before and not much after

So, the first order of business of the house remodel was to wash all the interior walls and ceilings, prime all the interior walls and ceilings, and finally paint all the interior walls and ceilings. Have you ever heard of TSP? Well, I never want to hear about it again. We spent days washing every wall, ceiling, piece of trim, baseboard, etc. with TSP. I am surprised my mom has any skin left on her arms from all the TSP-ing she did. She was the TSP champion! Here's a picture of her working hard:

Oh wait, I mean here she is:

If something's dirty, leave it to my Mom to get it clean! Speaking of moms and cleaning, my in-laws came up to visit and we made them clean the whole weekend! Cruel, I know! But the range looked so pretty when they were done. And the bathroom. My mother-in-law practically asphyxiated herself scrubbing down the bathroom. It needed a lot of bleach. Bob and Karen were such troopers. We really appreciated all their work! Yeah Bob and Karen!

Oh, yeah, Trav and I worked too. See, here I am:

Back to the cleaning and painting the walls, we were all surprised how much work it took to get everything clean enough to prime it. I couldn't believe how gross it all was. Everything was covered in nicotine. Our rags were stained yellow. Yellow and brown rivers ran down the walls while we were cleaning. But somehow, we made the walls and ceilings resemble some variation of white. It was a relief.

After some much needed caulking and sanding, the walls and ceilings were ready to prime and paint. The paint lady at OSH recommended a shellac primer that sealed in any smells in the drywall. Perfect. The primer was so toxic smelling, that I couldn't believe that we could smell anything after applying the primer.

Everything got two coast of fresh paint. I used a white in all the main rooms called "Chantilly Lace" from Benjamin Moore. The name made me a bit nervous, but it is a very nice, soft white. Not blue-ish or pink-ish or beige. Just white.

Our bedroom is a really pretty stone grey, the middle bedroom is white, but will eventually get wallpaper, and the front room is a robin's egg blue. The blue was a bold move, but it ended up looking pretty cute. Here are pictures of everyone working, including Megan and Betsy, (Irv helped a lot with caulking the crown molding, but we didn't get a picture).

And here are some before and after pictures (by the way, we had the floors redone. They look really good):

Before image of the Living Room :

and after:
before image of Dining Room:

and after:
This before of the front bedroom is scary. Don't say you weren't warned...

Ugh, it felt like we need to perform an exorcism in that bedroom. Here's after:


That's it for now. Pictures of the outside to follow.