Well, our last group of summer visitors left yesterday. We spent the evening enjoying the relative peace and quiet, but I woke up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to take advantage of the cool morning and get a jump on a new project.
Our entry space, like the living room, is paneled and the paneling is painted. It's not my favorite, but it's liveable. However, one thing I really don't like is that they also paneled over the doors and removed all the casings and trim around the doors. I love the doors in this house - they have 3 panels and they're very retro. So I wanted to do what I had done to the bathroom door - remove the paneling, sand down the door and repaint. Luckily, the previous renovators had only used glue and not nails, so I have have to pry the paneling off and remove all the extra spacing. Then I sand it down (and sand and sand), and repaint 3 coats of nice white paint.
I figure if I do one door each morning (there are 4 doors in this little entry way!), by the end of the weekend, I'll have some nice doors to break up the paneling. And that was really a good idea. Too bad I didn't stick with it.
After I got the closet door down, sanded and with the first coat of paint drying, I decided I wanted a little peek behind the paneling, just to see what was there. And I also wanted a peek underneath the acoustic ceiling tiles, to see if there were any obvious cracks that would explain why someone would cover the ceiling with them.
An hour later, and I've got paneling and ceiling tiles all over the place, and the hallway now looks HORRIBLE! LOL - this is what most home improvement projects are like. You start one little thing....
Whew. This is one ugly little space now! I was contemplating painting this little area a black or deep blue and then painting a white pattern over it - some kind of stencil - but after seeing how dark and cavelike it looks, well, it's going to get painted a nice light color.
Isn't this the ugliest wallpaper ever?!
And the ceiling tiles - they had gold glitter all over them - fancy!
They'd been painted white several times, so it wasn't until we pulled them down that we could see some unpainted areas. The good news was that the ceiling was in fine shape - apparently they just wanted it to be sparkly here. We also have ceiling tiles all over the living room and kitchen ceilings -- we'll get those taken care of when we get to those rooms. Underneath, the ceiling was painted a dreary shade of brown - we'll patch up the nail holes from the furring strips and give it a couple of coats of stain blocker to cover that awful brown.
But I have my work cut out for me now - scraping wallpaper off these walls. I got a start, just using a spray bottle and a putty knife, but I had to take a break and go out and get the scoring tool and a better scraper, so I'll have plenty of work to do this week. Got some good podcasts loaded up on the ipod, so it looks like I'll get caught up on my listening.
Oh, and that door? It looks great - although it's the only thing in the entry that does right now!
One down, 3 to go.
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| I seriously love these doors!! |
1 comment:
Seriously, that's awesome! We spend the past 5 years doing that on a home we sold last year. Sometime in the 70's they took out all the original mouldings from the home (except the closet)and replaced it with hollow core doors, paneling, and drop ceiling tile. It's hard to believe that was considered tasteful. Anyway, I admire what you are doing. I'm envious of the doors. Can't wait to see what it looks like after your done.
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