Kitchen Conundrum: The State We're In

As of today, halfway through December, 2011, the kitchen looks like this:







The wallpaper has been stripped (did this around Thanksgiving), the tile backsplash is gone (done over the past few days, new tools required!), shelves have come off the walls, and even the floor is slowly being chipped away. We're getting there!

Fun With an Extension Ladder: Painting the Landing, Finishing Up

On Wednesday I got the second coat of gray applied to the walls. Fresh and clean!

Up next: lighting.

Fun With an Extension Ladder: Painting the Landing

On Sunday we partially removed the satellite dish. On Monday, today (and finishing up tomorrow, with luck), I've been painting the landing at the top of our stairs. This is one of the last "easy" projects left in The Ear!

Setting up:





Ceiling done on Monday (Martha Stewart Glass of Milk, as usual):



First coat of wall paint done (Martha Stewart Driftwood Gray for continuity with the entryway below). As I did with the dining room, I'm keeping the wallpaper and just giving it a fresh coat of better-looking paint.

Dining Room, Now with Color

One of the last spots in the house left to improve, that I could work on without hiring professionals or buying more equipment, was the dining room. I have cogitated on what to do with the dining room for a few months. Options I have considered are: stripping the wallpaper and reapplying new wallpaper, painting a pattern on the bare walls with a stencil, continuing the green from the living room into the dining room, painting the walls the gray from the entryway. I was really leaning towards this last option after seeing how great the gray looked with the wood and brick in the entryway.

But one thing I hadn't considered doing was leaving up the current textured wallpaper and giving it a fresh coat of paint. I mean, it's clear by now that I hate all things textured wallpaper, right? However, that textured paper in the dining room, with its swirly floral pattern, had begun to look more attractive after getting rid of all the texture in the rest of the house. We'd even gotten several compliments on it over the past few months. So I thought and rethought and finally decided to give it a try.

Here was the dining room this past Tuesday, after clearing out most of the furniture. It had that same dirty cream color that the rest of the house had when we moved in.



Here's my test swatch of the gray paint (Martha Stewart's Driftwood Gray in flat finish) on the old wallpaper. Since I have not painted the wallpaper before, I wanted to try out whether or not I would need a coat of primer underneath. Since the paper already had a coat or two of flat paint on it, I discovered that I could skip the primer step. (I also painted the dining room ceiling in the same Martha Stewart Glass of Milk white that I have used elsewhere. Once again, taking this step helps diminish the visual presence of the textured ceiling and makes everything seem fresh and clean.)



And here's the dining room on Thursday evening. The room isn't totally put back together yet, but it already feels more polished and considered. The new coat of paint makes the pattern of the paper more subtle, perhaps because the color is darker and the flat paint doesn't reflect any light. It has become an interesting detail instead of an overbearing focal point.



Here's a close up of the freshly painted wallpaper.



Another look at the new dining room. Now I just need to work on lowering and centering the light fixture, and I think we can call this room done. One more line scratched off my to-do list. Hurrah!

Entryway: Scraped Clean

As of yesterday, this was our entryway:







The wallpaper and mildew are gone. The holes and rough places are patched. Paint and primer are next, but those may have to wait til after Christmas. Even with the wait, we've still got a fresh outlook on coming and going.

Back in the Scrape of Things

After a two-month hiatus, I'm back to scraping wallpaper this week. I've been working on our entryway, which has so far been underwhelming as a vision statement/aesthetic experience.

Here it was on Monday. Note the shiny, shiny texture (texture!) and beautiful light fixture (why that is still here, I do not know):



As of this morning, however, the shiny, shiny texture had gone missing. I'm left with a lot of clean up and a few plaster blemishes to patch.





Also a big mildew colony prospering by the front door. Eew.

Ballad of the One Bathroom: Archaeology

The medicine cabinets were installed on the wall in the standard way, with two large bolts in each upper corner, plus big screw anchors for good measure. The crafty DIY-er who was here before me added an L bracket to the bottom for good measure. I simply unscrewed all the bolts, and the cabinets easily came down (they were kind of heavy though, and I probably could have benefitted from a helper).

One cabinet down:



Both cabinets down:



I knew I was going to find some sort of hole in the wall (I assumed from a former small, recessed medicine cabinet), but I wasn't sure what form it would take. Many different approaches had been used over the years to cover up this hole, from a gypsum-board-and-skim-coat-of-plaster patch to these small fiber boards, almost like artist panels for painting, lightly tacked up with finishing nails.

Fiber board panels removed:



After removing the small panels, I found interesting evidence of the Ear's history and construction.

A scrap of fancy old wallpaper, with a shiny black finish and shiny gold accents:



Many different surfaces and materials, from gypsum board to plaster and lathe:

Ballad of the One Bathroom: Medicine Cabinet Dilemma

Yesterday morning: all the wallpaper was gone except for what was blocked by our two large medicine cabinets.



These cabinets are two recent Ikea models. They provide lots of storage and the mirrors are great. However, at 8.5 inches they are a little too deep and block the sink a bit. They are also strangely installed (in this house?).



I decided to take the cabinets down and find out what was behind them. First I removed the strange light fixture.

Mashup: Ballad of the One Bathroom Meets The Great Wallpaper Scrape

I started scraping off the wallpaper in the bathroom yesterday. Lots of bad looking wall underneath. Today I took down the beautiful light fixture to get at the wallpaper underneath it and found this fun looking mess of wires. May have to call in reinforcements on this one.



Tomorrow I will take down the beautiful outsize cabinets and find out what's back there. Fingers crossed for something good.

Living Room Update

We finished stripping the wallpaper on Saturday, so it only took us one week. However, we're dealing with more of the free range mutant glue like we found in the tiny bedroom/home office upstairs, so we've got a lot of razor-blading, plus some patching and caulking, in our future.



Because we're working in the downstairs, a more open part of our home, we've walled off the living room with sheets of plastic. They expand and contract as we move around, and as the AC cuts on and off. It's like our house has grown a lung in its middle. Kind of beautiful.



Otherwise, the plumbers are upstairs changing out my sink as I type. Suspense!

And So It Continues...Again

The Great Wallpaper Scrape has migrated to our living room (in place of our furniture).




Any guesses on how long this will take?

Porch Projects: Upstairs Sleeping Porches

Off of our back bedrooms are two little lean-to rooms. In the days before air conditioning, these were screened sleeping porches where former residents of the Sow's Ear took refuge on hot summer nights.



Now, these spaces are neglected little add-ons. They have been enclosed over time (you can see what used to be an exterior wall below, since it still has vinyl siding. Some brick is also visible on another wall.), but seemingly without purpose.



The former owners used the spaces for additional closet and storage spaces. We are hoping to turn them into some sort of art space.



To that end, I've been removing some wallpaper, old curtain and closet rods, and patching the walls. At some point I'll have to learn how to lay some new vinyl tiles, since the old stick-on flooring is starting to peel up. I'll also have to find an electrician to add a light and an outlet (fingers crossed that this is possible).

The Great Wallpaper Scrape Continues...Again...

We've gotten down to some serious scraping in the little nub of a 3rd bedroom we have. This will be our home office, eventually.



Even though this room is tiny, it's taking forever, forever!!, to get the walls clean. We've been at this for at least two weeks now, if not longer. The wallpaper hangers used some sort of mutant, genetically modified, free range glue in here. It leaves behind a scum that we have to go around and razor blade off. But, by the end of the past weekend we'd got the bulk of the paper off.



One glove was sacrificed in the process....



Not bad for a hard day's scrape.

Progress Report

Last week I showed you a photo of the Hellhole. That's the tiny half-bedroom that we're going to turn into a little office. Well, now it's all cleaned out and drop clothed.



Let the Great Wallpaper Scrape continue!

The Great Wallpaper Scrape Continues...

My parents arrived last Friday with a UHaul full of family furniture from Arkansas. I felt motivated to remove the wallpaper from the guest room so I could get it clean before their arrival. This process was made some easier by Mr. MJ being away on a business trip, so I could work into the wee hours without the suggestion that I go to bed (however, a downside to this is that I also have to make my own coffee when I get up in the morning, which is really not easy after a late nite of wallpaper scraping). Here are in-progress and mission complete photos:




Now, my house has been turned into the Capitol Hill Lumber Yard as my mom prepares to school me on the circular saw.

Moldy Corner

Fun surprises were waiting for me under the beautiful wallpaper: mildew! I believe this little colony was the remains of a once-flourishing civilization caused by a long-ago water leak.



Bleach to the rescue!



All clean (4 hours later)!



I've also been cleaning up all of the (glued-on, papered-over, painted-on) edges of trim and ceiling with a razor blade. Tomorrow, we patch.