Project: That Paneling has GOT to go.

As soon as the keys to this baby were in our hands, the first order of business was to get that particularly awful paneling off the walls and ceiling in the living room and dining room (well actually the first order of business was to move in, but that would make for a boring blog post... kind of. Move-in actually happened during a rainstorm!).

Back in the day the original owners tore down a wall to a front bedroom and created one large room for the living and dining areas.  In order to differentiate between the living area and the dining area, they apparently decided that sticking some dark wood paneling up to create that divide... which left us with one long room with a seemingly random application of paneling at one end which you would be able to see here if we hadn't been so gung-ho to get started and actually taken a before shot. Whoops.  Here is another shot of the ceiling paneling for your viewing pleasure instead:

Sweet chandelier too, right?

And a shot of the random wall of paneling in the living room. I'm guessing they thought it would balance the space out? Or maybe they were just hoping it would?

The window boxes are also made out of... wait for it... paneling!

Yep. You can probably see the problem here.  So J and I went to town thinking all we would need to do is pop a few small nails, peel that paneling away, repaint, and voila new dining room and living room!  Easy peesy, right?

Homeowner Extraordinaires

We're completely consumed with making improvements to the new house. No seriously. More posts on the projects to come, but before we can do that - I have to present the before pictures. Just know that while these are scary - there was a lot of potential under all that carpet and paneling!

Living room - before

Turn around from the living room and you're staring at the dining room. All paneled. Even the ceiling. Yeesh.

Kitchen - like the dark, shiny cabinets? Yeah, me neither.

More kitchen before. This gives you a great view of the floor.  Installed back when lime green laminate was considered a "good" idea.

The shining star in the basement! Yes - that is a Zenith TV in the wall! Sweet!

The one and only bathroom. There are swans on those glass doors. We're all about the classy here.

The rest of the itty, bitty, teeny-weeny bathroom.

The soon-to-be Master Bedroom.

So now that you've seen some of the before pictures you'll be able to appreciate the "in progress" and "after" posts a little more!