pictures of the finished living room project

Here they are at last.


The fireplace. Okay, we aren't completely finished. We still have to pick an accent color for that white part. And as a reminder: the brick was already painted. I tried scraping the paint off. And it's not happening. So we painted over it.


Looking at the southwest wall.

Looking toward the front door.

Coming Soon!

COMING SOON...

To a blog near you (ie this one):

Photos of a finished living room in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I have a very little bit left to finish tonight, then it will be done. Bill and I persevered and got 'er done. The painting that is. Yes, there are still the floors that have to be refinished. But that is for another time. Right now, in this moment of remodel history, we have the painting portion complete!

Stay tuned for pictures...

Updates

I have a few pictures to share. First, for our Quota Christmas party I decided to make rice krispy treats. I took a page out of Jenny's book and used a cookie cutter to make them more holiday appropriate. I found the last snowman cookie cutter when I was out shopping on black Friday. So here is Wally Jr. (named after the snowman marshmallow that Heather made for my 30th birthday, click here to see him).

This is a picture from the side, so you can see his three dimensions. He's a snowman, he doesn't mind showing off his roundness.

And here's the living room with the curtains hanging up.

the rest of the living room

What started in August is now almost complete. To remind you of what it looked like back in September, click here. The dusty, dirty part is done. Finally. Through lots of pain, blood, sweat and perhaps a few tears (of course I cried. I got a hot paint speck in my eye. I'm okay now).

Here, Bill is using the heat gun to remove the many layers of paint (I could count five).

Bill patched the walls with plaster compound. We decided to remove all the layers of paint from the wood molding, but only the top layer of paint on the walls. Once we started heating up the trim, that top layer on the wall just peeled off. So that was the easiest part of the entire job.



You can see here all the different molding. There is a fluted, flat molding on the ceiling, then the crown molding, next is the picture rail molding (yes, we use hooks to hang our pictures from this, instead of pounding nails into the plaster walls), the inside molding creates a frame. We call it the frame molding, and it was most likely not original to the house.



Cleaning the dust out of the picture rail molding before priming.
Bill gets paint on the walls, while I fix dinner. After dinner we busted it out and were finished painting the walls (second coat) by 9pm. All that is left is the trim. I can handle that. It might not be until the new year, but I am happy to have this much finished.


A very dusty camera lens

Ta Da!

There will be one more post once the trim is finished. For now, it's time to prepare for Christmas!

The Living Room Project

Since we moved in three years ago we knew we wanted to paint the living room. For three years we had not done anything to this house. Every room was pretty much colors we would have chosen, or at least weren't hideous enough that we didn't feel it necessary to do anything right away. As our three year anniversary came and went, we received news that Bill's parents would be coming back to visit. Their first visit was July after we first moved in. That kicked me into gear.
"We haven't done anything!" We have to get going. The other thing that was holding us back was choosing the right color for the living room. The dingy beige had to go. Especially after Bill did some patching and painted with the existing paint did we realize how dingy and dirty the walls really were!

I quickly took down the wallpaper in the bathroom and painted the walls there. You can see a picture here. Maybe in that post I mentioned how we came to chose the new color; if not here is the reason. I was reading about the difference between old Colonial Revival interiors and Craftsman interiors. Colonial interiors were often white walls. While Craftsman interiors reflected colors in nature, typically green. That was also the opposite color [on the color wheel] of the natural wood trim found in these style homes. That was my "ah ha!" moment. The unpainted trim in our living room has orange hints in it. Blue is opposite orange on the color wheel. That was it. Blue walls would enhance the wood trim that is throughout the first floor. In my mind I knew what color blue I wanted. Bill and I thought we found the right shade and bought a quart to try out. Thank goodness we did that. It was too blue. Smurf blue! Yikes. Back to the paint store. We finally found the right shade with the right tones. It's really difficult to tell in the photos, but the blue has hints of gray. It may still be a little too blue, but the white molding helps offset the walls.

But that's just the beginning. As we started stripping the paint off the trim, the paint started peeling off the walls in sheets. We don't think there's wallpaper under all the layers of paint. We think that there are just too many layers, latex over oil-based, and eighty years worth of paint on the walls.

We're working in sections. Or at least we started that way. We have the one corner finished, with the exception of the trim being painted. We worked from Bill's week off while his parents were here until Labor Day weekend. We took a break and are back at it. We hope to be finished by Christmas! I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, if you come and visit, please pardon the dust!

Over the framed opening into the Dining Room.

The fireplace and framed opening into the Dining Room.

Looking back at the finished half.