Rooms That Aren't Rooms

We have had lots of interruptions in the last few months. Both Sami and Don have been at Oliver's school several days a week working with the kids in their Oregon Battle of the Books volunteer project. And, both Sami and Don came down with a cold that rendered them unable to do much besides moan for several weeks (it was the worst!). However, through it all, we plugged away at the remodel. We are now finished with two areas that are as big and complex as any of the rooms we have worked on, but they are not rooms! The entryway by the kitchen has four doors (and a cat door), five switch plates, six switches, and what felt like miles of trim and a bucket full of hardware. The walls there are all bead-board, full of gouges and scraped paint. But after completely re-doing every surface and every detail, the area doesn't look much different than it did before we started.

Don refinished the long handrail going down to the basement and made a new handrail from the kitchen to the landing.

 The same was true of the front entryway. Don went through a large bucket of mud to repair all of the cracks in the plaster walls and became a master plasterer to repair a bulge in the front entryway stairwell wall. He also refinished all the old wood trim.. There was more wall space to paint there than in any of the other rooms.

The area with the bulge looked strangely guitar-like.

 But after it is all said and done, it looks lovely, but not surprisingly different than it did before.

 Even though our work didn't change the appearance of these areas a lot, WE know how much work it took, and decided it warranted a little celebration.