That 70's Dining Room

During the largest earthquake on the East coast and a hurricane, we decided to start our next project. Redoing that ugly 70's dining room with mud textured walls, yes, you read that right, mud textured. We had to Google the best way to remove that texture, turns out a water sprayer and some wall paper scrappers (the ones with razor blades) was all it needed. Of course, this was after our attempt to sand it, eh, guess you learn.

After putting up plastic everywhere, we spent the entire first day just removing that texture while wearing masks.  The next day, we spent filling in any holes with spackle, then sanding them. After we painted half the wall (we were planning on putting up wainscoting and chair rail) and painting the ceiling.

Day three, was putting up the wainscoting and chair rail following by painting them. When putting up wainscoting, remember that you have outlets on the wall, those need to be cut out. Perhaps having the right tool to do this handy would help. We used a Dremel saw to cut these after taking a trip halfway through to get it...did we mention we love Home Depot, they give discounts to vets, as does Lowes. To put up the wainscoting and chair rail we used our handy cordless nailer and the miter saw to cut the chair rail (remember how we said having those tools would be good? Told you so). The dining room is now the only complete room in the house.