Here we go again!

This week has continued on the same trend as week 1 and many of you can probably guess the theme...wallpaper removal!

During the week, John and I went over at night and removed some of the kitchen owl wallpaper. We are leaving the U-shape kitchen alone (not removing backsplash) at the moment as the kitchen renovation will be one of the last projects we do. The owl wallpaper actually came off pretty easy and we were able to tackle it all in one night as this is one of the newer wallpapers in the house.

For the weekend, John disappeared on his annual caving/camping trip so I had the help of my family in the afternoon. I started my day off at the Habitat for Humanity Restore to see if there was anything that could help us with furnishing the house and/or with the projects. This is a great local charity to support and we have been going every weekend to see if we stumble on anything. Last weekend we found a pretty cool chandelier for a bargain. You truly never know what they are going to have and it is fun walking around the store. Today, there was not anything that I found for the sake of our project but I did manage to find a cool cast iron floral pig trivet that I loved for $4 so I bought that. Other than that, I left empty handed and headed to meet up with my family.

One of the conditions when we bought the house was buying it "as is" and the previous owners had a lot of junk left in their garage and workout equipment (not the usable kind) in the basement. Mom, dad, and I tackled going through the garage and organizing what we found...let the fun begin. These people literally bought everything you could imagine from Amazon and just put it in the garage. Do you need an un-opened and un-used garment bag, let me know...I know have 10! Do you need a cat door, I got one. What about a mosquito trap thing that retails at $300...yep, I got one of those too! Literally we were finding things left and right that just make you wonder who these previous owners are. Needless to say, it is all listed for sale now and we are going to use the money from these items for the house...we shall see what we end up with!

I tasked my brother, Adam, with removing the baseboards as they are just bad. John and I have decided that some of our initial budget will go towards new baseboards as the amount of time we would have to spend sanding and fixing them do not outweigh the cost of new baseboards or our sanity. Adam was able to get all the baseboards on the main floor removed which is very helpful.

While Adam was wrapping up the baseboards, I started with the wallpaper removal in the formal dining room. And wouldn't you believe it, we had another double wallpaper situation!! Oh, how fun! The good news on this one was that the top layer came off very easily and in full panels. However, we were not so lucky with the floral paper that was below it. And the best part about it, the previous owners tried to remove it and just gave up and put new wallpaper over it...I am thinking that is a theme here and we are only going to uncover more double-layered wallpaper situations through the rest of the house. Only time will tell!

The group transitioned to this room and it was all hands on deck, even soapy little hands wiping the walls because that was their attempt at using the sponges on the wall. The steamer did prove to be useful in this room and Adam used it for his section of the wall while Shelby and I used the sponge/soap/water method and were fairly successful in removing it. The group called it around dinner time as there was a Titans game to watch and we had accomplished quite a bit. Sunday was more of the same as I returned to continue with the wallpaper removal. The room has 15% of wallpaper to go, we are moving and grooving!

One major callout regarding our progress is the way the main floor is coming along. The color choices that were on the walls, dark blues and browns, really made the house feel small, dark (not only because the lack of lighting throughout), and cramped. With the walls being down to drywall on the majority of the downstairs, the house feels so much more spacious and we absolutely love it!