Sometimes you just have to DIY

Before picture. Notice how dark the room is, even with all the lights on. It's like living in a bat cave. And notice how the people who have lived here before us did not really do a good job maintaining the fireplace. I am so ready to give this room new life! Ignore the beige wall to the right. We were just sampling colors. We still have no idea what color we will be painting the living room. I am also on the hunt for an inexpensive, neutral, light-colored slip cover for our sofa.


Sanding has commenced!



Major sanding work is done. There are still some areas that we will go over by hand. We tagged team this wall with two power sanders. We have not decided whether or not we will paint the bookshelf yet. We'll take a step back and reassess after we get the paneling done. Jury is still out on window treatment as well, but I'm leaning toward light-colored, fabric, Roman shades. I still have some taping to do before we start painting.



This isn't a job for anyone who has a problem with getting dust or soot all over the place. In case you're wondering, Gavin is at his grandparents' house this weekend. There will be lots of cleaning before he comes home.



In between power sanding and hand sanding I took a break to work on the fireplace. The sealant on the back wall was peeling badly. This is what I found when I started scraping it off - bricks that need new mortar, before we reseal. Awesome. The peeling probably occurred because the people who did this last didn't allow the mortar to cure long enough. Sweet, we get to fix someone else's mistake. I love it when that happens.


Washing soot off bricks.


Eventually the before and after of the fireplace will look something like this. We're going for light and bright. I can't wait.


Needless to say, our living room will be in various stages of disarray while we work on this. It will be interesting to see how we manage this with a toddler. Casey is out of town all next week (again), so it will be just me with the tater tot, our dogs, my Chemistry homework, and this living room. Hopefully work isn't too crazy this week. Thank goodness for crock pots, I have a huge pot of vegetable beef soup brewing and I still have seafood gumbo leftovers in the freezer(my first seafood gumbo attempt by the way, more on that later)so hopefully I won't have to spend too much time preparing new meals. I am hoping that at some point in the coming week I can get at least one coat of primer on. It will be a late-night, after-munchkin-hits-the-hay project. Stay tuned...