Tiki take down!

Sam taking down the tikis

Well after my inlaws FINALLY left on Monday (2 hours late mind you) Sam and I had some time to actually look around us and take in the whole home ownership thing. The one room in the entire house that bothered all of us more than any other was the 'tiki hut room'.

The tiki room looks like it might have been a second living room since there is a fire place in there complete with wet bar/sink. Luis decided to claim this room as his and we all decided that the tiki huts needed to go right away and we needed to at least clean out the closets/storage areas for Luis to put his stuff before he leaves to visit his mom in Mexico on Wed June 22.



Tiki Huts!!

 Now I would just like to know....who puts up tiki huts INSIDE of a house??? And who picked the hideous two tones bronze and peach wall color?!?!? This is probably the most hideous room I have EVER seen!!!

As I said before in our 'background story'....when we bought this house, we knew it would be a fixer-upper.....2800 sq of DIY projects to keep us busy for at least the next 30 years. I guess you do have to start SOMEWHERE and that somewhere was in the tiki room.



Sliding door needs replacement

Obviously our plan is to make this room a bedroom NOT a living room and given it's current state, we have a lot of work to do.

Here's the list of 'projects' in this room alone:

1. Take down tiki huts
2. Paint walls/baseboards/closets/doors
3. Clean out junk from closets/build ins

4. Replace switch plates and floor vent

5. Replace flooring/carpet

6. Replace sliding door

7. Replace door knobs/cabinet knobs

8. Take off popcorn ceiling and repaint
 9. Replace gas fireplace

10. Re-do brick

11. Decorate

12. Replace window treatments

Estimated costs of renovation:

Floor vent that is rusted and nasty

$500.00 sliding door

$1000.00 flooring
$100.00 paint/supplies
$100.00 knobs, door handles, floor vents, and switch plates
$300.00 decor
$100.00 window treatments
Cleaning, tiki take down, and labor.....free

Total reno estimate=$2100.00

Since we just moved in and hemorrhaged money because of the closing disaster we decided to do as much as we could to spruce this room up on our own....so the flooring in the tiki room is going to have to wait....same with the doors but we could take the tikis down, paint everything, and do MAJOR cleaning....we might even bust out the steam cleaner for this room :).

Wall to wall tikis



First things first....Sam and I begin taking down the tiki huts and began wondering how the hell these things were put up because they just weren't coming down!!! Some genius put them up with HEAVY steel mounting brackets and then stripped the nails which we had to take out with a pair of players!!! In addition to the steel mounting brackets....they built some weird frame out of unsanded lumber?!?!



Closets and fireplace

All the mounting brackets, screws, and nails were completely rusted....thank GOD we had our tetanus shots!!! We are still trying to figure out why everything is rusted in this room....I mean EVERYTHING is rusted....the floor vent, the switch plate screws, door hinges, nails....EVERYTHING. The only thing I can think of is the sliding door is all 'foggy' with moisture and since the house has been vacant since Oct 2010 maybe with all the rain we got this year it became a terrarium of sorts??? There was no evidence of any leaks or fire/water damage so who knows!!!



Weird rusted frames

 Anyway, the tikis were NOT coming down easily!!! One might wonder why we even bothered taking them down carefully rather than ripping them down....well if you can believe this, our inspector who did the inspection on the house LOVED the tikis and wanted them for his house!!! So we got to make money off this monstrosity!!!! Go figure!!!

 Anyway, taking down the tikis was not easy....they smelled funny and were SUPER dusty and did NOT want to come down from the mounting brackets!!! As I was standing there holding the frame up for Sam as he tried to get them down I saw something that would explain why we were having all these issues with the tikis....they were made in Mexico LOL :). Now I know that sounds bad but honestly Sam and I about died laughing when we say the "Mexico" stamp...all we could say was....'yep that explains everything'!!!  

Yep that says Mexico...no wonder we had issues!



Anyway we finally got the tikis down and into the garage so we could start painting. Luis got to pick the colors for his room (a nice light gray with a red accent wall) and before he left for Mexico he started painting. We got the paint and primer in one (AMAZING and totally worth the extra few bucks!!!!) and surprisingly it only took two coats of the gray to cover everything....now interestingly enough the red took 3-4 coats to cover the 2 toned nightmare who would have thought!!!



Sam taking down the tikis



We are still trying to figure out how the 'window treatments' (if one can even call them that) were made....I think they were either a DIY project gone horribly wrong or they too were bought in Mexico!!! Seriously the vertical blinds were more or less wall paper cut in to strips with little 'weights' glued to the bottom hung up in some chincy fashion!!! They were BAD!!!

We cleaned out all the built-ins and closets....and it looks like the people who were there before us left a lot of crap in there. We found 3 melted candles, some Christmas lights, black lights, and 5 containers of old/crusty looking body frosting....I don't even want to know where that came from!!!!!

'Window treatments'

However, I think the room is now about as clean as it's going to get...I've scrubbed and painted the baseboards and vacuumed the ceiling and light fixtures....I've cleaned EVERY INCH of that room....and I will do the steam cleaner this weekend before Luis gets back.

Luis left for Mexico on June 22nd and will return July 4th so we are hoping to have his room more or less done/cleaned by the time he comes home....minus the flooring and sliding door. As of today (June 29th) we are right on track....I'll be posting the 'after' pics as soon as we are done cleaning the room so watch for pics soon :)



More of the tiki room!



So far here is what we have done in the room and spent:

1. Painted walls, doors, and trim ($70.00 paint: 1 gallon red, 1 gallon gray, 1 quart white paint for trim/door) 

2. Spray painted closet doors and built-ins ($50.00 spray paint: 12 cans of black spray paint)

3. Floor/foot vent ($7.00)

4. Decor ($120.00: bed-in-a-bag, curtains, and curtain rods).

5. Supplies ($50.00: brushes, tape, paint tray, light bulbs etc.)



Love the tiki torch inspired light fixtures



Everything else in the room was 're-purposed' from other rooms and stuff I had from before....again pics coming soon :). So for about $300.00 and a little elbow grease we managed to get Luis's room more or less 'done'. The carpet isn't TOO bad so we might be able to hold off on that till next summer and the door we will fix before fall/winter because it IS drafty...we MUST fix it before then but for the rest of the summer I think it's fine. So Dear Reader I will leave you here.....be watching for more pics and postings soon!!!