Living Room ceiling done!

Many thanks to my cheap labor and good friend James for his 40-some hours of work sanding, caulking, priming and painting my living room ceiling. I have been criticized by some people for not keeping the wood stained, but it wasn't that nice in the first place and that's so not my taste anyway. It looks so much better now, it really opens up the room. It looked a ski lodge before, and that's fine for some people, but it's not what I am going for here at all. Now I just need to get the new lights up to see if they work in the space, and I can get started on the rest of this room.

No more ugly wall!

I'm finally making some progress on the dining room. You might remember the before picture:



Since then I've repaired the plaster above the window, skim coated some of the bigger spots where the first layer of wallpaper actually came off, and painted over it with an oil based primer. All that's left is to prime and paint the trim, paint the window and put up the new wallpaper! Here's how it looks so far. Already a huge improvement.

My contaminated yard.

This was supposed to be the "second of all" in my last post, but I didn't have time to finish.

Yesterday I was talking with my neighbor about her yard and she told me that the EPA had replaced her whole yard because it was contaminated with arsenic. I did some checking around the internet and found out that mine is too! In fact, she and I are 2 of only 3 lots on our block that had levels of arsenic that were too high. I do wonder why this was not disclosed to me in the buying process. The good news is that I should be getting a new yard. The back yard should be done this year. The bad news is the front yard could take up 5 years to be done. I'll keep you updated on this story! Here's some links to read about what is going on.

US EPA website
The Deets

Bedroom almost there.

First of all, I am almost done with the bedroom. There is a built in armoire type thing that I had to paint and fix up, and I love it. It looks so cute now! All I have left in the bedroom is the refinish the doors.

One room almost done!

I've been getting overwhelmed at everything that needs to be done so I've been trying to focus on one room, the bedroom. You can see how scary it was before, I think it's come a long way and I'm pretty proud of myself, I did this all on my own!
There is a little cove area where I plan on putting my computer.
The before picture:



After! The color here is not quite right, the next pic is more accurate.


And here are my new sconces. I am kicking myself for not taking a before picture, you should have seen the things that were up there before. The were candle sconces, off white with pink, green and blue flowers, with an orangy-red bulb. Scary.

Painting

Let me start off by saying that I never knew what a huge pain in the ass painting is. The prep work really sucks. I have so much wood with built ins and trim and doors, etc.. that I don't know if I'll ever get it done! One step at a time. I do have a helper. One of the main issues was the living room and the vaulted ceiling. I had hired a painter and they guy flaked out on me, never showed up or called. So my friend James is helping me for free (well, maybe for some pizza and White Castles). You can see the way it started out, with the wood stained black(ish) and pink painted in between. I'm going to be boring and do all white for the ceiling. Originally I wanted to put the color the walls will be (light lime green) on the pink area between the white beams, but that would just be so much more work. Too much taping, too much detail, too much to drive me even further insane than I already am from this!! Sorry for the crappy quality of this pic, I forgot my camera and had to use my cell phone.

A cool find

I'm in the midst of another disaster (don't I make this whole owning a home thing sound so fun?!) involving a permit (or rather lack there of) but I did manage to find something good in the mean time. As we tore out the wall above the fireplace we found a bunch of old newspaper that was used as insulation. It's enclosed in this bag, which has preserved it pretty well. It's not quite in full sheets, but there is definitely enough to read. The papers are all dated between Feb and June of 1929 so far. I've taken a few pictures. I'll take some more as I go through them.