Hallway Renovation

So - in the middle of our kitchen renovation, I am now in the throes of trying to finish up our hallway.

I started the hallway renovation over a year ago!   I stripped all the wallpaper, had a friend help me skim-coat the walls, and then we hit a "snag" when Hubby decided it would be great if we could strip the paint off the stairs and railings and bring it down to the natural wood.

Well....guess what....no one wanted to do it!  I had three different people come in for an estimate and they all said the same thing.  "We should just rip it all out and replace the whole thing."   First - that would have been very expensive. And second - that stairway and railing are solid as a rock, with beautiful wood underneath.

So we started doing it ourselves.  And a year later, we've finally gotten to the point where we have to finish it.  The new kitchen floor will be extended out into the front hall, and all the painting most assuredly needed to be done before that happens.

So I just spent the entire Memorial Day Weekend painting.  And I do mean the entire weekend.
  8-3:30 on Saturday  (then we went to my brother's house for a cook-out).   8-6 on Saturday. (Then we had a campfire in the backyard so Hubby could boil his sap.)  And 8-5 today.  (Then we rode up to Brown's for some seafood!).

I put two coats on all the woodwork....and there's a hell of a lot of woodwork!  And then one coat on all the walls  - including the stairwell.  I think the results speak for themselves.

That will be it for painting for me for awhile....until I have to paint the kitchen walls before the cabinets go up!

The Spoils of Demo

Hubby and I and Jamie spent another whole day doing demo.   What a job!  Of course, we started by saying we'd just take off the wall coverings and leave the lathes and the molding around the windows.  As we went we realized that if we're going to do it we might as well get down to the studs. So here are my lovely walls right now:

The sink and the wall right behind it are the only things left.  We wanted to keep our running water for as long as possible!

We found a couple of interesting things.   Of course we knew about this plug:

Hubby will be moving that one so it's below the windows, not between them!

But this plug was a surprise:

That is an old-fashioned ironing board cupboard.  

And of course you need an outlet to plug the iron into, right?

I waited the whole time to find the fantastic item hidden behind the walls.   Maybe a strong box with savings bonds, or gold coins.  Or at least an envelope with a few hundred dollars in it. 

Instead we got coupons

Someone's library card

A baseball card that was chewed on by a mouse

But we found the best things down in the heating duct.

  A couple army men, a train conductor, a small hat and a very big hat.

And a marble and a big Lego.

Not the best compensation for my poor, aching back!