Scraping the woodwork

The woman who lived here before seemed to have a strange obsession with the colour orange. I'm not even sure she realised, but it's everywhere.  Apricot coloured drapes, rust coloured kitchen, peach roses.  And, my favourite, the pumpkin coloured bedroom.  Being more of a cool colours girl myself, the orange is making me a bit loopy.  The pumpkin coloured bedroom is a particular sore point.  But since my mama raised me right, I can't just throw a coat of my favourite paint up there and call it good.  No, I've got to do prep work.  Lots of prepwork.  And I have to do it properly, or the angels might weep.

The thing about prep work is that every job seems to lead to another job:  in order to paint the walls, I need to prepare and paint the woodwork.  In order to prepare and paint the woodwork, I need to get under the carpet. The best way to get under the carpet would be to remove it in anticipation of having the boards sanded and varnished.  Which probably means the SO will kill me.

Still, you've got to start somewhere, so I spent the day burning the paint off around the doorframe.  My trusty heatgun, plus a couple of paint scrapers and my exciting new profile sanders by my side.  It took forever, and I accidentally set off our house alarm (umm, yeah, we don't know the code.  And the neighbours want to be best friends with us now!).  But, the thing is, it is sort of starting to look okay.  On the downside, I've got five doorways upstairs, and I've only done half of one.  Uh oh...

The lady not only liked her orange, she liked her bronze effect trim on the skirting boards.

Almost there!  The cool thing here is that there's so much more definition to the woodwork now. To the left you can see the dreaded alarm panel, just waiting to wreak terror upon the townspeople.

The side of the door is sanded, the top isn't.  I tell myself you can tell the difference.  The alarm went off shortly after this and I lost my will to decorate.