Before and After, Part 1: Bedrooms

(I am just now posting this series of posts from almost 5 years ago!  But better late than never!)

We moved into our home almost four months ago!  We have been working (and working, and working...) to fix things and make it into a home that reflects us.  The only reason I have the time to blog about it now is that, in the middle of repairs and renovations, I had a bike accident and had to have knee surgery.  So now I have time to post the "Before and After" series of what we've done so far.

The Guest Room
We started with the guest room.  I thought it would be easy - throw on a new coat of paint, put in the furniture, and finito!  But, alas, it was not so.

  

I went in ready to paint, but there was a lot of prep work to do.  If you look closely at the right corner of the first picture, you will see wood two-by-fours attached to the wall.  I pried those off, and that's when I realized that the wall was covered in wallpaper that had been painted.  That made it into a much bigger project.  After stripping the first layer of wallpaper (with the help of my friend's daughter, Vanessa), we discovered ANOTHER layer of painted wallpaper!  We stripped that layer, and found some sort of chipping primer underneath.  It turned out that most of the room had to be skim-coated with joint compound, then sanded and wiped down, before priming or painting.

After three weeks of work, the room was finally ready for furniture.

  

I'm so glad I mostly finished this room, because we eventually had to move into it when I started on our master bedroom.  But that's a completely different disaste- I mean, story.


The Second Bedroom
I still wanted to keep working after turning my bedroom into a disaster area (that story will come in a later installment).  So I worked on the most straightforward room in the house:

  

No wallpaper, no mold, no fuss.  It was such a bright color of green that it would have been better if I had put on two coats of primer first, but it still worked out.  I just ended up putting on two thick coats of paint, which I probably would have had to do anyway.

I also primed, painted, and caulked the floor boards.  It ended up turning out pretty nice.  This room will be a baby room (I guess we probably need a baby for that...), and I picked this color because it coordinates well with colors for both a boy or girl.