ok i will admit: ty pennington is pretty good looking, but after this blog you'll see that he's got nothin on me!
i haven't really had any kind of life outside of our living room for the last few months. i sleep there, i eat there, i watch the wall pretending there is a tv there, and most of all i get things really messy and then try and fix it up before jessie notices.
here is the story of our living room transformation.
the first day jessie walked into our future home, i told her we would be renting... from this picture you would probably only want to rent too!
(weird cast iron over the fireplace, yes that's a paper plate covering a big hole, awesome!)
-notice the mantel is white-
isn't the carpet to die for??
my 1st project: i took out the bookshelves and stripped about 5 layers of paint off the mantel.
while jessie was in oklahoma i surprised her and started taking off the wall paper from our ceiling. why would anybody put wall paper on the ceiling??? there were 4 layers.
this is night 1
good thing jess isn't around
i have a great friend and co-worker who has every tool known to man and is a know-it-all at everything! he is amazing and cut out the holes for our can lights.
this is me thinking about what jess would be thinking about. confusing i know.
logan braves the very dusty attic
cans: check
wallpaper: still workin on it
(the white is clean ceiling)
let there be light!
i want to make wall paper an official swear word!
i stayed up til 1:30 monday night and 3 on tuesday night
one of the main reasons we wanted to get rid of the wallpaper is because we saw a huge crack through the paint in our ceiling and we guessed something bad was going on. here you can see the huge cracks going across the ceiling. we think there used to be a partition dividing the room and they took it out and tried to patch the ceiling, it lasted only so long.
boo for evil cracks!
hooray for strong mesh tape
love notes to jessie
once i realized i was not even gonna get close to finishing this project before jessie got home i decided to write some love notes on the ceiling to butter her up; soften the blow of not having a normal living room for a while. as you probably read a while ago she was thrilled to have the "evil wallpaper" gone.
i work with the two greatest guys EVER!!
this is my principal cody foote. he used to be a drywaller before becoming a seminary teacher and he hasn't lost any of his skills. he was so good to come and save our house. he is the same one who saved our kitchen back when we took the evil wallpaper off the ceiling in there.
he put some intense mud over the mesh tape to cover all the cracks and when it dries it is as good as new
the mega cracks get a makeover
he also had to cover the gap where our walls meet our ceiling. yeah our house is ancient!
cody then textured over everything. we are probably gonna name our little girl some hybrid of logan and cody to thank these guys for all their kindness.
it looks so good
what i will look like 30 years from now
what happens when i took an electric palm sander to the mantel
our new dining room fan
it was a lot of work but we love our new living room!
we are almost done:
-still need to find a suitable replacement for our cast iron friend
-paint the brick cream like the walls
-paint some trim around the front door
-move on to the next project
"I watch the wall pretending there is a TV there" made me laugh pretty hard. Kudos on all the work--it really looks amazing.
ReplyDeleteLove it! And I love the captions. Brilliant redo and post.
ReplyDeleteAWESOME!!!!!!!!!!! You guys are champs to take on all these projects! It helps when you have friends who will help you...(for free!). Just have Jessie bake cookies for them. :-)
ReplyDeleteWOW. That is some SERIOUS work!! I think it looks AWESOME. Good job, Danny!!
ReplyDelete