Bad to Bead

When I started blogging about the house I said I was going to do before and after pictures and explain what we did. The funny thing is that I quickly realize there isn't one room in the house that we have finished! So I guess we will just be revealing one piece at a time instead!

Our family room looked like this when we got the house

Let's talk about that paneling. It is horrible! When I see it I think 70's. The house was built in the 80's so I don't think that it really is 70's. I guess I don't really know what I'm talking about!

My initial plan was to paint the lower half of the wall white and try to pull the paneling into today. I realized very quickly that it was not going to take paint very well so we moved onto the next plan.

Beadboard

If you have ever participated in impromptu demolition then you know how much fun it is! Craig had been telling me he wanted to take down all the paneling in the family room and I was trying to avoid the process. After I realized it wasn't going to take paint we decided at 10:00 pm one night to take it all down. It was so fun to pull it off the wall. When we did we found some writing on the wall with the names of the family members who installed it. Funny enough it wasn't original to the house. I'm not sure why they liked it to begin with but to each his own I suppose.

Craig and our friend Jonathan (you will probably see his name come up a lot on here!) spent a F-U-L-L day working on installing the beadboard. They worked really hard and got it all up on the wall. I spent another afternoon painting the beadboard the trim color that we selected for the house, Alabaster. Then Craig and I went through and installed chair rail and new baseboards. We had to find baseboards that matched the rest of the house for this room. The originals did not survive as well as they did in some of the other rooms.

The photos are not great but you can get an idea of what it looks like at this point. We still have some minor details to finish up on this project: filling nail holes, installing the last of the quarter round on the big wall in the room and a little bit of caulk in a few places. When it is complete I will show off the whole room.

You can also see a little bit of the door frame that I painted. Eventually I will paint all of the trim and doors. It is a slow process that might be finished a few years from now.

Maybe this will inspire me to finish up the details so I can show it all off!