Upstairs Tour and Wallpaper Dilemma

Life is truly hectic at the moment. We want to be working at the house almost every evening. But I work 2 evenings a week. So Sindre has the kids but he still tries to get over there for a bit. Plus Sindre is one of the coaches for Emilie's soccer team and he plays soccer himself. He didn't know he'd be renovating a house when he said yes to those things. But there's just a few matches and practices left before the season is over. The evenings we do have free to work on the house, it's a race to get the kids homework done, get supper made, eaten and cleaned up, send the girls to their various activities and/or get them ready to go over to the house with us. Thankfully, they love playing outside. Rebecca spent all day last Saturday there with Sindre and I and she was SOOOO good! She played with her doll, helped me rip off wallpaper, played "store" and watched a movie on her portable DVD player. What a cutie!

So...you got the main floor tour last time. Let's move upstairs. Speaking of stairs....I adore this staircase!!!

I will be sanding it down and painting it white. And that will be the second time this year that I've painted a staircase. I'm looking forward to it though! One, because I have 3 power sanders to play with this time (they are so much fun!!) and two, it's going to look soooo pretty! Can I just mention here that there used to be a very ugly blue and green carpet runner along the steps? Sindre ripped it off and I removed the nails. I removed s.e.v.e.n.t.e.e.n nails from just one single step. The previous owners were really nail happy. I've never seen so many nails in my life. On the bright side, I've become very handy with a hammer.

Ok, the opening you see at the top of steps is the door into the first bedroom which will be Emilie's bedroom. In the photo here, I'm standing in the door taking a picture into the room. The wall and door you see here will be removed. They closed in the back part of the room to use as a closet/storage but we're going to open it all up to make the room bigger. We'll be using the original paneling on the wall .

This is the "scary" room. You can't see it that well in the picture but this room has suffered the most from the rotten sill on the foundation of the house on the front wall. Actually it's the sill between the 1st and 2nd floors that's really the culprit. The floor is completely sagging except for middle where there is a big hump where a wall from the first floor is holding it up. It's not dangerous but really crooked. When the contractor jacks up the front wall and replaces the rotten materials, we should be ok. We'll see what the floor looks like after that before we make any decisions on what to do there. Madelen has the middle room so the original paneling will be removed so we can put in new electrics for the bedrooms and to insulate between the walls of the bedrooms. So we don't have to hear each other fart in bed. 'Nuff said.

And the bed is staying. I love it!

This is from the top of the stairs looking to the right down the hall to our bedroom and the little storage room with the funny door. Where you see the closed door on the right wall will be gone. Here is where the build-on will be. So there will be a door into Rebecca's room and closer to the stairs will be another door to the main bath.

This is our bedroom which is more or less the same as Emilie's and we'll be removing the wall here too.

This is from my bedroom door looking back down the hall to the stairs.

So that's the upstairs tour. :)

A little update. I've decided to paint the floors. Probably a light to medium grey. So choosing the right shade will be a challenge. We're trying to keep the interior of the house "old fashioned". We want it to feel like you've stepped back to 1929 but with all of today's modern day conveniences. Obviously, I can't just go and get rid of all my furniture that I have now, but I'm hoping that I can make it fit into the style we're going for and we'll be able to blend the new with the old.

So I've been looking at wallpapers. There is going to be a lot of painted wood paneling in the house and we want to add some colour and texture with wallpaper in some spaces. So I've been looking at some historically inspired papers. I absolutely fell in love with this one for the kitchen.

I found it online so I thought I'd better go check out what it looks like in real life at a store. And it's not the same at all. The muted blue is actually silver. Sparkling silver. There's no real colour to it all.It's pretty but it just doesn't have the right feel and I have my heart set on some blue. We're going to have a lot of neutrals so I need some colour somewhere.

I originally overlooked this wallpaper but it's really starting to grow on me. It still has that historical feel and it's got some colour. It's a little more busy than the other one though. What do you think??

And this one for Rebecca's room because I've honestly never seen anything cuter in my life. It will be on a feature wall and still works with my theme of "red gingham" for her bedroom. Isn't it just the cutest EVER???