I apologize for being M.I.A. the last few weeks. Edward and I spent our week off doing some home improvement projects. Painting the living room, dinging room and hallway leading to the upstairs were on our agenda. Seemed like a simple task that could be tackled in one week...
I love, love, love my old village home (I wouldn't trade it for anything), but nothing is a simple task in an old home. I'm sure two rooms could have been painted in two days in a new build (which was not the case for us). We began the project by having my dad's friend do some electrical work that would allow us to install a ceiling fan in our living room. After the hole was cut in the ceiling, wires were run through the walls and into the switch on the wall - it was now time to start clearing out the rooms. Our office and spare bedroom upstairs were jam packed with everything from the living room and dining room. Which meant our cable was unhooked, leading to NO INTERNET, NO CABLE AND NO DVR FOR TWO WEEKS!!! I was dying. You don't realize how much you depend on those things. Instead of watching all my shows and surfing the web, Edward and I were confined to our bedroom watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia DVD's and playing board games.
My dad was the foreman for the week. He graciously took the week to come over every day and help us since neither Edward or I had done any projects like this before. We got a crash course in Painting 101 from the best teacher! I didn't realize how much prep work we had to do before the actual painting... which was the easy part. It was the three days before hand of sanding the old walls, around the trim, taping, etc. that surprised us both. The major hold-up to getting started painting was our ceilings. They are the popcorn kind and they weren't in the best shape. We were nervous that once we started painting, the areas around the cracks would collapse because they were soft. My dad began scrapping and scraping, patching and patching, and drying, and patching again, and sanding, and so on... three days later we had to build little tents around the patches and respray them with popcorn (what a mess). Once everything dried, we were finally able to paint the ceiling! Then we FINALLY moved to the walls.
My dad was in charge of cutting in around the ceiling. Quote of the week goes to him during this process.
Me: "Dad, you are really good at that."
Dad: "That comes with doing this for 30 years."
Me: "Your line is so straight and your doing it so fast."
Dad: (paint brush in one hand, can of Labatts Blue in the other) "Sign of a good cutter is doing it with one beer in him."
LOVE HIM:)
Over the following week we successfully painted the ceilings and walls of both rooms and hallway, retouched the stain around all the trim, added shoe molding that was missing around both rooms, installed the new fan in the living room and a new chandelier in the dinning room, new switches. Oh yeah... we also painted the grates on all of the heating vents and cold air returns. THAT was nasty stuff!
After all the work was done, it was time to clean the rooms top to bottom, put the furniture back in place, buy a new couch (ugh...the dimensions of this room were difficult to work with) and grab a new chair. I am currently typing this on my comfortable new couch. Yes, the black beauty is gone! For those of you who don't know, this was Ed's black leather couch from his bachelor years that we were still using. Now it has a new home in someone else's living room that were found from listing it on craigslist.com. Wall decorations need to be hung back up and I have six different curtains hanging up trying to decide which ones go best... yes I am crazy. MOM I NEED YOUR HELP (hopefully she makes it over here tomorrow so I can take back the ones I decide to get rid of).
By the way, the rooms look FANTASTIC! I love the way everything turned out. I will post the finished pics by the end of the week. Thanks for all your help, dad! We couldn't have done it without you!
No more house projects until after the honeymoon... time to relax a bit!!!
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