If I Had a Camera...

So Joe managed to get a few pics of our porch "before" and "shortly after" construction began. Over the weekend, I took a few more recent pics with big plans for posts. But now, I can't find the camera. It's just as well since our camera is on its last leg anyway and a new one is on order. So now, in the absence of the pics I took, I give you a list of pictures I would post on the blog if I had the camera...

1. A picture of me driving my father-in-law's Ford F-3 million. Okay, I don't think Ford actually makes a F-3 million model, but the point is that it is a big, BIG truck. I could barely see over the steering wheel. And there was something funny about seeing my Kate Spade bag laying on the dusty floor, right next to his gun (very city-meets-country). But it was city clean-up day in Lathrop, which means there was a free drop-off for all of our construction waste. So I (literally) jumped up in the cab and drove a load uptown.
2. A picture of the progress on Max's room. As you may remember, Max's room was our project for April. Somehow, April passed us by and we didn't get it finished. We did, however, get it cleaned up and painted. Now, all we have to do is move the furniture in and put on the finishing touches. But because Max is pretty comfortable in his room as it is, this just honestly isn't high on our priority list.
3. A picture of the entry. No, we haven't tackled the green trim problem, but we did finally get it painted.
   
4. A picture of some of the treasures left in the garage by the previous homeowners: the home-made muscle-man collage, the old cans of protein powder, the cow skull, and the collection of energy drink cans. Sadly, we parted with all these priceless artifacts on the aforementioned Lathrop clean-up day.
5. A picture of our newly installed French doors (they are beautiful) and our back porch (which is less than beautiful right now). We have new back steps, which are nice. The porch walls are pretty much completely ripped out and half of the floor is missing, which is not so nice. But we're told that this project will be done (or at least mostly done) by the end of the week. I'm skeptical. We'll see.
6. A gratuitous Max pic (GMP). As he grows, parenting is getting more and more challenging. But he is happy and spunky and smart and I'm proud to be his Momma. And he reminds us every day (by demanding to go "outside" and play with his "ball bat" or pointing across the street and asking for "Emma," his new friend and neighbor) why this is such a good place for our family.
   

An Almost Perfect Weekend

Once again, I forgot the camera. Well, I actually forgot the battery. The bottom line is that there are no pictures to post right now, but there is some good news to report. Remember that big list I posted last week? We knocked most of it out this weekend. Paint the dining room? Check. Finish the window trim in the guest bedroom? Check. Touch-up the playroom, guest bedroom, living room, and parlor? Check. Fix the ductwork? Check!

We didn't get the ceiling fan installed, but it's close. When Joe took the old one down, all four wires were green. He marked them so he would know which was which, but somehow the markings rubbed off while he was working. Now we don't know which wire is which. So the fan is all but connected and Joe bought some gadget to test the wires to see which one is "hot" (I am so down with the home repair lingo).

We didn't start pulling off trim in the entry yet either. After much discussion with the guy at Sherwin Williams, I purchased two types of stripper. One is a paste meant for the stuff we'll strip on the wall (the windows). The other is a stronger liquid that we'll use for the stuff we'll take down (trim and doors). I am reasonably confident that these will lift off a fair amount of the stain and that we'll be able to use another stain--probably something reddish--to balance the green that is left and turn it brown. This is a job that will probably need to be done outside--or at least with all the windows and doors open for ventilation. It was cold and rainy over the weekend, so we decided not to start that project.

Finally, I took all the cabinet doors off the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen and Joe and I washed them. Those bad boys are getting primed and painted in the upcoming weekend. We also have plans to paint the kitchen walls AND the new appliances are arriving this week. So expect some "after" pictures of the kitchen soon.

We decided to take a vacation from the house on Sunday, so the three of us read the paper in our pajamas all morning, went out for lunch, and did some shopping. I think that recharged us a bit.

So all in all it was a VERY productive weekend at the country estate and a good weekend for the Gagnon family. The only downer? The Tigers loss to OU on Saturday. And the BCS bowl snub on Sunday night. But we wouldn't be Mizzou fans if we didn't have something to be disappointed about, right?

To be (one of those people who paint old woodwork) or not to be?

Let me introduce you to our entry:
To get to the nitty gritty of this post, skip to the last paragraph. To read my musings about the space, read on.

The entry is a small space, so it is difficult to photograph, but hopefully you get the idea. On the left is the open front door to the home (leading to the infamous front porch) and on the right is the door to the sitting room. What you can't see is that, directly next to the door to the sitting room is a door to the living room. So, when you walk in the front door and into this little vestibule, there are two doors that lead you into different rooms of the house. I've never seen anything like this before, and it is one of those unique features of the house about which we love to speculate. At first, we thought maybe the house was a duplex at one point, but nothing else about the home seems to suggest that. Then, our structural engineer (who happens to be a family member and an old home buff) suggested that the home may have been built by a professional--maybe a doctor or lawyer--who used one of the doors (probably the one to the sitting room) as a professional entrance into his office. That makes a lot of sense, so that's what we're going with for now.

The first thing that probably jumps out at you is the bright color. I'm all for color, but this space is just to small for that kind of intensity. Our plan is to lighten it up with something pale and pretty neutral, saving color for other areas of the house. What you may not be able to appreciate is that, at some point, someone has put a GREEN stain on the beautiful woodwork/trim. I don't know why someone would do that, but I guess that's not the point. It's done now and we need to deal with it.

Obviously, green wood is not an option. So, as I see it, there are really two choices. We can paint the wood, which is probably the easiest way to go. But then we're just a couple of jerks who painted over beautiful, old, original woodwork. The other option is to strip the wood and restain it to match the rest of the house. According to everyone we've talked to, this would be a LOT of work. And probably expensive if we take the woodwork down and have it stripped by a professional. But here are our questions: Would it be worth it? Would we have to take the trim off the wall in order to strip it? If we do that, can we strip it ourselves? Is there a product out there we can use to strip the wood while leaving it on the wall? Is there anything else we can do short of a total strip and restain job?

Any ideas?