When it came to a starting point on home renos, we decided, no place to start the reno's than in our front foyer - not that we spend tons of time there, but at least when I get home from a long day at work I would walk through a lovely foyer INTO the chaos rather than right into the mess ..... we'll call it my decompression zone!
So, picture this, when you walk in to the house you enter through an old white door (that has paint on the glass and something that resembles tree sap stuck all around it), the door lets in no air (no screen component) to the musty house. Immediately upon entry your dust allergy is kicked into high gear because of the layers of dust that have collected on the pink doilley of a curtain fluff and the area rug they have so generously left (which you soon find out they left because the floor beneath it has been damaged because of the tape they lay down for it!). As you stand in the space you realize the offensive pink floral metallic wallpaper that covers the upper half of the walls (which seems to have leaked up the stairs) and that the lower portion of the walls (wainscoting) is an equally nasty pink/rose colour (they matched it PERFECTLY to the curtain fluff). You turn back to face the door and see a nice size foyer closet - only when you look closely do you see that the space is home to more spiders, dust bunnies and mold spores then most people (including me) find comfortable. Beside the closet is an old radiator that will help to heat the house - it is covered by some contraption, but that appears easy to remove ..... so I rip it off and find what appears to be a massive length of dryer lint (turns out it is dust - I have never seen dust form such a solid sheet before) ...... otherwise, the last notable portion of the room appears to be the VERY fluffy deep red carpet that spills into the room from the staircase which leads upstairs (I am sure this helps the dust allergy! It looks like ideal breeding ground for dust and mites)
On the positive side, the foyer is a good size (although it could be considered a waste of space to those of us who don't hang out in the foyer) and after vacuuming and putting on my dish gloves to wash the closet down (it took changing the pail of Mr. Clean 7 times because the water kept getting so dirty!) paint was able to stick to the walls and with that I feel comfortable hanging our jackets and putting our shoes in their home!. The floors are in decent shape - turns out the tape that they had put down to keep the carpet in place did minimal damage after you clean the area with floor cleaner and a scrub brush. The electricians have fixed the pesky electrical wires hanging in the closet and after I removed the dusk and gave it a good bath the rad has potential! Oh - and the door and window trim throughout the house is amazing! Needs a few holes filled in and some paint - but the details and work is gorgeous!
The work; So, immediately we backed up a trailer to the house and threw out the area rug, window fluff, rad cover and lint cloth ..... I removed the wallpaper and cleaned the floors, walls and closet to get a better idea of what we were working with. Turned out the wallpaper had been holding the walls up in some sections so Ty had to do some repair work to the walls, crown moulding, trim, etc. After some dusty drywall work I could go ahead with paint - the ceiling and crown got 2 coats of fresh white paint (it is amazing how dirty a ceiling can get - and how much you don't notice it until you put a streak of white paint beside it! yikes!) Then I got to put some colour on the walls - after one coat of primer it was time for 2 coats of Shellburn Buff paint (this rich, warm golden colour by Benjamin Moore - amazing!), next the wainscoting got primed out and was given a face lift with 2 coats of cloud white paint (as did all the baseboards, door and window trim). Ty installed a new light fixture (to replace that lovely gold and glass thing). The front door has been cleaned and primed out and will be getting a fresh coat of Stone Brown paint over the weekend! The closet door was painted and given a new pull and we are in the process of deciding on a window treatment for the one large window in the room.
Next will simply be filling the room and giving it function so it doesn't feel like such an empty space!
Next week I shall move on to the "parlour room"! Joys of joy - getting rid of all that pink paint!
xoxo,
S
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