Kitchen Nightmares

Er, dreams.

If I get my way, the kitchen will be the first room we tackle in the decor department.

Before:

I'm dreaming the after will look something like this:

ReFINISHED

The floor refinishing is complete! They were actually done on the 7th but, well, you better get used to delayed updates around here. Real life happens faster than blog life.

Here's a preview. We went darker.

Curb Appeal

Google maps street view. Isn't that limb just screaming for a swing?

The wallpaper party goes disco

You know a party must be good when it lasts for two days. Yes, we're still talking about the wallpaper party. This is the last post on it until the day we decide to tackle the half bathroom.

Check out the double mirror action in these before shots.

Bathroom before (Realtor photo)

We had to take the wallpaper party up a notch in here. Before we could start on the a paper we had to remove the light fixture, towel rods, and big mirror. We also chose to remove the sliding bathtub doors.

Here are the steps we took to remove the doors. Surprisingly simple.

1. Removed each door by placing a hand on either side and gently lifting up and in. 
2. Lifted out the top piece of the door frame by removing the screws that attached it to the rest of the frame.
3. Used a sharp utility blade to cut the caulk/epoxy between the door frame and tile/tub.
4. Removed the screws attaching the door frame to the tile.
5. Gently coaxed the three remaining frame pieces from the tub and tile. This sometimes required cutting the caulk/epoxy again.
6. Scraped remaining epoxy from the tub and tile.

Here are a few pics of the action. As you can see, we have some follow-up work to complete. We plan on filling in the screw holes and resurfacing the tub.

Once everything was removed we partied with the wallpaper. The only spot we didn't get was behind the toilet. We left that excitement for another day.

Similar to the dining room, the wallpaper was applied directly to the drywall. It appears the previous owners had the wallpaper replaced at some point. The result is a very patchy wall. I'm concerned what it's going to look like when we paint...

And, done! We finished a bit earlier than anticipated and used the extra time to remove a few doors. The kitchen and master closet are now door-less.

Next project - floor refinishing! Alex hired some guys to take care of this while he is back in NYC.

Wallpaper Party

The wallpaper party contained so much excitement I couldn't get it all into one post. If you haven't already, read part one here.

After finishing up in the kitchen we moved on to the dining room.

The stripes in all their glory:

Dining room before (Realtor photo)

After stripping the stripes we quickly discovered the wallpaper was glued directly to the drywall. No primer, nothing. Ugh. It was definitely tougher to remove than in the kitchen but we adjusted our approach and knocked it out. Instead of scraping the adhesive layer (this damaged the drywall) we heated the "juice" and allowed it to thoroughly soak in before attempting to peel it away in large strips. We shouldn't have jumped the gun and scored before we stripped (hehe). The scoring marks made some of the adhesive layer a little more difficult to remove.

After:

Phew!

Bathroom stripping next.