Working on the living room

This is a lovely, big room, where we spend most of our indoor time.

With furniture out and curtains down:
 


The previous owner smoked, and the chimney may not have been swept regularly, so through some combination of the two, every surface in the room was dirty. These are the walls AFTER we carefully scrubbed with TSP.



This weekend, I got all the walls primed, and painted some sample color patches.



Eve likes neither color (she says light blue) and nobody else is sure yet.

We also took down the enormous, heavy mirror over the fireplace (without breaking anything or injuring anyone, though it was a near thing at one point.) Underneath is medium blue-green wallpaper, textured with stripes. Kind of nice, actually, except very very sooty.



Next are sanding the patches on the window frames, priming, painting, and hanging curtains. (The house next door has sold, and the new neighbors are moving in within the month, so we need to think about privacy.) Then removing the wallpaper over the chimney, patching the plaster and priming. Then deciding on a color. 

The ceiling is textured, and very dirty. I think eventually we'll want to take it down, allowing for rewiring (there's no overhead light fixture in this room) and replace with drywall, but for now we're just contemplating priming over the dirty and painting the heck out of it. It looks much dirtier now that the walls are clean.