Spackle, Sand, Paint- Repeat

In between cleaning up the yard after Hurricane Sandy, we decided we needed to get the living room corner cabinet & the foyer finished... 

It's been dragging on ENTIRELY too long!

So Mike spent last weekend spackling & sanding.  

It's pretty much his least favorite job, and I hate the mess (SO much dust!)  

But since it was needed to wrap up these rooms, we bit the bullet & got it done.

Right now, they really don't look much different from these pics...

Just add a coating of white dust EVERYWHERE.

Foyer

Living Room

The good news is that we bought the paint for the foyer & grabbed the almost full can we already had for the living room.  I'll post new photos as soon as we get it on the walls!  The plan is to work on it over the Thanksgiving weekend.

So, while Mike was sanding, I decided to work on the upstairs hallway moldings & banister balusters.  My mom had gotten a first coat of paint on them when she was here last, so I was able to finish it up in a single day!

They were all a creamy off-white color, but we decided to change them to white.  The pretty molding details should really pop once we get the hallway painted.

Check out the difference:

Before on the left;
After on the right

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

 It felt really good to have something to work on that showed immediate results!  

But I'm not going to lie... those balusters were a nightmare!  

I'm now dreading doing the rest down to the 1st floor, & up to the 3rd floor.

AFTER

I guess that's the biggest problem with trim work- they all run together & once you finish a section, the rest looks twice as bad sitting next to it!

Now the doors look
REALLY shabby!

We still have to decide what to do about painting the walls in this upstairs hallway.  

The stencil is really starting to bug me.  The problem is wallpaper that's under the existing paint.  We'll have to remove it, then more spackling & sanding (UGH!) before we can re-paint.

Oh well, little by little, we'll get it done...
(I'll just be keeping the lights low in the meantime!)