Kerry'd Away

This is my library. At least, this is how it looked shortly after we moved into the house. It had two green walls and two white walls.

We decided to redo it when we had a new ceiling put in (due to water damage from a leaking roof).

So now we have two purple walls…

Then I realized that there is real wood behind the paint….

And I created a real mess because I decided that the paint had to go. And it went, though not without a fight. It really put up lot of resistance.

But I am my father’s daughter and stubborn to a fault…

All that it took was a month, a lot of elbow grease, stripper, mineral spirits, sand paper, and a dental pick. Yes, a dental pick. It worked great to get in all of the little crevices and knots. I went to the dollar store and bought a dental kit that included the pick, a tongue scraper, and a brush. I figured that for $1 I could use them on my walls.

I took as much of the paint off as I possibly could. There were some spots that I just couldn’t get. And there were other spots that were different colors because nobody had removed trim when they would change the wall color.

Once I had determined that I was finished removing paint I put a light coat of stain on it to match the bookshelves. It really helped to warm up the room.

Here you can see that the wall doesn’t match the bookshelves perfectly, but it’s closer than what it was before I stained it.

Yes, I kept the one wall white because it is actually that cheap paneling that you buy at the home improvement stores and I didn’t know what I would get myself into if I removed it. It adds a nice contrast, though.

I put two coats of high gloss poly on it and I really like how it turned out.

I had to hurry up and finish this wall because the weather was getting colder and we really needed the thermostat back on the wall.

It was a lot of work, but I’m happy with the results. Now I just have to do all of the trim and the doors…

What do you think?

If you read my last post about my dining room, then you will already know that we had a problem with water leaking into our library. Luckily it dripped right in front of my bookshelves, but we needed to get it fixed. I was tired of living with a towel on the floor to catch the water whenever it rained.

It turns out that the leak in this room was caused by the same poor roofing job that caused the leak in the dining room. When water leaks in one spot you never know where it will end up. Steve, the contractor’s worker, did a good job on the seams.

They did not do such a good job, however, when putting the drywall up. To be fair, I don’t believe that this damage was their fault. This happened when they were taking the molding down so that they could replace the ceiling. The previous owners didn’t feel that you needed to tape anything off when painting, or even remove molding. So I have a feeling that some of the paint for the wall ended up on the molding and thus it pulled away with the molding.

They also marred the paint on the wall between the kitchen and the library. I hadn’t planned on repainting the library, but it looked like I wasn’t going to have a choice. Jay and I were discussing this when we noticed that it was real wood underneath this paint.

This looks like a tongue and groove bead board that was put on the wall at one point. I believe that this brown was the original color. Well, despite the fact that I didn’t want to take on another large project, I decided that I couldn’t bring myself to cover up beautiful wood with paint. *sigh*

This is what it looked like. Honestly, I never cared for this wall because it always made me feel like I was sitting in a room that had been built onto a house and they left the siding on what used to be the outside wall.

Unfortunately, it’s a decent size wall and I also have two doors to refinish, too. These are the doors that lead down to our basement. One of the panes of glass is cracked so we’ll have to change that out. I will also need to figure out some kind of curtain to go on them since I don’t want to walk by and be able to see down into the ugly basement through the glass. Currently there is a really ugly piece of brown plexiglass on it.

So, what did I do? I threw Citristrip on the wall to remove all of that paint. There are times when I wish that people would save me from myself. I need to give Jay a rolled up newspaper so that he can swat me on the nose and say, “No!” more often.

This is how the wall looked after the first application of the stripper. Yes, the FIRST. I ended up doing two different applications and then following behind with an application of paint thinner.

I had Jay remove the thermostat from the wall and we proceeded to have one of the hottest weeks that we’ve had all summer. We put it back on the wall to run the A/C. Once we no longer needed it we removed the thermostat again so that I could continue working on that portion of the wall.

In the meantime I emptied the bookshelves so that we could move them away from the wall. I asked Jay what color he wanted in here, and we compromised on a shade of that color. I didn’t want that dark green to show through, so I had to prime the walls first.

Hey! There’s actually a wall behind the bookshelves! Who would have thunk it?

Chosen color: It’s called ‘Kissin’ Cousins’. I’m not quite sure why. I’ve been throwing out there that the name of the paint color was a bit disturbing. When asked if I had a better name for it I said, “Unicorn Snot.” LOL Be honest, wouldn’t you rather have Unicorn Snot on your walls than Kissin’ Cousins??

I was worried that the color might be a bit overwhelming, but since you can’t see a whole lot of it the shock value should be tempered. Because I’m removing the white paint from the wood wall we needed something else to help lighten the room a bit. We didn’t want to feel like we had shrunk the room or darkened it.

Here’s a bit of an idea what it will look like. Once I get all of the paint removed from the wall I am going to stain it to match the bookshelves. I thought that would be a nice balance to the room. I also repainted the back wall using the same off-white that I used in the dining room. I couldn’t strip that wall because it is one of those cheap pressboard panels.

What do you think? Will it be worth all of the trouble? Or should I have just bucked up and repainted the wood wall? If I had just repainted then my house would no longer be a disaster area and I could move on to other projects.