Scary Cabin

August was a busy month. We were able to make it up every weekend and made great progress.

We learned how to spray texture on the walls and ceiling. Our test location was the kitchen since a lot of the walls in there get covered up by cabinets. Once you get the consistency of the texture correct, the real key seems to be the wait time before trying to knock it down. Waiting a bit longer is better than not long enough. Overall, it turned out pretty good. We were able to texture the kitchen, the hallway, the pantry and the bathroom. Once textured, we primed and painted the walls and ceiling.

The kitchen got a nice face lift. With the walls and ceiling done we installed the can lights and the cabinets.

With the cabinets out of the living room, we were able to start work there. Ben took a sledgehammer to the rock hearth. It was one well built hearth! The rock was held with lots of mortar that was strengthened further with chicken wire. Ben did let me take a few swings to relieve some of the stress from the bathroom tiling work. Thanks Ben!

Speaking of the bathroom … with the walls textured and painted we could start on the tub surround. The walls around the tub have plastic, cement board, and tile. Dealing with cement board was frustrating. On-line reports made it sound like you could score and snap it the same way you do sheetrock. Well, sort of. The score needs to be much deeper and you have to use a special tool. For large pieces it mostly worked. For small pieces, not so much. We did try power tools and dulled a circular saw blade after cutting about 6 inches. Same for a sawzall blade. Later we did find special (expensive) blades for circular saws for cutting cement board. We’ll be getting one of those before working with any more cement board.

With the cement board up, we worked on the tile. This was our first time working with tile so it was quite the learning experience. Cutting and fitting the tiles takes longer than expected. Square and plumb walls would be nice too. We did have to remove and re-do part of one wall because we didn’t get the tiles lined up right with the other wall.

Sandie found a new pass-time when a squirrel scampered up on the deck by the screen door and sat there. They had a bit of a stare down before the squirrel wisely scampered off.