Closing off the pocket door

Remember that cool pocket door that I loved, and carefully refinished and painted as part of my front entry makeover?  You can check that out here.  Well, it's gone, and now it seems like it was never there!

 Not a good photo at all, but essentially, I just primed and then painted over the wall patch with the same blue paint I had used before. I didn't put the base molding on because we are going to be creating some built-ins here, and so I'll add that in after I get the cabinetry built.

Like all the other drywall/plaster projects, this had tons of steps and seems like it takes forever.  First, we had to build out a wall with 2 x 4s, then cover that with drywall.

and then add a second layer of drywall, because the old walls are button board and a layer of old-fashioned plaster on top, for a thickness of 1".  Which means we have to put in two layers of 1/2" drywall, and then Dale does a layer of veneer plaster over it all to tie it together.

 

This is what it looks like from the kitchen side.  This wall looks monumental to me right now, but I think I'll get used to it as we move along.

 

This is the first coat of plaster to tie it all together.  I don't think I have any pics until I painted it all blue at the end.

So -- this is what it looked like with a pocket door.  Very cute, and I really liked it, but the door no longer made any sense --








And this is what it looks like now.  I do have big plans for the near future, however.





Meanwhile.....I also got the walls in the kitchen painted, and crown molding hung in most of the kitchen, but we still have a few small spots that need touchups along the beam, so I am in the middle of a few things.  Here's a little preview of some of the detail work I've been doing:

Trim around the beam and the ceiling in the kitchen where the wall has been smoothed out --















We continued to add the additional band 5" down from the ceiling to make the molding appear deeper.  This picture above is the first color I bought but I was  not happy with it -- too minty, so the new color is a more celery green.


So - there is a little more done, but right now we're in Indiana visiting our cute little grandson (oh, and the rest of the kids, too!).  We drove this time, and had a fun time, so I'll add that post later this week.  In the meantime, here's a picture of Parker J to tide you over:

The little drummer boy!

abc.....

I'd pinned several alphabet walls on Pinterest, and started picking up various letters about 6 months ago.  We finally got the last one done today (a D), so this evening, we laid them out and found an arrangement we liked.

 We measured the area of the wall we wanted to cover, and kept moving them until we liked the way they looked.  Assisted by Supervisor Kitty.

 (Our other Supervisor Kitty is on his union-mandated break)

So we nailed them up, but some of them need command strips behind them to keep them from tilting.  After we got them up, I don't like the plain white of the i, so I'm going to paint it tomorrow. 

 A broader view of the room, with Supervisor Kitty posing for her glamor shot.

Tomorrow we are going to visit my brother who lives in Los Angeles; he and his wife are going to be giving us some banana trees and other assorted plants from their lush yard.  Maybe we can get that hot desert backyard some more shade!

Entry finished

A marathon carpentry and paint session yesterday, and touch ups this morning and I have the entry hall done.  I can't believe how much bigger and nicer it feels.  I was worried that by using a tinted paint (compared the the pale beige it was) might make it look smaller.  Maybe it's just that when we removed the paneling, the dark wallpaper and ceiling make it look so small, that now, anything looks better!  At any rate, I'm delighted with it.

This is my attempt to get the whole thing to fit in one picture!  And of course, a cat walks through.

What I love most is that the doors all look great again:

 

I added casings around all the doors, and baseboard and crown molding.  I haven't done anything with the front door yet, I'd love to replace it with a new full view door.  So right now, it still has the old paneling on it, because it's just a flat slab underneath.

 We have three pocket doors in our house. Two of them had paneling applied, so I am glad to see this one in all it's glory.  I'd like to attack the one in the living room next.

 None of the rooms have base molding, so we are adding it in each room we do.  Although this house is essentially a mid-modern style, we prefer a more a traditional style.

  I'm also adding crown molding in each room, as well as a picture molding band 5" down and treating them all together.  I do notice that this makes the rooms feel wider. 

So - now I've got this done, I'm packing and hitting the road to meet up with my daughter in Pismo Beach for a mother/daughter getaway!

Ready to move furniture in!

After the earlier disaster of too-bright yellow, I went back and got another gallon of paint, this time a tint lighter and also changed from satin to flat.  So much happier! This color I love. 



I also finished out the trim work around the wardrobe.  The wardrobe pieces we bought  from IKEA are not as deep as our closet space.  We considered bringing them up to the front, but hated to waste any space in this little house!  We can always use that extra 6" to hang hooks for belts, etc.




So I built out the trim and finished off the edges.


Oh no!  The door hardware was hitting the top of the closet - just barely, but enough to drag and cause them to be difficult to open/close.  So we took the whole thing down - doors, trim, etc, and dropped the doors 3/4", which was the size of the wood I had that would fit.  Put everything back up, then...oh, dang, now they're dragging the bottom!  Just barely, so we took the whole thing apart again, and trimmed it by 1/4".  Needless to say, Dale was not thrilled to install the doors 3 times instead of once, but he knows 1) if I am not happy with it, I will be miserable and probably complain forever, and 2) he is a really good sport and as long as I feed him well and give him enough breaks, he's willing to go the extra mile or two.

So now the doors are perfect, and I rebuilt all the trim and repainted and I'm happy! They look beautiful, they slide along ever so nice.







Lots of storage and clothing space--














I think I'm going to add a shelf over the bar on the right, to store blankets and pillows for my visitors.










I also installed crown molding and new baseboards and installed nice beech wooden blinds.  This morning I scrubbed the floor - we'd love to refinish all the floors but there are so many things ahead of that in the line, but they're not too bad if I go over them with pine cleaner, water, a putty knife and steel wool - inch by inch! - and then polish them back up.  They'll do for now.

Next post will be the furniture and decorating.  I have an old iron bed that I've repainted to match different rooms - this time it'll be cheerful and red to match the decorating scheme I've come up with. I've also repainted an old record cabinet that I had installed mosaic fronts and sides to - it was originally dark green to match our bedroom years ago.  It looks much fresher with a coat of ivory paint.  It looks like we'll have everything ready for my daughter when she comes in a little more than a week!  Pictures to come.....

Studio - cleaned up

I finished painting this morning while watching/listening to the Rose Bowl parade - I really like the gray because it's such a sunny room, and this makes it feel cool and relaxing.

Gray is a nice neutral that makes the colors of the artwork pop.











 Another reason I want to get it all cleaned up is so that I can some work done in here! 

I  have a lot of messy things in here - Dale wanted me to get closed doors on my shelves since they're usually full of oddball things, but that limits the size of what I can put in them.

The color is Polished Silver by Valspar.

Now to change up some color around here...

When we bought the house, it had been professionally painted - walls, trim, ceilings - which made it feel clean, but all the walls are this ghastly tan color.  I hate it.  But I have many other things to do, so at least we know they're clean.  But the tan is getting to me, so I started painting my studio this evening - a nice silvery gray.

 

Dale hates gray.   So he came home, saw the can of paint and says, "oh, now it's ON."  He wants to paint the living room - which is also the same gross shade of tan.  But I can't decide what color to paint it - we tend to like pretty powerful colors.  I'm contemplating black or a deep navy blue - but I don't know if we have enough white trim out there to pull it off.  The white in the studio - the wainscoting and the trim and all the furniture - make the gray a definite neutral.  I would like the same gray in the bathroom, but since Dale hates it.....

Anyway - got one coat on the walls tonight - tomorrow I'll finish up and post some pictures of the finished room with all the paintings hung back up!