Day Three

The first exciting event to occur today required no work on our part, which is always good. We had professional painters come in to paint the ceiling and the stairwell.

This is the stairwell before:


And this is the stairwell now:




It's kind of hard to capture on film because we took off the nasty miniature lampshades, so there's a glare at the moment. Soon we will get a new light fixture.


I made Ben position himself in front of the light to try to block it, but the picture just turned out sort of creepy.



The other exciting event for today was completing the stripping of the wallpaper. Ben spent literally all day cooped in there picking it off inch by inch. Fun! I was there for the last couple of hours.








Finally, we added another coat to the cabinet frames in the kitchen. One more to go!


Also, here is Ben with our flooring.


It has to sit in the house for at least 72 hours prior to installation in order to acclimate to the conditions inside our house. We're not getting it installed for a couple of weeks, but we went ahead and picked it up over the weekend.

So that's it for today!

Completed, Day Three:
1. All ceilings painted.
2. Stairwell relieved of hideous orange color.
3. Wallpaper stripping completed.
4. Second coat of paint added to kitchen cabinets.

The First Weekend

First, a few particularly ugly details to record for posterity:

The sconce in the terrifyingly dark orange stairwell:


Kitchen light fixture with miniature lampshades:


And yet more miniature lampshades on the entryway light fixture, hung low enough so
everyone hits their head on it:


The stairwell railing, which has fallen off the wall, has a chip in it, and was installed backwards to begin with:


Our pile of paint and supplies:


The first project is set to be the kitchen.

First Ben removed all the cabinet doors and I washed them down:




Sara and Amy and I spent the whole day on Saturday stripping the pineapple wallpaper:


On Sunday, Ben and Danny painted all the cabinet doors white:


And Amy and Danny put the first coat on the cabinets:




Amy and I stripped the wallpaper from the entryway:








And Ben and I attempted to strip the downstairs bathroom wallpaper, which had apparently been painted over several times. We took a lot of the drywall paper with it, which our handyman has assured us he can fix. We're crossing our fingers.




The upstairs bathrooms proved to be the most tedious. Here's Danny removing wallpaper from the master bath:






And me in the guest bathroom, which is STILL not finished. These walls have TWO layers of wallpaper on them, with a coat of textured paint on top. Lots of fun.



Completed in first weekend:
1. border removed from guest bedroom (no pictures of this, as it took 2 minutes and gave us false hope that the rest of the wallpaper would be so easy)
2. kitchen cabinet doors painted
3. kitchen cabinet frames half done
4. wallpaper stripped from kitchen, entryway, and 2 1/2 bathrooms

What We're Starting With

View from front porch:


Back deck:






Living/dining room with door onto back deck:








Kitchen:




Downstairs bedroom - will be Ben's studio:






Downstairs bathroom with large burn mark on vanity:




Stairwell/hallway:




Master bedroom:






Guest bedroom: