Monday, December 3, 2012

Living Room Redo

We adopted our dog three weeks ago and immediately started to remodel our living room. We have a front and back stairs which helps since the living room is a main connecting room to the rest of the house. All the furniture is just crammed into other rooms on the first floor so we are living in craziness, but it is temporary and the end is in sight.
 Living Room - before - wallpaper from the '70s, old window treatments, painted woodwork.
 Living Room - before - the ceiling was the major reason for this project. The plaster was cracked and getting worse. Even Rob had to admit when we came home after our vacation at the beach that we had more cracks. We've had friends who have dealt with plaster unexpectedly falling from the ceiling. While we expected the plaster to hang on for years, we really couldn't be sure.
 Living Room - before - fireplace has green so the new color on the walls will have to work with the green. We had originally wanted a red living room, but we had forgotten about the green.
 Living Room - before - looking out into the dining room. We've stripped some of the wood in the dining room back to the original color and decided to do the same in the living room.
 Living Room - before - It is hard to see the plaster damage in these pictures, but if you look up next to the curved window it is more noticeable. Not only cracked along the window, but it is also a bit bowed down. This was the main worry for me.
 Living Room - during - Eric Erl is the man for the job. He works on several houses around the park and does excellent work. He pays attention to details and can do almost anything. He made sure the entire room was sealed off with plastic before starting the plaster demo.
 Living Room - during - one of the reasons for taking all the plaster out instead of patching is electricity. We just had old knob and tube in the ceiling and we wanted a ceiling light and fan.
 Living Room - during - while Eric has the woodwork off the windows, he is also fixing the weights. We haven't been able to use the windows in the living room for the six years we've lived here and I'm sure they have been painted shut for many years prior to our buying the house.
 Living Room - during - I love old construction. It was comforting to see how well everything is built. Our house has wonderful "bones". I was worried the bowing of plaster near the window might have been water damage, but nothing of the sort. All the wood is in great shape. Eric added some insulation near the window and the middle of the floor to keep the cold winds from the porch out of the house and  the noise down.
 Living Room - during - Rock star neighbors, Vicky and Greg, took the kids to a movie one weekend and when they brought them home I was attempting to take down the wallpaper. I was worried about getting the wall too wet and it was a lot of scraping and more work than it needed to be. Vicky and Greg immediately came to my rescue and stayed for about two hours in the dark to help remove the wallpaper. It was so much quicker with them helping, they even brought down this cool ladder, more tools to scrape with, and encouraged the kids to help. It made a task I was dreading feel like fun. I love them!
 Living Room - during - we've been very fortunate with predominantly warmer temps during this remodel so Eric could go in and out through the window to haul out plaster.
Living Room - during - the walls were thankfully not bad. The plaster really didn't have a lot of cracks. I wasn't sure what to expect under the wallpaper. There are several notes written on the walls so we know there were two wallpaper applications (they didn't put wallpaper on top of wallpaper which is nice) and no paint on the walls. It almost makes me want to put wallpaper up to keep the history.

4 comments:

Gita Carey said...

Wow! It's so exciting to see this project coming along! I can't wait to see the outcome.

VeganLinda said...

You are so fortunate to have Seth! This project is costing about twice as much as we first thought. We've had too much scope creep. We were just going to do the ceiling and then we wanted this and that while the room was cleaned out. We ended up going with a no-VOC paint instead of limestone paint.

Veganopoulous said...

I love stickybeaking other renovationgs :) I have some suss plaster and heaps of cracks and our reno is scheduled for next year. I can't wait, but I'm not looking forward to the inconvenience bit! can't wait to see your finished pics :)

VeganLinda said...

It is a lot of fun. I just wish we had the skills and/or money to do the entire house. I hope you post pics of your reno and it goes well.