This has been a long time coming...at the beginning of last summer we hired the genius Henry to begin stripping the box beams and wainscotting in the living room, dining room, and downstairs hall. This was a long, costly process but after the experience of doing most of the upstairs wood ourselves, AND having it take three years, it was well worth having Henry do the dirty work for us. He did a far better job than I could have done, and the photos do not do it justice. He worked 6 days a week for close to 3 months to achieve these results. Imagine how many weekends that would have taken us! (I would highly recommend Henry to anyone who needs some wood stripped or refinished. Contact us for his number.) We also had to reproduce some of the plate rail that was missing in places. Previous owners seemed to remove and/or hack at pieces at random.
Next step, the wood floors were sanded and polyurethaned by Francisco and his crew. They also did our upstairs floors in '07. Final step, paint. With the help of our good friend Patrick at Patrick Bustad Painting, many repairs were done to these old plaster walls which were in terrible shape from all the taping off during the wood stripping process. We picked from Benjamin Moore's historic color palette, Summerdale Gold for the living room. This is an amazing color which changes dramatically depending on the light and time of day. The dining room is a dark room in the NE corner of the house, and we had a hard time with the color. We slapped up about 10 different samples of gold, green, and caramel, but nothing screamed out. Finally our painter said, I'll finish today if you can pick a color. We bit the bullet and picked the best of the bunch and it turned out quite well. HC 122, Great Barrington Green. I'm not one of those who is scared to put color on a wall, and don't believe that a dark color in a dark room makes it feel closed in, small, etc. It is rich and delicious.
My parents 1950's colonial revival dining room set isn't perfect, nor is the eclectic mish mosh of living room furnishings, but that will have to wait for another time. At least we got a few pictures on the wall! If any of you readers out there have a pair of old Stickley Morris chairs or a nice unneeded settle, feel free to send them our way!
Carlos Castaneda, who has a lovely little lighting and antique shop on La Brea, shined up the old lighting fixture, and replaced the Home Depot issue chain with a more appropriate chain and hardware. We are both suffering from back aches after rehanging that thing yesterday afternoon.
Finishing touches will include swapping out the modern light switches for push button switches, and ordering some hammered copper switch plates.
