Sunday, February 19, 2012

Cover Your Ears, Children

Despite the cold, this is a good time of year.  Basketball is over.  Soccer games haven't started.   Our weekends are ours to do with as we please.

We usually please to get some home renovations done. 

I was hoping for a new kitchen, but that just won't be in the budget this year.  So, we're on to the next thing on the list.

Most of our house is filled with beautiful, original wood.  From the staircase


to the fireplace


gorgeous wood is everywhere.

Until you come to the room we call the game room.  There you will find an ugly, open nook


and a barely functional, ugly closet.


We decided to tackle this room next.

We have done plenty of "skin deep" renovations in the past.  We are pro painters and have taken down enough wallpaper to cover half of Indiana.  We have also hung wallpaper.

NOTE:  Let me just say that a couple should never attempt to wallpaper a room unless they are very solid and confident in their marriage.  Especially if the chosen room is the entryway with a 15 foot ceiling and uneven walls and you are trying to hang a paper with vertical stripes on it and one or both of you just happens to be a perfectionist.    Separate vacations may be in order by the time that type of project is done.

For this room project, we once again had to strip wallpaper off of the wall.  Fortunately, it only went halfway up the wall.  We had it done in 24 hours.  

Unfortunately, there was also a chair rail.  And, as we should have expected, it was not simply nailed up. 

Every single thing we have done around here has come with surprises.  When we got a new roof, we found that there were four layers of shingles that needed to come off.  Plus, the little roof over the back porch was actually built AROUND an old roof, gutter and all.

When the house was inspected, the guy told us that everything was to code, but it was most certainly done by the homeowner, who did things his own way.  Did he ever.

So, the chair rail was glued to the wall.  He didn't even have the decency to glue it to the wallpaper.  Just slapped it onto the plaster wall.  A lot of sanding is in our future.


And then there is all of the painted wood.  Painted an awful chocolate brown.


Two windows and five doors in this room.  Not doorways.  Doors.  Not including the ugly closet seen earlier. 

We've never stripped paint off of wood before.  We have read about it.  We have heard about what a pain it is.  But we are crazy optimists who are sick and tired of looking at the ugly brown.  And painting them just wouldn't go with the rest of the house.  So we're stripping.

We applied the non-toxic gel that is supposed to take the paint off.  We left it for an hour.


Then Hubby began scraping.


I followed behind with the mineral spirits and steel wool.

Buttercup asked if she could help.  Why certainly, dear daughter!


After three hours, we have done two doors and the baseboard of one wall.  Although, "done" is a strong word.  Some of the paint has come off.  In some places, a lot of it has.  We will certainly be needing to reapply the paint stripper and give it another go. 

And I am happy to say that not one cuss word has popped out of our mouths.  Yet.  We have a long, long way to go, though.  I'm not ruling it out.

Have a lovely day!

1 comment:

  1. Oooooh, paint stripper, eh? Nasty stuff! I stripped a hoosier cabenit down to bare wood years ago. Layer, after layer, after layer! Ugh. It's beautiful, now, though. :) Your woodwork will be too!

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