I'm finally done stripping wallpaper!!! (until I move onto the next room)

Over the weekend, I (sorta) finished the entry way. A couple weeks ago, I took advantage of having no heat at work, took the afternoon off and finished scrapping the last few bits of wallpaper 15 feet up the wall. Then the painting began, which wasn't too bad of a job, except for climbing up the ladder with a paint roller and perfoming balancing acts that would rival an acrobat. This weekend, I touched up a few thin spots in the paint and put the wall art and coat rack back up. I know beige is boring, but it is so much better than peach, and since I want to get new furniture eventually, beige is good and neutral. Jeremy is also glad to have his coat rack back, too. All I have left to do is touch up the white base board that goes down the sides of the steps, but that shouldn't take me 7 months...

Last week, I got the mirrored night stands I ordered from Target dot com, and they are quite fabulous. Although, J.R.'s description was that they look like something out of the movie Blow. I just picture someone like Jean Harlow lounging on my satin bedspread with a gimlet sitting on the nightstand or something. Very Hollywood Regency. BTW, I have to keep the spray bottle beside my bed for when the cats start meowing at 5 am. If you have cats, you understand.

Now, onto the backyard--my next project.

Christmas Target gift cards = blackout curtains

Jeremy's mom always gets me a Target gift card for Christmas because she knows I love to buy up their marked down Christmas stuff. And this year was no exception--I did my patriotic duty to personally pull our country out of a recession and boost slumping retail sales. In addition to Christmas stuff for next year, I bought some heavy velvet curtains that matched my bedroom. Jeremy has been complaining that the white sheers (which I loved) just weren't conducive to sleeping late for quite some time. The day after I bought them, he slept well past 1 pm.

Some other goodies, I picked up were some gold chargers and a wine carafe (marked down 75%)!!! I'm still saving up for the dining room suite I want from Ikea, and I'm about half way there. I can't wait to have a sideboard to store all the stuff like chargers and wine carafes in, and a table and chairs so I can have dinner in my dining room. My dad came over for a traditional "Feast of the THREE Fishes" on December 23rd--I didn't think we needed a whole 7 course meal! We put the leaf in the table that I have, which is the table my parents had when I was growing up. Only problem with the Christmas dinner was that we had to sit on these rickety little chairs that go with a third-hand Big Lots dinette (Jodie, do you remember the one you gave me like 7 years ago?) But it was still nice to host a dinner and entertain. The food was awesome and I force-bloomed some paperwhites in a big clear vase for the center of the table. Once I get the dining room done (soon, hopefully) I'll post some pics.

Also, I AM STILL working on stripping the wallpaper in the entryway but I only have a little bit left. I just need to get around to finishing the stripping and get on with the painting.

A tale of two trees...

Here are the two trees we put up this Christmas. As you can see, the one in the living room is the usual tree we put up every year with the blue and silver decorations. It is some kind of Canadian Fir that we got at the Capitol Market from French Creek Farms (shamless plug here. More on that later...) that the guy at the cash register admitted was probably mistagged since it had a $20 price tag on it. It was a little flat on one side, but we just put that side to the window.



Ally, my "new" old cat has shown quite a bit of interest in the presents under the tree. Something about the ribbons on the presents is evidently prettyt tasty to her, as she's been caught a few times chewing on them.



Now, about French Creek Farms. Evidently, they and one other Christmas tree vendor are the only ones that are selling West Virginia-grown trees. The other vendors are getting their trees from farms in N.C. The Capitol Market is supported by the Department of Agriculture, and gets some of its funding from WV taxpayers. All the vendors outside are required to have a percentage of their goods from West Virginia. In the summer, the farms that sell produce must have so much of their goods from West Virginia. Same goes for the trees. The guy who owns French Creek Farms has complained to Ag that some of the vendors aren't following the rules, and evidently, Ag hasn't done anything about it. The guy at French Creek Farms said he'd sell his trees for next to nothing to undercut the out-of-state tree vendors. He's now selling all his trees for $30--and trust me, that is a HUGE deal since there were some 7 ft blue spruces or some fancy kinds that were marked $90 when we were there. It has been on the news a couple times this past week. When we got our tree, I asked the guy, and he assured me the one I picked out was in fact a WV-grown tree.



Now, that I'm done with my "public service announcement," here is my "Charlie Brown" tree. I got this beaut (and the idea to put up a Charlie Brown tree) from Maysel at Erinn's mom and dad's house. Alan has been putting up a Charlie Brown tree for a few years and takes pride in finding the most pitiful looking tree that never aspired to become and Christmas tree and bringing it in to decorate. So, he picked this one out for me. I think it is just beautiful!

Technology sucks.

Okay, so I'm not the most computer-literate person out there, but I knew I wasn't crazy when I discovered that I couldn't save my pictures from snapfish dot com any larger than they were on the last post--and I knew I'd done it before by just right clicking and "saving picture as."

Well, as it turns out, Snapfish says they're having trouble with their software being compatible with Internet Explorer. Ha! So, it's not just me after all.

At any rate, I promise bigger pics once the problem is resolved. Snapfish says they're working on it.

The other day on HGTV, I was watching one of those design shows. I think it was Find Your Style. The couple wanted to do their living room in Hollywood Regency style and I realized that's what I was aiming for in my master bedroom, I just didn't know what it was called.

It's characterized by lots of luxurious fabrics, metallics, opulence, etc. I was thinking of getting some velvet curtains I saw at Target that match my bedspread, anyway. This would make Jeremy VERY happy since he hates the sheers--he likes to sleep late. So, now I need a double curtain rod (I'm keeping the sheers. I like them, damnit. We can just pull the velvet ones closed at bedtime.), some finials ... These ones at Ikea are only 7.99 for a 2-pack.

Here are the curtains at Target, and how about the mirrored side table to top it all off from Target, too. The other thing I'll look for is some new cabinet hardware for my dressers to match the silver stuff. Oh, yeah, and some carpet.

I finally got a new memory card...

And I took advantage of getting a half day off yesterday to clean my house. With it being clean and all, I decided to get some pics of the bedroom, living room, and wallpaper stripping progress.

Here are some before and after of the master bedroom. Note the ugly gold carpet I can't wait to replace.

Also, here are some pics of the living room I painted in August. Before it was peach with a stenciled green and white border. Our fabulous realtor had this couch and red arm chair that she wanted to get rid of. It was just sitting in her basement, so Jeremy and I gladly took them off her hands. I had the yellow curtains from when I lived in Morgantown, and they matched perfectly.

There was painted-over wallpaper in the entry way, and I've been scrapping it since August. I am so releived that it is almost gone. Just a few more hours of scrapping, then I can finish the paint job.

Time off from home improvement

Okay... It's been almost a month since I posted, and I swear I did not forget about this blog.

I've had a whirlwind month with lots going on during the weekend, leaving me little time to work on the house. The last weekend in October was the Junior League's Boo Ball. Erinn and Mike came down and went with me. I didn't get the flapper costume I ordered in time, so at 2pm the day of the Boo Ball, I ran out and put this Marilyn Monroe costume together. Erinn and Mike won Most Original for their version of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which was hilarious, by the way...

The next weekend, my mom and I went to Wheeling for Rebecca's wedding. Jeremy couldn't go because he fought fires all weekend, so my mom was my "stand in" date. We had an fabulous time in Wheeling and did LOTS of shopping on Sunday. Of course, the wedding was a lot of fun, too.

All this travelling and partying leaves me with little time to spend scrapping wallpaper in the entryway--my current project. In August, I painted my living room a nice neutral khaki color. It was peach with a stenciled green and white border--YUCK! Anyway, the entry way was wallpapered and painted over, peach, of course. So since then, I've been scrapping wallpaper. It's a HORRIBLY slow process. And I had to get an extension ladder since its a mid-entry, the entryway has high ceilings. Good times.

I haven't taken any recent pictures of the projects because I discovered on my Wheeling roadtrip that my camera wasn't working. My mom's memory card worked in my camera, so I went out and bought a new memory card, but it still doesn't work. Who knows what's wrong with it, but it's probably going to be expensive.

The 8-month half bath.

So, nobody said redecorating was quick and easy.

The next room I decided to tackle was the half bath downstairs. Yes, more wallpaper to strip. It was also hopelessly stuck in the early 80's.

We decided to replace everything except the toilet and floor, and bought the stuff we needed to redo the half bath in January. We got a pedestal sink, faucet, mirror, light fixture and new toilet seat for well below the $300 minimum purchase required for the 12 months same-as-cash promotion, so I also got a great vaccum, especially for homes with pets.

I got the idea for the half bath from my friend Loren. He had a full bath at his last house that had deep blue walls with bright white fixtures and chrome accents. It looked so clean. I've also been a fan of Spode for a few years, and although, plates don't "belong" with a bathroom, I thought it would be nice minimal decor for a small room. I decided not to go with dark blue on the walls because it is a REALLY small bathroom with no window, and I thought it would be too much for such a small room. The towel hook was actually left in the guest bathroom upstairs by the previous owner, and went with the Spode well.

When I started stripping the wallpaper, I discovered a 5-inch hole in the drywall at the top of the wall above the toilet. As it turns out, this half bath is below a full bath upstairs, and a leak damaged the drywall and ceiling in the half bath. Luckily, the leak had been repaired, but the last owner just wallpapered over the hole and left it. The drywall just crumbled when you touched it. Nice. Anyway, Jeremy cut out the damaged drywall and a piece of the ceiling above the toilet. We patched the seams in the drywall and had to learn how to "mud" the ceiling. The pattern in the mud is some sort of circular pattern that we couldn't replicate (we tried in vain). So we just textured it. You can't see in these pictures, but there is a boxed in part of the ceiling that hids the beam and AC/heating duct that runs through the middle of the house. So you don't notice the different textures of the ceiling in the bathroom.

Finally, in August we got the light fixture and sink installed. It's done for the most part, but we still haven't put up the toilet paper holder. Maybe one of these days we'll get around to that.