January 23, 2004

•    Lesee..it's been many months since I posted. I won't bother backing up about what has been going on for the last ..5? months. I will just start with this week.

  
  

     Thanks to the encouragement of my loving hubby, we started painting the dining room. He really wanted the room red, and red is realllly purty but I just don't think the color would flow with the rest of the colors that are going to be downstairs and in the house. So I suggested purple. Aubergine to be exact * eggplant to those who don't know the language of looveee ...French*. And a white ceiling just WON'T do of course!  Behr makes this awesome metallic paint that is sold at Home Depot. So I wanted to throw caution, and $20, to the wind and paint my ceiling gold. Yep. Metallic GOLD. And OH MY FRIENDS does it look NICE! It took a coat of primer, and two coats of gold, and my poor hubby had one wicked sore neck from painting it, but it is looking fiiinne.

  
  

    The walls. Ah the walls. Four HOURS to take off 2 wall borders. God bless the people who we bought our house from 2 years ago this past December. You see, our house is an old house, the oldest part which is dated to at least 1774. There is also a 100 year old portion, a 75 year old portion, a large garage which was built in the 1950s, a porch that is probably from the same era * but they TORE OFF the wrap around porch AHHH *. The house was owned by the same family up until about 25 years ago or so, and when the prior owners bought it they did a TON of work on it. All we have to do is dress it up, put in some insulation, and paint. Almost everything is white, and white is SO dull! lol We wanted to live with the house a while before we painted. Well its been two years and now we are painting. We spent all of our time working on the gardens * which there weren't any * and that has taken a LOT of time. They are looking REALLY nice.I will be sure to post pictures as things bloom....but I digress...

  
  

    The dining room is a beautiful room in the 200 + year old part of the house. Large, about 14 x 14, with a 3 window bay and one more window. There are wood floors and an enclosed fire place that I hope to one day open up and install a pellet stove or a wood burning stove * which I would prefer, but hubby wants a pellet stove ..we will cross that bridge if or when we get to it. Now back to the dining room walls..

  
  

    The people we bought our house from took 4 or 5 layers of wallpaper off the walls in the dining room, which uncovered the original horse hair plaster, which was/is in very good shape. They then painted the wall bottom green to chair rail height, and yellow above that with a border in between. The room was white when we moved in, with another border applied over the original PAINTED border * ARGH *. Thing is, the bottom border was applied directly to the horse hair plaster with NO sizing. NO primer * or the wrong or cheap primer *. GADS. It took me four hours, using a clothing steamer * thank you LORD I bought that last year! * to get the border off. Man ... someone remind me how nasty wallpaper is to remove if I EVER think of putting it up! Give me paint anyday. Oh one thing, when they removed all those layers of wallpaper, the very bottom layer was handpainted wallpaper dated 1774. Nice eh? Gives us a base date on the house, because the original deed was filed in 1800. It wasn't filed before then because there was no place to file a deed in the county. I still need to go to the Historical Society and find out all I can about the house.

  
  

    So we then painted the room with a primer that was tinted close to the base color of the walls. I have two darker shades from the color strip which I am going to mix with a water/glaze mix and either do a ragged,  plastic bag or color wash technique. I am going to do some tests on the wall soon and see what looks best. I can't WAIT! Then I can paint the ceiling fan flat black with gold accents, hang my curtain rods, make my curtains, and hang my Pier One mirror. Eventually I will refinish my side board. That will be a summer project though.  I am so excited.

  
  

     I  think I need to get out more.

  
  

      So this weekend is part two of the dining room painting. I will post pics as we get more done. Mike took before pics and some in progress pics, but I have no idea where he put my digital Nikon.

  
  

  Kattt*ReddKatt*

  • 2:29 am
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