Our playroom went through a major bit of remodeling about 4 weeks ago now, though there's not much that's been visibly transformed...
You might remember when that when we first moved into this house, the front sunroom of the house, where I wanted to put all the Munch's toys, was this dark, dreary, wood-paneled area with lots of scary cracks and ugly blinds.
It got transformed with the help of spackle, paint, and caulk, but has continued to be one of the coldest areas in the house. It wasn't fun to play in in colder weather. A little while back, I was noticing that cracks had developed between some of the panels where I'd put all that spackle--likely brought on by the expanding and contracting from the changing temps, so I figured there was probably a bit of air leaking through. Certainly there were other places I knew air was leaking through, but there's only so many things I can fix, and that was one I could fix...
About the same time that I started doing this, I showed up for work one day to find that the area rug under my nanny family's dining table had been removed...and they were looking for a new home for it. Its dimensions matched almost perfectly with the dimensions of my play area, and I'd already been thinking that once I was done with the spackling, I'd want to get a rug to help alleviate some of the floor chill. We agreed it was a perfect solution, and such perfect timing! And even better, I was getting a rug that had already seen a little damage done, meaning that my cats basically couldn't do it any worse.
So I hurried about, finishing up sealing the various cracks and then sanding the spackle down a little...And then Friday night, I went to paint it... Now, I used the very same paint I'd used before, making sure to mix it properly and all that--I've done a fair bit of painting in my time, so I think I know how it's done! But when I put it on that wall, it was no longer the same paint, and there was no hiding that fact. I can't explain what happened, other than that this was really, really cheap paint...
You see my problem...
So at this point, I realized I was going to have to repaint the entire room...Not something I particularly wanted to do, because all those windows mean that most of the painting has to be done with a brush, with takes soooo much longer.
It occurred to me at this point that since I was going to have to repaint anyway, we might as well do something about the front wall outlet...We knew it to be a major source of cold air, though we didn't yet know why, other than the fact that it was on the wall that got hit with the most wind and probably didn't have any insulation. None of these old houses do. I'd tried to cover it over with plastic, the type one usually covers windows with, and all I'd gotten for my troubles was so much condensation that it broke the tape seal and made puddles on the floor! If we were going to get a rug, that outlet needed to be dealt with. So Saturday morning, we got started on it...
But because the wall was paneling, we couldn't just knock a little hole in the wall around it and then seal it all back up again. The full panel had to come out, and then another, and another and before we knew it, we'd decided to 'just' take out the whole wall...And we very nearly took out the other 2 walls under those windows too, except that I drew the line on what we could do in a weekend...
As it was, we now had a great big mess on our hands, both in the playroom...
...and in the rest of the house...And that morning, the rug had been delivered, adding to the mayhem.
Here was the source of so much woe...
And in this corner was another source...an actual HOLE in the outside stucco that was letting in both light and lots of cold air (I'm just glad this particular weekend wasn't as cold as a couple other weekends have been!). I caulked that thing up fast, but there were other sources of wind from somewhere down below that I couldn't reach...So we ended up getting a whole bunch of expanding spray foam, and made a solid 'floor' with the stuff all along the inside of that wall.
We measured and measured and measured again (I think we've learned by now? ;) ), then Daddy went to the store and got just about everything we needed...in particular, insulation. I told him to smile for this picture. :)
Then, to facilitate getting the drywall in, we decided to take out the board under the window sill...and looky what we found there....MAJOR insect damage. To the internet I ran and spent the next hour or so reading up on termites and ants and other ickies to see if this was more likely to be old or new...And after my exhaustive searches, there was no indication that it was a current issue. Hope I came to the right conclusion, because after I determined that, I sprayfoamed the whole space!
Sunday night, the wall looked like this, and the rest of the house still looked like it did in that other picture. How fortunate that the next day was a school holiday and I would be going to my nanny family's house, rather than having Superman come to me for the morning like he usually does! We certainly were not ready for him to join us yet.
I spent all Monday evening and all day Tuesday spackling, sanding, spackling again, sanding again (this time with my electric sander which blew dust EVERYWHERE), cleaning up the dust, painting, unrolling the rug, cutting the rug to fit the corners that stuck into it and prevented it from laying straight, setting up the shelving again, and finally, FINALLY putting the toys back into their places...
Tuesday at about midnight, this is what the playroom looked like, just in time for Superman to come back to us in the morning. And for all that work, all you can really tell is that we put a rug in. But our work has made SUCH a difference. There are still more drafts to deal with (in the spring at the earliest), and more walls to fix, etc., but just having that outlet sealed up and a rug on the floor has made this space so much more of a play room. The Munch spends SO much more time there now! It was worth every bit of our effort.
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