Front Entry, Feb. 2003:

The front entry was wallpapered in something that can only be described as painted by Monet on Crack.  You can just see it in this photo of the wallpaper -- it's quite shiny too.  That is under the layer of tar from all the smoking that went on in this house!

Since the entry opens into large doorways to the library, dining room and living room. there wasn't actually a lot of wallspace.  But the 'crown molding' (I hate to call anything so badly installed crown molding -- it seems wrong!) and border and wallpaper had to be removed first.  Afterwards, Lynda scraped off the window paint (since it wasn't going to match her new paint job) and then began the prepping for the new colour.  Lynda wanted a rich dark red -- almost a burgundy colour.  She bought a burgundy paint to try on the wall but found it was too purple.  Another trip to he home improvement store and she came home with Ralph Lauren Balmoral Red.  Lovely.  Perfect.

First the ceiling had to be primed and painted.  Lynda chose to paint the ceiling the same colour as used in the living room, an Evermore colour called Antique White.  After the ceiling dried, Lynda began with the walls, starting them with a tinted primer.  All the painting Lynda has done in the house has been primed first, due to the massive amount of tar we found on the walls of the living room when we first took possession of the house.  Once the primer was dry, the Balmoral red went on beautifully.  So deep and rich!  A little addition of a picture and a new ceiling light, and the room was complete.  Very well done, Lynda.

 
  

 
 

Laundry Room, Feb. 2003:

The laundry room was quite interesting.  The cupboards attached to the wall weren't that bad, although the crackle finish left a lot to be desired.  And I guess the yellow wasn't too awful although I found it to be quite astringent -- too much green in it for me.  The border at the middle of the room was pretty bad.  Again there was a Monet element to it -- green with a ghastly olde English garden design.  But it was the molding at the level of the ceiling (it really can't be described as crown molding as that's much too nice to be grouped in with this stuff) with a crackle finish and little posts sticking out of it, presumably for hanging your giant ballcap collection that took the cake.  Hideous.  Unfortunately I didn't remember to take photos of it before I began prying off the cabinets and moldings.  You'll just have to take my word for it.  There were no great plans for this room, we just wanted a 'normal' colour and to be able to stack our washer and dryer.
 

Office and Hallway July 2003:

How do you like the wallpaper to the left?  Pretty ugly, huh?  Again there's the shininess factor to this paper as well.  You can see why Joe and I decided to paint over it in December 2001 when we first moved in.  We didn't have time to strip it as we were painting the livingroom as well (a large space with high ceilings and in need of primer to keep the tar and nicotine from bleeding through) so we just painted over it.  It looked better, but not much.  So you can see why we were planning to do this room over sometime in the future.  In July 2003 after a little flooding incident, the carpet in the office needed to be replaced.  Once we decided that we were going to have laminate flooring installed, we decided to repaint the walls and ceilings in the office and the hallway, since the ugly old carpet would make a cheap drop cloth.

Lynda worked very hard to strip the wallpaper that we'd painted over in the office, removing the badly installed crown moldings as well.  Why install crown moldings if you're going to use three pieces along one wall?  New baseboards and chair rail were painted and installed by Lynda and Joe (Joe did a great job of mastering the mitre saw).  Lynda also installed her first ceiling fan (pretty much required in this climate) in this room which faces west and gets quite warm in the late afternoon. The colour turned out to be very nice and the trim was Conneticut blue, a lovely contrast.
 

At the same time Lynda also stipped the two layers of wallpaper in the hallway and painted the hallway walls and ceiling.  The new hallway colour is called "Muslin" and is a lovely soft creamy colour, almost a very light tan.   The numerous holes in the walls were filled and the motion sensor for the alarm that we don't use was removed.  There was also a hole in the wall badly filled that had to be redone.  I guess wallpaper can hide a lot.  After the paint was dry and the ceiling repainted too, the floor was installed (Lynda and Joe felt all the rest of the work was enough for them and let skilled workers do the job).  Lynda only had to paint the quarter round to match the trim.  The hallway was completed with the addition of a black and white photo gallery of Lynda and Joe's family and close friends.
 

Guest Bedroom, Oct. 2003:

One of the things we really did like about this house was the tree in the guest bedroom.  Unfortunately the colour didn't go at all with the 'dusty rose' carpet and although you can't see it in the picture to the left, it was quite a greenish yellow.  Lynda didn't like it at all, but short of painting over our tree, what could we do?

In October 2003, after returning from almost a month away, Lynda and Joe decided to do some work in the guest bedroom.  The awful dusty rose carpet was marooned in that room by the new laminate in the hallway and it never did go with the paint anyway.  Lynda toned down the green in the yellow paint on the three walls opposite from the tree by painting it a warm and bright yellow which really took the acidity out of the room. She couldn't cover that last wall, but she sponged up to the edges of the leaves and did a good job of blending it in.  There had once been a window treatment so she filled the holes and then added a new modern curtain rod.  The curtains she picked out still have to be hemmed -- her firend Lynnda is helping with that.  When they are done, the room will be beautiful.  After all the painting was completed, the carpet was replaced with one in a neutral coffee colour and the improvement was considerable.  When the new curtains are up, Lynda will take a final picture of the room and you can see the finished product.
 

Kitchen and Breakfast Room, June 2004:
 

In June of 2004 Lynda decided to tackle the ugly wallpaper in the kitchen.  It was soooooo busy.  And with the kitchen being long it could sometimes feel dark with the darker wallpaper and the little 'fence' acting to shield the bottom of the window in the breakfast area.  Since Joe was going away for a conference and Lynda couldn't accompany him, she figured it was a good time to get it done.  She had no idea how much more work it was going to be than she'd thought.

She started by removing the wallpaper.  She'd expected it to be on top of painted wallboard.  It wasn't.  It was on top of another layer of wallpaper which was on unfinished wallboard.  Arrrrgh.  So she took it off anyway and started the process of repairing the wallboard and texturing it before beginning to prime the walls and ceiling.

The Breakfast area held a different surprise.  Under the wallpaper was a paint job.  A very scary paint job.  Pink on the top with darker pink on the bottom and marks from where a very high chair rail had been and to top it off, a stenciled lattice with roses.  Really.  I couldn't believe it either, but the proof is to your right.

There were a ton of holes to fill and the draperies to take down as well.  And anchors to pull.  I sometimes wonder just what it was C&R were hanging on their walls!  The paint job seen at the left took two coats of primer to cover it well enought to start the wall colour.  The ceiling was primed and painted as well using the same colour as the kitchen walls -- the Antique white seen in the living room but in a semi-gloss.  After the ceiling dried and the walls in the kitchen, it was time to mask and paint the colour Lynda picked out for the breakfast area: Butter Cookie!  A deliciously warm light yellow brown, Lynda thought it the perfect colour to brighten up the room.

Lynda made one more discovery.  After painting the rest of the kitchen and breakfast area, she discovered that she'd completely missed the pantry!  And the pantry was in desperate need of paint too.  So she emptied it out and painted it too.

After the paint dried, Joe made his contribution.  He helped Lynda screwing in the kitchen light fixtures (he needed to hold the nut in the attic) and he installed the ceiling fan as well.  That also involved him getting into the attick to attach the crossbar support for the fan, a job he left until mid-afternoon on a July Saturday.  Not the best plan -- he was dripping sweat after that and swears the attic was over 125ºF!  I believe him!  But Lynda was eagerly awaiting the time she could sit reading her morning newspaper as the sun poured into her new breakfast area, cooled by the ceiling fan above her.  With a little help from Lynnda, cafe curtains were sewn to add to the new curtains that Lynda bought for the room and hung from her new and beautiful curtain rod.  Looking at it now, we can't believe we lived as long with it as we did.  The only thing that Lynda was a little dissatisfied about was the ceiling -- the semi-gloss was too shiny for the ceiling.  Oh well, it could wait, after all we aren't going to tackle any more house projects for a while, are we?  Famous last words.

Living Room & Entry Flooring: Oct. 2004: 

In September of 2004 Lynda called her flooring guy to enquire about purchasing some more of the laminate used in the hallway and computer room.  Lynda and Joe had decided to start stock-piling the flooring in preparation for doing the living room and front entry when they had a quantity of it.  When Rick called them back to let them know the flooring had been discontinued, they were taken by surprise and decided they'd better buy all they would need for the living room, entry, diningroom and Master bedroom now!  And so began preparations for the next house project:  The Living room and Entry floor.

In October, Lynda arranged for the tile to be taken up from the floor of the entry and the laminate installed in the entry and living room.  Lynda also used this project as a chance to take down the overly flowery draperies over the livingroom windows and fill, patch and paint the holes from the curtain rods.  It was also a good chance to do a little touch up painting of the walls.  Although no big paint jobs were needed on the walls in these rooms, the trim all had to be sanded and painted and the quarter round painted in preparation for it's installation after the floor was in. 

Once everything was touched up, it became apparent that the kitchen trim couldn't stay in it's pathetic condition.  Once that was painted, the doors looked in bad need of a new paint job so five of them (master bedroom, dining room, pantry, laundry room and computer room) were taken down, sanded prepped and repainted.  At the same time the fireplace mantle was also repaired and repainted.  It has sustained some water damage at the bottom at one time which caused it to swell outwards.  Joe took the bottom portion off, sanded it down and we re-attached and re-painted it.  Then finally she admitted that the semi-gloss was too shiny for the kitchen ceiling and re-painted it in the same colour but with a satin finish.  The whole area now looks wonderful -- so clean and fresh.  Lynda is still deciding on what to hang over the windows but it's nice to have it plain for now while she decides on the perfect window treatment -- not busy, but with clean lines, and a warm colour. 

Note:  We actually left the windows bare for quite a while to 'cleanse the palate' from the busy flowery draperies that we kept from the previous owners.  As so much in the house changes to match our taste, we find that those old things don't fit any longer, but we have become used to them.  Hence the time needed to prepare for something new.  In May and June of 2005 Lynda and Joe tackled the master bedroom and bath.  This was a huge project and when they finished, they also found and hung curtains and a rod in the living room.  Projects 2, the next page in the series, chronicles this project and the remaining ones in the house.   In January 2005 Lynda found an advertisement for the perfect carpet for the living room in a Great Indoors flyer.  She ordered it and it arrived in February.