Christmas at 220 Cochrane

Christmas truly is my favourite time of the year!  I love the music, the smells of cinnamon and gingerbread, and the decorations.  We go pretty crazy around here with the decorations, and we've been hard at work getting it all done.  We put the finishing touches on both the indoor and outdoor decorations this past weekend, so here's a few shots of how things are looking these days.

 

Now that our decorating is done, I guess it's time to start baking and shopping and wrapping...

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!

Dining Room Update

It's been a while.  Sorry about that!  We got caught up in drywall dust and paint.  We also decided to take a break from our dining room project for a few weeks.  Sometimes living in the midst of a reno just gets to be too much.

When I last posted, we had just uncovered 100 year old wallpaper after making the decision to drywall over the cracked plaster.  We are both so glad that we made that decision when we did!  My brother spent a few days working on the drywall for us and he did such a great job.  We used 1/4" which is the thinnest drywall you can get.  It matched up with the moulding and trim beautifully which was my biggest concern.

Once the drywalling was done, we were able to begin wallpapering the squares inside the wainscoting to cover the cracks and smooth out the old plaster.  Some of them were in very rough shape! We also added a small moulding to the perimeter of each of the squares to finish them off.  We always felt like they were lacking that final detail. Then the priming began.

The trim and new drywall all needed to be primed before we could do three coats of Dove White.  There's a whole lotta trim in this room!  We're actually still not done it all yet, but we couldn't wait to see the Revere Pewter (the same colour that we did in the living room) on the top half.  So this is where we are today, almost three months after we started this project:

Our to-do list is still pretty long.  We have to:

-install trim around the patio door

-finish all of the painting

-paint both doors black

-order and install the new medallion

-order and install the crown moulding

-hang the drapes

-paint and recover the dining room chairs

It seems like a lot, but when I look at how far we have come, it's not really that much.  Some of it will wait until a rainy day (like painting the chairs) so hopefully soon I will have a reveal post to write!

Uncovering the Past

Well, after much talking, debate, and poking and prodding of the walls last night, we decided that drywalling really is the best route to go.  We felt that if we ever do want to paint the room in the future, it would be best to have all of the prep work done now.  At first, we were thinking of drywalling just three walls, and doing something else with the fourth wall that had already been drywalled over many years ago.  But that's when the poking began, and we realized that the old layer of drywall was barely hanging by a few nails.

I started picking at a small corner of it, thinking I would just take down a small piece and see what's underneath.  That's when we found this:

I couldn't stop there! Within about 30 minutes, we had the whole wall down.  The wallpaper underneath is beautiful.  If it was in better condition, we would actually consider keeping it. 

The gypsum board that we removed is dated 1944.  We figure the wallpaper looks like it's from the 20's, and was probably put up just before the Depression, then was covered over once the economy had recovered.   Underneath this layer are two others, one that is VERY dark (probably from the turn of the century) and another lighter green floral that we think was most likely the first paper from when the house was built in 1883.  It goes all the way down the wall, behind the wainscoting panels.

 
Tomorrow we plan on starting to drywall the room.  We'll be using 1/4", the thinnest that you can buy.  We don't need it to be structural, just a good clean surface to prime and paint or wallpaper over.

I'm certainly glad we found this though!  It's like stepping back in time, which is what we were hoping to do as we go through the process of renovating this old house, which is finally starting to feel like our home.

Dining Room Disaster

It's now been 10 days since we started the dining room, and I'm feeling like we've barely even scratched the surface (literally!).  Things started out great.  We started removing the bottom squares of wallpaper, which came off really well.  In most areas there was only one layer so we were able to take them right back to the plaster.

It was when we started the top half of the room that things got slow, frustrating, and rather sticky.  

The top layer has been coming off great in some areas.  There are some spots where they used white glue, so it's REALLY stuck to the plaster. We haven't decided how to tackle those spots yet.

On most of the walls, however, there are multiple layers.  Under the top layer, we found a bird motif which had been primed over.  Under it is a really thick (almost like cardboard) flower pattern. Unfortunately these two layers are just not coming off.  We've tried using a scoring tool and special wallpaper razor blade, but even they're not working. 

So we now have some decisions to make.  We've been researching different solutions, and have come up with two possibilities.  

Option #1: Drywall over the top half of the room.  This will work well in most areas, but in some spots it's been done previously and there's very little depth left on the door trims.  With this option we would be able to paint the top half.

Option #2: Prime the walls, use a thick wallpaper lining to cover the many bumps and imperfections, then wallpaper over top.  In some ways, this option feels like we are just adding more layers to the ones already on the walls, but it will do the job and give us the finished look we are going for.

At this point, we are strongly considering option #2.  Although I don't love the thought of adding more wallpaper, it does go with the age of the house, and I feel like it adds warmth to a space.

We found this option at Bouclair, which is reasonably priced and goes with our design plan.

So that's where we stand right now.  Sticky glue, many layers, and more wallpaper on the horizon.