Stripping

Another mile­stone in our mamouth remod­el­ling jour­ney has been reached!

The liv­in­groom is within a hairs breath of being com­pleted. Another coat of var­nish and the floor is done, a new fire­place and a light fix­ture. We’ve spent the last 2 week­ends prep­ping, strip­ping and now var­nish­ing the floor and it looks amaz­ing. Bet­ter than I could have imag­ined really.  The week­end before last we rented a floor sander and a detail sander. A few friends had warned me it was going to be very dusty but I didn’t find that to be true. It came w/ a bag and pretty much con­tained the dust. Lucky as I’m highly aller­gic to dust. I can say the same thing about what we did this week­end. Wal spent all day Sat­ur­day and most of Sun­day with the lit­tle cor­ner sander “clean­ing up” what the large indus­trial rented sander didn’t get. I came close to killing him and we did bicker a bit. It was not our best DIY moment. I still stick to my guns and say if the big sander didn’t get it don’t worry about it. I will grudg­ingly admit that the floor does look good.

We painted the walls a Dulux Quartz Flint 2 and I couldn’t be hap­pier with it. It was the first time I tried a color that had to be mixed and although I thought it took more coats than the pre­mixed paint it looks great. It’s a very sub­tle grey blue and with the white skirt­ing boards and pale floor it makes me happy.  I get a New Eng­land vibe from the color scheme and as you can image this New Eng­land girl likes that a lot. I’m look­ing into some stripy sofas to com­pli­ment this theme but the MAN is against it. I’m work­ing on him so watch this space.

Here are some before and after pho­tos of the hall­way. The after pho­tos are with one coat of clear matt var­nish. We’re plan­ning on at least 3 more coats.

As I look at these pic­tures I still see so much that needs to be done. The skirt­ing boards need paint­ing, new fire­place, light fix­tures, win­dowsill painted… still I see how far we’ve come and those last lit­tle bits are noth­ing.  Watch this space for fire­place and light fix­ture options.