Well, it was time for a new phase in life. Time to move most of the toys (the ones that are left, anyway) to the basement, since Anna is starting to get in the "in between" stage---between a kid who likes to play with toys and a young lady who is more interested in books and music and movies. So it's time to renovate the "middle room" as we call it. So after the Christmas tree was put away, we moved all of the little stuff out, and started clearing the walls of the multiple layers of paint over the original wallpaper from 1939. Praise the Lord for good and dear friends. My friend Denise came up one day with her young daughter Teressa, and we worked on spraying the walls and scraping the paint and wallpaper. These old walls are in pretty bad shape. Lots and lots of cracks, and places where previous owners have patched (with not much finesse!). Scott has also been working to strip the paint off of the beautiful woodwork around the room. It's beautiful underneath, and we are excited that it's in decent enough shape that we can stain it instead of repainting it! Someday (year) we'll get carpet put down. For now, I bought an area rug from Overstock.com. The old wood floors need help, but they'll do for now.
One of the kids or Scott took a picture of this patch of sorts up on the wall. This looks pretty bad, although it was taken before we scrubbed down the walls, so already the walls look better than this picture. I'll try to post different pictures along the way . . . maybe I'll get one of Scott working on the rest of the woodwork. Its a LONG slow process, and I am reminded of what I used to say when we moved into this house . . . every project seems to take so much longer and so much more money than we originally anticipated. It's an adventure! (Although we're thinking now that brand new homes sure have an appeal! If we ever decide to move once the kids are out of school---we love living so close to the high school and we don't want to move from here right now!--I think we'll look into a brand new house if it's in our budget!)
I have plans for this room! Anna and I already found an ottoman in Marshalls that we loved, so we bought that and are using it in the living room for now. I have two chairs in mind that I plan to purchase, but we don't have room for them at the moment, so I'm waiting until we have the walls done (it will take awhile, but patience is a virtue!). We're looking forward to a "new room."
Before Christmas, I was thinking that we would do this middle room and move right on to the living room (which is connected to the "middle room" with a big archway in between). When it took so long to get all the wallpaper off that little middle room, I began thinking that maybe the living room should wait until next year (2009) after Christmas 2008! It needs the same work (original wallpaper & multiple layers of paint stripped, cracked walls spackled and repaired, and woodwork stripped of paint and original finish so that we can restain it). And it's a bigger room than the middle room! Maybe we should only tackle that in the winter/spring of 2009 if we think we can finish it before Abby graduates from high school next June.
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