final coat of mud was applied to the bathroom walls and the second coat to the master bedroom. Not worthy of pictures though, since seeing each additional coat of mud is about as interesting as watching grass grow.
January 30th - Priming the second bedroom and bathroom
The second (smaller) bedroom was in pretty good shape, but had a bold blue color that needed more than one coat of paint to cover. We decided to use the latex-based Kilz® primer to help prepare the walls and trim for the color coat. The latex Kilz® is much different that it's oil-based counterpart. It has a much thicker consistency, drys slower and doesn't have the powerful fumes. The only real pain with the small bedroom is that the quarter-round trim that joined the walls to the ceiling had masking take applied to it many years ago. It had since hardened and was proving to be a pain to remove, so I tore the trim down and I will replace it after the painting is done. Here's a view of the bedroom after the primer coat.
In the bathroom, all the mud was lightly sanded to blend out any marks or edges, and drywall primer was rolled over the fresh areas. On one of the next trips over, I'll remove a wallpaper border,wash the ceiling and old wall sections, then prime the entire room with the latex Kilz®.
Well, that's it for the week #2 of work on the condo. Come back next week to see updates on the progress!