happiness is...

After the challenges of removing wallpaper in our dining room, to discover that the wallpaper in our long hallway and high entry way did this...













Had both Charlie and I singing a jig and doing a happy dance. We were preparing for wallpaper removal in this portion of our home to take a solid six months.







Last night we were up sanding the glue off the walls. Today, we're going to paint the hall ceiling. We're also hoping to paint all of the walls after we go out and buy a HUGE ladder that will allow us to reach the top of the entryway. That ladder will also be used to reach the gutters, eaves, windows at the back of the house and limbs of various trees in our yard.

After living in a brand new house in California, where there was virtually no maintenance, my head is spinning a bit at all the things we have to do in our "new" home.

I'll post before and after pictures once we're completely finished, but as a teaser, we're painting the hallway Mushroom Bisque, which is a shade or two lighter than the Basketry that we painted in our living room. Since these two rooms are adjacent, we thought the colors would blend nicely. We're then planning to paint all of the door frames and baseboards semi-gloss white.

We'd eventually like to replace all of the doors with solid doors but considering we have 1,000,000 other things that we'd like to do and not $1,000,000 to spend, we might just paint the doors and replace the hardware.

Home improvements, we're discovering, involve some compromise.