Duty distribution

Having emptied the attic of the dreaded vermiculite, it was now time to take stock and decide where oh where to begin. The problem with a reno of this size as my Mr. felt the need to point out to me, time and time again ad nauseam, is that one project links to another. That being said my meticulously organized brain was having an issue wrapping my mind around that, I wanted to tackle one room at a time, one bathroom at a time etc. That was not going to happen as evidently creating 2 new bathrooms involved pretty much doing the plumbing for both simultaneously. Ok fine but I wanted to start in the largest, front room first, so with visitors imminent to help with our "project" we, and that is the "royal we" prepared to begin the demo of the wall that would be the entrance to the new bathroom.

A note of caution here, if you have friends willing to help, fantastic! However if you leave them to have at it make sure your instructions are very clear as one day we went out for a few hours to come home and discover the wall that was going to be partially removed in the first bedroom was now eliminated. As it turned out this was ok as the design changed repeatedly with regard to this ensuite.

I made the executive decision that multi tasking on this project was an absolute necessity if we were going to see any kind of progress. While hammering and sawing noises were going on upstairs I put myself to work in what is now the dining room and I must say when only cosmetic changes are needed for the most part it goes very quickly and you will see improvements on a daily basis.

I had decided when I saw this lovely large bright room that I wanted some architectural interest and as it involved the other "B" in B&B it had to be impressive. I choose a deep red/wine color for the upper portion of the wall as I felt it would really make the red in the stained glass adorning the front window really pop out and it surely did. I want to take a moment to talk about paint. I have always said if you want to make a wow and quickly, paint the walls, it is the cheapest and fastest way to make a total makeover, and really what is the worst that can happen? If you hate it, change it, don't be afraid of color, I can guarantee you, if you break out of the beige box you will not be disappointed and you will have more comments on your cozy room than ever before. As for choosing red, here again be warned it is not the easiest color to work with, a tinted primer is a must and even then be prepared that you will need 2 coats and maybe even 3 depending on what was on the wall and quality of paint.

I will include some before pictures of the dining room and as you can see it is a lovely large room and so I was eager to start here.

So this is one of the few rooms that was going to be wallpaperless, so just imagine the stripping that went on here before the paint, but really much like giving birth you really do forget how bad it is until you need to do it again. For the lower half of the room I wanted an ivory color with alot of molding detail, and this is where it got tricky, as "my" project suddenly needed my Mr. to do all the cutting of the actual molding and this was going to pull him away from the ever important new bathroom. But bless him he did as asked and the look is exactly as I had imagined, take a look, let me know what you think?

Notice as well the crown molding at the ceiling? I love the look of this but here's a secret it is actually a synthetic material which is a foam base. The good news is it looks really authentic, and it is light to work with, once painted it is fantastic. Bad news is, in old homes like this where nothing is square, well the corners are not as easily modified as when using wood, if you can live with slightly less than perfection then this may be a viable solution and relatively inexpensive as well, another plus is it is really light and easy to work with. This product is meant to be just glued on but I did not feel confident enough with that so we added a few nails using our air gun set on a light setting, the results were quite impressive.

Next I will talk about a faux tin ceiling, but much like the task itself I need to be well rested before tackling, I will be back.