Living room wall patching and new porch look.

Yesterday afternoon was spent patching the living room walls. The first thing I had to do was fix all the holes I made when running the wire for the lights.

I took some scrap lathing and cut it into short strips and placed it in the hole using my nailgun to secure it to the lathing around the hole.


Then I cut 1/2" drywall to fit in the hole and screwed it in place.

Here are all the holes covered and ready for mud.

And here they are mudded.

After the holes were patched I patched all the cracks in the rest of the room. As I've mentioned before I'm using drywall mud mixed with play sand. It gives it a texture very similar to plaster and blends in well with the existing plaster.


Unfortunately today I have other things I have to take care of so I doubt I'll get a chance to sand and primer today.

I've come up with a redesign of the front porch, originally it was just a one story porch but at some point a second story porch was added. The second story porch is horribly done with just 4x4 posts, 2x4 joists, and plywood floors. I had thought of removing the second story porch but we really love sitting up there in the evenings.

So I took a picture of the house, played around with a few ideas and came up with this:


I think it keeps with the style of the house nicely and gives us our second story porch to sit on in the evenings. This style of porch was actually popular in this area so it keeps with the period look.

I probably wont get to this project this year, it will have to be something I take on after the rest of the house is finished.

Living room mantle and electrical

Work on the living room has gone slower than anticipated... imagine that. Stripping the mantle took almost the entire day Saturday.


unfortunately the tiger oak veneer on the front edge of the mantle was in such bad shape that I had to remove it. The wood underneath is oak but it's very rough and it's not quarter-sawn so I'll probably have to get some new oak veneer.

Sunday was almost entirely taken up with rewiring the lighting. The original knob and tube was shoved back up into the ceiling at some point and metal conduit run along the ceiling and down the wall.


The light switch wasn't even by the door to the hallway. When the house was apartments the little door in the above picture was the entrance to this room, it is a small closet that connects to the study. These two rooms, along with the main bathroom and the laundry room were one apartment.

So anyways, the conduit had to go. Running the new wire from the fixture in the ceiling and down the wall was a pain. I had to cut a lot of holes in the wall to run it.


The rest of the day sunday was spent finishing up all the scraping of the walls and ceiling.



Hopefully I can patch everything today then sand and paint tomorrow. For the trim I've decided to try my hand at faux graining. The living room needs to get done fast and I dont have time to remove all of the paint from the trim.