Today I didn’t have much time to spend on the condo. It was my mom’s birthday, so we got together for dinner. I stopped by home depot after the festivities and got a 5 gallon bucket of white ceiling paint, and 3 sample quarts of various colors. I also got some painting supplies, and checked out the bathroom vanity tops. I need a 71 inch one in the master bath with two sinks, which seems to be a custom order item everywhere. The best price so far seems to be ~$700 for a granite one at Lowes. It’s not a bad price for granite, but I don’t think I want to spend that much.

After picking up the paint, we picked up some poster board at Fry’s to paint samples on so we can move them around. We arrived at the condo at around 11 and my sister Lucy painted the posterboard. I think the main color is too light, and the darker brown is definitely better, but I have to wait to see what they look like in the sunlight. We hung around until about 12:45 and did some paint prep, masking some of the trim and removing outlet covers. Mike, Paul and Jac also removed some more linoleum and trim from the kitchen. Tomorrow morning we should start painting ceilings, and hopefully we’ll be able to start on walls tomorrow as well.

I am also trying to come to a decision about whether or not to redo cabinets. I was looking through an Ikea catalog last night to see if they had any good paint schemes, and noticed their kitchen cabinets at least look pretty nice. I looked at them a bit online and downloaded their kitchen planner program. It looks like it would be about $3000 to replace cabinets and counters with Ikea gear, but I’m a little worried about quality. I’ll have to go to the store and take a look. My uncle has Ikea cabinets I think, and he seems to be pretty picky about quality, so maybe they are good.

I have no pictures tonight because I forgot my camera, but I will take some in the morning to show the color samples and further progress.

So, as you may have heard, I recently purchased a condo. It came with a bunch of money for redecorating expenses, so I was planning on doing some work to make it nice. It turns out the people trashed it, and it needed to be pretty much gutted. I took pictures of the place for record and they are here if you want to see the extent of the nasty.

I, along with a bunch of helpful family members have been spending the past week or so cleaning things and ripping out flooring, etc. It is already looking much better. Tomorrow I hope to start painting. I am going to paint the ceilings “ceiling white” and the rest of the tile/paint selection can be seen here:

The top two colors will be the paint colors. The right side will be the main color, with the darker color being an accent color on various walls. I’m not totally decided on any of this, but those are the choices for now.

I’m going to try and post daily or whatever and update on the progress. You can see the full gallery of photos here.

So, for today, Mike and I started working early and started with the bathroom. We installed some new faucets in the master bathroom earlier, but finished hooking up the drain levers today, so they are fully operational. I also started dismantling the toilet in the master bath, which will be replaced after the tile goes in. Then, I started washing all the walls while Mike worked on removing moldings where tile is going in. We will paint and lay the tile with them off, then clean them up and put them back on. He also pulled out some remaining tack strips where carpet is being replaced with other flooring, as well as some tile in the living room which will be replaced with the new tile. I finished washing almost all of the walls, so I’m pretty happy about that. Here’s a few action shots:

Mike just finished removing the tiles from around the fireplace.

Me scrubbing the walls