A year or so ago, I proclaimed with all my heart that the suckiest DIY job ever was painting ceilings. In fact it was what I told Court I wanted for my anniversary. He totally delivered, such a good guy right?
Well I am here to go on record today saying that I lead you astray my friends.
Painting ceilings are not in fact the suckiest job ever.
Chiseling off thinset is the suckiest suck job ever.
I mean, have you ever done it?
WHY. IS. IT. SO. HARD?!?
The good news, you guys get to see my awesome chisel boots.
The bad news? We still have 1/2 our kitchen.
You also may be wondering why I am updating you on the kitchen. Why not the Master Bedroom, or Cara’s Office. The answer is simple. Court said if we were going to do it, we needed to do it now. I of course said “As you wish.”
I guess that is the beauty of a real time room makeover, you guys get to see how things really work around these parts.
Hate the game, not the playa.
So tell me, in your opinion, what is the suckiest DIY job you’ve encountered?
I totally agreed with you that painting ceilings was the worst…. until I had to rip up carpet off the stairs in 90* heat. UGHHH.
So far for us, removing 70s carpet that is glued to the subfloor has been the worst. However, we are getting ready to try to knock the ugly slate tile out of our foyer – a job I have been dreading since we moved in five years ago. I have no doubt that will be the worst.
You crack me up!! My suckiest DIY ever? Pulling staples on a huge room after someone went crazy while putting down carpet. Three days worth of pulling. And I have to do it again… Shoot. Me. Now.
I'm a mosaic artist. Chiseling thinset wins the suckiest suck job prize. Doesn't matter if it's 8 x 10 inches or 8 x 10 feet. That stuff is evil.
(ADDING) Chiseling mastic off formerly tiled bathroom walls is right up there as a close second.
We had 300 sqft to remove. We rented a BIG demolition hammer and followed it by a 16" circular sander – but used just the floor cleaning pads (no sand paper). It took just a weekend and didn't have to sit inna pile of thin set.
Sometimes, you do just need a bigger hammer.
hang in there girlfriend! i can only imagine. removing old carpet, tack strips and glue is the job i hate the most. totally sucks.
i despise sanding, priming, and painting trim…. ugh! but i think chiseling the thinset looks worse. sorry, friend.
Painting ceilings is terrible – but so is digging a french drain in 100 degrees (not our finest decision). The worst part was that after we dug everything up, we decided to NOT use that same dirt in our backyard – so we had to move literally 1.5 tons of dirt by filling five gallon buckets, dumping them into the bed of a pick up truck, and then shoveling them back out of the truck in my father in law's yard. It was not a good weekend.
So far the worst jobs I've done are a) painting hallways (they just go on and on and all that trim? oy vey!) and b) refinishing our nasty stairs. That was a long, painful process.
However, I think I'm about to have to experience removing freshly installed marble tiles and the thinset beneath it so I'll probably add that to the list soon!
Pulling leftover carpet staples from hardwood floors is THE suckiest job ever!
In middle school we moved into a house that was last redecorated in the 70's–yellow and green shag(ish) carpeting, 20+ year old wallpaper, avocado appliances, the works. Removing said carpet and wallpaper was NASTIEST home improvement job I have ever been apart of.
The (slightly decaying) carpet pad was glued onto the hardwood floors so we had to douse it with Goo-Gone and then scrape it off with a putty knife. The wallpaper was so old the glue was crusted to the wall and if you pulled off a chunk longer than 6 inches it was cause for a happy dance. Then you had to scrub (and occasionally sand) the remaining glue off the wall. Also, the kitchen had 5 different wallpapers scattered throughout in layers. So. Gross.
This house was also the first (and hopefully last) time I have ever painted a ceiling. If I ever need to do that again I'm going to hire someone.
Mudding and sanding drywall. I'm not talking about a patch job…I'm talking about a whole unfininished room. Ceiling, walls, corners. Ugh. It took me over a week and that was even with my husband's help on the sanding part because drywall compound dust is no bueno for 8 mos pregnant women. 🙂
Buuuuut…scraping thinset looks pretty awful too!
well i've never chiseled off thinset. so i guess i can't comment on how sucky that is. i still think it's painting ceilings. although removing really-hard-to-remove-been-there-for-40-years wallpaper from the CEILING did rival the actual painting of the ceiling. suckety suck suck. good luck.
Fitting new doors into an old house (small door frames!). We had to chisel and sand them down, and they're still kind of tight. Good thing we're moving tomorrow 🙂
Suckiest? Oh, let me count the ways!!! Sanding tape/floated walls; removing old carpet tacking and staples; painting a ceiling (toward the top of the list); scraping off 4 layers of linoleum flooring (using that jack hammer method you're using) and chiseling off concrete…not just thinset along with the 20+ year old saltillo tile. LOL Alllll these things were pretty.darn.sucky! lol Good luck…you're half way done! Good for you!
Oh wow!! Thanks goodness it is all finished. It looks like a lot of work! xx. McKenna (Lou) Ryan
We pulled up vinyl flooring, then the plywood underlayment beneath it on a hardwood floor.. There were a hundred million billion trillion staples, I kid you not! My hands were raw! That was my worst.
For me scraping popcorn ceilings was the worst job ever, in the history of the planet. However that looks pretty terrible too!
Oof. That looks rough!
-Becca
Ladyface Blog
Let's see…it's a toss up between shoveling insulation out of the kitchen for 5 days when I decided to remove the soffit in my mother-in-law's kitchen and didn't properly think about what to do with the insulation beforehand. I didn't realize that insulation grows to about 5 times it's size. It was 4' deep and nasty and dirty and I've never felt so gross in all my life. I chafed my face from the rubber on the ventilation mask and the sweat that formed around it. Or, it could have been the week I spent hosing down her (my MIL) ceiling and scraping popcorn ceiling off an entire house. My shoulders ache just thinking about it. Or, perhaps it was the time I tried to replace the front door on a freezing October day, only to discover the new door wouldn't fit and my husband was out of town and my reluctant teenage son and I had to figure out how to reframe a door on the fly. I can't decide which one was suckier. Of course, removing plaster from a 163-year-old wall and gutting a moldy bathroom that was hidden by the bathroom carpet(!) are all vying for a place in my top 3 suckiest suckfest of DIY jobs.
We're gutting our kitchen and removing the plaster and lath from the walls, really, really sucks. The plaster dust is EVERYWHERE.
Dude. I know the feel. I still think the suckiest job ever is mudding, taping, and sanding. Anything that has to do with drywall is the worst. ACTUALLY, cleaning up after it is the worst. You never really do get rid of all the drywall dust. And your lungs hurt for days. I love how honest you're being about the time line. That's just how it works in real life. There's always about 4 revolving projects going on at once. That's the life of a DIYer! Hang in there lady, and keep rockin those boots!
Removing wood wall paneling to find wallpaper under it. Wallpaper that had more wallpaper under it…and then another layer…and another layer…and and to be honest…we gave up and just painted the wood paneling white and put it back up!!
highlight would be one of the layer of wall paper had what looked like dancing poodles on it =P
Another would be painting the exterior of our house in winter. It was so cold the brushes froze. That was intense for this wimpy california girl, we don't do winter here!!
UGH! What is it with carpet in bathrooms??? lol I have been there too. Its…really gross. Its always a deep breath when you pull it up because you never know what you will find..and its never good!!!
We don't own a home so our suckiest project has to be the pallet bed! I thought "oh free pallets! just buy some bolts.. done!" nope. that sucker was a nightmare to sand.. the bolts and nuts were expensive and for some stupid reason we decided to make our own seat instead of just buying a mattress. We got fiber board, egg crates, batting and fabric to make to most uncomfortable bed ever and it ended up costing $200 !!
Dumb dumb dumb.
We built it before I was pregnant and it ended up in our daughters nursery. Now that she's crawling we are disassembling it this weekend to put it outside for plant hanging.
Such a waste of money.
xo
Ali
Scrapping paint off a wood sided house. Talk about something that never ends! And the best part? In 5-8 years you get to do it ALL OVER AGAIN!!!
I'm new to DIY and home improvement so I haven't taken on a ton of projects, but the worst so far is the painting our bathroom tile grout. Yup! I'm painting the tile grout. It's in decent condition but needed some freshening up since I don't think we'll ever do a full reno of the room!
I've never liked removing wallpaper or dealing with gross things (mold, critters, dirty upholstery, etc) but THAT my friend, looks suckier than sucky.
I feel your pain! We redid the floor on our 4000 sf commercial building. Combination of glued down carpet and tile. A 4 1/2" grinder and a 4" diamond cup wheel did the trick. You can buy a cheap grinder at any big box store and the cup wheel was about $35.00 (which we bought at an industrial contractor supply store). The worst thing was the dust! I used a spray bottle with water while my husband did the grinding. Or you can put some water on the floor (you're on concrete right?) Good luck! Maybe then the ceiling painting will go back in place as the suckiest job!
I scraped an entire 3000 square foot house worth of popcorn ceilings after we bought a nasty foreclosure. My knuckles have never been the same.
Keep on chislin'!
Both of those jobs are yuck! One of the ickiest jobs I ever did was clean a vent hood out that was clogged with dirt dobber nests (they're like wasps). I filled 2- 1 gallon buckets with mud and dirt and bug parts raining down on my head– Gross!
Well, I don't envy you the sucky projects — although I can say that stripping wallpaper from a tiny, poorly-vented bathroom where the previous owners layered paper on top of paper on top of UNPRIMED walls wasn't much fun, either.
Good luck on everything!
This was going to be my answer as well. I did my daughter's room including the ceiling. I figured since I was a professional painter that mudding would be easy. I will definitely hire someone next time and pay them double. It's a suck job.
Oh I don't know. I might have to go with painting the ceiling because there is pain and discomfort involved. Chiseling off the thinset looks mind numbing though. Can you even listen to music or a podcast or is there too much noise?
Chiseling asbestos laiden laminate floors from a 1950's basement. Yeah. It was bad.
I think it's sanding ceiling drywall or getting the black glue off a floor underneath some God-awful tile. Ick.
I feel for you, though.
Yeah…I tried to remove that thinset stuff once. It didn't go so well, so we tried to skimp and just remove some of it, went ahead with re-tiling. It went about as well as you might imagine. What I wondered afterward was…might it have been easier to just rip up the whole subfloor and start over?!?! Possibly.
When I was 30, I moved into a charming 30's home that was, uh, dated, to say the least. The bathroom had brown fur wall-to-wall carpet. I pulled that up, only to reveal a green paisley-ish indoor-outdoor carpet underneath, glued to what i thought was subfloor…….um, no, turns out there was thin carpet pad under that, which was glued to TILE, ladies and gentlemen…….Because I was 30 and had more energy than brains, i decided to get some adhesive remover and I scraped that pad in 106 degree heat over 2 days; did I mention there was only a wall air conditioner in the kitchen? —–do I win? LOL
I feel your pain….=D
Removing 5 layers of wallpaper from every wall and (vaulted) ceiling in our home and some of the layers had been painted so a steamer was useless…S.U.C.K. We actually decided to remove all of the wallpapered drywalled ceilings in the basement and just re-drywall rather than suffer any longer when the first layer had been removed to reveal the EXACT same wallpaper underneath, but in a different color. Shudder…
This is what I've been doing today and yesterday and the day before. I don't mind the mudding so much, but the sanding. Ugh-a-lugga!
I'm gonna agree with you that thinset does indeed suck. Not sure if it's my suckiest project ever, but definitely top 10. No. Top 5.
I would have to say it is removing that nasty old thick black adhesive they used to use to put vinyl down, in like the 50's, off of hardwood floors. You have to tear off the top layer of the vinyl, citristrip, and scrape. Then repeat the process about twenty times. Then sand the rest of because you just do not care anymore. If I someone told me to try that again. My head would totally explode all of the room and it would be ruined anyways so why bother tearing out the ugly vinyl with the sizzling scary brain bits on it? Yeah, suckity sucky suck job.
Removing old staples from upholstery where they all break in half instead of come out in one piece. Then you have to get the pliers and pull as hard as you can to get each broken piece out. I actually gave up on a chair because every staple did this. UGHHHH. Ceilings are bad too and I have not done the thinset thing.
I would love for my husband to give me the green light to use an air hammer on the floor! Is your tile under the cabinets? I so want to redo our kitchen tile.
I hear ya on the thinset – we`re doing that on our front entry right now! Ugh.
ceilings are bad…but laying pavers are worse. dig, fill, haul, tamp, fill, mixed with 34,986 trips to Lowe's and rain showers all weekend…that is the worst!
Last year my hubster and I pulled up 1100 sq ft of carpet and tile from the main floor of our house. It sucked. I've never painted ceilings so I can't say which is worse, but chiseling up thinset is absolutely a Suck Fest, no doubt about it.
Did that years ago, hated every minute of it. Also chipped out an entire floor of parquet wood tiles. Auughh. My sympathies.
I hate floor remodels. PERIOD. Tearing out linoleum and scraping that adhesive crap-ola off the subfloor sucks! Chipping thinset sucks. Ripping out carpet and tacks strips is a disaster. I guess what I'm saying is those are the jobs I just bite the bullet and hire someone else to do! Because life is hard enough without having to deal with that…
I absolutely HATE caulking and painting trim! Yuck!
I've done ceilings and thinset, and I have to agree with you. Thinset is THE DEVIL! I would probably rather paint 100 ceilings than tear up tile EVER. AGAIN. Oh, and next to the thinset would have to be pulling out all of the staples used to attach the wire underneath it to the sub-floor. I'm having PTSD just thinking about it.
I read this post and thought- oh that sucks.. and then randomly this weekend we decided to put in new flooring and I found myself on the ground, chiseling away… and I remembered… you warned me.. I just didn't listen….. 🙁
I totally agree with you on this one! After taking out my entry way tile and 6 chisel blades later I'm still finding the dust in all areas of my house.
Pulling tiny upholstery nails from an antique sofa ranks up there as being a pretty tedious back breaking job. Thankfully not that dirty but still a pain in the blank!
p.s. so glad I'm not the only one with 20 projects in the works at the same time. We have 4 rooms…no maybe 6 rooms in our house that have started being redone but we keep hopping around and NONE of them are finished yet.
Yes, it does suck! Did you wet down the ceiling first a bit with a spray bottle and then use a shop vac to suck up the debris as you scraped it off? It really is a two person job but if you do it that way things stay much cleaner and it is much easier to do. My parents have removed nearly 80% of their entire nasty old popcorn ceiling throughout their home during their total house makeover and that's what they are doing. I'd give it a shot!
xo, Jennifer @Blissfully Ever After