When we bought this (old) house, the back bedroom that overlooks the yard seemed to be the best one! The closer we looked through, the more we saw…
This room did not have a popcorn ceiling, but we had the ceiling textured and repainted along with the other rooms. No problems there, the team said this ceiling was the best looking one.
We had the floors refinished just like the rest of the house so they all match. At this point we were optimistic about the room. Then we did a series of lead tests on the paint around the house and found that this room was the only one that tested positive for lead. Drat!
After a lot of research, we decided to tackle this project ourselves. First, I protected the windows and floor with plastic and tape. Then, I cleaned the walls with TSP cleaner and a scrubby sponge. Lots of built up grime, and the room looked better immediately. Meanwhile, Colin took out all the closet fixtures and doors because we didn’t want to even deal with the lead paint on these. Good thing he did- there was a bunch of mouse poop between the closet shelf and the wall. Disgusting.
I cleaned that up and while I TSP cleaned the closet, Colin started wet sanding the room. I followed with another wipe down with the TSP. This process took until 2pm on our first day of work and we were very tired after this.
We had some lunch and returned in the evening to prime the walls. We re-protected the floors and priming didn’t take too long, although it’s not satisfying to paint primer on white walls. It feels like doing nothing but taking forever. Colin also repaired some cracks and holes in the closet.
The next day, Sunday, we painted the trim and I got halfway done with the closet. Painting the inside of a closet is a pain! It’s really tall and has a bunch of corners and weird trim pieces of wood. One panel of wood we removed was hiding a huge gouge in the lath wall! We put it back.
Today, Monday, I did a second coat on all the trim and the closet. Unfortunately the closet needs a third coat, which I will maybe do tomorrow. My hand and arm are super tired.
