Every house has its story. What's yours?

The wife and I had the idea that good project to tackle this past winter was to oil the hardwood floor in the upstairs living room. Of course, to do such a thing require one (me) to remove all the furniture. Once that was sorted we had look around the room and decided the yellow/beige wallpaper wasn't our style and since we had done most of the rest of our house to our liking maybe some new wallpaper or a coat of paint would do the trick. Following a few minutes of additional discussion we began to wonder what type of ceiling was under the ceiling paper (we have a thing for old wood ceilings). Lo and behold, we found a nice old wood plank ceiling under.

Now it appeared that what was originally planned to be a weekend oiling project and then grown to a minor facelift had now evolved into a full-on room renovation....typical for us!

Here are some pictures from that first evening after I began inspecting the ceiling and before I put down my tarps:

Soon the work was underway and I was busy taking hundreds of nails and tacks out of the ceiling with my trusty tongs (fuzzy picture to the right). after a couple days of this I brought out the handy scraper and handheld sander and hit the boards. They sanded down nicely and I left them to sit for a bit while I decided what my next step would be.

We were looking through a house magazine when we spotted a really nice room that had mouldings in the wall corners providing a nice framed feel. We thought that would be a nice touch for the room so we headed out to the lumberyard to buy some, but were astonished at the price so we settled on getting some regular 10cm wide board that I could use my router to get the same pattern along the sides. we also bought enough wood to mount mouldings to edge the ceilings more.

Once those were routed I slapped some base paint on them and mounted them with the following results:

I then got back to the ceiling where I mounted 2cm wide strips of wood between the gaps prevent old insulating material from falling through the cracks, but also for looks. After much toiling that was completed and I was began cuting the old wallpaper creases out of the walls and also trimming the the old wallpaper from the floor, ceiling and window mouldings so that I could spackle them smooth.

Clean-up time was next in preparation for miles of taping-off and paint roller/paintbrush work. With everything painted, including the radiators and pipes and a new dimmer wired in we are ready to reveal the result:

Oh, and do you remember the reason we began this whole project? Yes, oiling the floor. We never did get around to that. D'oh!