Deh-muh-li-shun

Here are the photos of the almost completely wood paneling free guest room. There is a lovely lavendar butterfly wallpaper that covers the walls. The other wall near the window has no sheet rock but is insulated which is good. I'm wondering if we should bother to reinsulate the walls?





Although it looks a little scary it feels so much bigger. I think the wood panleing was just a little bit scarier than this. Now people won't be so afraid to sleep in this room once we get a few minor things done.

I'm offically beat!

Last weekend we were very productive. Maybe too productive if there is such a thing. We started our weekend off by sanding the front door and starting to sand the trim around the windows (this is on the front sun porch). I started caulking around windows to prepare for this extremely cold winter that we are being told about (can't wait!). Then, on Sunday, we decided it was time to start gutting the guest bedroom. We are redoing the hard wood floors and I just really want the major demolition to be finished before so that we aren't dragging this stuff through the house.

So here are the only before photos I could find. These are from the day we got our keys to the place:


Don't you love those great built in dressers? Hahah. I think wood paneling was the cheap easy way for guys to 'refinish' a room back in the 70's.

here is another random:


All of the wood paneling and dropped ceiling along with tiles are now gone. I have to take some photos tonight when I get home and I'll post them tomorrow. The room looks soooo much better. Even gutted. Sad.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We also bought a new light for the office and changed out all of the ourlets so they are clean and white. Well now there is a short somewhere and half the lights are out upstairs. What a friggen mess. TG for my maintenance guy. He's going to stop by tonight.

A little excited.

We had a fun visit with some friends last night, who are also fellow house rehabbers/ bloggers. We had been planning on paying someone to sand and redo our hardwood floors. The upstairs hall and office alone was going to cost $825. A little pricey but it needed to be done. I've never really wanted to tackle a sanding project because I've always been warned I would sand too deep and could really mess up my hard wood. After speaking with them it sounds like this is actually a project that we are going to take on. Not only will we be sanding the office and hall... We will also be resanding the living room and dining room. How ambitious, right?

The only problem is that we won't be able to put the furniture on the floors for about 7 days after sanding, which isn't much of a problem. We'll just have to fins a place to stay for a week. This is going to be a big- FUN- project. I'm excited! The hand sanding of our stairs starts either this weekend or next weekend.

Hall paint

The paint in the hall is pretty much done. Just a few touch- ups left here and there. What a long tedious project. I have to take long breaks in between painting rooms. Everything is a mess until it's finished. Here's what the hall looks like now.
Sorry- these photos were taken at night time. It's a wee bit dark.

This is where the closet was ripped out:

The color is a continuation from the living room/ hall. I could have picked something sooo much cooler but I really have a tough time with picking colors. I think it looks pretty good. The floors are just driving me nuts now. We have these great finished walls and these ugly paint splatted, worn floors. November or early December they WILL be done. That means we start sanding the stairs next week. Yay- Can't wait (a little sarcastic).

We stripped paint off the porch windows this weekend. I've come to find that citrus stripper works so much better and faster than a heat gun. It's alot safer on or around glass as well. We'll hopefully sand that area while we work on the stairs. Who know- maybe not.

Office paint

The office paint is complete. I'm not a huge fan of the color. It's a little hard to tell from these photos, but it's a light gray with a hint of blue to it. What I really need now is some color in this room and black accents. I'm torn on what color to do in here. Maybe rust? I need to get to work with my colored pencils and play with a few different ideas.



Now I'm not complaining by an means. This color is soooo much better than the electric jean blue that used to cover the walls. The floors are next on the list to redo so I am excited about that being right around the corner! Can you imagine this color with some light natural smooth flooring. I'm excited.



We'll soon be building a new desk. I really don't even like the desk in this location, however, this is about the only spot for it. This room has all of the furniture I'm not too fond of. Eventually everything in this room is going to be replaced and upgraded.



The new desk will be built over this weird hump next to the window. It's the ceiling of the stairwell beneath it. Then the room and space will be more functional. Somebody please sign me up for a room makeover show.



I'll have some photos of the upstairs hallway once we are finsihed cutting in this weekend. I'll be happy to be done with this project. Whew~!

The speed of light

Not only did we prime the walls in the office last weekend, we also got both coats of semi gloss paint on the trim, the office painted and the hallway painted. We just have 1 more coat to do on the hall. I can't wait to post the photos- it looks amazing!

Once we are finished with this we are going to start sanding the stairs. We're both dreading this project. There is something about working with a sander that drys out your sinuses, eyes and makes you feel a little crummy over all. It's called saw dust. I'm just so happy that the steps will be done soon and we can enjoy them rather than dread them. We have come so far!

This project seems to be going on forever

Last night I worked on the hallway and office from 5:30pm to 9:30pm. Did I mention I went home on my lunch break to roll out the first coat of paint on the ceilings? Ha ha ha. I just want this project finished so bad. It will bring some normalcy back to our lifes. I'm tired of looking at those walls and having dust and paint all over my feet every time I walk down them.

Last night I primed the hall walls as well. No more yellow glue walls! I also got ambitious and started painting the woodwork semi gloss white. The wood work was already painted and wasn't worth stripping. Maybe the next person will be ambitious enough to strip them.

Here is our progress:

Before


After



Here are the painteds ceilings in the office. Not as overwhelming as the floor to ceiling blue. We should have the hall painted by this weekend and the office should be primed.

Almost there!

We had a very productive weekend! We finished the MASSIVE amount of sanding on our hallway and are almost finished with the room. Since it has been so long since the place has been taken care of there were cracks and holes pretty much everywhere. Especially underneath the wallpaper. Every inch of wall was pretty much spackled or completely mudded. Also we had a large patch job next to the bathroom where a door had been covered over for a closet and never really got a proper fix. I trimmed out most of the walls in primer, I think my maintenance guys call that cutting in, I'll just say trimmed out. Tonight we'll probably finish sanding the office and do any final mudding that we might have missed. That means tomorrow we roll out the walls with primer.

After we we are done with that we will begin sanding the stairs. Thank god! They are such an eye sore right now. Soon enough they'll be a back sore. heheh. I also primed the back vestibule which leads in the kitchen. The vestibule has wall paneling up. I painted it the same color as the sun porch. I figured since they're both entrances, and they are such small spaces, that the color wouldn't be too repetative. I also don't want it to look like a fun house with too many different colors. I just need to pick up more high gloss white paint for the trim in the vestibule and paint the ceiling. Once that's complete I'm replacing the carpeting with the same gray carpet tile in the sun porch. I'm not a huge fan of them but it looks nice and it's good enough for now. Especially since we are still doing work which could mess up something nicer.

Things finally seem to be moving along so much faster. We just seem to be knocking out projects left and right lately. I don't know what we would do if we had no motivation. Alot of people forewarned us that we would get sick of working on the house when we bought it. They thought things would never get done. I can imagine most people would lose steam pretty quick and I'm just thankful we haven't.

Before & After

So this is the last post about the buffet since there has been so many. I was looking through old photos from when we purchased the house last night and stumbled across this photo.

If you look closely you can see that one of the drawers were chewed on all corners by an animal. You can barely tell there was ever an issue now. Here is a better photo of the complete buffet.

We sanded and stained the woodwork around the windows above just to make sure it didn't look mismatched. I just thought I'd share this with everyone

Priming our lives away.

So, this week we are not only going to be priming our hallway- which won't be too tough. We are also priming our office- which is a lovely shade of shit blue. "There is no such color as shit blue," you're thinking. Well, there sure is.


Ok, so maybe it's not that bad, it just doesn't belong on a wall. I have a feeling that this color will be bleeding through a few times, thus the priming. Not only will we be priming the walls in here, we'll also be priming the ceiling.

Maybe that's why the color is so overbearing. Don't you love that brass 1 bulb light fixture? We'll be upgrading that as well. After we prime the walls we'll have to wait until the floors are refinished to paint. This is the other room in need of some sanding and poly. It's going to look so good!

On a happier note- look what is growing out back by our A/C

Our very own corn on de cob. Isn't it cute? When I was pulling weeds I thought I would save it. Pretty random.

Ta Daa!

Here are a few blurry photos of the buffet. We just have one more pull to put on a drawer and then we are completely finished. Speaking of finish, the finish is alot more vibrant than what it looks like in the photos. The blur and sun make it look a little dull.


What do you think?

I ripped out the closet in the hallway. Eventually this little area will be part of the bathroom expansion when we get the 10-15k we need to redo it. Probably next pay check. (yeah right)

Atleast there is finally some light in the hall.

I also finished scraping wall paper- Finally! Next week we'll start priming the hall walls and painting the ceiling. We are going to wait to paint the walls and trim until we have refinished the floors. I really don't feel like dusting off walls.

I almost forgot. Here are some pictures I took of the dogs the other day. Tito is at the doctor today because he has some mites that have almost cause him an infection. I'm waiting to hear more details but I feel so bad for the poor guy. His little eyes was really swollen bad.


Roscoe is doing good. These guys are really expensive too. I love my house and I love my dogs. Why do the things we love cost so much?