Don't worry friends, I haven't joined one of Baltimore's tough street gangs. My knuckles are bloody from an honest days' work! The first project of the very first Hustle, Bustle, and Home blog house is underway! We've started with the living room. Project one was to prepare the room for all of the awesomeness it is about to experience. The old carpet needed to come up, and there was a wall of textured wallpaper. The wallpaper had to go. Not because it was bad or uncool, it was just peeling so much that it seemed to be saying "please, let me retire and enjoy a good trash bag somewhere." It was fun to see the original family's notes and experiments under the wallpaper. Also wonderful was the supposed ease of the paper coming down. I left the blog house for a few hours to tend to some things in my own household, and when I cam back the homeowner told me that with a few good rips, her and her two sweet little boys got it all down. No scrubbing or laboring! I suppose that is one great advantage to wallpaper that has been there for decades!
That evening, we got to work at making this space spectacular.
Step #1: Empty out the room of all of the contents. Not an easy job, but we got it done.
Step #2 : Rip up carpet, carpet pad, carpet tacks, and staples as FAST as possible. I think I should note that decades of dust and wear are less than fun to be coated in, but SO worth the results. I also felt like a surgeon (a living room saving surgeon), as I had to crawl on my hands and knees with a needle nose pliers and pull up any pesky staples.
Step # 3,4, & 5.........Go over the floors again and again and again to make sure no nails or staples were missed or hiding. Every time we thought we were done another one seemed to pop up out of nowhere. ( I should also note as I type "we", I am referring to the lady of the house who participated in the demo).
Step # 6-20: Get on your hands and knees and scrub with a bucket of soapy water and a brush, then with plain water, mop, and mop again, and while you are at it, plan on making mopping the plan for your week. These floors are looking great, but will take A LOT of rounds with a mop to get them spick and span.
Painting and the other fun transformations are next on the list, but first I'll show you some pictures of the floor process.
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Here is a before view of the carpet |
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Another view to give you insight into this....lovely....old carpet |
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Wallpaper is down! |
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Mid-process......yum huh |
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Soon these babies will be BEAUTIFUL |
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Told ya! Oh and you just wait dear, sweet, blog followers. This room is going to be awesome very very soon. |
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The room already looks bigger and fresher! |
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So exciting what one day of work can do. |
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Picture happy? Perhaps. But this one had the dog in it, so I had to include it. |
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Now aren't you just dying to see what paint color we are going to use to transform this space? I'm sure you are. Stay tuned, and those pictures will follow close behind.Until then, stay well,live well and savor the joys that we are so kindly given.
Of course we want to know the paint color! And I'm scouring the pictures trying to figure out whose house it is...I have a guess! :)
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