Project: That Paneling has GOT to go.

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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?



Side note: this project actually commenced about 15 minutes after J got down on one knee on our front walkway and proposed before we walked into the house together as new homeowners for the first time (cue happy tears and excessive hand flapping!)!  BUT we're no slackers and after I was reminded that I needed to answer and we discovered the the ring fit perfectly with no resizing, I took it back off, put it in it's box for safe-keeping, and we went to work while simultaneously calling all our family and friends (sorry to those of you who I called to make the big announcement and could barely here me over the banging of a hammer on a crowbar in the background!). That's how we roll.

We dug right in...

Peeling paint AND mold?!

... and womp womp.

This was definitely our first, "Oh my God. What have we gotten ourselves into?!" But - it was too late to turn back, so we kept pulling pieces off and revealing more of the walls that hadn't seen the light of day for at least 40 years.

It's like pancakes - made out of paint!

Sooooooo not great news under there! Lots of peeling paint (likely lead based no less) and some mold issues and at least 30 million little tiny holes from the nails... BUT it lightened up the room dramatically, and despite the peeling paint and mold spores floating around, I already like it more than that damn paneling!

Oye.

The newly lightened dining area!

More to come! Right now it's ice cream time.