Our Family Room

When we first saw our family room our Realtor literally cringed in horror. The description on the real estate ad said "a good fixer upper", and looking back, they must have been very optimistic! We had several very outdated pieces, such as our light fixture, our hideous (and GROSS!) carpet, our mirrored wall, a burnt up/worn out fireplace and a door filled with staples and a missing pane from the house being broken into.

However, like I've said before, we wanted a home we could fix up and this looked like a pretty decent starting point.

• Brandon took down our acoustic ceiling using a large putty knife to scrape the ceiling after using a garden spray pump (like used for spraying weeds) to wet a 3x3 section of ceiling with water mixed with just a little bit of biodegradable paint stripper. This prevented dust and allowed the textured ceiling to be more easily removed as well as weighing it down so it would fall to the floor once he scraped a little bit. Despite having an acoustic ceiling, we did not have an asbestos problem because our house was "new enough" that the likelihood that asbestos was used was very low. However, if your home is 1975 or older you may want to have a sample tested first before removing it yourself. On a side note, always wear protective goggles and masks when working on projects like this---unlike Brandon, who is not wearing his mask OR goggles!!! Also be sure to lay down plenty of drop cloths to catch the removed texture, it is a lot more than you would think would come off and it's easier to pick up a drop cloth and dump it out rather than brutally torturing your vacuum again and again.
  

• After removing the ceiling we decided to remove the old mirrors. We had seen a tutorial on DIY network where you tape up the mirrors with an asterisk shape to hold them together in case they break. Then, slowly and surely you can pry them off the wall using a pry-bar behind the glass. Fortunately ours were held on with circled dots on the walls as seen in the photo below and we only broke one mirror in the ten minute process!

• We did have to re-texture the wall with the mirrors, but we were able to do that while Brandon re-textured our ceiling as well.

• After sanding the trim with 180 grit sandpaper, patching the staple holes with putty, and scrubbing the walls and fireplace with a TSP solution, we were ready to prime the whole room. Keep in mind we went a little crazy with the airless sprayer because we were painting EVERYTHING and so we didn't have to worry about the trim, carpet, or ceiling because everything was going to need primer. Ten gallons of latex primer later, our entire house was WHITE! Not to mention our hands, faces, and hair as well :-)