Sunday, January 13, 2008

Holiday Barn


I'm a sucker for barns. I can't remember if I've covered this in the blog before, but when I see em, I get all warm and fuzzy. My theory is that it comes from all those trips to Indiana through the Ohio Cornfields. (note to self, use the search feature and find that indeed, I am repeating myself).

Anyhow, if you like them too, here's a nice one for you, right near my parents home, taken during our Christmas visit home to Pittsburgh.

Stripping the Walls


And now for the home improvement blog. Mr. Right and I are starting to get his house ready to put on the market. Don't talk to me about timing -- we know. But we've got good reasons to move forward with the sale, so we have the get this 140 year old farmhouse ready for the rest of the world. So we are tackling the wallpaper in the bedrooms. In the kids room, it wasn't terrible looking paper, but there were some peeling areas and some completely blank areas. First photo was how it looked when we started. Then we proceeded to strip that layer (with the help of Ian's blog as well as a little This Old House). Well, there turned out to be four layers. Yikes!

As you strip those layers, you can't help but wonder who picked them out and who has been hanging in the room, staring at the cabbage roses or the snowflakes. Were they happy here? What were their lives like, here in the southern suburbs of Boston? You can't help but be nostalgic when you look at this old paper, hidden for so long.

The next step will be adding the new paper -- I'll share that when we get there. It's a satisfying project, if kinda messy.