Let the renovations begin!

And so it begins. We have started getting ready to "renovate" the house. When I say renovate-I mean scrape off the many many layers of paint off of the trim and start over-either with a stain or a much thinner layer of paint. I googled my little eyes out earlier and found that if you put harware that has been painted over into a crockpot on medium heat with a little liquid laundry soap overnight, it removes all the old paint-or softens it so you can remove the paint. If this is possible we are going to save a crap ton of money replacing hinges that have many layers of paint on them. We are testing it out tonight with the chain on the french doors in the living room. I am going to take some pictures of the process tomorrow and post them. 

When we bought this house, I fell in love with the old charm that came along with a 100 year old home. And now it is the same "charming details" that I will be stripping and redoing :) Nothing against any of the previous owners, but how hard is it to NOT paint hinges? Or windows? Or window pulleys or chains on french doors? Was it necessary to use such a THICK layer of paint on the doors and window frames? Should I really have to block off my entire living room with plastic and remove everything so I can pour some chemicals on the trim to remove all the layers of paint? The answer is no I shouldnt. But I am. Because that is probably a better way of doing things than slapping another layer of paint over the already flaking trim. I feel like I will probably fall in love with this house as we make these little changes. And the husband has dreams of us getting a lot more out of the house than we paid for it just by fixing these little things. All of this would be much easier if Christian were a little older. Planning all this around him and his nap schedule should be fun. And he is a curious little bugger. It will be tough to keep him out of the living room. But once it is all said and done we will have a beautiful living room for him to play in and we will hopefully not need to worry about the paint chipping, it will be a much brighter room because as much as I love the red-we need something brighter and more neutral. We are not red wall kind of people. 

I am going to try to keep updating here. I will be taking breaks from my many online outlets for awhile. Not as much Facebooking and message board time. If I want this house to be all I dream of it being, I need to put in a lot less computer time and a lot more work time :)