2. I've been tackling the former dining room, then Collin's room, with totally destroyed carpeting and really bad walls room. The carpet has been torn up except for a little patch of 50 year old berber (which will come up tomorrow) that was under a bunch of furniture. The carpet pad disintegrates when pulled up, which makes for a lovely mess, but the carpet has long needed to come up. Bye Bye Berber!
The last little pathetically nasty piece of berber carpeting
I've painted the walls a lovely robin's egg blue (which I am proud to say that I mixed myself using left over paint and those little paint samples to tint what I already had).
OH, and I NEVER thought I would do this, as I'm all about maintaining the original beauty of a vintage house, but I painted the paneling in the room (I'm still sort of gasping as I type this, even though I LOVE the way it came out).
Here's the paneling in the living room for some comparison.
It's dated and dark, and painting it white brightened up the room so much it was totally unbelievable, but the paneling is also this gorgeous knotty pine. Really pretty; it makes people sort of gasp when they see it because you rarely see paneling of this quality in houses anymore. But I bit the bullet and painted over it in the dining room.
I still have to paint the floor, find a new ceiling fixture (there's a groovy one at Ikea that I like, but our nearest Ikea is 100 miles away (Ikea, why haven't you placed a store in Columbus, OH? Oh, and would delivery kill you?)) And I have an idea for floor pillows that are made crazy quilt style using old sweaters that I steak and sew together and then do one of those cool embroidery stitches on, but I'll do those after I get the room done. Hmmm, so I think that's about it. That's the news, Walter Kronkite!
9 comments:
wow! sounds like you have been pretty busy... the robin's egg blue looks pretty!
& i don't think i hold the yarn very well when i knit either... hmm...
anyway, glad to see that you are alive!! :)
Hi Erin,
We suffered through pine in our kitchen in our 100+ year old Greek Revival home until we finally were ready to spend three times more than our first house and tear it all out to replace the entire interior of the kitchen. There was nothing better than getting rid of that ugly pine we had here, raising the kitchen to the original height (found more windows up there!), and replacing the horrible tile floor with wood.
Perhaps it was in style 50 years ago, but why in the world the woman who lived here put knotty pine in a Greek Revival home I'll never know. She had also painted the Rookwood Fireplaces and the eleven Ionic Columns in the entrance hall and main staircase grey. Needless to say, I stripped the paint off of the Rookwood and the columns are now white. Oh, then there was the replacing of the leaded glass because it was "old fashioned." We have restored that, too, by commissioning leaded glass to fit the home.
Yeah, knotty pine. It's great in a cabin in the woods.
Your wall looks just beautiful painted white. Don't feel bad about covering it!
Best,
Lois
wow Erin, you've accomplished a lot! love the color you mixed~ can't wait to see the finished room~
xo
katie
I love maintaining the look of older homes, but I think there should be an automatic exception for most paneling - it so often is just so dark.
So glad you aren't dead. :)
Love the blue and I have to agree, the painted paneling looks fantastic!
i think the best thing anyone can do to paneling is paint it....so bravo for you !!!
First of all, I haven't been around here much lately. Secondly, I missed you and Dropped Stitches! So I'm back and commenting.
I love the robin's egg blue! It looks fabulous! And I really, really love the painted over paneling. It looks so much more up to date and cheery! I'm looking forward to seeing the finished room!
Busy busy! The room looks great. I know it was hard to paint over the paneling, but I think it's for the best; it looks so great!
Late comment but your painting looks good!
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