Demo Day #1 and already a change of plans!

We picked up our keys yesterday and boy were we excited!!!

We went straight over to the house from the lawyer's office, where our keys were attached to a little leather cutout of a beaver. I leapt through the front door in excitement and immediately started peeling wallpaper off the walls.

The first layer came off too easily. But is there really anything more satisfying than pulling off an entire panel of wallpaper in one piece!?

And guess what was underneath? Wallpaper. And MORE WALLPAPER. 

Seriously, guys, there are SEVEN LAYERS of wallpaper. And, for good measure, a layer of yellow paint between layer 2 and 3. Can you see them? From the top layer down: a brownish-green vertical stripe pattern, a beige spotty pattern, another beige stripey pattern, a blue hatch-mark weave pattern, then the beautiful yellow paint layer, and then an "I-swear-this-is-a-camouflage-pattern" layer, and... you guessed it, another beige layer right on top of the drywall. 

Today, with tools, wallpaper remover, and my mother-in-law Chris, we went at the wallpaper in the den. While the top layer came off like a dream, the other six layers are NOT coming off easily. We will have to choose between either 1) scoring, spraying, and scraping Every. Single. Layer. off the wall, or 2) hammer-and-chiseling all the layers off at once, but in Tiny. Little. Chunks.

We knew renovating this house was going to be a labour of love, but it just got a whole lot lovier. This is the smallest of the three rooms, plus a long hallway, that needs wallpaper stripped. And don't even say it. I WILL NOT paint over all those layers and just make it worse!

Meanwhile...

Mister J., his Papa, and our friend Jim attacked the kitchen.

Seriously. They ATTACKED it:

There were sledgehammers, chisels, reciprocating saws, and crowbars a-plenty. And lots of NOISE, and dust, and debris, of course. 

But after removing all the hardware, all this wood, a pile of tile, the old cabinets, and a wall, here is our new beautiful open kitchen! 

Okay, so it's not beautiful yet. But to me, it's Gorgeous.

We discovered a pipe, though. Not sure what we're going to do with that pipe. It's right in the middle of what will hopefully be a walkway.

But the major change to our reno plans is the colour scheme of the main floor. Remember how I said we were going to paint the coffered ceilings and all the trim around the windows and doors white? Well, the quote for bringing all that wood up to paint grade was wayyyyyy outside our budget.

So we're going to keep the wood dark brown. Which, now that I think about it, is actually a better decision. Once you take trim white, you can never go back. After some time spent on Pinterest looking at inspiration for "craftsman dark wood colour schemes," we've decided to go green! Here's our favourite inspiration:

We'll also be painting the ceiling (not the wood bits) a nice white, which will lighten up the colour scheme quite a bit, kind of like other awesome inspiration photo: 

What do you think? I can't WAIT to get to the painting stage. 

NEXT UP: More wallpaper peeling, and more kitchen demo!