Dining in style

The dining room is the room that started my panic attacks the day we closed on our house.  With that one little visible wallpaper seam, the fate of all our weekends for the rest of the year were sealed.  The room seemed pretty harmless (and boring)....

Until you lifted up that seam to see this seafoam hot mess underneath:

Funny enough, I actually liked the seafoam color….but I had other plans for this room.  The walls weren't primed when the wallpaper went up, because chunks of plaster came off with it.  Super.  Since there was plaster damage anyway, we knew we were going to have to skim coat to repair some of the worst areas.  It probably would have been just fine to skim the walls, prime, paint, and call it 'done', but it is never that easy with me.  No, the renovator in me wanted MORE.  So I concocted a plan to add faux panel moldings and a chair rail to this room.  My fiancé thought I was nuts at first, but with much convincing, he got on board and we both agreed this room was missing that something 'extra'. 
Here are the upper walls touched up with joint compound, the bottom of the walls perfectly smoothed out with heavier layers of compound, and the walls primed.  Do you know why gray-blue primer was used on top?

Because gray primer is best under RED paint.  Check out this former yawn-inducing room now:

Oh, la la!  Do I see dinner parties in my future?  TomKat?  GyllenSpoon?  Call me!

And a moody night shot of the room from our attached sun porch: 

Now that is a handsome room, no?  My apologies for my less-than-perfect photos.....but here is a great shot of the color (Antique Red by Behr) and the fabulous decorative moldings we added using paneling adhesive and our trusty nail gun.

Don't the moldings just make the room?  I did write up directions on how we did it here. I also found a $5 chandy on Craigslist and spray painted it, then found the Pottery Barn rug for $240 on eBay!  The last 'to do' items in this room include painting the french doors leading to the sun porch, and replacing the IKEA table set with a lovely pedestal table graciously donated to us by my future mother-in-law.  Thanks, Gayle! 


Smooches and goodnight, blog friends.

Wallpaper in the loo?

When we first found out that all kinds of rooms in our house were infected with 'the wallpapers', it was a really dark day.  Like when Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt broke up so he could start an army of children with St. Angie.  No one really understands what is involved with wallpaper removal until you are standing on a ladder with a steamer and scraper looking at the miles of wall in front of you.  It is tempting to scrape out your eyes instead and just live with it.  One room that we started working on pretty quickly was the downstairs bathroom.  Here is what it looked like when we closed: 
 

The only things this bathroom had going for it was a cool Kohler diagonal tub, nice original floor tiles, and perfectly acceptable gray shower tiles.  Everything else had to go:  maroon 'baseboard' tiles, horrid seashell light, gross medicine cabinet, broken pedestal sink, outdated towel bars, shower head and mirror.  We moved the toilet to our upstairs bath to replace the dinosaur that was up there.  Back to the wallpaper, this is what it looked like when we started trying to remove it: 
 
It was like separating Heidi Montag from Spencer's low grade video camera.....not happening.  So, we decided to cut our wallpaper stripping losses and just re-drywall the ceiling, upper walls and shower area, and use my favorite material for the rest of the walls - beadboard!!!!  BEHOLD the progress pics: 
 
With some help from a handy friend (thanks, Matt!) our ‘resident plumber’ friend (thanks, Mike!), an amazing deal on that gorgeous pedestal sink (thanks, Craigslist!) and some dramatic paint for the tiny bit of wall, we were able to turn this bathroom into a gorgeous little space that looked high end:
 
And the best part is that we simply painted the ugly maroon tiles with Rustoleum Tub & Tile epoxy paint in white.  You’d never know they are painted, and it instantly upgrades the floor tiles from the 50s to today.  Doesn’t the floor look modern now?  Say yes.  Next up is another wallpaper doozie, the dining room!  Happy Labor Day, go slack off.

Living large

One of the first things we did when we got our keys at closing was sign over our first born to Home Depot rent a floor sander and get to work undoing the damage to the living room floors.  Here is a before to remind you what the room looked like when we closed: 

Sexy pants learned his trade as a floor refinisher quickly .  This process was as painful as watching an episode of "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here", believe me. 

Making headway thanks to my mom 

After countless trips for more sandpaper, agonizing over the stain color, and a couple of not-so-smooth layers of satin poly, we finally got what we were after: 
Floor perfection.  After painting, painting, making artwork, shopping and more painting, we ended up with this: 
Yes, we still need art and other things for the walls (and furniture that fits in the space), but the big things are done.  There are also french doors leading to the front hall in the last pic, but they have been removed for an ill-fated stripping project that has ended up doing nothing but taking up space in our garage.  They will be painted white.  Again.  Sigh.

Hope you enjoyed the living room tour, next post will be all about our downstairs bath!  Let the potty humor begin!

Tomorrow, I promise

For my 2.2 readers - I will cover the amazing before and after of the living room, I promise.  Scroll down to yesterday's post for the scratched up and ruined before.  Ok, maybe the after isn't amazing, but it is very nice.  At least I think so.  Hey, I don't need to defend my decorating skills to you!  All two of you!  Just kidding, happy Saturday.

Some people should not own houses

While I am busy ruining my back working on the outside of the house, I thought this would be a great time to show you some of the heinous things the previous owner(s) had done to our beautiful house. Behold, some sloppy, dirty, and just plain ugly photos of the interior of our house when we first looked at it in April 2008:

Basement. Have you ever seen such a scary laundry area before? I mean, no one likes doing laundry but this area was enough to send the most dedicated housewife running away screaming and swatting the centipedes off her shoulders. Go ahead and click to enlarge it, I dare you! The floor! The interlocking rubber mats! The paint colors! The confrontational dryer coming out from the corner to attack you! The random old-school phone! Turns out those filthy rubber mats on the floor were covering up STILL WET concrete paint, several layers in fact. They had chosen wonderful shades like blood red, green, gray. While we were trying to clean it all up it looked like a Christmas horror movie.

So, what if you are doing laundry and suddenly nature calls? Well, what's behind door number 2? (heh, number 2) A state-of-the-art indoor outhouse, that's what! Genius! At least the toilet was new.

  

You would probably expect that the hallway leading down to this dungeon paradise was carpeted with gossamer strands and lit by sunshine, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. It looked more like a hallway from a crack house.  Most of the walls and trim in the house looked like this. 

Front entry. Looks ok, right?

Until you notice this diarrhea paint color was slobbed on everything, the stairs, balusters, railing, doors, windows, trim, and as you can see - the ceiling. You can't see in the pic, but there was blue painters tape stuck on top of the railing there. FAIL.

Of course, paint just the trim and hinges salmon! It's brilliant! A real design statement!

Living room doesn't look so bad, a little bit of paint and you're golden, right?

Until you get a close up of the gorgeous oak floors that were detroyed by some sort of evil dog(s) that also ate a lot of windowsills and trim in the rest of the house.

Dining room. Despite the several different flesh tones that were painted on all the built-ins, walls, and trim, I thought this room was in great shape. Then I sat down in there the day after closing and said to my mom - what is that line on the wall? Yes, the entire room was painted-over wallpaper. HYSTERICAL SOBS echoed through the empty house as I realized that this was the case all over the house. The dining room, office/den, downstairs bath, front entryway, stairway, upstairs hallway, downstairs hallway were all covered with wallpaper. It set us back at least 6 months removing the wallpaper. There is a special place in hell for people that paint over wallpaper.  Especially when it was put over plaster without priming first.  But that is another post.

Den/office. Maroon crown molding, sage base trim and a yellowy-peach wall color? YES, OF COURSE!!! Brilliant. And please, go ahead and paint and caulk shut the gorgeous 12-lite prairie doors that are original to the house, no one will ever want to open those!

Upstairs hallway/walk through closet. What was that? You have a bunch of remnants of different carpets for 95% off? AWESOME - we'll take 'em!

Coming soon - 'after' pics!

Getting down and dirty

So, let me share with you the big daddio of projects that took me and my man from young and spry to this:
           

IT.WAS.SO.HARD.  Doesn't he look PISSED?

This debacle all started when we decided to get a quote for a quick n dirty paver patio on the north side of our house, where we have a sunporch that leads to nowhere.  Well, it led to weeds and flagstones we had laid there until further notice:

               

This pic is after we removed a bunch of sod and started digging.  Again, not a true 'before' picture.  Sue me. 

           

Wouldn't it be delightful to step out of the sunporch onto a patio?   With a margarita in hand and Jack Johnson playing in the background?  Ah, yes my friends.  We had a dream.  One quote for $8200 (!!) later, our dreams were dashed and we were doing the work ourselves.  Poo.  So we went to the stone place and ordered our pavers, supplies and, just because we wanted things to be more difficult, huge blocks for a seat wall. 

Then we did this:

              

And this:
           
 And then me and my mom did this:

 

 

Let's get a close up of our paver-laying skills, shall we?

 

About two years weeks, 11 tons of gravel, 2 tons of sand, 4 pallets of stone, 8 cubic yards of dug out dirt, 1 million trips to Home Desperate, 1 day of online patio table ordering and 6 hours of mulching and decorating later, we ended up with this:

          
           

                 

             

A 300 sq ft patio completed just before our summer party.  And I mean, hours before. We still need to cut, reconfigure and use concrete adhesive on the seat wall.  And we still need to figure out what to do with all the leftover pavers, but for now we are chillin out, maxin, relaxin all cool. 
Yeah....who am I kidding?  There is no relaxing at this house.  Nevah.  We can still have a celebratory brewskie, though.

Me and my mom, the man and my dad.  This is not our patio, and was taken way before we even thought of the project, but you get the idea.
Thanks to mom, dad, brother, and everyone that helped us with this project.  And thanks to everyone who came over to 'break in' the patio for hiding beer cans all over our landscaping!  You jokesters, you.