The family room: Part I

Yes, that is a window from the living room, looking into another room. A bit weird. It's going to have to come out of there at some point. The room is an old, traditional sunroom. Windows all around the room, and white tile on the floor. Actually, we think the tile is just painted-over stamped concrete. Who knows.

We think this is going to be a great family room/TV room until we take the plunge and finish off the unfinished basement. That's going to take some time for us to get there, and with our two kids, we need a family and kids zone. The tile/concrete is not in the least bit cozy. So, we found a "low-cost" carpet to tide us over in there for a while.

And did I mention the wall paper? Yeah, it's not cute. A bamboo motif of some sort. We decided this will be the first room to really dig into so we have a place to hang out in the evenings.

It our haste to get at least one room done, we decided to try to get the wallpaper down and paint before the carpet was installed (today). The first layer of wallpaper came off pretty quickly. And then...surprise! Another layer underneath, plus the added benefit of it all being held up by nothing more than tack board. No plaster, no drywall. Hmm. Interesting.

I figured I'd try to patch the areas where the tack board was, and then paint over the wallpaper. Great idea, except that not only did the wallpaper buckle, it started peeling more in certain areas.

My darling husband thought it would be fine, but I knew deep-down it wouldn't. I decided to call in some experts, who all gave me different advice. After a very calming trip to Standard Paint and Wallpaper, my new best friend is Andy. Andy verified that my best choice is to strip it all, then paint with an oil-based primer, then float the seams on the walls with mud, prime it again, then spray a texture spray on it....THEN paint it.

We'll see what happens! The good news is, there is carpet...and now I'm going to take the night off for sanity.