The Dining Room Continues

So, the saga of the dining room continues. This was supposed to be the EASY room! We discovered 3 more layers of wallpaper. These were between the 1/4 inch wallboard, and the original plaster. They're all brown now, probably from age, and I wonder what they might have looked like originally. One has a wheat type pattern, one is a woven design, and the other has small sea shell type circles. Amy Barry came over to help me scrape the other day, as we were able to get the last of the paneling down, as well as pull out all of the residual nails in the walls which had held the paneling up. THANKS Amy!!

We've decided to hang drywall on the ceiling. The plaster would take a whole lot of work to repair, especially in the parts which Jeff pulled out to do the lighting. So, we will be hanging the drywall ourselves, and then having our neighbor do the mudding.

Speaking of the lighting, we replaced the light location. The current one was in the center of the room, and since we didn't want to center our table in the middle of the room (it would have obstructed walking through to the kitchen), Jeff hacked into the ceiling to move it. The outlet box where the light wiring came out was never recessed, so that had to be done as well. As we expected, the wiring was all knob and coil (think ancient!), so Jeff had to run a length of new wire up for the light, and then fish it through the ceiling around the joists, to the new location. Once that was done, he recessed the lighting box and attached it to one of the joists, so we're all set to hang up our new light fixture once we get to that point.

We're still thinking of doing plaster on the walls. The walls will be my thing, and the ceiling Jeff's. I have been scraping off whatever is cracking and peeling, but not necessarily trying to get down to the plaster anymore. Once I have a flat surface that is not cracked anywhere, I can apply the Plaster Weld, which is an adhesive product that will allow me to plaster on top of it, without having to do all of the various layers (did you know real plastering takes a YEAR to dry?!). Spots that are lower right now, I am applying drywall mud to bring them up to an even surface with everything else. Then I'll sand it all down (with proper ventilation, incase there's any lead paint lurking in there) for the Plaster Weld.

We're thinking that we may hack in to the walls around the base of the room, and replace the knob and coil wiring with updated stuff. We'll see how ambitious we end up getting. Though, since the wall is all crappy at the moment, now would be the time to do it...

We've pulled up the carpet in some places, and have discovered that they did paint the black "protective tar" on the hardwood years ago before they covered it up. That will have to be sanded to death, but the hardwood looks great underneath! We'll pull up the carpet to do that once the floor and ceiling are done. :-)


More layers of wallpaper- there were 3 more layers underneath the wallboard, and on top of the plaster


Amy came over to help scrape down wallpaper and pull down the last few panels.


The ceiling- with the paint peeling off of the plaster, some stress cracks, and the lighting outlet box, which they never bothered to recess into the ceiling.


Rewiring the light. Jeff had to pull down some of the plaster, and fish a new wire in by the floor joists.


Ripping up and pulling out some of the dining room carpet.