Our House Was (Is) Also Crazy

So there was a LOT of wood paneling. Which we tore off the walls. And then it was piled up around the house for a while. Giant shards of fake wood paneling. The satisfaction of pulling it off though was pretty great though!

Here you can see the stairs that still have a million billion zillion staples in them from where the old green carpeting was. We got to pull those all out. Yee. That was also pretty satisfying though, once I figured out the right way to use pliers. Pliers! Claw Hand! No more staples...

This is the downstairs living room (I think that is what we are calling it). It doesn't look like this anymore, but this is mmm, fairly early on. When we were all steaming the layers of wallpaper off the walls we discovered names painted underneath. There is a video of this somewhere. The fun part was seeing "ART" first and thinking that the house was super creatively blessed, and then wondering if there was just an "F" to the left of it that we hadn't discovered yet. Fortunately there was not. At least not painted on the wall.

"Hi Dust and Schrapnel!"
"Hi Amy.."

 This was the constant conversation that I had for the first couple of months.
Actually that is just part of the conversation. The rest of the conversation was private. At least for now.

In case you hadn't figured it out, this is the second floor landing. That is the bathroom that you are looking at right there with the door open. There are three more bedrooms on this floor. You will eventually see them. One has brown wallpaper with some designs on it, one has crrrraaazy pink and purple psychedelic striped wall paper, and the master bedroom was a couple shades of blue. All of them had dropped ceilings and big hanging industrial fluorescent lights, which, while energy efficient is not particularly emotionally efficient. Though maybe that's just me and my personal relationship with fluorescent lights. Each to their own.

Why hello there hellacious carpet tack edging strips! You were my nemesis UNTIL I DISCOVERED YOUR WEAKNESS! The key (several rooms later but I DID figure it out!) to your demise is to pull you up with a crowbar AT YOUR NAILS! Ha HA! And now I have told this to the internets so basically your days of thinking you will live forever in the corners of old houses waiting for babies feet to be punctured on your evil teeth are over. OVER I TELL YOU! Though I'm sure you were totally appreciated when you were holding all that original green carpeting in, so you know, don't take it too badly. Please. Thank you for leaving though! NOT THAT YOU WANTED TO GO. So "ULTRA". So Gone. Ahhhhhhhhh! Sweet sweet victory. One victory that is. And now I feel bad for attacking you. But come on, you are NAILS sticking up. And I have a hundred tiny bitty scars on my gloved-at-the-time hands to prove it. Bye nails! Good bye! Sweet Jubilation! Okay. Moving on...

This is a view of the second floor landing from the stairs. That door with the dirty old thin sheer over it actually goes out to a great little uncovered porch on the second floor.  The door on the left is to the (blue-on-blue-soon-to-be-some-other-color) master bedroom. There was wall paneling where all the robin's egg blue color is, and the floor was covered with carpeting I think. I don't know, all that green carpeting sort of melded together in my memory into one giant field of gritty fur zone.

Wow the angle of this stairwell shot infers beer intake. The color palette of the room at this stage infers both victory and the grey-green-brown vomit of a cat that accidentally ate old meat curry for dinner.

THIS is/was the kitchen with my brother Dave and his wife, Amy Mae, looking at the cabinet we brought home from Ikea to hold the double-bowl Domsjo farm sink that we got off Craigslist with Ryan. Their serious nature is due to the fact that we didn't realize until just before then that we were missing several key pieces to install the sink that only came with the original sink. Con-ster-NATION.

Fortunately these two are great company, both silly and charming so you know, it was all good. That sink is still on our floor, though we just recently got the missing parts from Ikea. More on that later - AWESOME DISCOVERY though. Make sure that I TELL YOU. Later. HaHA!


ps. See those two little lanterns in the background? Those are from the JP Lantern Festival when the community all lights lanterns and walks around JP pond. Very sweet and endearing. We chose (of course) to buy the lantern on the right that a child made that says "Poop" and has poop cutouts on it. Apparently "Pee" had just been sold before we got there, so we walked the pond looking for our lantern's soulmate with no success. Probably just as well. Poop is enough.

 See? Funny comments and laughing. At our temporary setback most certainly. We were probably laughing too. Probably.

No, we were. ;)

Deep thoughts before they went home for the night. There is a corresponding video to this picture where Ryan proceeded to wear Izzie   as fur collar. She likes it.

She liiiiikes it!

This slab of wood is also from Ikea. (You wills see a theme here, so consider yourself forewarned...)

We decided to stain these a nice green that we found and then put Bar-Top on them (a thick polyurethane that they use on bar tops...thus the NAME!)  You will see these later as a couple of them are now in the kitchen! Yeee! Major minor successes. Count. For. So. MUCH.

Apparently you put on this pre-stain before the colored stain. I did this. It worked!
Though you couldn't really tell because hey! it looks exactly the same before and after the fancy shmancy pre-stain. But it works! Somehow. Bonding or something. Sealing. You know... staining.

Good thing we liked the color because hey! this stain is NOT RETURNABLE.

Hhhhh...it's interesting seeing this project here, because I literally did NOTHING to this until yesterday when I finally moved it so we can put some flooring in that room before the washer and dryer come on Friday.

What IS this project you ask? It was a medicine cabinet that was too big for the bathroom (but in there anyways...) and a cool style but kind of needing some attention so I spray-painted it neon orange (really) and then painted over it white and then I was planning on sanding into it and painting another couple layers and making it all odd and interesting. But then actual REAL jobs needed to get done around the house. Like prepping rooms so that we could live in them, etc. etc. etc.