Messy jobs

So today I've been doing the messy jobs that come before decorating. We have nice old grates that cover our vents, but the one in the bedroom had peeling paint and looked a bit grim. So I decided to strip it so I could repaint it and make it look nice and smooth.

I always regretting stripping anything. It always looks much much worse after you start stripping. And of course the bottle (this kind is meant to be environmentally friendly) confidently tells you that this stripper can take away layers of paint and it will do all the work for you. But in truth it's usually a smelly, messy, tedious job.

Afterwards I'm usually very happy with the results and feel it was worth it. Sort of. But in this case after a few rounds of gooey paint scraping I decided to call it a day and clean up, do a little sanding and leave it at that.
In this case the results weren't great. Probably not much better than a bit of scraping and sanding would have been, but I'm done and have remembered why I probably won't do this again.
We've also made new baseboards, since we removed the wainscotting. I primed those earlier this week, and today they got their 1st coat of paint. The nice old style of baseboards in our house are plain with a bevelled edge at the top. We couldn't find them pre-made so we (ie. Bradley) made our own with planks of wood cut with a matching bevelled edge.

This grate will tidy up our bedroom, along with the baseboards. Taking out the wainscotting turned out to create a whole lot of work. Also, as I just discovered, my post was used on Apartment Therapy.

This time I didn't get asked and they really hated this one! In my defense I think it's one of those cases where a photo is a bit misleading. The wainscotting really wasn't nice, and everyone who visited the house agreed. The room still has nice character with the old trim and aforementioned pretty old grate. And you guys know I do appreciate old things...