Home Care 101

[Jim Alfredson]

I said I'd post some pictures, so:

The Alfredson Nursery

A photo essay of de-Dunkle-fying our baby's room - by Jim Alfredson

As many of you know, my wife and I bought our first house back in August of 2003. It is an old house, built in 1909 in a historic section of downtown Lansing. It sits at the corner of Moore's River Drive and Davis Ave., with the beautiful Moore's Park only footsteps to the north and a 120 student elementary school right next to the park, built in 1906. It's a lovely little neighborhood.

The home is huge. Big rooms, tall ceilings, big doors and windows, and lots of woodwork, mostly all original and unpainted. Since we moved in, we have been using a little side bedroom as our computer office. But when we learned we were having a baby, we decided to turn it into a nursery and our child's room. It is inbetween our bedroom and the living room, so it's perfect.

Here is what the office space looked like when we moved in. It was one of the few rooms in the house that had painted woodwork (but not the doors, thank God!).

Pic 1

This is the door that leads into a short hallway. The bathroom is across the hall (which I'm currently renovating), the kitchen is to the left, and our bedroom is to the right.

Notice the lovely pink. Everything was painted the same shade of Pepto-Bismal pink. It was hideous. Even the drapes on the window were the same shade and dense as all get out. No light came into the room.

Pic 2

This is a terrible picture, but I included it so you could see the ugly drop ceiling. Every room in the house on the first floor, save the living room and dining room, have drop ceilings in them. The kitchen, our bedroom, the bathroom, and this bedroom-soon-to-be-nursery. The first step in the renovation was to remove this.

I was scared to remove it because every drop ceiling in the house was hiding something. In the bathroom it was no plaster and exposed pipes. In the kitchen, exposed pipes and a huge whole in the ceiling. In our master bedroom, more pipes and holes. But in the nursery, it was just hiding the fact that they were 6 layers of wallpaper on the ceiling!!!!

6 layers of wallpaper on the ceiling and 8 on the walls.

But have no fear, mighty Jim with his toolbelt is here!!!!

Pic 3

The first step, after moving everything out of the room (thanks Joe!) and taking down the drop ceiling, was to chip off all the pink on the walls, since that was painted wallpaper and steam would not penetrate. We decided to use steam because the chemical wallpaper removers would not even budge the 8 layers of ancient paper on these walls.

Pic 4

Here you can see the first wall I tackled, the outside wall with the window. Notice up in the right hand corner the exposed lathe board. The plaster here had bowed out and had to be repaired. Notice also the blue paint underneath all the drywall. That's the plaster, painted with milk paint! It had a very cool look to it. Milk paint does not cover as evenly as latex or oil, so the color is very rich, with different shades peaking through here and there. I think I'm going to buy some milk paint and paint our bathroom walls (the part of the walls that will not be tiled) with it.

Pic 5

Another shot. Notice the ceiling. That's all wallpaper. Yucky.

Pic 6

Here I am, hard at work with the steamer. I worked so hard the first day I lost all feeling in both my thumbs. It took two days for my left thumb to return to normal. Not the smartest thing I've ever done, considering I had to play a gig on the second day!

Pic 7

After all the walls were done (on the third day), I enlisted more help to do the ceiling. My wife's sister had come up from Florida to help me with the walls, but the ceilings were beyond her reach. So I called up my sister's fiance, Nick. He worked his tail off with me!!! The ceiling was the hardest part of the whole job. They used what seemed like an entire 40-gallon drum of glue to put that stuff up there and it took a lot of elbow grease and steam to get it off.

Pic 8

This is the same corner as Pic 5 after all wallpaper was removed and I had primed the walls and the ceiling with 3 coats of Killz. My concern was that when the house was built, they never put a finish coat of plaster on the walls. It was just the horse-hair plaster. They wallpapered directly on top of that. So the walls were very coarse and uneven. I was hoping that putting at least 3 layers of Killz on the walls and ceiling would even and smooth them out. It worked!

Pic 9

The window. My bassist from my R&B band came by on the third day and fixed the big plaster hole in the other corner. He did a fantastic job! You cannot even tell it was a hole!

Pic 10

My wife is very happy after we finished the first and only coat of yellow paint on the walls. Putting three layers of primer on the walls really helped! It took barely any paint to cover them beautifully!

[Jim Alfredson]

Pic 11

New light fixture. I regret I don't have a picture of the original one. It was HIDEOUS! I had to post this picture because I picked it out and I'm very proud!

Pic 12

That same corner from Pic 5 and Pic 8. Looks a lot better, eh?

Pic 13

That same corner again after my wife painted the scallops and we added the furniture. All the trim was painted white as well. The Pepto-Bismal pink was no more!! Victory!

Pic 14

My wife found the dresser at our local pawn shop for $35. I think it was made in the early 60s. It has dovetail joints in the drawers. It's very solid. But it was ugly. So we painted it white and then used the two shades of yellow for the drawers! The top works perfectly as a changing table!

Pic 15

There will soon be a little person sleeping in this crib! It brought tears to my eyes last night just looking at it!

Pic 16

Last one. The window all painted white. I repaired the ropes and weights that allow easy opening and closing of the window. I put new trim on the inside of the window and re-glazed the glass on the outside. This room is ready for baby!!!

Today I put the first coat of mud on the drywall in the bathroom. The baby is due April 21st and I'm hoping to have the bathroom ready to go before then. Two more coats of mud, some sanding, and then tile the walls (up to five feet). And then paint the un-tiled walls and ceiling. Install fixtures, hook up plumbing and wiring and VOILA!

I'll post a photo essay on that one, too!

[maren]

Wow!!! great work, Jim and crew! I'm impressed.

Did someone build you that cradle in the last pic? It looks a lot like a plan my father used, when he made three (one for each of first 3 grandkids -- after that, we handed down -- or maybe "around"). He shipped one from Wisconsin to New York 20 years ago, just before my son was born. It was so impeccably packed (by Dad) that it took me HOURS (and lots of tools) to open the shipping crate he built!

[Jim Alfredson]

Yes, that crib was handmade by my wife's grandfather. On the side it has little nameplates of all the babies that have slept in it, including my wife's five cousins and her cousin's child (now 2 years old and cute as a button!) The funny thing is, it's been all boys!!! No girls have slept in it, yet. We're hoping to break that tradition!

[Man with the Golden Arm]

Pic 4

That room used to look so familiar.

Great freeegin' job!

[couw]

the eye of the master with the golden arm at work.

couw enjoyed that one a fine lot.

[wesbed]

b3-er: Is the bathroom completed yet? Did you post some pictures of the finished product? Did I miss them in another thread, perhaps?

Edited April 12, 2004 by wesbed

[Jim Alfredson]

I just got eaves put on the north and south side of our house finally so I'm hoping that will solve our wet basement problems as well. I have to move this computer and the rest of my office down there this week because my wife's sister is coming from Florida to help her paint and decorate this room and turn it into the nursery. So I hope to high heaven that the eaves solved the water problem I had!!

ARGH! So we made it through an entire spring, summer, and fall without any water coming into the basement but last night it started to seep in. No doubt due to all the snow melting here in Michigan and the ground still being semi-frozen. Also, it's been raining for 18 hours straight as well as the melting snow and now it is snowing again!

I thought the new eaves would solve the problem, but I woke up this morning to water in my studio. When it all dries I guess we need to spring for some cement/foundation sealer. I found some stuff that is guaranteed to work on poured concrete foundations, especially old ones like mine (almost 100 years old) but it's expensive. $174 for a five gallon bucket. But I gotta do what I gotta do!

[Free For All]

Has the dirt outside around the foundation pulled away from the house? We have that problem when we go through a dry spell. Suddenly we get a lot of precipitation, and then water will collect underneath and seep up through the basement floor. We have to occasionally water the foundation (even in winter, whenever it's dry for a long time) to keep the dirt tight to the house.

I'd like to just put the house in a big baggie.

[Jim Alfredson]

No, the dirt hasn't pulled away. At least not that I can see... problem is the previous owners installed what can only be described as sidewalks on the north and south side of the house. They literally look like concrete sidewalks. I have no idea what they are for... I can only assume that they are supposed to funnel water away from the house but I have not checked to see if they are at an angle.

90% of the water is coming in from the east side anyway, which is new. It was coming from the north side primarily, but the eaves seemed to have solved that. I'm not sure how it is coming in from the east because we have a huge front porch on the east side (the entrance side of our house). I checked underneath the porch yesterday and it is perfectly dry under there. Very strange.