Category Archives: Room Renovations

Popcorn Ceiling & Trim in the Basement

Quite often, our projects begin with the thought of making one small single improvement. In this case, we wanted to paint the basement, replacing the green walls with a neutral gray. However, like most of the projects we’ve shared on this blog, this one also snowballed into a ton of work. The payoff, however, made the time and effort all worth it!

The biggest complication with simply painting the walls centered around the fact that I had cut large holes in the ceiling when installing the pool table lamp. After installing the over-table lights, I figured, “well, I’ve already torn into the ceiling, might as well also replace the dated ‘boob’ lights and put in can lights.” Again, snowball forming.

When attempting to patch those ceiling holes, I admit I lacked the experience to match the existing popcorn texture.

And thus the project stalled, creating a financial conundrum. I stared at the ceiling for months, reminding myself of two key outcomes when proceeding:

1. If I hired an expert, it would cost more money than I think I wanted to spend.

2. If I stripped the popcorn texture myself, it would be a hell of a mess and a bunch of work AND I’d risk ruining the carpet that was relatively new.

Ultimately, money won. I decided to make a mess and get to work. Fortunately, I did make a good purchase and bought a ceiling scraper to help reduce the aformentioned popcorn scraping mess:

The tool lets you attach a bag for the popcorn to fall into while you scrape the ceiling. It’s really easy to use, especially when you spray the popcorn with a little water before you start. I used our multi-purpose pump sprayer that we have had for years, here’s a link, for the water application.

I was also careful about the dust that was unavoidable, always wearing a mask, gloves and eye protection. I also worked in stages, moving and draping all the furniture to one side of the room, to reduce the after-cleaning process.

These photos show one side of the room stripped of popcorn texture, with the other side still untouched. I used 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of white ceiling paint. The difference in the two sides of the room was dramatic:

After finishing the ceiling, I primed and painted the dark green walls. We used the Behr color “Mineral” in an eggshell finish. We used Mineral in several rooms in our Apple Valley home and liked it a lot as a neutral “greige.” The room immediately looked bigger when covering the dark green paint.

Rather than priming and painting the existing trim, we decided to go a little more contemporary with slightly larger trim. For the baseboards, I used primed 1x4s. For the door & window trim, I used a mix of 3/4×3.5 casings and 9/16×2.25 casings. Everything was painted in Behr Semi-Gloss Ultra Pure White Latex.

We also painted the doors and updated the hardware.

Here are some before-and-after pics of the whole room:

Up next? Replacing the old, leaky windows and re-doing the fireplace surround and adding a mantle. Thanks for reading!
-Mike

Updated Bathroom Vanity

I’m starting this post with an “after” pic because we are so pleased with the results of this project! It just took WAY longer than we thought to complete (keep reading to find out why). This vanity replaces a very decorative vanity (pictured below), which was purchased by the previous homeowners. Aside from not liking the style of the original we were puzzled by how to use it properly in the space because it didn’t have any drawers. We struggled to find places to put things like toothbrushes and hair brushes, so decided it was an easy first update to this new home of ours.

This update came with several challenges: First, there is a floor vent beneath the vanity, meaning any replacement would need to be free-standing, unless we wanted to re-route the vent. Second, the space is an odd size for the most-popular sizes available at the big box stores (44″ wide would be perfect, but the most common sizes are 36″ 42″ and 48″. With these challenges in mind, we decided to piece something together on our own. We started by finding a vanity bottom that met our needs. We ended up finding exactly what we were looking for and ordered it online from Home Depot:

The vanity is part of the Cambridge collection by Ariel. It’s 42″ wide, 34.5″ tall and 21.5″ deep. We wanted something sturdy, which we got thanks to the hardwood design, and it also came with soft-closing doors and drawers, which was an added perk.

With the vanity bottom in place, we painted the walls and did a little plumbing to replace the rusty supply lines. The walls are now “Mineral” by Behr in a satin finish (we used the color in multiple rooms in our Apple Valley home). The vanity top was a granite remnant found at The Pinske Edge here in Rochester, MN. This is our second granite counter they have made for us from remnants at their business. We love the pattern, as you can tell because we used something nearly identical in a previous project at our first house. Unfortunately, the customization process meant our bathroom sink was out of commission for more than a month. The company needed the new vanity bottom in place and mounted to take accurate measurements, which is understandable. Then, after several weeks of waiting, the granite they brought out for installation had been miss-measured and the sink sat too far forward. We had to pick out another remnant, get another set of measurements taken, then wait another full week to get it installed. In the end, it was worth it, because we ended up changing our mind about the granite color and going with what you see below. We are very happy with The Pinske Edge and would hire them again without hesitation.

The faucet is Moen Lindor brushed nickel. We like the design and this may be the second time we’ve purchased this particular one.

Finally, we updated the mirror, installing a simple builder’s grade 36″x 42″ which we might frame in down the road.

With the new white cabinet, the softer grey/beige color on the walls, the space feels so much brighter and much more “us” – we’re very happy with the results. The next update you can expect to see in this space will be white doors and trim. Thanks for reading!
-Mike