All Hail the Mighty Goo-Gone

You may remember that our upstairs bathroom was in a state of carpetedness (yes, I invented that word--you can feel free to use it if you wish) when we moved into The Serpico House.

When we removed the carpet, we found nice pink tile. It was in fine shape, except for the adhesive the installers used to make it stick to the floor near the door. Interestingly, that was the only area where they used adhesive or anything other than gravity to hold the carpet down to the floor. I don't know if this represents shoddy workmanship or what, but at least we only had to deal with one cruddy-looking area of the floor.

And, believe it or not, that stuff didn't want to come up with the use of a mere scraper.

It looked like this...



Kinda gross, right? I know. Worse, we left it that way all this time... mainly because it didn't want to come off. This past Sunday morning, I walked past the bathroom and said to myself, "Maybe I'll try something else..." (cue "I Control, I Fly" by Monster Magnet--good song!)

Goo-Gone. That's what I tried. Yes. It worked. Took about 15 minutes total to get this....


There's one more annoyance off the list.

The Legend of Ol' Painty Pants and The Wallpaper That Wouldn't Die

(Picture me as a country storyteller. Or not. This D&D-looking dude was the best thing I could find. Looks like me in a few years, right?)

*Sits back on rocking chair with a pipe*
Yup, I got a tale to tell ya... back in aught-nine... or was it the waning days of '10? My old brain gets so frazzled these days, ya know. Anyway, as I said, I have a tale to tell ya. Round these here parts, there was a woman who could paint like the wind. Went by the name of Avy. Six foot tall if she was an inch, shock of black hair sprouting from her noggin, and, by golly, could she paint... Some of the locals 'round The Old Serpico place got to callin' her 'Ol Painty Pants.

So yeah. We managed to get some painting done. Finally.

Let's start with the "oops" paint. We wanted the living room to have a warmish, sorta inviting vibe without going with too dark of a color. We had originally chosen a caramel color, but, at the last minute, we opted for a waffle color and bought two cans based on the color chip we found in Home Depot. We dropped the cans and supplies off at the house one evening last week, and Avy stopped in the next day to throw it onto the walls. She paints quickly, and she soon noticed something about the color... on the wall, it did not look like a waffle. It looked like a peach.



Now, I'm not saying it looked bad or anything, but it became obvious that this peachy color wouldn't easily mesh with our big red rug and other decor. Sadly, there was no choice but to abandon the peachy waffle action and look for something a little less fruity.

We went back to the store and came back with two cans of a darkish taupe color.

**Warning to heterosexual male readers: I mentioned "taupe" and "peach" in the same post. I'm also bound to mention "mauve" and "magenta" eventually. You may need to hunt a lion, drink brandy or get into a bar fight very shortly if you're concerned about maintaining your machismo levels. I, on the other hand, am required (by physician's orders) to offload my machismo levels on a regular basis, lest I spontaneously combust from sheer masculinity. It's my cross to bear.**

The darker color works. Check it out.


The lighting is different for this photo, so you can't see the color exactly, but take my word for it--it's better. The color is mellow and lacking in the peachy quality that made the room feel a little too much like a beach house.

Here's a little more of the living room...


As you can see, we painted into the evening. Ol' Painty Pants amped things up and really got the living room looking nice.

So, let's talk about that wall... you know, the one that had the mirror on it? The one that had the wallpaper under the mirror? That wall.




Well, after looking into things a little more deeply, I found a product called Piranha Wallpaper Remover.

Is it awesome? Kind of. I didn't buy the little kit--I bought the "wall-chewer" thing and a spray bottle of the gel wallpaper remover stuff. I already had scrapers. So, while Avy... (erm, Ol' Painty Pants) was doing her thing, I went after the wallpaper. The "wall-chewer" thing made horrible squeals when dragged across the surface of the wall (perhaps to scare away the old paste?), but it also made a lot of little holes in the wallpaper, which allowed the gel stuff to work its magic.

After a little time with the gel and a scraper, I had this...

Better, right? Yes. Better, but not all better. Some of the wallpaper was incredibly stubborn, especially in the areas where the folks who installed the giant mirror used some kind of ludicrous adhesive for the foam padding behind the mirror. Nasty. The upper parts of the wall were highly unpleasant--hurts the arms quite a bit to have them over one's head for so long. Ow.

Around this point, Avy and I ate some dinner and hit the sack... erm... air mattress. Tell you what--a nice air mattress isn't a terrible thing to own. We got a good night's sleep and picked up Kenny (Painty Pants Jr.) the next morning. With his help (and a lot more spraying and scraping), we had this...
Even better, but still not ready to paint. Nope. All those little chunks of old adhesive just didn't want to leave the house. Kenny and I attacked the wall with sponges and water, and that did the trick.


Yes! Finally, something suitable for painting. And paint we did.


Ah. Much better. After another coat, we called that wall done. Big improvement, I thinks.

But the trim... oh, the trim. This is where I get to use the word "mauve." We're re-painting all of Mrs. Serpico's mauve trim with a color called "toasted white." We think it looks pretty kick-ass against the taupe.

To use an interior design expression (and lose more machismo), the toasted white "pops" against the taupe. Wow. There's a sentence not usually uttered while butchering deer, huh?

So, onto the dining room..

OK, we decided we wanted the dining room to look very elegant and rich, so we chose a very deep burgundy color for the part of the wall above the chair rail, with the same toasted white for the lower part of the wall and the trim. The guy who made the color for me said the formula starts with magenta and then adds plain old red to the mix.

I had a little fun with the paint when we first started. It really looked like a bucket of blood when I opened the first can.

"Danny isn't here, Mrs. Serpico..."

Know what sucks about deep red paint (and red in general)? It doesn't cover well. I mean... it just doesn't cover well at all. You need a lot of coats. A lot. After two coats, we still had this...


It's still not a deep, elegant, bloody burgundy color, but it'll get there eventually. We're thinking four coats might do it. Maybe. We hope.

Until next time, Ol' Painty Pants and I bid you a fond farewell.

The Bear in the Mirror, and Big-Ass TV: The Mountening

Kooky happenings at The Serpico house lately.

The township came and took away the leaves we piled at the curb. The street is frighteningly clean. I like it. Tax dollars at work!

In other news, Avy's aunt Renee assisted in the acquisition of a big-ass TV--a 46" LG flat-screen LCD.

I know... every male person reading this just said, "oooooOOOOooo!"

We got it for a discount. Yes, Avy is a smart shopper. And the TV? It's bad-ass. Xavier already digs it for Blue's Clues and other political discussion shows. He's into current events.

We had plans to mount the TV over the fireplace. Avy scored us a nice flat-screen mount, which included all the hardware for the job. We just needed a few special tools to make the whole thing happen. And courage. Because dropping an expensive TV scares me, as does the idea of making a lot of potentially large holes in the wall.

But, before we get to that whole thing... remember that mirror in our living room?

This one...
It's over there on the left, next to my mom. Big tacky mirror. Actually, the faded Greek key thing around the edge is tacky. The rest is just a really big mirror. Anyway, we decided we didn't want it immediately. We finally got around to taking it down this weekend. The plan? Get rid of the Greek key parts (they're actually smaller mirrors bordering the big one in the center) and put the big middle part in the basement, where it will act as a visual assistant for Avy's bellydance crew's routines. Well, we managed to get the mirror down there. That was no problem.

That mirror was definitely professionally installed. The hardware holding it up was not playing around at all. We made it bend to our will, though. But guess what was under the mirror?

There was wallpaper under there. Actually, two kinds of wallpaper.




What the hell? There's no wallpaper anywhere else in the house. Figures that the one place we find it would be hidden by a giant mirror. Awesome.

So there's that funky speckled stuff on the outside... and some really old textured, velvety stuff on the inside. It's all dusty. And it's UP there. I mean, it has no desire to come down. But Ms. Serpico's mighty wallpaper will bow to us. I swear it. It has to go before we paint.

The textured blue wallpaper is kind of neat, actually. Check it out close up...

There are flowers and things in the pattern.

Anyway, cool or not, it has to go. And, like I said, it really doesn't want to come down, but wet sponges and scrapers are persuasive implements.


The key is to get the wallpaper really good and wet, and let that water soak into the paper for a while before starting the scraping process. It's almost as much fun as scraping adhesive off of the floor, except your arm starts to hurt sooner. Have you noticed the amount of scraping we've been doing in this house? It seems to be a recurring theme. I really hope we don't have to scrape anything else. We were only able to do a smallish amount of work before we had to skip out for the evening, but we did return the next day.

We did not, however, continue scraping, as we had another task we wished to complete--the mounting of the big-ass TV. We didn't have a lot of time, so we wanted to just quickly knock the job out. We thought it would be simple.

Well, it really is a simple process. There are only four major bits to the kit: the TV, two clampy things and the bracket. The bracket goes on the wall, the clampy things go on the TV and then the clampy things are used to attach to the TV to the bracket, which is on the wall... and then your TV is on the wall. Basic. I mean, yeah there are screws and other things, too, but that's the basic jist.

Maybe. But you need to have some stuff, first. Like a stud finder (**make obligatory stud joke here**) so that the big lag bolts for the bracket can go into a solid part of the wall. And a drill bit of the proper dimensions to start those bolts on their journey into the stud. And a socket wrench of the proper size in order to make the bolts turn.

Yeah, we didn't have those things, so we had to go buy them.

The other thing you have to figure out when you're mounting a big-ass TV is how you plan to center the thing on the wall. See, we wanted to mount the TV above the fireplace, which is kind of a sweet idea, really. The problem is that there is one stud in the middle of the fireplace, which would be the ideal spot to mount the bracket. Except the bracket has to be mounted onto TWO studs, which means the damn TV would then be off to one side or the other... not centered over the fireplace. No. That's not what we want. We want what we want.

So what this means is that we have to choose the side we want to mount the bracket and then slide the TV back in the other direction in order to center it. BAH. It took some doing, but we made it happen... and it does look pretty damn sweet.


Sorry--the picture isn't the best. The TV isn't quite centered in this shot, and the wires are showing, but whatever. You can see that we have a big-ass TV over our fireplace. That was the goal. We did it. Yay!

Just to give you an idea of the scale of this thing--the fireplace is 72" wide. The TV is 46". That's a big-ass TV. We may have to start watching sports or something. Isn't the World Bowl Cup coming up soon?

A thought: there are people who charge upwards of $200 to come to your house with a stud finder, a little drill and a socket wrench, and they install your TV on a wall mount in about 20 minutes. Now, granted, we had to buy a stud finder (which we'll need in other projects) a drill bit (um, duh) and a cheap set of socket wrenches (again, we'll need those, too) , and it did take us more than 20 minutes. I think the tools cost us about $60. So we saved approximately $140 by figuring this out on our own. And, now that we've done it once, I know we can do it again, which is good, because we want to mount a TV in our bedroom, too. No sense having the thing sit on a dresser or something if it can be mounted, right?