The trim came off easily and the priming began.  It was sooooooo satisfying to cover those cherubs in the white primer.  Instantly they are gone forever!  Good riddance.   Lynda worked on the closet at the same time.  After priming, she started to work on the ceiling.  Originally her plan was to mask the upper rectangle of the ceiling (formerly bordered by the trim) so she could paint it the lightest colour, called Parchment Paper, and then paint the rest a darker shade in the same family called Raffia Cream.  The trim was to be in the matching colour Gobi Desert which was also used in the bathroom.  One wall or four were to be painted a lovely green called Dried Thyme which matched with a part of the print hanging over the bed.  After some debate we decided on just the wall that the bed was against for the Dried Thyme colour. 

After painting all the walls in the bedroom and the closet ceiling, Lynda was ready to begin on the trim.  She certainly was enjoying using the mauve carpet as her drop cloth again.  The trim, originally painted with an oil paint, had to be sanded before the new latex paint could be applied.  With a main door, a closet door and a bathroom door as well as a window, there was a lot of trim to sand and paint.  When that was completed, the closet tear out happened and Lynda painted the closet in the Parchment Paper colour, the lightest of the three.

Soon after, Mike came and installed the flooring  -- the same laminate we'd installed in the rest of the house.  Once the laminate was in the closet, the installation of the custom closet could be done.  When it was completed, there was a place for everything in the new closet, including a built in laundry basket.  From that point on it was just a matter of hanging the new ceiling fan, the new closet light, bathroom lights, and putting up new mini-blinds, a curtain rod and a curtain.  Then we moved our furniture back in (and finally added the matching dressers to our bedroom set), re-filled our closet and hung our pictures.  June 10th was the magic date we moved back into the bedroom.  Although this was one of the hardest and most complicated rooms we have done, it was so worth it to have a relaxing sanctuary to call our bedroom. 
 
 

 
 

Library, Jan - Feb. 2006:

After the holidays, it was certainly time to think of doing the library.  Lynda had a plan.  Although she wanted to do the dining room first, it would be easier to move all the library furniture into the dining room while it still had carpet, so the Library would have to be done first.  For a long time Lynda had been dissatisfied with the library space.  Originally part of the house listed as "Formal Living Room" it was used by the previous owners as the husband's office/study.  Lynda was dying to get rid of the muddy walls and the trim on the walls and ceiling as well as the wallpaper on two walls which had seams coming up. 

Lynda chose the floral print chairs she had bought as her inspiration.  The chairs were bought to provide something in the room that would not clash with the chenille throw she'd given her father before he died and the batik pillow with a design reminiscent of the BC coastline.  So we definetly had to get rid of the green.  She decided the cream from the chairs for the walls and ceiling, using an ICI paint called "Light Navajo" and used the same colour as in the office for the trim, called Conneticut Blue.  This colour was also taken from the chairs, a perfect match to the lighter of the two blues.  The carpet colour was a shade of brown also found in the chairs, meaning that Lynda was using her favorite drop cloth again: the mauve or dusty rose carpet!  Yay!

She began by packing up the library -- quite a task as many of the shelves had a double layer of books.  She culled some, but had been keeping things pretty well in check, so there wasn't a lot to cull.  The the electrician was called to wire the ceiling for a light and fan.  Yes, Lynda and Joe love their ceiling fans.  If every we move back to Canada, we'll still want to have them.  The room had only had lights provided from the wall sockets, and Lynda thought an overhead light and fan was very much needed.  At the same time the electrician also wired the light and exhaust fan combo in the Master bathroom so that they could run the fan and light separately from the other lights.  After he was done, he offered to take the bookcases she was getting rid of off her hands and Lynda was happy to agree to that, making one less thing to worry about. 

Once the room was empty, it was time to tackle the wallpaper.  The seams had been coming up for a long time and the cats had even been tearing some of the loose overlap off under the window.  Lynda found that the top layer of the paper came off quite easily, except around the seams.  It appeared that the seams had been glued down with actual glue.  Also the "wood" trim at the top of the wallpapered walls was actually glued to the walls. Taking it off damaged the walls slightly.  The trim on the ceiling was also in small pieces and glued up in some places.  Lynda can't understand how somebody could put up trim on one straight stretch of wall and use three pieces -- one being less than 1 inch long.  Didn't the previous owners have a measuring tape?  So once the trim was down, out came the Dif (Lynda laid in a good supply of concentrate many rooms ago, and it's still going strong) and she began soaking the wallpaper and taking it down.  When it was all down, the walls were quite sticky, possibly the combination of glue and the tar and nicotine from the years of smoking in the house before Lynda and Joe bought it. 

Once the wallpaper was down, Lynda was appalled to see all the holes it had been covering.  There were at least 20 (no exaggeration) around the window plus the eight on the inside of the arch for the sheer that was attached to a flexible rod in there.  So Lynda located the Patch and Paint and started filling those holes and the ones she had made taking down the trim.  Then it was time to wash the walls.  Lynda was quite thankful that this time she didn't have to deal with unfinished wallboard, making that job that much easier.  After sanding the trim, Lynda put on two coats of a bright white primer to cover the muddy green and seal in any nicotine stains.  After priming the ceiling, and trim, it was time to put on the paint.  Lynda was concerned at first at how dark the "Light Navajo" looked, but that was when compared to the bright white primer.  Once the walls were dry, Lynda masked them in order to paint the trim.  She found that priming and painting the trim the same colour as the wall helped when it came time to mask as she didn't have to worry about any lack of overlap.  The trim was painted and then the carpet removed and the new carpet installed.  Lynda found that she had to do quite a bit of touch ups on the trim after the carpet was installed, but that's usually the case, she's found.  The new carpet looks lovely (and has no cigarette burns to try to strategically cover!).

Lynda had purchased some medium brown Billy Bookcases from Ikea that were perfect for the wall opposite the doorway.  One of them is even a corner bookcase, perfect for that space, but allowing access to the shelves even from behind the chairs which had been a problem in the previous set-up.  She put them all together herself one day and then Joe helped her move the other furniture back into the room.  Her friend Lynnda had suggested she map it all out before buying the bookcases to make sure of the fit, and that helped tremendously.  Once the shelves and cases were back in, she only had to fill them.  A job that took slightly longer than she anticipated because of the completely open possibilities for book and object placement.  Then when that was finished, Joe hung the ceiling fan and Lynda put up the new curtain rod and curtains.  The sheer gives them some privacy while still allowing in the light from the north facing, and the dark blue curtains can be closed for more privacy if needed and also pull out the midnight blue from the chairs.  Then Lynda re-did her Varekai shadow box using the t-shirt she wore while working for them. She re-hung it and the rest of the pictures, including a lighthouse painted by her mother which is a perfect accompaniment to Joe's Ships shelf theme. 

I must say that I prefer the "After" photo to the "Before". --Lynda

Dining Room Feb - March 2006:

Oh the end is so near...  Lynda can taste it  Although a trip is planned for March 2006, she decided she'd at least begin the dining room and then it will either be done or close to done when she returns from visiting her mom.