Foyer Progress

I have a bad bad habit of constantly starting new house projects and moving on to something else before I'm finished. I am easily bored & have a hard time focusing on the tedious aspects of making things pretty. I call it Decorating ADD (quite possibly real ADD, since my entire life is like this but whatever, we're talking about my house here).

One of the first things I did in my house was start to remove the wallpaper in the kitchen. But when I saw the unfinished drywall underneath my first attempts, I ran thru the house to see if every room was gonna be this much of a pain. Answer: yes, pretty much. Anyhoodle, as a result, rooms that I have not even begun to tackle have large sections of half ripped off wallpaper. I have since learned the secret to removing wallpaper from unfinished drywall and the first room I tackled was the foyer. That was back in September. And then I ran out to buy the stuff to fix the drywall. And then... (skip ahead 3.5 months)... I fixed the drywall.

Then came the hard part - moving to the next step w/out getting distracted. "Boy, I really want to (remove this tile, renovate this bathroom, paint this living room, clean the spare room, etc, etc, etc)." But I was determined to stop staring at those ugly unfinished walls. So I used the long NY weekend to tackle the job. Saturday, I primed the crap out of the walls - 2 full coats of new drywall primer plus some shellac based primer over a few spots. On Sunday, I rested by going to the latest Sad Clooney movie w/a friend. Then yesterday, I finished the job*. And I did this with the distraction of a sick dog, depressing world, newly formed Words with Friends addiction, etc. Go, me!

Here's a look at the transformation:

Bam! Top left: the foyer when I bought the house (a little nugget of joy I forgot... even the switchplates were wallpapered). Top right: After the wallpaper was removed. Bottom left: Primed. Bottom right: Painted.

I really love the color - Riverway by Sherwin Williams - and I love love love the matte finish. It hides all the wall flaws. Once you go matte, you never go back... hahahaha. I still have a shelf to hang & a doorbell cover project to tackle. Plus, a bunch of other stuff. But it is so nice to look over and see some color on the walls.

*OK, I still have to paint the trim, FIVE doors, and the ceiling in here... but those things all require other projects to happen. Like, to paint the trim I have to remove the tile that I'm going to be removing, which can't happen until I figure out how to remove decades old tile glue from a hardwood floor. That kind of stuff. But the walls are finished!!! Weeeeeee!