Monday, November 1, 2010

Project Central

Life is comprised of many, many small and large projects for us right now. They all fall under the major headings of "homeownership" and "parenting" really though. First for the "home" projects.
These curtains in the living and dining just had to go. Tried Craigslist to get some money out of them--but had no takers.
On to The Wallpaper. This house was and is covered in Wallpaper. All over. Layers of wallpaper, as you can see from the above photo. We peel off one layer, and there is an even more hideous one and so on and so forth. They have even painted over wallpaper in one room and textured over it in another. The two kid's rooms are where we started peeling. We were eager to get the paper off, paint the rooms the colors we like and finally move in all the kids' stuff.
We first tried chemicals and hot water to peel it off. That was beyond painful. Next, Tadd's boss loaned us a steamer--MUCH easier. Peeling the wallpaper has revealed another problem unfortunately...no texture on the walls beneath the wall paper. They even wrote "no texture" on the wall to make sure the contractors didn't put any there 25 years ago when they built the house. Now we are faced with a.) trying to dig up the money to pay someone to texture for us, b.) attempting to texture ourselves, c.) leaving the walls bare and ugly and just moving on with life until a much later date.

And furniture refinishing. This delightful china hutch that I found on Craigslist is in the middle of its transformation. Not shown are a child's dresser that will be painted for either Ezra or Caroline to use and a set of bunk bed frames that my parents gave me. There are still many boxes to be unpacked, organized and put away. Many of these boxes can't be put away until other projects are finished....like the kids' rooms renovations and the hutch refinishing.
I figured that the easiest way to pretty up the yard was to put in some bulbs. We aren't able to focus on the landscaping the way we'd like to yet, so this will prettify things come spring, at least.
So--any of you who love projects and are out of your own--feel free to come work on ours! Haha, just kidding. I suppose that taking on one thing at a time would be a lot easier and more fun. But where's the challenge in that????
On to the parenting projects.
Project number one and his "Gun Show":
Project One and Project Two:
Project Three:
Airing our dirty laundry.

If you don't hear from me for a while, I might be buried under one or more of these projects...

4 comments:

Kirsten said...

Oh, that last pic with caption is just HILARIOUS!

I'm so very sorry about the wallpaper. Haven't dealt with that, but can definitely sympathize with one task revealing yet another problem:/.

Looking forward to seeing you SOON!!

Unknown said...

Hmmm, I'm thinking after not having any drapery in my dining room for awhile, yours is looking pretty good! ;)Not envious of your wallpaper projects/texturing dilema at all. The kids still seem to figure out how to have fun amongst it all though. Hang in there!♥

Megan Miller said...

Wish I could come help! Course, 3 years after living in this house I still have a list of projects a mile long. Bit of encouragment there for you.

The picture of Nora in the basket reminds me so much of Lucas at that age. (Lucas was a beautiful baby :)Never thought they looked alike before

NaomiG said...

:-) Ugh, house projects. I'm right there with you, and we've been in this house for 2.5 years. Your child projects are darling though. :-)

I'm sure you've thought of all this, but Naomi can't help suggesting things. She likes to be in fix-it mode. :-)

1) a linen or simple wallpaper... just for now. I know, I don't like that idea either, wallpaper is generally sort of nasty. But, at least it would look finished while you worked on other things for a few years.

2) since you have no texture on the walls, how about a magnet primer with chalkboard paint over the top?! With chalkboard paint in whatever color you wanted, and dust free chalk, that might be fun for a kids room, and you could totally texture and paint over it when they get tired of it.

3) forget the texture and go with a hi-gloss paint. I've seen people do it before to cover the fact that there's no texture, and it looked pretty good. Bonus: it would wipe off pretty easy since it is a kids bedroom.

4) Cans of touch up texture can be bought from home depot. I just checked mine and it covers 110 sq feet on the fine setting. It wouldn't be perfect, but then you could paint and deal with it again a few years down the road. It would definitely be cheaper than paying someone to texture.

Ok, I'm done now. Gotta love all the cool stuff off craigslist!!