Vesti-beautiful

Here are the things that my life outside of work and family revolved around for the past week: wood filler, deglosser, paint, brushes and rollers, cleaner and a good cup of tea every now and then to keep me going.

While we'd painted the walls of our entry hall aka the vestibule a while ago, scraping together enough enthusiasm to tackle yet another room's worth of trim took me some time. Oh, but it was so worth it! For more impact, let's go back to where we started:

[Before: Once upon a time our vestibule was a bedroom ...]

Ah yes, it was awful. Like, really really awful. This is what our entry hall looked like when we first toured the house. In order to create a second bedroom for the downstair's apartment of our house, the previous owner had closed up the original archway to the livingroom and the wall toward the staircase. It was teeny tiny, cramped and pretty filthy.

Within a week from closing we tore into those non-original walls and restored the original floorplan.

The impact that reopening those walls had on this area of the house can hardly be captured in pictures. I marvel at it every time I step into our house. Not only made the floorplan sense now but it felt like the house was drawing you in while at the same time appearing much, MUCH larger than before.

After hours of trimming, patching, priming, sanding, refinishing floors, updating electric yet still miles to go in regard to artwork, window treatments, lighting and other decorative finishing touches, we have arrived at this:

Hard to believe it's the same room, no? Or the same house, for that matter. The old heart pine floors look simply A-mazing against the white trim and soft warm "Woodlawn Colonial Gray" walls and the entire vestibule feels open and airy and bright.

Looooove!

Topping it off two-tone

For the past couple of days I've been a derwish with a paint brush in the entry hall. Everything and everyone including the cat got painted if they weren't fast enough to get away!

One of the few things left to paint, other than the actual staircase, was the newel post Joe built for us to replace the one that had been chopped when the house was converted to a duplex. Looks like it came with the house, doesn't it?

[Before: Hello Newel!]

It's been sitting there primed but un-painted for quite a while. This week, I finally tackled it. You see, the newel post is part of my Nemesis project: the staircase. While we're missing the spindles and handrail along the lower part of the stairs, there are spindles and handrails along the second stretch and the cantilever balcony. Badly painted spindles and handrails. Flaking spindles and handrails. Spindles and handrails with ornate detail and nooks and crannies.

Spindles and handrails that are a bear to strip from old bad nasty paint. It's a project that'll keep me busy for a while.

The downstair's part is easy and was a joy to paint. Just white, though, didn't quite cut it, so I decided to paint the top of the newel post in a dark warm brown, picking up on the beautiful warm walnut brown of our refinished stair treads.

[After: Hellooooo, Newel!]

I love the two-tone look on our newel post. It also comes with the added benefit that it's now much more visible against the other millwork in the hall and Little Man is less likely to run into it. Yes, this has happened before and is quite painful, he can assure you.

Tricking the eye

There's one not-original feature to the house that I really and truly enjoy: the entry hall coat closet.

When the Ugly Duckling was a Duplex, the former entry hall was closed in and became a bedroom. The teeniest, cramped bedroom you could imagine, especially after the addition of a rather big closet. One of the first projects we tackled after closing on our little old house was to rip open those walls and restore the old floorplan.
However, since we need to be budget-conscious, we decided to postpone the restoration of the original staircase. The millwork is there, all the original trim is safely enclosed behind a drywall cover, so once that is removed all we need to install are spindles and a new wooden handrail. It's going to be beautiful, but it would mean losing this humongous closet of holding, and closet space does come at a premium in old houses.

Anyways, when the closet was built, the previous owner didn't care about matching the trim. They just slapped on some teeny baseboards and quarter rounds and called it a day.

These modern baseboards don't really deserve to be called base boards. I mean look at them! That's not a board. That's a sliver of a piece of wood! About a third of the size of the original baseboards, they appear insubstantial and flimsy.

Since the days of the closet and thus the days of its weeny trim are counted, we weren't going to replace it. That money is going right into the staircase fund.

What's a girl to do? Mismatched trim ain't gonna do it. Yes, it's mostly hidden behind a big ol' steamer trunk but still. It's there, I know it's there - something has to happen.

I have paint and I'm not afraid to use it. Turns out you can trick the eye just fine by painting the wall with the paint used for the baseboards. See what I mean? Here I'm just done priming the area. If you squint, you can't tell that the left side is the side with the wimpy baseboards.

Pennies in paint evened out the mismatched trim. You can catch a glimpse of the steamer trunk
that's usually sitting right in that corner serving as a bench and storage for gloves and hats and scarves (and some more boardgames).

Trim envy

Here we go again - trim it is for today's post! While the de-texturized zone was drying I made sure to spend the spare time in between coats on other projects around the entry hall. As you might have noticed by now (I have whined reported about it a couple of times already), all of the millwork at the Ugly Duckling is in dire need of some TLC. This usually comes in the form of scraping, patching, sanding, priming and painting or short, SPSPP.

It's now a serious effort to get excited about painting trim. Sure, it's rewarding. There're few things more rewarding than the look of crisp clean white trim. But, man, it's a bore!
Anyways, the original trim in our house has taken quite a beating over the past 97 years - too much to restore it to its stained wood glory. Besides, I prefer white trim and old millwork looks absolutely stunning in pristine white.

So here I am again, scraping off loose paint and filling in with wood filler.

[In-progress: Notice the fine layering of drywall dust on the floor.]

See the corner of the window peaking in on the left of the photo? That's where our big entrance door with the sidelights (and the now missing transom) should be.

It got moved years ago, replacing a window in the livingroom, when the Ugly Duckling was turned into a Duplex. I'm hellbent on squirreling aside enough funds to move the ol' door back to its original location sometime in spring next year. That'd really rock my boat even though it means construction dust and painting everything all over again.

[In-progress: Now with primer!]

Next step, primer! That usually gives you a really good idea of how the end result is going to look. Lovely, don't you think?

All done! yes, I even painted the archway. Isn't it pretty? Phil trimmed this one out for us and he did a beautiful job. It looks like it's been there ever since the house was built and feels just right. I'm so glad we returned the house to its original floor plan as much as we could; it just makes so much more sense and flows beautifully.

And just before it got too dark for pictures I snapped this one with the furniture moved back into place. Yes, we have vintage typewriters all over the place. This is an old German one that I flew in all the way from Hamburg for Christmas one year. The things you do for love ...

Texture all gone!

This is what the little mess of textured wall above the door looked like when we last saw it.

[In-progress: Good bye, texture!]

It took another three coats to smooth out even the last bump of texture and create a smooth finish like the adjoining drywall. At this point I'm not sure I really want to skimcoat the remaining textured walls in the house. Ripping them out and replacing them with drywall sounds much more appealing and potentially faster than trying to cover up the texture. We'll need some time to think this over, I guess.

[More progress: All nice and even. I also made sure that all adjoining areas
received a thorough dusting of fine drywall dust]

Anyways, once the area was mudded smooth and had time to dry completely, it was time for a quick sanding and a coat of primer. If you forget to prime freshly mudded drywall you end up with spots that "flash". These areas will reflect the light differently and drive you insane. Really. Ahem ... not like I know anything about that. So yes, priming is a must.

Fresh coat of paint and voila - all done!

[After: Mission accomplished - texture eliminated]

I put the drying time between coats of mud and then some to good use and tackled a few other projects in the entry hall to get'er done! 20 days 'till Thanksgiving! How much trim can I possibly paint accomplish in 20 days? Guess we'll find out!

Texture is overrated

According to some smart interior design books there are five design elements:

1. line


2. form


3. space


4. color


5. texture

Frankly, when it comes to walls and ceilings, texture is way overrated and a serious pain to get rid of. Ceilings I can deal with, but textured walls ... not so much. Here at the Ugly Duckling, we have to deal with some textured walls, namely the wall of our staircase, the upstair's hallway and the dressing and master bath aka the former upstair's kitchen, reflective of the design choices of the '80s when the Duckling was, once again, turned into duplex.



I don't mind the textured ceilings so much. It's sort of a sunburst design, and since our ceilings are painted a bright crisp white the texture is hardly noticable.



The walls ... ehh. It's not bad bad. It's just ... I don't know. Weird. Like furry wallpaper. Or green wall-to-wall shag carpeting. Painted Woodlawn Colonial Grey, it's, again, not bad bad but skimcoating it definitely made it onto our project list quite early. Little did we know what we were talking about though our contractor mentioned it'd be "quite a pain in the -you-know-where".



I figured before tackling a big area like our stair case I could practice my skimcoating skills on a small piece. Like that area above our current entry door.
Since that door had been the door to the upstair's unit opening up directly into the enclosed staircase, it had also received the knock-down texture treatment. After we restored the original floorplan, ripping out the wall separating the staircase from the room that was then a bedroom and is now a vestibule again, we had clean smooth drywall for most of the walls except for a small rectangle right above the door.




Awkwaaard.

Here's a close-up of the transition between textured wall and plain drywall, just to make it really obvious.

Super awkward.

Husband wasn't perturbed by it one bit but it kept nagging me. So, after finishing the trim work in the dining room, I decided to move into the vestibule next and to tackle that odd textured rectangle. Better to get over and done with the drywall dust.

The process is rather simple and straightforward: load your mud pan with drywall compound aka 'mud' , slather on and smooth it over. Let it dry. Rinse and repeat.




The 'rinse and repeat' part surprised me. Sure, several thin coats are better than one thick one, but I was simply amazed about just how many coats and how much mud I needed to skimcoat this small area nice and smooth.

Here's an in-progress shot where you can see the white areas of already filled-in texture and the darker grey areas of the raised parts that aren't covered yet.


Uh-mazing.

This also meant that each coat needed its own drying time and it wasn't something I could just finish up in one afternoon or evening. So you're being treated to two entries for a project that measures 2 feet by 3 feet. Hilarious, isn't it?

Needless to say I did put that waiting period between drying coats to good use in the entry hall. Unlike many other couples, we started with the bedrooms and worked our way into the public rooms (usually the master bedroom seems to be last to get any kind of update). I'll update you over the next couple of days to show you what's been happening in the entry hall here at the Ugly Duckling.

Hook'em up!

The other day, on my way to pick up the Little Man from school, I used the chance to drop into TJ Maxx. It's been forever since I last had had a chance to mosey through the aisles of this store, especially since they closed their store closer to us and moved it out closer to the Beaches, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

There were a couple of interesting home goods to be found, some sparked ideas for other rooms but in an effort to not get carried away, put unnecessary strain on our house budget and stay focussed on the current project area (well, okay, areas), I window shopped for the most part and only scored two really cool hooks for the bathroom which were on the "to buy" list!

Yay me!

Back at home I couldn't wait to grab drill and drywall anchors with screws to get my new hooks up and at the wall! The husband and I each own a bathrobe and those needed a dedicated space!

Tools of the trade: drill and screw.

Making a guest appearance later: level and pencil

Aren't they pretty???? I love love love our new bathrobe hooks!
They came in at $3.99 a pop and they are quite heavy.

I quickly drilled two holes, hammered in the dry wall anchors and screwed in the screws that the hooks hook into and I was done!

Now our bathrobes have a dedicated place and we have a chance to keep our sweet master suite a little tidier! No more bathrobes lounging around where they shouldn't.


Hooks fit for a king and a queen ;o)


And here's a sneak peek of the "closet project" (don't mind the yet unpainted door frame to the dressing room and the equally unpainted plinths of the closet door frame - I will get there eventually): the open doorframe is one side of the former teeny hallway between the upstair's hallway and our then kitchen, now master bathroom. I have to paint the door frame and then hang the door and it will become a closet for towels and other bathroom paraphenalia!

For that huse "negative" aka open space in the middle of our bathroom I'm hoping to find a nice traditional rug in washed out vintage-looking beiges and browns rather than a blah bath mat and maybe add an ottoman for convenient seating [for like when you're brushing teeth :o)]. I'm also on the hunt for baskets and some charming old wire organizer, all to warm up our crisp and clean white bathroom. And art and window treatments. Good thing Calico Corners is having a Sale coming up next week!