PRIME TIME

I am exhausted. I worked on the master from morning 'til night for the past 6 days. I am happy to report however, that the sanding has come to an end. We've entered into the exciting stage of PRIMING...everything!

The original base molding was in fact salvaged and turned out remarkably nice. I had only hoped that we would see its clean straight lines come through at last. My spackling, puttying, sanding ability exceeded my own expectations.




It has been so gratifying to see the transformation! Splotchy imperfect walls have become a uniform clean, smooth, and white canvas for color.




When all is primed, the ceiling will receive a stipple effect. We picked up a 62 lb bucket of all purpose joint compound for this purpose. I'm excited to use the horsehair 5" round texture brush we also bought. The stipple will dry for 48 hours before receiving 2 coats of ceiling paint.

In the meantime, the base molding and window casings will be painted their true white.

Lastly, everything will be taped off with painters tape in order to paint the walls.

Painting the walls is scheduled for this weekend! (I have a lot of work to do to keep on schedule.)

Progress & Choosing A Color

Liam and I are nearing the time to paint our bedroom. We've decided to scale down our project a little. We were initially going to remove the old base molding and replace it, but we realized that almost everything can be made to look quite nice with a little patience, some spackling with some putty, and some careful sanding here and there. That is how the whole room has come together so far. I also finally came into the understanding that this is an old house, so it is naturally flawed by time and use and that's what makes it so imperfectly charming. Browsing through photos in design inspiration books, such as "Country Living, Cottage Style" I noticed that the old original flawed base molding, and window casings are something of real beauty in older homes. They seem to make a room just that more cosy and inviting when the rest of the room is decorated and painted to perfection. I've begun to fall in love with the flaws of the house, the time told tale of years of living.

Anyway, we have decided that we will finish smoothing and sanding the closet, the base molding, and window casings. Then we will be re-painting and texturing the ceiling. Although, the ceiling is pretty smooth, a subtly textured ceiling will cover any small exisiting imperfections and hide any future ones that always occur with time. It will be the finishing touch on the room.

When all of that is completed, we will be able to paint the very first walls in our house with color. We've chosen the color, "ivory sampler" by Glidden.



It's a soft, clean, warm, medium neutral tone somewhere between taupe brown and muted yellow.

We're excited! We've been sleeping on an air mattress for several weeks during the process.

Back to Nature

The project for last few days has been to remove the old extremely dark stain from our bedroom closet door. We previously tested a stripping agent called "Multi-Strip Pro" with success, so we removed the door from the closet to continue removing more of the stain.




I know it looks messy, but this stain/paint stripper is very low odor, and cleans up really easily with water. The only messy part is the stain itself. We did crack the window while working as there is a bit of an odor when using a lot of the stripper at once. We wore face masks and eye goggles as well as chemical resistant gloves for safety. The stain remover remained on the door 24 hours prior to gently scraping it off and scrubbing off the stain. A lot of scrubbing pads were necessary so that we did not rub the stain back into the wood, but in fact remove it before cleaning the remainder up with water.

This is how the door looked initially after all the stripper was removed. At this stage, the wood is still wet and would be left to dry for several hours.






We left the door to dry overnight. The result was a bare-wood natural finish. Some of the door was still drying when the following photographs were taken. Some areas of the wood are darker than others based on the way the stain took to the door differently in other areas. This doesn't pose a problem at all. We will gently sand the door prior to refinishing it with a new golden stain. The natural discrepancies in the color of the wood will add to the character and beauty of the refinished door.










Here is a picture of the door as it was when we purchased the property to demonstate the before and after.

Take pride in the little things...

Well, I'm here reporting that I've spent the last couple of weeks slowly working on our bedroom. I've come close to smoothing out all the old plaster walls. I've made some good progress. It's a very slow, and patient process, but we only have one chance to do it right before we paint the walls.

In other news, we've had great success stripping the old dark stain from the closet door during our trial test of "Multi-strip Pro." Our goal is to remove the old oxidized dark stain from the closet door and entrance door, and re-finish the doors with a new stain that will showcase the beauty of the wood grain. I can't wait for that!



Liam and I have removed almost all of our bedroom furniture from the room in order to work. We have an air mattress we will be using for the next several weeks while we work. Sanding walls is extremely messy and this saves a lot of time with clean-up.

Master Bedroom Project

We've started brainstorming ideas for the master bedroom. I really like saying master-bedroom, don't I?

Well, we've outlined exactly what needs to be done to make the place as beautiful as possible. We want it to be roaring twenties vintage of course, but functional and as comfortable as 2009.

We're going to need to smooth all the old plaster walls. They are in relatively good shape infact, but they will need to be sanded, and patched here and there in order to provide us with a nice painting canvas. Yes, having smooth walls is the canvas of the whole room. Without this, the rest just won't come together.

We will be removing the old dull base boards and updating them with something more clean and elegant and as romantic as this room should be.

Lots of other things will happen to the room. We'll leave some to surprise, but a lot of stripping, and re-finsihing, and sanding will be the forefront of the project. We will try as much as possible to "restore" what is good about the room.

The room will be finished with all the necessary details, new phone jacks, new outlets, new lighting fixtures, and a completely renovated closet space.

In the mean-time we will be keeping design in mind! Here are some photos of inspiration.

Getting Settled In...

Well, we finally made the move into our new house shortly before Thanksgiving. We've spent the last several weeks, organizing ourselves, and getting settled in. Work is back in progress on the 2nd floor of our house, particularly the master bedroom. We will be working over the next couple of months to renovate, and design our new bedroom suite.

Meanwhile, Liam will be continuing the hardwood floor restoration in the guest bedroom.

Here are a few photos depicting the "settling in" for your enjoyment...

BLOG BRB

Our renovation blog is on a temporary break as we have spent the last month settling in and dealing with the holidays. We're getting ourselves organized. Everything is going well. We had a very nice 1st Christmas in the house! Many pictures will be uploaded in the coming weeks.

As for the future, we are looking to begin full remodeling of the master bedroom after New Year's. Liam will continue the hardwood floor restoration project in the guest bedroom.

Check back soon....

Please visit Chelsea's really lovely vintage shop in the mean-time. Helps pay the bills!