Here’s something we haven’t done in a while – actually, it’s been over six months if you’re keeping track. For those of you who weren’t around back then (or those of you like me that simply can’t remember back that far), Flashback Friday highlighted some of the initial improvements we made to the house shortly after moving in.

It’s almost been long enough that it’s easy to forget the mad scramble of improvements we made to the house prior to moving in. We didn’t have much time between closing on the house we were moving into and closing on the house we were moving out of, but we managed to make a few improvements that we thought would help make the house a little homier for the kiddos prior to moving in.

We’ve already looked at Potato Boy’s floor, Sissy’s bright walls, and the dining room. Today’s room is the bedroom shared by LuLu and Peanut. Sissy and Potato Boy each tried to claim the room the first time they walked through the house simply because of its size. But, it was the quietest room being at the end of the hall and was right next to our bedroom, so it just made sense to put LuLu there (Peanut was still just a twinkle in her mother’s eye at that point).

Here’s where we started out….

So, what did we have to do?

The work on LuLu’s bedroom was broken into three phases… basically from the top down. First, we did a quick overlay of drywall on the ceiling. The ceiling had been covered with wallpaper and the plaster behind it was cracked and stained from a former leak in the roof. It was all flat and smooth, so instead of tearing it all down and messing with the insulation above it, we simply over-laid the ceiling with 3/8” drywall, then taped and mudded the seams.

Second, we attacked the walls – and in this instance, attack is probably an understatement. Layer by layer, we peeled back the wallpaper (six layers in all) until we uncovered the original plaster – unpainted and in surprisingly good shape. We can’t be sure, but we’re guessing the wallpaper went back at least 80 years. We then sprayed the walls with texture and painted.

Finally, we rolled up the old carpet – it had been numerous years since anyone had used the bedroom and it’s impossible to describe how bad it really was. We were hoping to find 3” finished wood floors like we found in some of the other bedrooms. Instead, we found 6” pine boards that had been painted once upon a time and in need of some TLC. To keep things simple we thoroughly cleaned the floor, added a fresh coat of dark brown paint, and found an area rug to match.

For not knowing what we were getting into when we started peeling wallpaper, the room turned out surprisingly well.