The Dining Room

These two photographs are of the walls in our dining room after I sanded the texture with a belt, and random orbital sander. After I finished sanding it had kind of a cool distressed look. If not for the peeling part I might have left it that way.
The next two pictures are of the same walls after I skim coated them with drywall compound.



I decided it was time to get moving on another room remodel. The dining room was next on the list. I walled in the opening to the entry a couple of years ago and had it professionally textured when I had the living room done with a nice knock down texture. The other three walls were still the same wierd texture that the rest of the house has. I am not sure if it was applied with a trowel or a roller, but I could not match it. I successfully skim coated and re-textured three walls in the spare bedroom recently and it turned out really well. I decided I would do the same in the dining room. I hand applied the skim coat in the bedroom and it was a lot of work. I thought I would try a different method in the dining room. I used the texture sprayer and sprayed on a thinned coat of drywall compound then troweled it smooth while it was still wet. It worked pretty well and went a lot faster than the trowel on method.

I sanded down the highest spots on the wall before applying the mud and I think it helped a lot. Now all I have to do is sand it all smooth, re-texture and paint.

The floor in this room is not level. There is a low spot in the corner nearest the front door and a high spot just in front of the opposite wall near the door to the kitchen. The difference in the two is 3/4 of an inch! I had the same problem in the entry and tried everything I could think of to level it out. I rented a large floor grinder, which was heavy and very hard to control and did very little to take down the high spot. Then I found a diamond grinding wheel that fit my 4.5 inch grinder and it worked a lot better. It made a lot of dust though. To finish the job I tried the self leveling underlayment. I finally did get the floor level enough to lay the tile.

I used the grinder on the hump in the dining room with moderate success. Although I burned out the motor on the grinder. Oh well, lesson learned; don't use a 6" wheel on a 4.5" motor. I think I will fill in some of the lowest spots and let it go. Carpeting will hide the rest.