Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 12:12PMClose Encounters With Victorian Horsehair
This is our guest bedroom. It's very, very, very blue. Deep blue wallpaper, deep blue carpet, and somewhat surprisingly, a white ceiling - maybe the previous owners ran out of deep blue paint before they could finish the job?
The other day we began enthusiastically stripping wallpaper from the walls of the Very Dark Blue Room. Ably assisted by one over-excited toddler and two over-excited Jack Russells, the first wall went very well, revealing lovely fresh plasterboard. Aha! we thought. This will be easy! Cue hollow laughter, natch. All the other walls revealed hideously botched DIY plaster jobs (plastering over the top of Victorian wallpaper, anyone?), huge expanses of crumbling plaster that simply dropped off the wall leaving behind large holes, and on occasion, tufts of Victorian horsehair.
Being naturally averse to the concept of actually paying people to do renovation work for us, we did some online research, consulted The Bible, watched some YouTube videos, went to B&Q, and got to work. This result just in - Alice and Andre: 1. Large hole in chimney breast: 0. Take that, sucker!
A couple of weekends later, and we have a nice freshly plastered and (first coat) painted room that while not being perfect (in a few places, blind chipmunks appeared to have plastered the wall, resulting in the necessity for a few sessions with the sander to get it looking smooth) is certainly good enough. And cheap! We like cheap.
We also hired a floor sander, and sanded 130 years of grime off the floors. Unfortunately as the floors are plank rather than tongue-and-groove, and are therefore slightly uneven in height, the big industrial floor sander didn't really work properly as it only sanded the highest part of the floor - besides being rather pricey (when you think we've got nearly 3000 square feet of floor to sand) and impractical from a limited hire-period perspective (we're usually kept somewhat busy on weekends on account of the previously mentioned over-excitable and thoroughly adorable toddler).
So we've purchased a rather splendid Makita belt sander and will be finishing the job by hand. Yikes. The room's already looking at least a zillion times better, however. Now we just need to repeat the process for the other 2900 square feet of house. Blimey. Can someone pass me a glass of wine, please?
Reader Comments (3)
The results of your work are fantastic; well done you, deserve a whole bottle!
Wow - you've taken on a huge project. I want to refinish my floors but am petrified of doing it myself, good luck with it!
and that has to be the cutest fireplace I've ever seen. Is it functional?
Jan - yep, it's a monster project. We're slowly tackling one room at a time though, which makes it feel less daunting. The fireplace is very pretty, right? It was painted white and gold by one of the previous owners and we decided to keep it that way. And yes, it would be functional if we got the chimney swept and re-lined, although I think we'll probably just do this with the fireplace in the main living room rather than the spare bedrooms.