Come and Be Our Guest--in our updated guest room

So my plan for the summer was to update the office and prepare for remote learning (I could see the writing on the wall as the cases didn't go down--there was no way we were going back to school here).  Then, just after I was finishing up the office, we got the news about the defunding efforts of the city council.  I didn't really want to spend money to furnish the office (or Sarah's room).  I felt lost and frustrated.  So--I took out my frustrations on another room of wallpaper.  The guest room.  (We are running out of rooms, by the way.  If you are keeping track--we only have the master bedroom left--and it's WAY too much for me to do.  That'll be a new drywall room for sure.  In 20 years when we can afford a big master makeover.)

Of course, I forgot to take official before pictures.  But I when I got to the closet I did stop to get a picture of the wallpaper.  This was on 3/4 of the room.  One wall I had stripped in 2015 because the wallpaper was falling off that wall due to mold.  None of the other walls were moldy though, so they got 5 more years of time on the walls.  There was a 2nd layer of wallpaper and a layer of paint under one wall.  There was a layer of paint under one wall.  And under the exterior wall of the closet there was nothing under the wallpaper.  But this wallpaper was so thick it just came right off.  The closet was mostly sheetrock with wallpaper on top too. 

So I oil primed on the walls that hadn't been painted to seal in the wallpaper paste.  Oil primer gives the nicest finish.  But it is SO SO smelly.  I should have worn a serious mask.  In the closet I got super nauseous.  

Thankfully Kaj and Emma came to help me paint the ceiling and walls.  

Under this wallpaper, there was (in a few places) another equally thick wallpaper.  And one section of the closet had that other wallpaper on top.  And I'd never noticed.  

Finishing the walls and ceiling were just the beginning in this room though.  I still needed to:
Paint the door trim for 3 doors (it was brown)
Paint the doors (they were brown)
Both trim and doors required 3 coats
Install new doorknobs on doors
Install new outlets and switches (yes guests, your stuff will now stay plugged in and not slip out!)
And, this room never had baseboards.  So buy, paint, cut and install (then touch up) baseboards
So it took a long time to finish this room (considering the wallpaper removal and basic painting took about 1-2 days each.)

I got new curtains (Costco for the win!).  It is now very dark in there, so guests will sleep much better than the nearly sheer curtains I bought at Burlington when someone was coming to visit right after we moved in. 

Tada! 

Derek helped me get the baseboards (16 footers are no joke to get home).  I painted them. Then Joe (the dad of our quarantine family friends) showed me and Maren how to use his miter saw.  I was so proud of us.  We cut the baseboards and got them up basically all by ourselves!  (We only had to cut more than once a few times.) dI love using power tools.  To cut out the section for the heat vent, I used a regular saw and miter box to make the side cuts.  I used a box cutter to cut the long side (with Maren's help).  

I also spent a long time on the floors in this room.  When we moved in it had carpet.  When we pulled up the carpet, there was paint all over the wood floors.  I basically hand scrapped all the paint off.  It was no easy task.  I bought a rug for the room that should be coming tomorrow.  

The closet.  Looks so much nicer with clean white walls. 

Me with the nail gun.  That was one long Saturday! We got the baseboards done at like 9:30 pm. 

This corner was what made this room take so much longer.  But the white doors and the updated door knobs look nice, right? 

Come and VISIT! 

Anyway--now that it looks like Seattle won't be doing the huge defunding that they were initially proposing, I can furnish my office.  But now everything is sold out!  I might be back to the card table option.