After a couple of weeks of drying time, my wife primed the textured wall with a water based primer. The following weekend we applied the color. It's called “Green Dusk”, but I call it “Army Man”.

If you are obsessed with this project you can find the exact color at Kelly-Moore. It is number KM3903-3. The adjacent walls will be two shades lighter—Woodland Waterfall number KM3901-2.

Outside, with spring in full swing, I continued to clean things up and trim things back. My son and I cut down three more trees. One had been intentionally planted and two had just sprung up and been allowed to thrive. All three were horribly placed; either too close to the house or crowding other, better trees.

I finally took steps to alleviate the possibility of flooding. With more help from my son, I cored a 6” hole through the wall next to the existing drains. I set it slightly higher than the others because, in a moderate rain they work. However, in a heavy rain they simply can’t keep up (see March 2007). Now the overflow will pass through the new hole, into the yard, and drain away on the surface.

Wow! What a week! I took off Wednesday the 9th and continued skimming the walls and ceiling; a total of about 800 square feet of old and new sheetrock—some previously textured, some previously papered, and all of it full of windows, openings, and other obstacles. Most of it was overhead and crossed by beams.

On Friday the 11th I pressed on and finally finished that phase of the project—every muscle I own aching.

On Saturday morning we masked the previously finished edges at the kitchen/living room junction. We also masked “The Wall” and covered it completely with plastic sheeting. We then covered the openings to the other adjacent rooms and placed fans in the windows in each space. By blowing air into these rooms, creating positive pressure in each, we prevented dust and paint from escaping the living room and drifting throughout the rest of the house (see November 2007).

After lunch I used my pole sander to sand the entire ceiling. This generated a lot of dust, but my plan worked perfectly and it all remained in the living room. Afterward we simply swept it up; once, twice, three times. Then I used a wet sponge to “sand” the walls. I had read about this technique in a pamphlet I picked up at the home improvement store. It worked quite well and was less messy than real sanding, but it would have been far too difficult to do overhead.

After dinner I thinned some bedding compound and used my “crow’s foot” brush to texture the walls. At long last we were ready to paint.

Sunday morning I figured out how to use the paint sprayer I had rented, fired up all the pressurizing fans, and went to work with the first coat of primer. I put two coats on the beams. They are rough cedar which tends to bleed trough paint.

Afterward, we both agreed that all the edges of all the quarter-round molding along all the ceiling beams would have to be caulked. That took a while. All-in-all it equaled about 390 linear feet of caulk. I did about half of it on Sunday evening and the rest on Monday.

Tuesday the 15th I sprayed the ceiling and beams with the finish color.

Over the remainder of the week, my wife painted the rest of the walls with the lighter shade of green. We removed all the masking and dust barriers and began the process of finishing, e.g. touch-up painting, electrical trim, window blind reinstallation, and base board preparation.

I began work on the sub-floor. There was originally a free standing fireplace (one of those 70s style inverted funnel shaped things, in harvest gold) in the corner of the stair-well. It was removed years ago, but remaining were gravel laminated pieces of plywood (acting as heat shields) set into the floor and attached to the adjacent walls. These we demolished soon after we took up residency. The removal of the floor panel

left an odd shaped gap in the sub-floor. I removed the remnants of the thing and cut a new, full sized replacement. I also cut a new piece to fit at the top of the stairs. (It was originally cut short at the top step, we are moving the end of the railing, and I want a more solid and substantial landing than the particle board could provide.) Before installing them, I applied a liberal amount of silicone caulk to help bond the two layers and hopefully eliminate, or at least reduce, the squeaking (see February 2008). This helped, but the adjacent section still squeaked. I removed it, screwed the bottom layer tightly to the joists, applied more caulk, and reinstalled it. That worked! Now the other, minor, squeaky spots seem more noticeable, but I'm not pulling up the whole floor.

Because we expanded the living room by removing the bank of closets that ran along the east wall, we now had an A/C register out in the middle of the floor. I had to move it closer to the new wall. To accomplish this, I removed the ductwork, cut a new hole in the sub-floor, and measured the distance hole-to-hole. I then cut that same dimension off the supply duct and reinstalled it.

To patch the abandoned hole I installed a support board below the bottom layer of the sub-floor, then set a patch board in the hole itself (see FIGURE 1). To accomplish this, I cut the support board larger than the hole, but small enough to fit through it when turned sideways. Using another scrap board as a lever and a long screw as a fulcrum, I applied wood glue to the support and positioned it under the hole; holding it up with the lever while I screwed it to the floor (see FIGURE 2). I removed the fulcrum screw and inserted the glued patch into the hole, screwing it to the support. Afterward, I installed the upper layer of sub-floor and set the register in the ductwork at its new location—the old location destined to fade from memory.

The ceiling fan was in working and acceptable condition, but the hanging rod was too short and the fan hung too close to the ceiling. Also, the rubber bushing was dried up and cracked. I disassembled it, and fashioned a new bushing from a scrap of radiator hose I found in the shed. I manufactured a longer rod. Then I rewired the top of the fan (the wires being too short for the new rod) and rehung it. Cool!