One does not simply walk into a room of 60 year old house and paint.

RickeyM

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Ah plaster & lathe walls covered in wallpaper, how I detest thee. I don't know what they used for wallpaper adhesive in the olden days but boy, it just doesn't want to let go. Then there's the cracks in the walls caused by decades of house settling. After two days of surface repair/prep/priming it almost seem anti-climatic when I sprayed on the topcoat in an hour. I picked out a color (Elegant Charcoal / PPG Diamond) and wifey said "didn't they have anything darker?". Now she says "It's perfect, I love it". So now you know why I left here home when I got the paint. I got to admit, it does look pretty nice.
Then there's the 30+ year old carpet. I got it up alright but I wonder if I can get a Haz-Mat crew to take it away? The good news is that with the carpet removed I found another electrical outlet in the room. Go figure :dunno:
 
Ah plaster & lathe walls covered in wallpaper, how I detest thee. I don't know what they used for wallpaper adhesive in the olden days but boy, it just doesn't want to let go. Then there's the cracks in the walls caused by decades of house settling. After two days of surface repair/prep/priming it almost seem anti-climatic when I sprayed on the topcoat in an hour. I picked out a color (Elegant Charcoal / PPG Diamond) and wifey said "didn't they have anything darker?". Now she says "It's perfect, I love it". So now you know why I left here home when I got the paint. I got to admit, it does look pretty nice.
Then there's the 30+ year old carpet. I got it up alright but I wonder if I can get a Haz-Mat crew to take it away? The good news is that with the carpet removed I found another electrical outlet in the room. Go figure :dunno:
Pictures please
 
I finished painting my oldest son's room, but it was simple textured drywall and a previous lighter coat of paint.

The most time consuming was the prep and masking.

Just looking at your pictures fatigued me to the point I need to lie down and rest.

Good luck!
 
Your house looks quite a bit older than 60 years to me.

Last home I restored [built in 1927] was a serious mess inside.
In particular, the floors.
There was a layer of hideous carpet [with thousands of requisite tacks along the perimeters].
Five layers of glued down linoleum. The last layer of course stuck down with that horrible black mastic.
Took four guys a week to get it all up.
I spent days on my knees just pulling tacks.

The original floors were full-room width runs of high-grade longleaf pine.
Gorgeous stuff. Beautiful amber/orange color that positively glowed when the sun hit it.
Made the place something very special once they were finished.
 
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Brings back memories of an old 2 story that was the first home my wife and I bought. Tried painting latex paint on all the painted trim. Then we learned about oil based paints after the latex refused to stick. It was great fun for a young couple to change the things we could see. It was the things we couldn't see (plumbing and electrical wires) that really made us wonder what we had gotten in to.
 
Your house looks quite a bit older than 60 years to me.

I'm just guessing at the age so I could be wrong. It's got gravity fed hot water radiator heating with the pipes to the second floor exposed. It originally had knob & tube electrical wiring. The previous owner took a short cut with the carpet. It was just a 9x12 rug laid down over padding. I rolled that thing up in a dollar store plastic drop cloth to contain the now shedding foam padding and dragged it outside. I did a rattle-can paint job on the radiator cover to spruce it up. I'm going to surprise wifey with some new electric logs in the faux fireplace :).

Ah, no ghosts. If I see any I'll tell 'em pay some bills or get out :rflmao:
 
I'm just guessing at the age so I could be wrong. It's got gravity fed hot water radiator heating with the pipes to the second floor exposed. It originally had knob & tube electrical wiring.

Yeah, I'd say more like 100 years old.
In this area [which could well be different than in yours], knob and tube generally dates a house to around 1910-1920.
 
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Eye spy possible black mold. I just moved out of a house with black mold. Nasty, nasty stuff. I used to get migraines twice a month and had constant red eye. Those symptoms are gone now that I have moved to a clean house.

Thanks for the look out but that's not mold. I've seen black mold before and that's not it. That corner is under the front porch roof and there is no plumbing there. Just the lighting fooling the eyes.

1910-1920 I dunno, I'll have to see what I can find out. I know the little old lady (yeah, I know) we bought the house from left a small tool box in the basement with a receipt in it from a local defense plant. I'll have to take another look to see if it's from WW2 or the Korean war.

Edit: I did a little sleuthing. There was a housing boom that began around the mid 1940's. The earlier row houses were the ones with the famous white marble steps. As the city spread out more houses were built larger and had porches and lost those marble steps

Anyway, I've got the ungodly amount of fine, almost talc like, dust up from the old rug and padding. Now I can put the room back together and take it easy until next year. Pics coming ;)
 
Just finished painting the (former) dining room in my 1922 house. Literally just sat down after pulling up all the painter's tape and drop cloths. Stripped the wallpaper prior to move-in 16 years ago and had the walls skim coated at that time. Old guy did a nice job, and I learned a lot by watching him. Specifically, learned not to do that myself. Did new windows 5 years ago, and now getting around to staining them and the newly-stripped woodwork. Lots of the original molding is rift-sawn white oak, which has a great look. The quarter-round shoe molding is in 18' long sticks across the minor dimension of the rooms. Straight, single piece for the full width.

Had the floors sanded and re-finished prior to move-in as well. It started as 3/8" x 1.25-ish" strip white oak -- a mini tongue and groove. It was the last time for those floors, having been sanded down to barely thick enough for the grooves to stay intact. (And some of it isn't.) We'll leave that for the next owner...

By the way, I hate to paint.
 
Something I learned from a guy that used to paint things for a living, whatever color you pick, go one shade lighter. Once you get the whole room done, it appears darker than whatever you expected based on a paint chip.
 
if you find any kind of dust, use a HEPA air filter, and swiffer down the ceilings (if you can)
and the walls. change the HEPA filter until there's only minor accumulations.

done this several times in several houses
 
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