Trimming My Sails

English: Paintbrush Português: Trincha (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The radiator, segueing from old dingy white to glossy new white.

The sun is shining, the tomatoes are pouring in, the weather is finally cool enough to stand and the mosquitoes are thicker than thieves in our yard. My speckled legs bear testament. Urgh. So...I'm painting indoors for respite.

Before Trim

After Trim!

 The trim in the boy's bath is finally getting a glossy coat of white and I'm humming away. Coming along, isn't it? I'm so excited about the whole project. I think this room may really end up looking miles better. I adore the cool aqua blue on the walls and shiny white trim always makes me feel better. Have a peek!

The baby has learned to stay asleep for a reasonable amount of time and little jobs like this don't require any taping or hauling out of drop cloths. I could do picky detail work like this all day long. I love being down on my hands and knees with a bitty brush, trying to be sure to go right up to the very edge. What does that mean about me? Something important I'm sure.

Sometimes You Need A Little Taupe

I swear I decorate in rash episodes. I mean to have strategic plans and check things off cleverly one by one working my way methodically through the house creating a nest of beauty as I go. But what really happens? I wake up one random Wednesday morning and decide I have had enough....today I must paint the upstairs hall. Life and death hangs on it. And it has to be done before I take the boys to their co-op meeting, and before the babysitter gets here, and before my extremely stress laden meet-and-greet appointment with the birth center that is my last out of hospital hope. I am not sure if this is insanity, stress relief, brilliant inspiration or nesting.

Pre-renovation stairwell and view into hallway

Ripping out that old carpet

Who really cares? The hall looks good! Not finished, there is still a floor to finish, a ceiling to paint, and trim to re-paint with gloss white. But its starting to really look sophisticated and pretty and to hint at how I want the house to feel. Its a lot better than the plasticky faux wood panelling look + really dingy carpet look that was there before.

I always leave a set of squares for each of the boys to paint at the very end with their own brushes

Nib's first experience getting in on painting himself.

I've never painted a wall taupe before. I feel like a grown-up. It's very elegant on the wall, not boring and it feels adult. I had the runner on the floor and my friend and very sophisticated pal, who also happens to be Ru's godmother suggested taupe after taking an advisory stroll through the place during a co-decorating brainstorm. She's edgy and eclectic and hip and not at all the boring, bland over-elegant style of decorator that I makes me shrink into a very small version of myself. I aspire to be as expressive and creative as this girl. She's that hip.

The finished product. Hall doors and trip all white,walls taupe to match the cool runner.

And when I finished I re-hung the mirror I took down out of the kid-bath which is darn cool but going to be replaced by a medicine cabinet.

Good thing I kept it, eh? It's classy.

Anyhow...all that to say, she told me instantly that I needed taupe. "Taupe walls are the thing in here." And I would never, never have decided that on my own (I go for colors like teal and peacock and bright grape) but when she said it I could see it immedietly and it felt right and I also remembered that I somehow had a bucket full of taupe paint in the basement that I'd pick up somewhere on clearance. So, that was this summer and here we are, a few months later...tucking into bed, in a room off our newly classy hallway. Ah! Accomplishment. One "room" down...five million to go.

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Bathroom Redo, Part Two

Remember when I stripped the wallpaper off the bathroom and then got stumped? I have spent months dithering about what exactly I should do next and how. Sometimes the answer was, drywall mud over the whole friggin' thing, glue residue and all and start over...sometimes the answer was old fashioned elbow grease, just a slow manual scrub of every single inch....and sometimes I convinced myself that this whole project was insane for us to be tackling at all and the real solution was to hire professionals and just outsource. I love it when a real person inspires me to suddenly believe in the impossible.

The next thing that happened was that I met Ashley. Ashley doesn't have any inkling that she turned on my lightbulb and gave me real life hope about being a home re-modeler, I'm not even sure she remembers my name...we met in passing at a women's group. She just shared quickly that she is mother of three and that their family purchased a 1929 home (the exact year of our house) that needs a lot of work and she is single-handedly renovating it piece by piece. The day she talked to me she had just finished lining and building a fireplace and installing a mantle over it! Holy moly! Forget my blues...with no training or formal qualifications. She just has an old house that she wants to see live again, she wants to be a can-do woman and she believes she is qualified to learn how to do virtually anything her house needs because she has a good mind and two sound hands. She does it all with her kids by her side with no nanny and her mother living across the country. Dude. She beats the We Can Do It woman all hollow if you ask me!

Image by The U.S. National Archives via FlickrI went home completely inspired and super motivated. I sat down and did some quick research on what was the correct thing to do with a wall covered with wallpaper glue...no short-cuts or quick fixes or cover over jobs but what was the right thing that a real pro, going the honest route would recommend. I realized that even though it will take longer and in some cases take some special equipment and education I would rather renovate our home the right way than turn it into a giant hack job. That is work that a woman can be proud of with good reason. I'd be busting my buttons if I dusted off our home and made it shine again the right, honest way, giving myself an education in the process.

After my internet digging I found out that the right way is truly to remove the glue. Any other plan might fall right through. Drywall mudding over the top can go awry because sometimes the mud doesn't stick well to the glue or it doesn't stick long-term (even worse!). Painting right over the residue could have similar results and professionals would be very pricey and maybe not even a sure bet for "the right method." The only way to do it was to clean the wall. So then I thought, "Well, then let's think outside the box. I have to get the glue off...I need clever methods of doing it." and the research took another furious bend. And eventually I found Chomp wallpaper removal spray cleaner. I read reviews and ordered it up. It came in the mail and I got right to work testing it out this week. I am happy to say that the glue removal has been vastly accelerated, I am back to dreaming about bathroom paint swatches and feeling more hopeful than ever about my own abilities as woman home renovator. It's crazy to do with a herd of children and my feet and an optimistically small budget but is not impossible. I really believe that sometimes the key is just hearing encouragement, it sure changed my tune. Share your major achievements with people, you never know who really needs to hear a success story!

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Surprise! Our Hidden Walk.

I love the discoveries that come with an old house. We're all cabin fevered up to our earlobes at this point so every single warmish/sunnyish day has us romping around on the lawn until the very last second. I've been out shifting plants around, playing with the edges of beds, dreaming up what will someday go where and generally enjoying having a yard to the very fullest. I decided that there needed to be a little something down the sides of the rather stark front walk....a little plant life to give a lusher look than just concrete and grass. 

The boring front walk last fall, notice all those cringe-worthy buzz-cut yews along the front....all gone!

So, I found some hostas that could be divided up and moved from their current home and after plunking them in, I meandered down the walk to check the view from the street. At the curb I found myself looking down at a couple of funny cobblestone rocks we'd noticed in the grass between the sidewalk and the street. My landscape designer friend had suggested we lift them at some point and use them in our design because they looked pretty. 

Here's a little further away view of the "Before" look. Can you see the cobblestones in the grass between sidewalk and curb? Yeah, me neither.

Pretty soon I was down on my hands and knees, fiddling around, pulling clumps of last year's crabgrass off of them and my fingers found the hidden edge of another stone, and then Ru was down on his knees helping and there was another and another! By the time I had finished Ru and I had unearthed a hidden cobblestone connector to the street. A beautiful little field-stone segue to our front walk, the perfect place for someone to arrive curbside and a beautiful little addition to the view. It is hard to believe that it was invisible under grass and dirt for all that time, years probably and that someone so long ago must have laid those stones, fitting all the notches and edges together. 

Surprise! Beautiful laid stone walk!

Woohoo! Isn't that pretty? This is how it looks now. some plantings along the side of the walk, newly discovered cobble-walk bridging our house to the road....and plantings going in along the sides.

I sure wish I knew the story. After sweeping off the stones with our broom I went dashing to the backyard and came back with some clumps of daylilies I'd wrenched out of the long swathe next to the garage and planted them along the stone walk. I think the look is really beautiful, even if it is a bit unformed yet. I am having visions of creeping thyme or, Irish moss or Corsican mint creeping between the stones and beautiful gardens on both sides to frame the view. Gotta love little victories!

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