One thing was for sure and that is that we were NOT going to go through the hassle of stripping all that
woodwork back to natural. We decided to go with classic white. You can see from the picture above a
large section of the wall is now sheetrock, that portion of wall had some 50 years of electrical work
done to it and the wall was a hodgepodge of patches, cracks and missing plaster. I tried to save
plaster where I could, this was not one of those places.
Bethany has much more patience than I, that's why she gets to paint trim and I get to take the pictures
here.
To this day we still haven't figured out what was above the mantel or why the brickwork
looks so awful. Best just to cover it up for now. We decided that a two tone mantel in 70's
maroon and off-white wasn't for us. Now everything's white.
newly made window sill and new/old molding
When they put up the wood paneling in this room I guess they decided to remove and THROW AWAY the
original molding, even the window sills were replaced with crappy thin 70s pine. I found an entire
room's worth of Queen Anne window molding at Bethany's work
(they have a reused building materials section) but
I still had to make new windowsills and the bottom trim from scratch. I borrowed a router from my
father and my first one didn't turn out too badly if I do say so myself. You can tell from the
water spots that we used it this way for a while, I didn't mind so much as we had to paint it
anyway.