One of the things I really liked about the house when I bought it was the great layout. The rooms were all pretty evenly spaced and it would be good to work with when putting furniture. The living room was perfect...2 windows, coved ceilings, a great corner to put the TV.
Then there was the Wall O' Mirrors.
From the moment I decided to buy the house, I knew they were coming down. I know, I know, they make a space look bigger. But I just don't like looking at myself that much. Maybe if I was a cast member of "Jersey Shore" I would, but it ain't me babe.
My parents and family hypothesized how we should get them down. We didn't want to break them to bits and have 7 years bad luck! Should we gently pry an edge, then use a piano wire to wiggle them loose from the adhesive? Will they just pop off? What will be behind them? Will it wreck the plaster? Our minds were running wild for about 3 months about these mirrors. And once we did the living room...there was more in the bedroom!
The kicker was, when I did the walk through the house with Elizabeth 2 weeks before I moved in, Violet pointed out to me the paperwork she was leaving behind for the mirrors, so I would know who to call when they would start to fall down! Turns out she had just gotten them "re-glued" and they would come undone from the wall from time to time. Sigh.
Needless to say, taking them down was the first thing we did when I got the keys.
And if memory serves...it went a lot easier than we thought. We started with the small piece over the hallway and then we kind of shimmied the rest off with various techniques. We did break some mirrors, but who believes in Old Wives Tales? Or maybe my bad luck was the housing market tanking 6 years later? Removing the glue was a bit of a bear. I think we went through many gallons of Diff or whatever that stuff is called and my arm muscles were never more toned than after weeks of scraping wallpaper and glue from every wall of this house.
The room is great now. Where there was once mirrors is our Pottery Barn picture wall. Scalloped window shades were replaced with wide blinds. I found the perfect small sectional for this space and I think it is a pretty cozy room. I would really like to get a great entertainment center, but am going to wait until the next house, since I hope we will have more room.
Here it is today. The color on the walls is Benjamin Moore's Chestertown Buff, part of the Historical Collection
3 comments:
Yes it was a very trying time dealing with how to remove those damn mirrors!! But after all the anxiety and worries they come off quite easliy. The "hockey pucks" that held them in place were the most pain because they stained the wall so bad it several coats to cover the spots.
We had mirrored wallpaper in our bedroom when we bought our house, along with orange shag carpet, some of those horrific oil dripping down the fishing line lamps and actual chains that held back the curtains that were actually shower curtains.
I love the color you put in there
Tamilyn - Oh boy. Yours sounded so much worse! Good thing you could see beyond it! Thanks for the compliment on the paint color. After 6 years, I am still not sick of it!
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