Orange peel texture is sprayed on. It covers a lot of sins and was used heavily in tract homes, etc. Smooth walls are in current favor but they are more labor intensive to create. Takes experienced tapers and a lot of sanding. Perfectly smooth are called level 5. I try for smooth when we install new drywall, but sometimes have to live with what is on the existing walls. If its hideous, we will apply a light skip trowel over the walls. We had to do that on the walls in this project that had wallpaper or paneling because we just could not get all the glue lumps off.
If you have orange peel or some other texture that you don’t like, the best thing to do is use flat paint. Satin or eggshell highlights all the bumps and doesn’t look good.
@nottelling: You said: “will be overwhelmed with gratitude for the mirage of a slightly lower priced, infinitely better, property!”
I’m not convinced that coralbrook should price hers at less than $1.2 million. Let’s wait and see what’s going on when she’s ready to put it on the market and what other good houses are going for at that point.
Doesn’t anybody plaster any more?
My house was built with plaster skim coat over over some sort of sheet material (blueboard? It was built int the 60’s). We’ve done two major renovation projects, and had them plaster the new stuff as well.
It looks great, and is perfectly smooth. Those guys are magicians.
Now if only they hadn’t done textured ceilings…
I think that skilled plasterers are not really available here. In So Calif only really old houses built in the 1920s and 1930s have true chicken wire and thick plaster walls on the interior. I seem to buy all of those 
It is really expensive to find someone that can duplicate those thick walls. We spend a lot of time shimming out really thick drywall and in order to patch those types of walls. The plaster walls usually have a thick skim coat with heavy texture - but not orange peel texture. Once again… flat matte paint for the old plaster walls.
Eggshell paint used to be the vogue, but I have been doing flat paint for several years now because I am always trying to hide any texture or imperfections.
Regarding market… the Spanish on Poinsettia still has not gone into contract at $935,000 and I really cannot figure out why, since the one right next door with the same character (but probably better views and with garage) sold for over a million. Market for my project is just very hard to predict.
Hopefully our curb appeal project will really bring us around to something nice looking from the street. We don’t look so good from the street right now.
Today is another busy day. We finished half of the ceiling joists and are raising the bathroom and bedroom walls. All of the doors and windows are getting delivered today - except the big Anderson patio door which is arriving next week. I have a crew working Saturday to install all of the windows and doors so we can get more secure and not have to waste our time screwing plywood over all our openings.
We need to punch out the one existing glass window downstairs and start opening up stucco to build framing for all the windows.
I have another crew coming to build the 6 ft high fence along the parking patio at the bottom of the driveway. Going to use up all of that cage wood that was removed from the front of the house - placing it horizontal along some posts and I will paint it up later when we figure out our paint colors.
Had someone come yesterday to give advice on how we are going to scaffold so we can work on upper deck, sand and scrape the house and get it painted. There are a lot of areas where the paint is bubbling off the stucco. Stucco underneath the paint is all chalky. This will require a lot of scraping and then a full coat of Chalk Sealer on the stucco areas of the house. I made the mistake of not noticing this when I did original inspection of the house - so exterior painting is going to cost double what I had budgeted for.
I don’t understand the fencing plan for the patio; you are not going to block the view, are you? Why not wait for the landscape architect’ s plans before doing anything on that patio area?
The landscape designer and I stood down on the patio and held up some wood. 6ft fence helps block ugly view under neighbors house on side. View still open to Mission Bay to NW. Fence is only going along side of driveway
I think that lower patio is going to be great!
Oh, okay, got it! I’ve been wondering what you were going to do about railings on the view side, and wasn’t thinking about the driveway side. It would be nice if whatever you do on the view side continued around the corner for a few feet because having the corner open will really help in keeping the expansive open feeling to view. Not sure if that is possible while still screening the negative parts of neighbor’s house.
NEWELL COMP
I took some photos of the harbor views (nice!) and the design and workmanship issues (not nice!) at the Newell comparable sale house the other day. I loaded them to the Flickr group for everyone.
I think that whatever the Newell house sells for, you should be able to get a good 15% to 20% more.
Who in their right mind would put a stove next to the pantry like that? The kitchen must have been designed by a man.
That stove placement is nuts!! It really is hazardous. Loved the shower tile work (sarcasm). Even if I were desperate to spend $1M on a house, I would not pick that one!
That tiling design and installation is so wrong in so many ways…at first glance the subway tile nook in the shower looks like someone has boarded up a window. The mismatched floor…totally amateurish. They should have ripped it up and redone it. And IMHO it’s just plain ugly. The gas stove right next to that cabinet is actually dangerous. I’m surprised it would pass inspection. Aren’t there rules about keeping gas flames away from wood? As soon as someone puts a wide pan or a big pot on those burners on high heat, it’s going to scorch.
I loaded the ‘before’ photo of the kitchen from the MLS listing. Note that they were too cheap to move any sink plumbing or stove gas lines. The stove used to be crammed next to a refrigerator.
There were not any permits pulled for this remodel - they were very careful not to move any electrical, gas or plumbing that would require a permit. So, no one inspected this house… it just goes against any common sense kitchen design.
Regarding the tile design and tile work… this is an example of what happens when you are not on site full time. I’m guessing that the ‘flippers’ have full time jobs and are trying to do this without daily supervision. Just calling in sub contractors to do a bunch of work, or a cheap general contractor. Those workers don’t care what something looks like… they just slam in what you bought and stacked up for them. You would come back at night or on the weekend and find that the shower floor tile doesn’t match and is atrocious, but too late !
I personally have made it very clear to my tile guy that if pieces are not matching they need to show me immediately before they lay it down. Sometimes we will hide the odd dark section of marble under the bath vanity or something or I will drive back and get more to make sure it all works properly. On the Hoarder House project we had several pieces of mosaic that were a different tone of marble and one accidentally got laid right next to the toilet (remember the strategically placed magazine basket???) without me catching it. The tile guys always claim that they didn’t notice it. But it was a very slight mismatch - not as horribly obvious as the Newell tile work.
Here is a tip learned the very hard way…
If you are ordering tile - make sure and note that all tile has to come from the same ‘lot’. When it arrives open up as much as possible and match them up. This doesn’t happen with tile such as white subway, but it does happen with anything that has a coloring.
When pulling tile off the shelf at a store, especially fancy trim pieces that come as one piece each, match them as you load them into the cart. Happens a lot with marble tile (as you can see in the Newell photo). Doesn’t happen with glass mosaic stuff, but I have had an issue where an entire box of small trim or bullnose was a completely different coloring. Had to scramble back to store and find a box that matched. This is one of the reasons that I try really hard to find something I love that is ‘in stock’ somewhere because there is a lot of rushing back to the store to get ‘5 more pieces’ or to find the right coloring or ‘lot’.
I remember the fridge thing, and remember thinking that the only kitchens where I’ve ever seen that have been in rental apartments where an old building has been broken up into units on the cheap.
Kitchen fanatic that I am, I would walk away from that house on that point alone.
Have you had thoughts about how to present your entrance and DR areas? If people are going to have to walk through the DR to get to the LR, maybe a refectory-style table with side benches and chairs at the head and foot? Or maybe a center table with chairs drawn back to the walls? If there is any wall space…
That kitchen wasn’t even designed!!! No design thought at all. They took in the current measurements and layout and crammed whatever sold by Chinese cabinet company that would fit in the layout.
I have another concern also… in the ‘before’ photos there are two posts with small open wall where the current stupid useless island is placed. Did they just tear out the posts without any thought to structure??? I cannot tell if there is any reinforcement with a big header