The Transformation of Chateau Travolta: Drywalling Over Door Frames

This year has been busy in terms of Arens Family Home Improvement. You might recall our February powder room remodel. Or our kitchen wallpaper stripping extravaganza. This past weekend, we planned to take out a wall only to find the night before it contained a duct. Lucky for us, Beloved pays attention to such things. I would've found the duct after splitting it wide open with a hammer.

It was a little bittersweet to learn the wall has a duct, because then it became apparent to me I've left a wall that could've been painted this entire time looking like this for the past four months.

See wall directly behind little angel. Yeah, we thought we were going to remove it. Shut up.

The really sad part is that it took about 20 minutes to remove that wainscoting and strip the rest of the wallpaper backing off, making it look completely normal. Until I painted it the wrong color.

Here you see the stripped wall minus its trim. Beloved is going to make the sides of the wall just drywall and add an arch to the top. Soon.

So, the rest of the kitchen and the powder room are "Egg White." I found paint that said "Eggshell" and remembered it had been egg something. As I was pouring the paint, I mentioned to Beloved it was so totally the wrong color. He assured me it was the right color. Here, Beloved: 0, Rita: 1.

Screw it. We'll just pretend that's primer, shall we?

We'd hoped to take that whole wall out to open up the space between the kitchen and the living room. But sometimes you have to know when to back away.

Beloved also drywalled over a door frame to give us more room when we do our kitchen remodel.

Before:

Oh, hi, 2007. That's the library with piss-splattered carpet and recently removed horrible wainscoting and wallpaper. You can see the country roses on either side of the door.

Minus country rose wallpaper.

Plus white trim and EGG WHITE paint.

Plus hot man and drywall over that door frame.

EGGSHELL.

EGG WHITE.

Beloved is quite brilliant, as you can see how much space this will give us for a coffin-sized pantry in which we can hide entire people or a whole shitload of food.

Unfortunately, I also screwed up a paint color.

Drywall patch over old door frame.

Getting ready to sand the drywall. Everything we know about home improvement we learned from Dexter. (Actually, doing this totally reduces drywall dust. As in there was none on the bookcases after I sanded.)

Primed.

Beloved insisted this was the wrong color as I had just painted it. I was all, "No, it's totally not." And he was all "What would you like to bet?" So we made a bet. It was the wrong color. Beloved: 1, Rita: 0.

Nothing a short trip to Sherwin Williams couldn't fix. Humph.

So there you have it! As though that silly door was never there! More to come on the kitchen wall when we install the arch.