Living Room Update

So are you wondering how the living room is coming along? The last time I showed you pics it was completely gutted down to the lathes. The progress is rather slow because Gary only has a couple of days a week to work on it, and sometimes those days get used up by other things... life goes on. Today I will show you what has happened since my last post.

First, Gary and son Jed put sheetrock up. They put it on the walls and on the ceiling.


Here is Jed nailing sheetrock bits around the windows. It was rather clever use of bits and pieces they had cut off the big sheets, like making a patchwork quilt!

Being over 100 years old and extremely crooked, the walls had some very "interesting" spots to fill in! Like this one...
The ceiling was done last. They left a hole for the light fixture.
Next came the "mud" work. I wasn't worried about the gaping holes and crooked bits, because I was lucky to have the best mud men in Weeks Mills. Jed has done extensive work in this field. Here is the ceiling after mud:

And here is Gary working around the fireplace. See that big tangle of wires hanging out of the wall? Those are audio/video wires to go to the TV and the surround speakers. It was a challenge to work around them.
Here is the fireplace area after all the mudwork and the first coat of wall primer.

Remember that odd corner I showed you with the little triangular piece of sheetrock wedged in it? Well here is that corner now, you can't even tell there was a problem there. Don't my guys do good work?

Once the mudwork was done and was dry, it was time to do the ceiling. I had originally wanted an old-fashioned tin ceiling, but when I found out it would be a couple thousand dollars, I changed my mind. We then looked into a plastic look-alike ceiling tile, and it would have cost $800. For plastic! Can you believe it? Once again I have more dash than cash. So while wondering what to do with those bare walls, we looked at lots of wallpapers. When I found a paintable embossed tile-patterned wallpaper, I asked Gary, "Could you put wallpaper on the ceiling?" And he said yes! With a faux finish, perhaps we could make it look like copper patina! So here is Gary, wallpapering the ceiling.

The paper went up surprisingly easily. I was the helper on this job, and I have got to tell you, there was absolutely no cussin' and no throwing of the tools. So if you would like your ceiling papered, just give us a call! Will work for wool...

Then Gary painted the paper the green I found that looked most like copper patina. The he applied two glazes, the first one was bronze. Here you can see Gary applying dabs randomly,

And here he is burnishing the bronze glaze into the embossed crannies. Look at that hand fly!

Then he did the same with a buff glaze, to give it random lighter spots. It was nearly impossible to get a photo of the finished ceiling, but here is the best closeup I could get:

I really love it, it looks almost like the real thing! Next we are working on the walls and fireplace, I will try to update again soon.