Painting wood paneling- The den project

So we finished the hallway a little while back, as shown here. Three weeks ago we tackled the den and kitchen. Remember when the kitchen looked like this...

and the den looked like this...

notice wood paneling EVERYWHERE

Well a couple of weeks ago, we stopped procrastinating and jumped into this very large project. We were scared. It is the kitchen that we were talking about and that's the center hub of our lives. Putting the kitchen out of commission for at least a week was a scary idea. But we jumped.
We started out by ripping off all the wallpaper in the kitchen. We were lucky, it was old and the non-shiny kind so it didn't hold any stickiness of the wallpaper paste. It came right off, very different from the shiny kind in the bedrooms.
Then we patched, and sanded, and sanded, and sanded...

We moved all the furniture out before sanding...sanding took us about a week. So for about a week our kitchen and den looked like this:

Then we finally got to paint something. We painted the walls once with primer first. It didn't look good at this point. The stain from the wood paneling bled through.

See how the middle of each piece of wood is darker, there was more paint on the seems (because we used a small brush to get into them) and only used a roller for the panels... The stain bled through :(

But we kept going and did a second coat of primer. It still bled through a bit...we were pretty sad at the end of that day. We had no choice but to go on. We painted the ceiling next (we planned well so we wouldn't have to tape the ceiling line until the final painting.)
Then, after letting the primer completely dry and the ceiling dry, we taped and painted the walls. This was the next day. We were hoping the very complete drying of the primer would seal in the stain.

Alas! It worked. See the difference between the part that has been painted and the part that is still bled through primer. We painted the kitchen and den the same color as the hallway, Bermuda Sand by Valspar.

Shows the painted ceiling, the painted walls, mid tape pulling down and still a mess...

Now we pulled down tape for another week, every evening after work we would chip away at it. We finally cleaned everything up, and then, just because we are painfully perfectionist, we decided to give the wood floor a little spruce before returning the furniture.

See how shiny the floor is!

A few other things we did in there that I forgot to mention:
-sprayed the heaters with rust spray and painted them Bermuda Sand as well
-Sealed a few cracks in the ceiling, so far they have not re-emerged. Go us!
-Took down the 70s lamp/fan combo in the kitchen
That might be it... I might be forgetting. It was a pretty long experience but now we love it. Final after picture to come... Don't you love the suspense!  :p

Almost summer

School is winding down and summer is almost here. Of course, Bill doesn't get summer but we have a lot of fun things planned for this summer.

As far as our house lately, we've been very busy.Here's a teaser. more later.

Hallway efforts

So our hallway looked like this when we moved in:

Notice the lovely plaid wallpaper and very 70s? light fixture? Ugh

And it seems we don't get things done very fast around here but a couple weekends ago we ripped down all of that extremely ugly wallpaper and sanded like there was no tomorrow, spackled, sanded some more (insert picture titled our failed meth-lab- which happened when we took a break from sanding to make lunch...:(
and then we finally painted. It was a long and annoying weekend (and by that I mean two weekends and the entire week in between) but now we have...
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Notice new light fixture, plan creme colored wall, maybe a bit boring at the moment but we were having sensory overload with the plaid- this will look better once I have picture frames up.

 Our non-plaid, Bermuda Sand colored hallway. Yay

House redo progress!

We've made progress. I would consider the bedroom done with only tiny details- like it needs a few more pictures on the wall and we haven't put switch plates back on yet, but only because the old ones are super ugly and I am going to make new ceramic ones. Here are finished pictures:

So those are our NEW bedroom set that we really really love and researched a long time to get.









Now that this project, which we started last November when we first moved in and ripped down wallpaper, is done-ish we started another project. Just this last weekend- our three day President's Day weekend we ripped down all the plaid wallpaper in the hallway and are currently priming. We bought the paint- Bermuda sand- and will be done by this weekend, if all goes as planned. I have to say, Bill has gotten really really good and sanding and spackling and sanding some more. He is pretty much an expert at it now. :) He also did an amazing job with the trim in the bedroom, don't you think?

Christmas

Bill and I spent Christmas vacation in Wisconsin this year, at his parents house. It was a really great break and time to rejuvenate, relax and remember how many people we love and miss here in the Midwest. I didn't do any lesson planning until the last day of vacation, which might be a big mistake, but I am starting to get comfortable enough in front of a classroom that I think it might not be the end of the world if I am a little less prepared for one day. Bad idea? very possibly but we'll see. I just can't keep up.
Other news, we finally got a bedroom set and have the trim done! Well it might need some touch up paint still but all the trim is up and nail holes are filled. The room is so near done and looks really great! I'll get pictures of it up in a couple days. Now I get to decorate and try to get curtains up!
I never thought it would take us this long to get our house how we want it, but so far, only one room close to done...

Life got in the way

Yeah, Remember how we were so gung ho on redecorating our house, starting with our bedroom. Still not done...I think we have been "putting up trim" for 2 months. So much for buying a house stuck in the 70s and redoing it, I guess we just get to live in the 70s too. Although the 70s weren't that bad of a time, I hear...
Bill has been super busy at work lately and I just have been too. I absolutely absolutely love what I am doing. I love teaching the kids and it's even easy when I am prepared and get into a rhythm with them, I love every second, well almost. And I love planning too, but this year, my first year teaching, I have to make all my unit plans for the art projects we will do and it takes and INCREDIBLE amount of time. So I love planning, I love teaching, I just don't have time to love them both at the same time. Then I end up hating them because I don't have the time to do it as well as I want to.. BAH
Anyways, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I've never thought a ton about how amazing Thanksgiving is. When I lived at home it was just like a nice one day affair where we ate a lot. But earlier this week I was reminded why Thanksgiving is really really amazing. It doesn't involve presents, no stress there. It's not super religious so people don't get confronted by how good or bad they are at that. It's just about being thankful, so simple and so beautiful. And they give you lots of time off to be with all the people you are thankful for, and at this point in the school year, I am so thankful for that!
My Grandma recently passed away and it was pretty horrible, but to avoid all the horrible, I made a slide show for the visitation. Here is a picture that I think is just breathtaking, taken between my grandparents engagement and wedding, about 1945-6.

Blogging

I've been wondering a lot lately about if it's weird to blog. I mean I'm not a super computer-ish person who has time to tell a story about every day of my life, but I love reading other people's blogs. I blog stalk people who I don't even talk to anymore and I don't know why. It seems a lot of people in my generation do this, at least I hear a lot of people admit to it? And I like the idea of having a record of stuff. I like the idea of contributing back to that large sphere of random information and stories that I like to read when I blog-stalk other people.
Mostly I'm curious if anyone even reads this blog. It's so anonymous and I feel like I'm talking to outer space, and that makes me feel a little pathetic.
Putting up my wedding pictures on here was a good excuse for a useful purpose, but now I won't have any new wedding pictures. So I'm kinda wondering, is anybody out there? I'd like to know if anyone actually ends up here and reads it. So if you wouldn't mind, respond, and then I'll know!