2007- Project Number 1

Our second project for the year, is going to be the front room. Regular readers of my blog will remember that this was going to be project 3 for last year... (or was it 4?) but the porch took longer than planned and then I went and got hurt. OK.. so that said.. I give you project number 1. Ms. Thang's bedroom. I'd like to tell you that these are before photos.. but they are not. They are mid-way photos even though I took them today. We are going to paint, finish the trim, and have ordered her new furniture. That bed used to be mine. It's 23 years old.



See when we bought the house 5 and half years ago... Ms. Thang's bedroom had some floral wallpaper. It was cream with dark red flowers, and it was pretty. Thing is that it was old, and starting to peel off. Her room is small and so we thought, heck, we'll take it down, paint it up and be done with the room. How wrong we were. We took down the wallpaper, and discovered this lovely yellow underneath. I don't know why people think that yellow is a good color to paint houses. Maybe a pale yellow would be ok, so long as it's not too lemony. This dark red trim was obviously added into the closet and the shelves when the red floral wallpaper went up. Anyhow.. back to the yellow walls. At first I wasn't phased. No biggie I thought, couple of coats of a good primer, and it will cover that right up. Closer inspection revealed that wasn't to be the case.




That yellow paint, it turns out.. was on top of wallpaper. Closer inspection showed that it was adhered to un-primed drywall. We actually found a fresh wall underneath the wall next to the bathroom. The bathroom addition was an afterthought later on in the houses life, after the bathroom came into existence. The sink was installed in 1984 according to notes on the plumbing lines. We stopped working on Ms. Thangs room while we figured out how to proceed.

One day we were at Home Depot and came across masking paper that was on clearance. What you do with this paper, is prime your wall.. put it up.. prime again and paint until your heart's content. Hides a whole range of wall sins. Awesome we thought. Just what we need. Hopefully there will be enough left for the playroom (contact paper over raw drywall.. who does this stuff?!?). So anyhow... we weren't ready for this kind of project at the time.

Last fall we decided we'd do it this year over April vacation. Well here we are. Today we cleared out the bedroom, minus the two big furniture pieces that will come out tomorrow. While Ms. Thang and I went through all of her things and decided what to keep and what to toss and which clothes still fit and which do not... The Boy started removing some peeling drywall tape from the ceiling edges. He called me over a short time later to show me what he discovered. That yellow painted wallpaper, was masking paper. Underneath it, was some blue floral wallpaper... attached to raw drywall. Now we have to decide where to go next. Do we try and take down all the yellow, and then prime and paper.. prolonging the project.. or just paper over the whole mess. The OCD in me might reign it's ugly head, I hate to do a project half assed. We'll see.