Monday, December 8, 2014

Playroom turned ArtIsBeauty Art studio Part 1 DECONSTRUCTION

 Hello again my BEAUTIES!
This weekend has been crazy busy and a ton of work.
You see; You know that old saying...
"man makes a plan and God laughs"
Yeah..this room....was one of those PLANS! :)
 This is the kids playroom in the basement.
I painted that chalkboard wall almost 20 years ago.
So long ago that I had to go to a specialty paint store to get a quart of chalk board paint 
because they didn't sell it in stores... Who knew, for once I was WAAAY ahead of the trend.
Well any who..
I had planned on turning this into my art studio. 
It had slowly over the years just turned into a "CRAP CATCHER" room.
My "PLAN" ....I use that term Loosely; was to QUICK empty the room,
Keep the chalkboard wall, rip out the carpet and paint the trim...
 But when we moved the furniture we saw was water damage coming in from behind the wall...
See that part right there....that was God Laughing....There went my Quick plans.
I had planned on keeping the ceiling also. Even though I wasn't really a fan of it,
I didn't want to deal with taking it down!...again.....that HAD been the plan.
 You see, I couldn't get the old wall down to repair without taking out the ceiling. Its a drop
ceiling rail system and basically a complete pain in the butt to put back.
So my plan had to change again.
 We pulled the wall down to see where condensation had been building 
up on the cinder block wall. The wall board had been up when we moved in and
they used pneumatic nails with wood strips into the wall, then Styrofoam and Black plastic in between each layer. The nails driven into the cinder block had over the years let moisture in.
The plastic that had been in between basically held the moisture and there was no where for it to go.
So now came the fun part of repairing the wall. 
I used hydraulic cement to close up all the holes where the nails had rusted out and deteriorated and basically fell out of the wall. I did all this AFTER I had scraped and scraped and scraped and vacuumed and scraped some more all the damage parts of the wall down. I also used the cement 
on any fractures and cracks I found.  I DO NOT want to have to do this again. :)

Next up after the cement is cured, is to use a EXTREME drylock system.
I have to say, I love the guys at LOWES Grandville for this.
They went through so much to make sure I got the right stuff.
The paint dept guy went and found two other employees from two other departments 
so we could decide what would be the best treatment for this wall.
I was so impressed. They went out of their way to find out every issue 
 I was dealing with to make sure I did this right. 
Hopefully our collective decision pays off :)
So here is where we are at so far.
Carpet....all gone...
I still have those two little sections of tack strip to take out and let me tell you;
pulling tack strips out of cement is INSANE....That little section will probably take me an hour and a half. Not Fun!
The BAD WALL is all down.
The Ceiling is all down.
The wall has been cemented in the problem areas.
Next up....
Paint the ceiling trusses white to make it look clean and brighten the room.
Get new simple industrial lights to replace the old Cam Lights.
Dry lock the wall.
Paint the floor.
Paint the whole room.
Then finally we will be able to get to the fun part.....
Decorating..
I hope you enjoyed this portion of the makeover.
I have no IDEA how long it will take me to complete.
Your guess is as good as mine.:)
I have my air compressor
sitting in the basement when I get the urge to 
paint the ceiling.
It might be a few days seeing as I can hardly lift my arms. :)
Have a BEAUTIFUL day!


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