Before and After #1

I've been neglecting my all-encompassing blog duties in order to work on a long-overdue home improvement job. Over the last few weeks I've been putting my kids to bed and then spending an hour or two every evening working on my dining room. The most important lesson I've learned in all this is that in my next life, I need to come back as a rich person. That way, I can sip margaritas on a beach in the Caribbean while someone else does all the hard work back at the mansion.

After stripping off about 4 layers of painted-over wallpaper, some of it with raised black velvet swirly patterns on it, this is what we had to work with:

And the after pics:

It became apparent pretty quickly that I am no drywaller. My seam work was atrocious, so I believed the folks at Home Depot when they claimed I could hide all manner of ugly with some popcorn texture paint and a special roller. I have never made such a mess in all my life. But believe it or not, this disaster actually looks better than my "smooth" ceiling. That said, I'd never, ever do it again, and I would not recommend it to a friend.

Because of the big, bright south-facing window, we picked a dark red for the walls. I thought it'd be a good idea to try it out on the primer first, just to make sure I liked it. And also to drop the Captain a subtle hint.

The walls were in bad shape, and my attempts at smoothing them out were not wholly successful, but the dark colour hides a lot. At night, when there's no glare, the finish almost looks professional! Almost.

Obviously, the work is not finished. When the Captain comes home (NEXT WEEK!!!), we're going to get some nice big white moldings up to make the wall colour pop, and we'll be putting laminate down for that classy hardwood-but-not-really look.

Speaking of which, it's time to start patching the dents in the sub-floor. Groan. There'd better be a pair of shoes in this for me.