Thursday, October 7, 2010

The Living Room: Part II


The pumpkin-flavored beer helps me to concentrate,
and also to be less whiny about stripping paint.
Truthfully, we've been pretty lazy lately. With our lease expiration date less than three weeks away, we had been over to the house a couple of times to install new doorknobs, program garage door openers, etc, but the living room was still a looming problem. Last night, after never hearing back from a painter we asked for an estimate, we decided to strip the wall ourselves. We found out that the yellow paint on the walls was in fact 4 COATS of exterior paint, which had also not been primed. Luckily for us, that meant the paint was fairly easy to scrape off the walls.


  
Roland with his prize catch. A 1 pounder!



It may have come off with little resistance, but stripping paint off a giant wall is extremely time-consuming. R and I decided to have a contest to see who could scrape off the biggest single piece of paint. He won, but just barely.



At the end of the night, we still had about 25% left to scrape, so we'll be heading back over there tonight. We've already filled a Hefty bag with 30lbs of this paint -- which, like the plywood pieces you see in the background, are up for grabs.






What could we display in here?

In the meantime, we need our readers' opinion (see right sidebar!). In the dining room, we have a built-in shelf with seven tiny platforms. The previous owner used it for displaying the Seven Lucky Gods of Japan. We don't know what to use it for. Should we keep it? Remove it? We tried to determine how it's affixed to the wall, and the answer is: securely. If we ripped it out, it would certainly leave a giant gaping hole.




Mmm...probably not the most glamorous idea.

Right now, R wants to take it out, and I'm ambivalent. It doesn't bother me (and I really don't want to have to patch up more drywall), but I'm really at a loss as to what we could use it for.

What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. It looks like a nice shelf; I think you should leave it for now, don't create more work for yourselves. Get moved in, and ponder it for a bit. Head to Pottery Barn and I'm sure you'll find something nice to display. How about miniature vases?

    Hugs!
    Aunt A

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  2. Could you use a new window in that spot?

    If so, you and Roland could play a pinata-like game & take turns sledge-hammering it til you see the outdoors. Or, wait til I get there, and we'll find a nice big quilt, install a quilt hanger over the current waste of wall space, and forget the weirdness lurks behind it.

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  3. Matryoshka dolls?

    And I think the shelves that you already tore down were kind of gorgeous and this one is really nice, too. So you should definitely leave it up.

    Oh! It's in the dining room? Obviously, you need to display something dining-related there. A nice collection of fancy drinks glasses, perhaps? Say, a large brandy snifter in the center, and progressively smaller glasses going up the sides, with a little cognac snifters on the top level. Or a pint glass in the middle with progressively smaller glasses leading up to shot glasses. Think about it.

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  4. Could you take out the shelves and have it just be a display case? You could then make it a photo case or even hang a clock in there?!

    OR the best option might be to put Pound Puppies on the shelves -- I think Bec's knows where they are in the basement!

    -Megs

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