When we decided to buy our old house and renovate we really had no idea what we were in for. In the months since settlement we have come to realise this project is so much bigger than we ever imagined. Every day we discover new things that need doing, and every task we undertake takes longer than we anticipate. That said, it does feel wonderful to be (very) slowly breathing life back into this old house…
Reubs took last week off work to work on the house and we naively believed that with a solid nine days behind us, we’d be able to strip and paint two of our three bedrooms, as well our living room. Of course we were way off! We spent four days just stripping, sanding and prepping one bedroom!! We did however manage to get the two bedrooms very almost finished, so I thought today I’d share some pictures of our progress so far.
When we moved in the main bedroom looked like this:
Last week it looked like this:
And now, it looks like this:
As you an see the skirting boards and windows (and door frame) have only been undercoated and still need a couple of coats of paint, but we are almost finished! You might remember that when we started stripping paint we found the wood underneath had previously been varnished and we decided to keep the wood exposed? Yes well, as you can see we changed our minds. We discovered the hard way that stripping the paint off completely in order to varnish is virtually impossible and the wood underneath was in worse condition than we had realised. Plus, it just looked really dark and yucky. So sadly, the wood had to go.
Here’s the smallest bedroom (soon to be craft room!) when we moved in:
And here it is now:
We still need to paint all the trim in there too.
Both rooms feel so much bigger and fresher now! We’ve used Taubmans Ocean Pearl on the walls which is a creamy, ever so slightly lemony, off white. We’ll be finishing the doors, windows and skirting boards with straight white. You can’t really see in these pictures but the ceilings were a creamy colour and they are now crisp white too, which has made such a difference to the spaces, and made both rooms feel brighter and more airy. We’re so pleased with how these rooms are looking so far and the fresh paint really brings the floors we slaved on to life! We can’t wait until the rest of the house is looking so good.
Only one bedroom, the living room, hall, entryway, kitchen, bathroom and laundry to go…
