Whoa oooah, we’re half way there…

Ok, so maybe not quite half way, but the old carpet is up, the new carpet is ordered and we’ve got all day Friday to paint. every. single. surface. of this stupid room. But to truly show you how much progress we’ve made since we bought the house three years ago, I had to track down my ancient LiveJournal account and steal these pictures.

This is the wallpaper I found under the OTHER wallpaper. Sadly, it was just on this one wall or I might have kept it. Jungle animals are so hot right now.

I *intentionally* painted that futon orange. You know, to match the room. Yikes.

And then in the past three years, we’ve thrown out most of the furniture, dragged a guest bed up there and turned it into a giant junk hole.

I also painted the walls a color that should have been called "dirty band-aid" and hung up dark polyester curtains. Because who wants to really SEE a room that ugly?

Since Wednesday afternoon, THAT has turned into this:

Ugly room, now with less stuff!

Which now looks like this:

That's my dad, who ripped up all that carpet entirely by himself. Before I had finished breakfast. No, he is not for sale or rent.

Next up, paint ceiling, paint trim, paint moldings, replace electric baseboard heaters, repeat all of that in the stairwell, buy new closet doors and THEN we can paint the walls.

The carpet guy comes Thursday.

And then we get to move all our bedroom furniture UP.

I need to go lie down.

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17 Responses to “Whoa oooah, we’re half way there…”

  1. brigidkeely says:

    Your trim looks pretty decent. Can you leave it wood-looking? One of our Future Projects (after we GUT OUR APARTMENT) involves stripping all the hundred year old oak trim and doors.

    Dads are so awesome! My dad ripped out our bathroom ceiling for us! Lucky us, eh? :)

    • bebehblog says:

      I know it looks decent in the pictures but in person it is truly terrible. And it’s not original to the house – it’s from when they added that room in the 70’s. Plus when E helped me paint the room he didn’t bother cutting in so the sides are all splattered with flesh-colored paint.

      For the record, I did try to strip ALL THE TRIM on the first floor of our house but discovered it had all been added at different times and some of it had never been stained before it was painted. So I was scraping paint off of bare wood and gouging the crap out of it. I gave up and painted it white.

      BUT. It is my goal to strip and restain every door in the house. Beautiful 100 year old solid wood doors that previous owners ruined with layers and layers of paint. I’ve done 3 so far, only a million left to go.

      • brigidkeely says:

        Bah, I hear you on the trim. We have a mix of vintage trim and stuff that was added a few years ago and isn’t even wood, BUT, my inlaws have owned this place for 30 years and know what trim isn’t original so our work is kind of cut out for us.

        Have you tried using a heat gun? My project for this summer is to start stripping doors, to practice on if nothing else. Previous tenants (this is a 2 flat that was in terrible shape when my father in law bought it) did things like add dead bolts to interior doors (WHY) and drill random holes in doors (OH GOD WHY THESE DOORS ARE 100 YEARS OLD LITERALLY) and bust out the milky jade art glass panes in the front door and steal doorknobs and CHEW ON THE DOORS and oh GOD are these doors salvageable? They have holes the size of fists in them…! But it’s practice if nothing else, and I’ve been peeking in windows of other buildings around here that are being gutted and rehabbed and the wood in the lobby/stairs is untouched and ~~gorgeous~~ so… you know. I’m gonna make the effort.

        Someone also painted the brick and limestone fireplace. If I could go back in time and kill people with fire, i would.

  2. Excellent progress. Can’t wait to see the end result.

  3. becca says:

    how exciting though! can’t wait to watch the progress and it unfolds. and your dad? completely a rockstar!

  4. Progress!!! My ENTIRE house is painted “dirty bandaid” and with FLAT paint to boot! I HATE IT!

  5. TMae says:

    Look at how big that room is. It’s like the whole first floor of my house… (Okay, maybe not really, but it does make me jealous.) Can’t wait to see it finished!

  6. Cole says:

    I’m with the previous commenter – that room is HUGE. Loving the animal wallpaper! :O

    Mommy calls Coach whenever we need help with ANYthing – and, lucky for us, he’s retired so he’s usually around!

  7. jill says:

    that wallpaper cracks me up! i can just picture the person who originally put it up having a matching jungle blanket on their bed! it looks like things are coming along great and i cant wait to see the finished product! its going to be your bedroom??

    • bebehblog says:

      If we can fit our bed up there, it’s going to be the master bedroom. Mostly because I am tired of keeping all my clothes in the nursery closet and E’s tired of not being able to see his clothes in the tiny dark thing they call a closet in our current bedroom. DOUBLE CLOSETS!

  8. That’s really exciting! I can’t wait to see it finished! Does your Mom and Dad need a place to stay on their way home?!?!? Cause I’ve got a dinning room that they could have a crack at…and then a whole upstairs.

  9. that grammer on my last post its pretty bad. Sorry! It’s way past my bedtime!

  10. *comment — feel free fix/remove any of this :)

  11. I am SO jealous about the new carpet! Our house desperately needs it! If you don’t mind sharing, how much did the new carpet cost?

    • bebehblog says:

      To do 450 square feet plus 13 stairs and a landing, it’s $1300. Which is…not cheap, but we’re getting medium-nice carpet and medium padding, rather than the cheap 99 cent a foot stuff from Home Depot. Also, we’re using a local carpet place instead of Home Depot because the carpet place would tell us straight what everything would cost with installation and HD’s advertised “$30 installation” was actually a LOT more.

    • brigidkeely says:

      Hey Sarah, I don’t know how it is around you, but in Chicago pretty much every flooring place is offering mad discounts because the economy sucks. If you’re in a new flooring mood, you might want to measure your rooms and call around for quotes.

  12. Dude. I have a livejournal. I don’t really post there much anymore, but I autopost my blog entries and still read.

    Great work! I’ve never done any sort of home reno so anything other than paint impresses me.

    Can’t wait to see how it turns out!

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