It’s been awhile. And it was a lot of work! But the dining room is almost as I wanted it to be. I still want to put some vintage wallpaper up in the alcove that now houses my little electric piano, but who knows when I’ll get to that?
Luckily, I have a painter in the family, but he lives very far away. He decided to drop in, though, and I let him go to work! Here, we’re deciding which hue for the dining room walls.And here, he’s helping me remove the casings from around the window.
Ready to start painting, while I continued stripping the paint off the trim in the garage.Paint stripped, wood filler slapped on.Smoothed and sanded.Stained and lacquered.Since I knew how hard it was to try and strip paint from the un-removable parts, I eventually decided on brown paint instead for the inside of this doorway and for the baseboards. It took a good while to find a brown that would blend in, but in the end, although noticeable, it isn’t strikingly odd or different.Archway to living room DONE!Now the daunting task of the two doors. This one leads to the basement. I couldn’t carry it down to the garage, so carried it onto the porch.And began work.This is the closet door. I was even lazier and decided to strip it in the dining room. Things didn’t go so well, whether because the new batch of Citristrip I bought had a completely different color and consistency, or the wood is just a different wood. If I’d known, I would’ve gotten conditioner!In the end it turned out alright.Though a tad too dark.And here’s the basement door installed and I’ve finally, after weeks, nay months, of procrastination painted the baseboards.Nice!And there are the kitchen doorway and dining room window! My neighbor across the street has the actual original kitchen door stored in her basement. It’s a swinging door with panes of glass in it where the mirrors on the other doors are. She said I can have it and someday, I will go and get it.
I’ve decided NOT to do the same thing to all the trim and not even the mantle in the living room because I just can’t bear the thought of all the work. It will all stay white…at least for now.
