Hubs' weekend project

You may recall that I mentioned my husband's weekend project was removing living room ceiling tiles.

Just like in the hallway, we uncovered bead board, and, as always. clues about the original layout of the house.

There was apparently a wall on the other side of the front door (which is at the bottom left in this picture), creating an entry hallway. This confirms our theory, based on the huge hole in the paneling at the bottom of the stairs, that there was once a doorway that aligned the front door with the stairs. We were planning to restore that doorway, if we stayed here.

The problem, as you can clearly see from the above picture, is the nasty, jagged line in the ceiling (also, not pictured, are two circular holes: one in the "hallway" and one in the actual living room, that indicate the former location of light fixtures).We had already planned to paint the ceiling, so I did some quick measuring and determined that this break is almost exactly 1/3 of the way into the room, so we could put up a faux beam to cover the gap and another one, symmetrically, on the other side of the room. The plan was mostly brilliant except for the fact that the room is just over 13 feet wide while the longest board we could buy is 12 feet long, so we had to piece things together.

More pictures to come, but the ceiling did get painted (I am still scraping paint splatters off the floor to prove it!) and a gorgeous black fan installed. The light kit for the fan didn't work so well, so we'll have to return it and get a new one. 

Sadly, I had to return hubby to the airport in the middle of a thunderstorm AND rush hour traffic on Monday afternoon, so now I'm on my own to finish things up.

The finishing-up has a definite end point because the other half of his weekend project was convincing me to list the house now, unfinished (it makes me cringe just to type the word!)

Inventory is low in our local housing market, and we live in a highly sought-after school district so our agent is convinced that with the amount of square footage we have and the improvements we've already made, the house will sell quickly. Cross your fingers, because ready or not (emphasis on the not), our listing goes live on Monday, May 9!