Monday, December 22, 2014

Living room redo. Part 1 goodbye wallpaper, hello cedar walls!

We're finally getting around to redoing our living room! I say finally like we've been putting it off for years, we've only been here for 3 months. It is an enormous room! Theres 2 windows, 3 doors and about 400 square feet. I know theres  a lot of potential in there! The first thing we needed to do is get rid of the wall paper. Let me tell you, that was a spectacular woodsy scene!







Tan walls, tan ceiling, red wainscoting, wall paper border mid wall and extra molding. It was… let's just say not our style and dark.

The wall paper came down fairly easily. We peeled off what we could before wetting the rest with sponges and hot water. Wet, scrubs, pick and peel. Surprisingly after 3 nights we were finished. That was the easiest part.

Next came figuring out where we'd need plugs and lights. I have no idea how the previous family only lived with 4 plugs in such a big space and no lighting. At all. It was like a cave in there, even with lamps. Obviously we needed to have some lighting put in. We opted for four wall sconces, added 4 plugs and a light switch. Good god, electricians are expensive! And who knew that were wasn't a "proper" place to put a sconce other than the tallest person shouldn't be able to see the bulbs. We marked the walls where we thought we'd like the sconces by putting up pieces of paper and leaving them there for about a week. We drew a spot of the TV and marked for outlets and left it for more than a week. By the time we were ready to cut the holes we knew thats where we wanted everything.

Cutting holes in the walls always makes me nervous, our house is almost 100 years old. I was convinced there was going to be a nightmare of something in there. No dead bodies, no monsters living in there. Thankfully there was a pleasant surprise. PILES OF CASH! No wait, that didn't happen. Our walls are two inch cedar planks with half an inch dry wall on top. Hello insulation! 
  
No wonder the stud finder kept showing studs everywhere! Step one complete. Wall paper removed!



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