Netherfield’s Dining Room
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The dining room was one of the rooms we got to work right away in. Removing the dusty old carpet and the window treatments was a top priority! Also, right off the dining room is our half-bath (pointing it out incase you couldn’t tell 😉 )
This picture gives a peek into the living room. Yes, those are POCKET DOORS!!
The wallpaper honestly wasn’t the most horrible thing, but you can see the scotch tape that was added to the ceiling in places the wallpaper was cracking. One of my favorite features of this house is the woodwork! This room has delightful cabinets that are adjacent to some in the kitchen, making life a little easier.
Only downside of these cabinets is that the latches are high enough that if we put something in front of this wall such as a server (or buffet table), I can’t reach the latches!
We ripped into this room right away, removing the carpet, the carpet pad, and then a layer of linoleum that looked like wood paneling.
There was one large rectangular area the linoleum padding must have been glued down to, because it stuck in a perfect rectangle, which was miserable to eventually deal with.
This was one of two rooms that the wallpaper wasn’t painted over (except on the ceilings), and this was actually the last room it was removed from. We tried a couple different methods to remove it, such as using Piranha Wallpaper Remover, a wallpaper scoring tool, and even a steamer, but we found for us, warm water and some putty knives seemed to do the trick the best. We would soak down the wall for a little bit before working on that area, and then do our best to keep the area damp so it could penetrate through the different layers of paint and such. We were fortunate to find most areas only had one layer of wallpaper and paint, but there were a couple of areas that there were wallpaper borders hiding under the paint.
Yes, the water and the woodwork did worry me, but most of the water damage that occured, my solution of vinegar and olive oil took care of. We learned after the first two rooms that it was best if we covered the floor with plastic for easier cleanup after the hard work of removing wallpaper was done.
Also, drywall stilts came in very handy, both for getting work done and for laughs when people fell with them on (don’t worry, no one was hurt!)
After cleaning down the walls with a lot of elbow grease and a solution of Dawn dish soap, baking soda, and water (using a drywall sponge!), Andrew got to do the fun job of patching and repairing the walls and ceiling. There was a big area in front of the bathroom door that he actually ended up removing loose plaster and put some drywall up there to fix it. He was introduced to FibaFuse paperless drywall and plaster tape, which has been used a LOT to help cover bigger cracks. I tend to stay out of the room while the dust is flying, so unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of that work in progress. Another hack he was taught was to put paintable caulk in the corners to fill in the cracks, and that has worked wonderfully!
The wall color in the dining room is Hancock Green, a Benjamin Moore color from their historical collection, but we got the color in Sherwin-Williams paint because we have one close to us. We used their Cashmere Interior Acrylic Latex overtop their PrepRite ProBlock Interior/Exterior Latex Primer/Sealer. Before this, we’d used Valspar paint from Lowe’s, but the quality seemed to be going down and this was recommended to us instead. I have no complaints! The color turned out exactly as I’d hoped.
Also, note the lovely pocket doors are closed in the above picture. At some point, there must have been water leaking from the upstairs bathroom which caused some water damage to the left pocket door. At some point, that will get taken care of.
Because we didn’t know what we wanted to do with the floor since we had that weird spot that was not only glued on, but also didn’t seem to be finished, we procrastinated doing the floor until after we painted the room. Then we had a spark of inspiration egged on by a friend telling us that the glue should come up with a powered sander (which had Andrew annoyed for a while, but it did work with a lot of effort!) that a stain we had accidentally bought last year that was flat instead of glossy would probably match the floor close enough that it would work for now. So after Andrew worked on that for quite a while (and I avoided the area because it made me cough), here was the result:
After it was finished drying, my friend helped me clean the floors and we moved the table from its temporary home in the parlor to the dining room, and I haven’t gotten a decent picture of the room set up, even though we finished it two months ago, just in time for a birthday dinner celebration for me! (Andrew cooked me some DELICIOUS steak and made hamburgers with ground beef from a local farm.)
Eventually I shall get a finished picture of the room, but even now it has some temporary furniture in it while it waits for the parlor to be completed.
Other rooms: