Let's Play Wallpaper Detective

I've got a challenge for you all! Here's a picture of my dining room wall taken in the middle of the wallpaper scraping phase. I've studied it closely, and I think I can piece together all of the various incarnations it has taken on over the years. I'll list them out below, and I'll even throw in the first and last ones for you. Your job is to fill in the missing slots, using only this picture (click on it to see a bigger image).

Note: I went ahead and filled in the rest.

• 1. Walls: Rusty Red Paint; Trim: Dark Stain (not shown, but deduced from other trim in the room.)


• 2. Walls: Mint Green ; Trim: Dark Stain


• 3. Walls: Mystery Wallpaper* ; Trim: Off-white


• 4. Walls: Gold floral wallpaper ; Trim: Gone!


• 5. Walls: Blue Floral Stripe wallpaper ; Trim: N/A


• 6. Walls: 80's Floral Wallpaper (not shown in this picture); Trim: N/A


• 7. Walls: Devine Blush red; Trim: Devine Icing white (coming soon!)

* #3 was tricky. If you look around the edges of the bare plaster (where the trim used to be) you can see where someone had painted the trim an off-white color. They obviously didn't care about keeping a sharp edge as they painted. That was my clue that there must have been a "mystery wallpaper" that was put up around the trimwork. That layer had to be removed along with the trim before they could put up the gold layer. UPDATE: Read here for the mystery wallpaper Revealed!

Hasn't been a lot happening here

Right now I'm in between projects, more or less. I called Appliance City today and had them come pick up my vintage O'keefe & Merritt stove so they can give it a once-over and tell me what it needs. I started scraping wallpaper in the dining room, but haven't gotten too far on that yet. The most exciting thing I've done lately is attend a trimwork class at the Northwest Woodworking Studio.

Cottages & Bungalows Magazine Article

The spring 2008 issue of Cottages & Bungalows magazine has a blogging sidebar and they were gracious enough to include 1916 Portland Bungalow right there at the top! I hope this doesn't count towards my 15 minutes. ;-)



Due to my poor photo quality, you can't really see them, but M & C Build a House and Our Fixer-Upper also made the list.

Doorbell Finally Mounted

I bought this really cool art-deco doorbell at Rejuvenation's attic sale 2 or 3 years ago and I've been (im)patiently waiting to put it up in the finished kitchen. Well, I finally got around to it. Now it'll probably be another two years before I hook up the button.

Here's another shot of the finished cabinets, now with decorative fake plants for that finishing touch!

Crown Moulding Finished!

Yipee!! The crown moulding in the kitchen is finally done! In fact, 99.9% of all the visible parts of the kitchen are done. Only the vintage stove is left to get refurbished and installed. Other non-visible things left to do are hooking up the fan and electrical for the vent hood and one light switch. The end is in sight!!!