Stripping the last of the hallway woodwork

It's taken me weeks and months to build up to finish this job, because it's just. so. ghastly.  I HATE stripping paint, and I really dislike sanding - it's just so dusty.

But as I'm starting to run out of jobs to do in the hallway, I'm starting to run out of excuses.  That and I had bought the carpet so I needed to crack on and get the painting done.

This is how I had left it before I painted the walls, so the majority of the architrave was done, but I still had the doorstops to do.

I tried to protect the flooring a bit with an old towel, but it still made a big old mess.

Years and years of layers and layers of paint...

The greeny coloured layer was really stubborn, to the point where the heat gun didn't seem to be shifting it.  I stopped for a rest and just thought I'd give it a go with the mouse sander with a really coarse grit sandpaper (40), and like magic, it all came right off - yay!  I'd already taken off layers and layers of paint before I got to this point, so I don;t think a mouse sander would have been time efficient without the heat gun first, but just look at this beauty.  Bare, naked wood.  All ready for a fresh lick of pure brilliant white paint.

The mess along the way...

I had to take off the kitchen door to get to all the nooks and crannies, and it's still off its hinges until I finish painting. Probably should get round to doing that...

All in all it took me a whole day to do 5 door frames (and remember that's 5 half, half, door frames really as I was only doing one side, and I had already done most of the architrave bit).  I wore safety glasses and a dust mask, but I think I should have been a bit more careful.  I was so ill that night and for a few days afterwards, that I'm not sure if I fumigated myself or something.  Not good.

But it's done! Finally!

I can;t believe how much I underestimated the job that is tackling a hallway/stairs.  It's just such a huge space as it's so tall, and it has sooooo many doors!  Ours has 8 in total - nuts.  This means lots of architraves, lots of corners, lots of tricky bits.  And stairs also mean lots of spindles to paint!  But I love how far it has come, just the last little bit to go now.

Which jobs have you done that you completely underestimated the time investment?

Filling in the holes in the new plaster

So you might have read about our mini plumbing disaster here and here.

Which left us with some gaping holes through to the living room.  I used some deep gap filler, and a filling knife, and filled them as best as I could.

I left this for a few days to go fully hard, and then used some sandpaper to sand it down.  I've no idea what grit size I used, I just picked up the first piece I found in the garage!  It seemed quite coarse, but when I touched the wall afterwards it was super smooth so I didn't bother looking to find any finer sandpaper.

I then touched up with the wall paint, and I used a dry roller to run over where I had touched up to get rid of the brush marks,  I also used this opportunity to touch up a few marks that we have accidently made on the walls since we painted it, not that long ago at all - oops!

For example this one, where Dan made a mark and then tried to rub it to get rid of the mark...

Good as new now.  You'd never know there was ever a hole there now: