Home Improvement, Part III

Done painting ceilings, walls, and part of the trim. Tomorrow we will have contractors sanding the floor. Here's the progress on the bathroom so far.


Before:




After:

Home Improvement, Part II

Jotted down a floor plan in Visio (click pic to zoom in) before heading over to Home Depot to buy paint. Since all rooms will be done in different colors, figuring out the amount of paint took forever. Not drawn to exact scale, but pretty accurate. Also gives you an idea of what walls will be what color. We bought Behr paint, attracted by their great interactive tool for color coordination. It turns out it lays down nicely, covering almost everything in one coat even without priming. Images of our progress tomorrow -- we have quite a few walls done already, but taking an academic break today.

De-cockroaching went strangely. I got six cans of fogger, which filled the apartment entirely, and let the stuff ventilate overnight. No cockroaches on the floor next morning, though. The only insect we found was a dead fly. Hope it's because there were none to start with.

Retro Ads for Japanese Psychiatric Drugs

An amazing collection of Japanese ads for psychiatric drugs. This one is for Serenace (haloperidol) for treating schizophrenia. Very Pink Floydish.

Home Improvement, Part I

We are signing a lease tomorrow on a rather large 3-bedroom apartment. We got it for a very good price but in return we are responsible for rennovating its entire 1500 square feet. We have two weeks to get at least the floors done.

Here's what we've got:


Spacious and sunny living room with totally worn out hardwood floors and walls in a desperate need of paint. Two bedrooms, #2 and #3, are across the long hallway from each other, #3 is connected to the living room with double sliding doors.




The bathroom looks horrible and will probably be among the biggest expenses. Besides washing everything, we need a new floor (tile? vinyl?), the ceiling needs to be fixed and walls -- painted. I think we'll make it pink.



The kitchen is big and doesn't look bad at all. The most urgent job is to paint the walls behind the counters, stove and fridge, as well as those ugly door frames.



Dining room is a nice extra.



Bedroom #1. Looks the worst of all three. We'll need to pick a bright calm color to make it look bigger and lighter.


First steps:
1. Kitchen clean-up. The fridge stinks like hell and there are food crumbs all over the cabinets.
2. De-cockroaching. We plan to bomb the place with Raid Fogger -- the weapon ultimate of mass cockroach destruction.

This should be a fun project and I'll keep the journal updated on our progress. Any furniture/decoration tips are welcome.

Happy 4th

more Boston fireworks