All Things Old Are New Again. . .

We have "strongly disliked" the wood panelling in our family room since we moved here more than 6 years ago. We've done many things to try to distract from the panelling from interesting furniture arrangements, to painting the panelling *twice*. We loved the size of this room, we spend most of our time in this room, but we've never loved this room. . . on our long drive home from Calgary, Milo and I discussed ways to improve our home. . . Our first desire was to finally change our family room - to make it the Great Room we've always wanted it to be.

Here's how the room looked after several changes to the original room, but before we started our massive project! (thanks Nana & Madison for being great models!)

Vivien helped sand down the larger flaws in the wood.

This door is probably my LEAST favorite thing in the entire house! It was a rusty-brown, and while it's a sound door, it was in bad shape cosmetically. We looked into buying a new door, but WOW - they're expensive! Painting the door was on the top of our priority list!

The change to the walls was a multi-stepped process. We had to prime it, apply a heavy duty wall-liner and wait 24 hours. The next night we primed it again with a special adhesive - but were given the wrong one!! It had some sort of chemical reaction to our previous step, because the liner started to fall right off! After (another!) trip to Lowe's, we were able to rectify that situation and finish this step. The next night was applying the paintable wall paper. It's textured (called "corduroy"). When we went to bed after applying that, we were sure we'd made a HORRIBLE mistake. It was looking awful - you could see the seams of the liner under the new wallpaper, and there were places where it looked like the paper was sagging right off the wall. We were super surprised when we woke up the next morning and it looked great!

We finally began adding color. The textured wall paper had to cure for another 24 hours before we could paint it, so we began on the trim and the top of the wall. We chose "Jalepeno green" and were hesitant, but hopeful that we'd love it.

And we DO!! The room looks fresh and lovely. I thought it would feel smaller because of the darker color, but I think because of the missing panelling and the creamy trim, the room feels larger. Add in our new, fabulous carpet, and this is truly the best room in the house!

And perhaps the best change of all, our door looks brand new!!