I may have stretched the truth a bit yesterday when I said the master bedroom looked better all torn up than it did with the ugly paint and dirty carpet. Looking at photos now (which were taken hastily, at night, and without regard for what–or who–was in the room at the time) I’m not as impressed. I probably just felt better about the room once all the nastiness was gone. There’s something immensely satisfying about ripping out carpet and baseboards, especially when you hate them so very much.
To show you exactly what we had changed thus far, and to give you an idea of what is still to come, here are a couple before shots (just in case you forgot what it looked like) followed by annotated afters.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
1) We removed all the face plates for electrical outlets and light switches. The switches and outlets themselves were eventually replaced, along with their faces, but that’s still to come.
2) We tore out all the baseboards and thresholds. (At the transitions between carpet and tile, there were metal thresholds. Those had to go.)
3) We primed the entryway walls.
4) We also primed the ugly accent wall. The rest of the room was neutral enough that we decided the primer wouldn’t really be necessary before we painted.
5) David scraped off the popcorn ceiling and painted it flat white. (The entryway ceiling was also painted flat white. Forgot to note that.) We probably should have retextured the ceiling after taking off the popcorn, since it was mostly down to bare drywall. The seams and other irregularities are not noticeable enough for us to be bothered, though. It was just way more effort than we wanted to put in.
6) We did, however, attempt to retexture the areas where built-ins had previously been attached to the walls. Those bits were smooth; the rest of the wall has that orange peel texture, and we didn’t like being able to see the difference. It was more challenging to match the old texture than we expected, and you can still see where the stuff used to be, but it’s a lot less noticeable than it was before.
7) We tore out the carpet. Obviously. And ripped up the nasty pad underneath. And scraped the glue remnants up as best we could.
8) David took down the old ceiling fan. It was both ugly and too small for the room, so we decided to replace it with something less offensive.
9) We took some measurements and bought us some pretty new wood flooring. Here, it’s still in boxes, but wait till you see it. Swoon.
At this point, the room was at “beauty base zero.” There was nothing ostensibly offensive about it anymore, and it was just about ready for hair and makeup. More photos to come!
I am getting so excited to see what the final project looks like.. I keep checking the blog to see if you post updates. 🙂
It's nowhere near finished, but I'll keep the pictures rolling as things progress.