It's good to make some progress

After acquiring a heat gun a couple weeks ago, Brent and I have been slowly but surely scraping paint off the woodwork in the upstairs living room. We've got most of the panels under the windows all clear now. They look like this now:



We're still working on the baseboards. The existing ones are painted with graining patterns and we still need to dig up more from the basement to put back in the rest of the way around the room. I like me some baseboards.

After estimating the cost of having all the wood-graining completed I decided to put an interim solution in place. I'm staining and shellacking all the woodwork to approximately the same color range as our desired graining will be. I know we'll cover this later when we hire someone to add the oak graining, but for now, it's going to give us a much more finished-looking house. I'm using a dark walnut stain and amber-colored shellac. I've got one door done so far, though it needs some more shellac. It's very annoying to have to use a tall stepladder to do this job though. It's one time when I wish our ceilings were lower. Anyway, here are some pictures:





Also, Brent investigated some electrical issues today. Our ceiling fan and light quit working in the living room. He couldn't find anything wrong with the wiring, and I researched the switch. Apparently it's run by some fancy circuit board and switch, and seems likely that something on that circuitry is hosed. We're going to look into getting a new fan and light. Neither of us really like this one that much anyway.

He did, however, successfully fix both the light in the back hallway and in the laundry room. Yay! We have an awful lot of lights in the hall area now, but I'm pleased as punch since I've really needed that laundry room light.