Living Room - Time for some destruction

So this makeover was actually quite some time ago now, but we are at the point of selling our home, and I want to make sure I capture all that we have done on this house before we move on and I forget!  So, lets begin on all that has been achieved on the house in the last 18 months...

First up, the living room...

Now, when we bought the house the living room contained all the textures you could ever imagine.  Textured wallpaper on the walls painted yellow, textured wallpaper on the ceiling, damaged polystyrene coving, and a foul green carpet - yum!  It also didn't help that on Day 1 of owning the house we had it rewired so there were also a LOT of chases around the room too (not helped by the fact that we have 10 double sockets in here now - yes 10!)

After a few months of living here, we bought a cheap tub of magnolia paint to slap on the walls to cover up the chases and make it look vaguely more attractive.  The texture was temporarily staying until we had the time and financial resource to tackle it.

Roll forward another year to about March 2016, when we decided enough was enough.  I couldn't bear looking at the texture anymore.  We hated the room so much we barely used it - so it was time to rectify that.  Starting with stripping the wallpaper... oh my!

I completely underestimated how long this would take.  My chosen tools were a wet cloth and a scraper, but after several looong days, it was clear that these just weren't cutting the mustard.  After a plea on Instgram, my fellow instagrammers guided me to getting a wallpaper steamer and a Zinsser Paper Tiger.  The BEST money I have EVER spent.  My life is transformed! I have always been nervous about using a steamer as I've heard horror stories of it damaging the plaster behind.  I already knew that these walls were going to need re-skimming though, so I thought what the heck.   Absolutely no problems with damage because of the wallpaper steamer and I feel like a bit of divvy that I didn't invest sooner .

As you can see below though, after the wallpaper came off, the walls were significantly cracked behind - so as anticipated, this was going to be another job for me to plaster.

In good news, when removing the fireplace, I did find £10 behind it - wooo! That will pay for the renovation right?!

Can you see the gorgeous texture? Yum!

This was about 4 hours work, pre the steamer!

Absolute came changers!

SO much progress, and a facial in one!

We had a steel lintel installed above this window a few years ago (read all about that here), but this had clearly disrupted some of the plaster on the inside.  We just didn't realise before as the wallpaper was holding it all together!  So some patching up was required here.

I also came across some rather unsightly cracks, larger than most.  I put some scrim tape over these cracks to hopefully prevent the crack coming through my new plaster finish.  18 months on and it's still going strong with no crack present in the surface so I'm pleased with how it turned out.

And this is how we lived for a few months.  We sold our sofa for pittance and bought in the garden chairs from the garage.  The bunnies appreciated them though! Haha!

The next step was to strip the wallpaper from the ceiling.  There was also some fairly sizeable cracks between the boards so they would need refixing.  Not long in, I decided it was going to be easier to get a fresh start o the ceiling with new boards, and may even be quicker that way too.  So, as you do, we pulled the old ceiling down, textured wallpaper and all.

Buh-bye textured wallpaper!

What a mess! I never fail to underestimate how far and wide the dust spreads in the house.  And this is where I shall leave you until the next installment when we will start putting everything back together again!

Total spend:

Wallpaper steamer £25

Zinsser paper tiger £14.99

TOTAL: £39.99

(We also sold all our furniture and the fireplace surround, so we were actually making money at this point!)

Using Frogtape - Top Tips

I haven't used masking tape much historically, but now I have found Frogtape, which is really quite a revelation. I've learnt some lessons from it though, and made some mistakes.

Here's the pros and cons (and how to avoid them) of using it:

This is when I used it on the hallway - on the floorboards and the walls.

It's really important to smooth it down really well at the edge otherwise it's still possible for some paint to get underneath.  It's a bit tricky though if you have a random bump or lump in the walls, but do the best you can.  

The difficulty I found is that when I was trying to put it on, if I went slightly off course, the instinct is to pull it off quickly.  Why do we have this instinct?!  You want to pull it off before it sticks?  No idea, but it's completely unfounded, yet somehow I can't stop myself doing this! It's this quick ripping action which does no favours for the tape, and on some sensitive surfaces, can pull off the paint from the surface beneath.  This was my problem.

It's easy to tear however, and once you have smoothed it down, very easy to paint over.

To pull it off, do it whilst the paint is still wet, and do it slowly.  Pull the tape almost back on itself for best results to prevent it pulling off the paint underneath.  It's the 90 degree pull off that's not good:

But some fine sandpaper, and a little touch up, and all is forgotten:

You'll notice I mostly used the yellow tape - this is for delicate surfaces.  As I was running out of yellow tape I started using the green tape on the floor and it was absolutely fine.

Both the yellow and green tapes are for emulsion paint and water based paint (which my Johnstones Acrylic Eggshell Paint was), but there is also an orange tape for oil based paints too.

Frogtape has definitely changed my life - my DIY life anyway!

What products have you used that have changed your DIY adventures for the better?