Flashback to the Living Room Redo

The Cottage, when purchased in 2002, had icky beige and blue calico patterned wallpaper in the living room. Forgive me, but I do not have a photo of it, for what I hope are obvious reasons. I think it was supposed to be part of the PHO's "country" decorating theme. Within hours of the closing, I had stripped the wallpaper using only my bare hands. It felt great. I had just plunked down $88,000, and was beginning to realize what I had gotten myself into. It was my way of claiming the Cottage as my own.

Afterward, the living room walls lay exposed: wallpaper bits, stains, cracks, and all. And that is exactly how the living room remained until I decided to finally transform it a few years later. (Yes, years later).

Below is a very early before photo of the living room. Note the complete absence of baseboards (the floors had recently been refinished). The shadowy stains on the walls are not photographic artifact. They really were this yucky, uneven, and splotchy. Actually, they were worse. My "drapes" were old bedsheets strung up on rope. Looking at this photo, I recall the scrap of 2x4 "drapery rod support" that the PHO had nailed and screwed to the wall. Such memories!

The original double-hung windows had not yet been replaced. Below is a photo of the old windows, after the floors were refinished, but before I moved in. Note the matching pair of window-propping sticks provided by the PHO. I found them very useful for propping the windows open, since, without the window-propper sticks, the windows would not have remained open for very long at all!

Below is another photo of the same room, from a different angle. Wow,look at that gap. You can really see how badly off-kilter the old entry door was in this photo.

About 5 months after purchasing the Cottage, my second big splurge (after the metal roof) : new windows!
The photo below shows an exterior view of the front of the Cottage, with new windows installed. I chose the 3-over-1 lite pattern because of its Craftsman feel (although the Cottage is not in the Craftsman style, homes of the same era around here often have this style of window), and because I like having one large open pane on the bottom to give an unobstructed view of my garden and the birds.

You can still see the shadowy reminder of the old vinyl faux shutters. I recall more than a few wasp stings while taking those suckers down. Who knew?

Below is a closeup of the windows, because they are so 3-over-1/aluminum-clad/wooden/double-hung/low-E/double-glazed fabulous!

Back to the living room....after the windows were replaced, but before the living room transformation was complete, there was THE HOLE. I do not seem to have a photo of THE HOLE, but it lived in the living room wall, under the only south-facing window in the room. THE HOLE came to exist after I noticed mushrooms growing from the exterior window sill. I thought that was odd, and that it probably meant trouble. Removing the rotten sill (basically touching it with my hand, and watching it fall to bits) led to the discovery of some rotted siding located beneath the window and hidden by the shingles. Which led to my wondering, if the exterior had been water damaged to this extent, wouldn't the interior have been, too? So, I moved the living room furniture away from the window and tore out all of the drywall from beneath the window. And, yes, the jack stud inside the wall was also completely rotted and crumbling. It was replaced, along with the small area of damaged siding. The drywall, on the other hand, did not get replaced right away, because it just seemed easier at the time to put the furniture back, which made THE HOLE completely invisible. And, because furniture could hide THE HOLE, THE HOLE stayed hidden, where it remained until further improvements were made.

The old 32" sagging front door was replaced with a new 36" fiberglass door with a leaded glass inset. The Cottage's exterior shingles had all been professionally and expertly removed from its exterior by this time, as shown in this photo, in which the underlying faded and chipped original bygone lead-containing paint job is visible. This was the Cottage's transitional phase. It was a curious time. One neighbor actually stopped out front as she was driving by and said (no joke), "I LOVE what you've done!!" Something about "shabby chic" and "log cabin style." Ugh. It defies explanation.

When I finally got around to completing the living room, I started by taking down the crown molding, and carefully numbering each piece for re-installation later. Next, I patched the dozens of nail holes and cracks in the wall, and taped and mudded the entire perimeter of the room where the walls meet the ceiling. (The Cottage's drywall is all similarly installed, with prominent gaps between wall and ceiling, and gaps where drywall meets drywall in the corners. Some people must REALLY have hated taping and mudding back when this house was built; or, maybe they didn't expect it to last this long). After the joints were all neatly filled in and sanded smooth, I moved one electrical outlet over about 12 inches and then drywalled over THE HOLE.

Next, I attempted to even up the rather uneven walls as best I could. My original plan was to do a knockdown pattern. But, I quickly realized that I had no idea how to do it. My attempts at teaching myself proper application of a knockdown drywall finish via online do-it-yourself tutorials were pretty disappointing. I gave up and came up with Plan B. I troweled layer upon thin layer of drywall compound over the really obvious low spots, to build them up. Then, I concocted a mixture of playground sand with slightly thinned drywall mud that I rolled onto the walls like paint, using a thick-napped roller. It took about 2 days for each coat to completely dry. That was okay, since I had nothing but time. I layered on 2-3 coats of the sand/mud mixture, depending on how uneven the area was. The result was a pleasing slightly coarse wall texture that helped hide minor flaws. I primed and then painted the room, and put the crown molding back up. After I installed the window trim and put up the new drapes, I was extremely pleased with the results:




I trimmed out the windows using stock poplar lumber. My trim carpentry skills are not so great, so I kept the design very simple. Instead of staining the wood, I used shellac. If you have never used shellac, you definitely must try it on a finishing or refinishing project soon. It is truly the most forgiving finish you can ever hope to apply to wood. It is simple to mix, and very easy to apply (imagine a finish with NO brush marks). Each new coat dissolves and combines with previous coats, so it builds up beautifully, and dries in minutes.

For the window trim, I used orange shellac flakes from Lee Valley Tools. It gave the perfect warm color to the poplar, don't you think? I have also used the same shellac to refinish the walnut burl dresser shown in one of my earlier posts. It took just one day to refinish the dresser.

I bought 8" cypress baseboards from a local sawmill, and finished them with 6 coats of natural oil-based Minwax stain (to match to color of the original heart pine flooring as much as possible) and 3 coats of oil-based satin polyurethane. Once the baseboards were installed, the living room was complete.