Paint me a river.

We are finally ready for color in the dining room and master bedroom! It's been a long slow process, but we really wanted to get those 2 rooms done right, since we spend a lot of time there.

The master bedroom had some lovely wallpaper on it, you might recall. Pale blue, pink and yellow stripes - all you needed was a crib and voila! Instant nursery!

Dave and I decided that we've still got a few years before we can tackle another very expensive time consuming endeavor (children) so the nursery paper had to go! We contemplated the Trading-Spaces-quick-fix-paint-over-it philosophy... but in the end we had to strip it. The previous owner had papered over nails and tacks and picture hangers!!! So there were these big bumps in the wall - it was a mess. So I spent about a week stripping the paper and washing the walls. Then my dad came over to help mud the imperfections and Dave puttied holes. Then Dave sanded, vacuumed, and wiped down the walls. Then I went in and primed with Killz. So it's FINALLY ready for some color! It was ALOT of prep, but the walls are sooooo smooth you would not believe it. You can't even tell they're plaster. They look like drywall.

After seeing the amazing results, we are kicking ourselves that we did not do that much prep at the Belmonte house!! If you've been to our other house, you've seen the bumpy plaster walls. (Why didn't we think to do some prep there instead of slapping paint over it?)

Anyway I guess that's water over a bridge - or a bridge over troubled water - whatever. Needless to say we had to do the same thing to the dining room - couldn't bear to do a half assed job there. So we stripped the wallpaper - found the nicotine stains - washed walls - mudded - sanded - vacuumed - wiped - and last night primed. But this time used oiled based Killz because of the smell. Which if you've never used oil based Killz smells like gasoline and gets you high like a crackhead!!! Good lord that was an interesting evening! We tried to get as much ventilation as possible in there - but we ended up talking about some weird stuff and Dave was laughing... I got very cranky... my eyes started watering, so much so - I'd say it was more than when I watched The Notebook.

But it was worth it - both rooms look fantastic and are ready for some color!!