The Living Room: Our Never Ending Project

I wrote about this room early on in this foray into blogging, but I feel like a recap is in order, simply due to how much time has passed. It’s been about 3 years since we started the remodel in our living room. It was early into our homeownership and both of us being somewhat new to DIY, we made what I’ve now come to understand to be the cardinal mistake when tackling a home remodel – we bit off more than we could chew.

To be honest, we really had no idea what we were getting into with this room, heck with this whole place. I mean, the house is only a hundred years old so what could possibly go wrong? The short version? So. Many. Things.

As with much of this house, the tiles hid an aging plaster ceiling, cracked and chipped in several places. Unbeknownst to us at the time was that the recommended course of action was to hang drywall over the existing plaster, instead of what we did which was to take everything down to studs. I feel like a broken record when I say once again that neither myself nor the hubby really understood the amount of work it would take to get the room back to a livable state.

Mounting new ceiling studs and drywall seemed simple enough. We both knew the theory and he’d had a bit more practice than I, but we were all gung-ho and ready to work. Hanging drywall on the ceiling was challenging enough even with two of us and our rented lift. (Our difference in height didn’t help either.)

But with time and a LOT of patience, eventually, the deed was done. We stepped back to admire our handiwork and realized there were several uneven spots on the ceiling. As in one sheet of drywall wasn’t at quite the same level as it’s neighbor. Nothing a bit of spackle layering couldn’t fix. I wish we had known then that projects in this house are never easy or simple.

Overhead spackling ended up being much more labor intensive than we had initially thought, more so because of the strain it puts on the arms and back working overhead rather than the difficulty level.

A year passed of working on it here and there, but our energy was sapped and motivation practically nonexistent.

With the ceiling taking much longer than anticipated, we put our heads together to think of the next step we could take in that room that would set us back on track with a renewed desire to work. The answer? The flooring. It’s amazing what new floors can do for a room and for one’s own self-esteem.

And with finished floors, we picked ourselves back up and started on the next phase in our living room.