Goodbye Creepy Children (The Hallway, Phase 1)

With the end of summer in sight, we decided to try and tackle one more big project before heading back to work.  One of biggest projects we still have to complete in this house is definitely the hallway.  It begins with the foyer and front stairs, includes what we refer to as "the landing" at the top of the stairs, then continues down the upstairs hall and down the back stairs.  Its massive.  And the whole thing is wallpapered.

 

 

 

 

That's a whole lotta wallpaper! Creepy children wallpaper, to be exact! Its one of those things that you either love, or hate, and i can't say that either of us love it. 

"Girl Swings While Pondering Life"

"Boy Courts Girl With Clarinet"

"Ring Around the Rosie to the Sounds of Banjo Boy"

Although lots of people walk into the house and tell us how much they love it, it's just not our style.  But stripping all of that wallpaper is a big undertaking! So, we have decided to break it into three phases.  We are hoping to have the front hall and stairwell done before heading back to work.  Phase two will be the back stairs and upper hallway, and phase three will be the landing, since redoing the bookshelves will require a lot of work.  The final thing will be removing the red carpet on the stairs.  That way we can protect whatever is underneath while doing all this work.

So last weekend, Jeremy felt the wallpaper itch and started stripping the front hall.  Believe it or not, it came down in full sheets, and in about one hour we had the foyer and stairwell completely stripped back to the plaster and drywall.

 

 

Things were going great until we got to the very top of the stairwell, where we uncovered some unexpected water damage and mould. YIKES!

 

 

After having the roof inspected and repaired, we were able to carefully remove the crown molding, cut out the old drywall and replace it with a new sheet.

We have now been starting to patch and repair all of the damage which will be a fairly lengthy process.  Our goal is to have it completed by the end of the long weekend.  Just in time to return to work!

Dining Room Transformation: From Disaster to Delight

It's hard to believe that it's been 4 months now since we started this project.  This room was so dark and heavy feeling.  I know that's in keeping with Victorian style, but it's not the type of feeling we are going for. As a quick reminder, here's what we started with:

Our first step was removing the spindles and carpet.  We also took out the old bookshelf that was hiding an original door frame.

Then, down came the wallpaper and fake crown moulding.

After much debate, we ended up drywalling the top half of the room (ok, my brother drywalled the top half of the room for us!)

And then we started painting...and painting...and painting some more.

Finally, the new crown moulding went up, the drapes were hung and furniture was moved back in. Today I spent some time recovering the dining room chairs.  We had purchased the fabric back in the fall, but were waiting until the room was done to actually recover them.  It felt great to finally get this task done!

We still have a few small bits left to do like hem the curtains, paint the doors and stain some patches in the floor, but those will all be rainy day projects.  For now, this room is ready to be lived in again, and we love it!

  

Crowning the Dining Room

After a few busy weeks, we finally managed to get some more work done in the dining room this weekend.  The next thing on our to-do list was installing the crown moulding.  Jeremy and I have installed crown moulding many times before, and it's definitely not one of our favourite tasks.  It can be so hard to wrap your head around working upside down and backwards.  We also knew that our corners and ceiling would be way off.  They are 130 years old, after all!

See how the ceiling in the photo above slants up in the right corner?  This was not going to be easy!

Fortunately the crown moulding we wanted was on clearance at our local DIY store.  Unfortunately they didn't have enough in stock and we had to drive to another location 1.5 hours away to get more.  We went with a 5" crown that has a very detailed profile.  It matches all of our original trim really well, so the drive was worth it.  We are hoping to have enough left over to do the front hall as well (YAY! More crown moulding...).

The first thing we did was read and print off instructions from this blog which we found on Pinterest.  She gives very clear templates for cutting inside and outside corners and how the moulding should sit on the saw for each different one.  In the past we have tried to stand the moulding up to cut the angle, but with her instructions you lay the moulding flat on the saw.  It was so much easier!  We also purchased a handy angle measurer and printed off a list of mitre cuts for every angle imaginable. So with our angle measurer and the new mitre saw we got for Christmas, we were ready to go!

   

Installing crown moulding takes a lot of patience and precision. We literally were measuring twice and cutting once.  We also always cut our pieces a little on the large side, because you can take more off but you can't put it back on.  

So we're about 3/4 of the way through the room right now.  We still have the bay window to do, which has some very interesting angles in it.  Hopefully that goes ok!