Well, another weekend come and gone. I lost about 4 hours to prospective adopters coming over yesterday and today to look at the rescue dogs. But If we can place 1 or 2 of the ones here, I'll work with it.
Came home Friday night and the garage door opener wouldn't work. Hmm, bad remote battery?? Get out and go to the pad on the door frame and enter my code...........still nothing. Look at the neighbor's house and the outside lights that are always on, were not. Uh oh. No power. Walked to the front of the house and LOML met me there to open the door. Power had just been off for a few minutes. I worked on cutting up the carpet and got it out to the garage to be thrown away. By about 7:00, still no power, I said let's go eat and run to HD to look at light fixtures. It will save having to get out Sat. and losing work time. Found a fixture that we both liked, and I put it up when we got home. (Power was back on)
Sat. am I started scraping the pad and the floor. I scraped and I scraped. I have some paint and some texture on the floor, around the perimeter. The texture came up easy....the paint is not all coming up. The guys at the John Bridge tile forum say it all needs to come up. I'll be at this for 3 months to get it all up. I've tried water, helped a little, my angle grinder with a 60 grit sanding disc, sends clouds of dust all over the house-
LOML NOT HAPPY AT ALL, the angle grinder with a wire cup wheel on it, leaves black all over the concrete, and finally the edge of a putty knife. It gets it, but time is not on my side for this. I've asked at the tile forum and a note to the manufacturer of the crack isolation membrane I'll be using if it will work. What the guys at the tile forum are afraid of is the moisture from the thinset will release the paint, then the tile will pop up. Since water did help a little getting some off, I believe they are right. The crack isolation membrane would be a barrier between the thinset and the paint, I'm hoping it will work, thus saving me a lot of time. If not, guess the tile won't get finished before the Rescue Christmas Party we are having.
Sat evening, after supper I started installing the ceiling fan. With the wires I found hidden in the wall early on, I decided to do a 3-way light switch so if in the future, this room is turned back into a bedroom, there will already be a light switch by that door. The fan switch, on the other hand, will have to be with the other 3-way switch by the current opening (5' wide, no door) to the room. Got the basic fan motor housing, no blades, up and turned the power back on to check things, and the light did not work, and the fan came on with the light switch.
Turned the power back off and went in and got cleaned up.
This morning, I redid the wiring. Took a little while. The instructions that come with the switches are very basic...basically wrong.
The wiring diagram I guess is not to be taken seriously because the ground wire terminal is on the wrong side of the switch.
So I test the switch out, and use a schematic type wiring diagram to wire the switches up. Worked fine that time.
Back to scraping the floor. I got real tired of doing that, so I alternated it with burnishing the venetian plaster job. LOML was seriously thinking about repainting the entry. Didn't like how the VP looked. I said wait until we see what this last step does. All I can say is
WOW!!!! What a difference. The only way I can describe it is seeing what a nice piece of wood does when you stain it. It is amazing how the flat looking wall has so much depth and changes of color. This picture won't do it justice, but... This is a very labor intensive project to do. I figure this entry that is 6' X 8' with a 4' wide entry door, a 5' wide opening to the Pink Room, a 6' wide opening to the Family room, and a 3' wide opening to the Studio is going to eat up amost 11 hours to do. 3+ hours for each coat of the venetian plaster since you don't paint it on, you use a 4" wide putty knife. Then the burnishing is about 4 hours or so (if you don't count the resting time...it gives your arms a good work out!). I still have 2 walls left to do.
I had hoped to get started with the tiling, but, I've got to either get the remaining paint up, or get some good news about the crack isolation membrane. Maybe tile next weekend?
So, what did you do this weekend? Jim.