If there's a heaven, my father most certainly deserves to go there because he's an angel.
My companion in paint stripping and home improvement projects are the Audible audiobooks. It keeps a handy little ticker of hours spent listening. Based on the books I listened to while working on the stairs, I think I'm somewhere around 84 hours to remove all the paint from the spindles and take a solid first whack at sanding out the little bits that I couldn't get with a scraper.

My lovely father could see the desperation in my eyes and as a Christmas/Birthday present said he'd finish the stairs for me. And the clouds parted and angels sang...because I was absolutely kaput on sanding and pretty intimidated at the prospect of figuring out how to stain and varnish the top of the railing. He and his handyman buddy, John, finished it up with probably an additional 50 hours on top of what I put in.
He did an awesome job. At some point I'll need to put another coat of porch paint on the stairs. But right now I'm basking in the beauty of "done". (IGNORE the window to the left of the picture. It's a figment of your imagination. And it's single pane glass that I don't dare finish stripping with a heat gun until it's warmer outside. Sometimes prudence wins out over my impatience)

To celebrate, I bought out half the frame department at IKEA and had fun picking out photos from my different travels. I tried to include a picture from each country I've been to. I haven't been to nearly enough, so there are numerous repeats.
For anyone else trying to figure out frame placement to go up stairs, it was a bit of a bitch & I'll tell you what I did: All of them are RIBBA frames because the widths/lengths worked well with each other. I used 15 of the 9" squares, 2 of the 20", and 3 of the 9" x 20". In the photo, there's supposed to be one more 9" square at the very top of the stairs to make it 3 vertical spots. (I'm saving this pic for when my niece/nephew arrives this summer!) I used about a 1" gap between the frames to make 2 9" squares equal the 20" frames.

Here are some more before/after pics of the hallway:
Not a "true" before, because this was after I started pulling down the acoustic ceiling tiles. The railing looks good in the pic, but there were a lot of layers of paint and the finish on the railing was rubbed off in places.

This is a picture of all the plaster & lathe that I pulled off the walls and ceiling.





This one is after removing all the paint, but before Dad's intervention.

I'm going to have to work on getting some "after" photos up!

The past few months have been a flurry of activity: with help from Kevin and Brad, the trim in the dining room, kitchen, library, and front hallway is up! It's amazing what a difference some trim work makes in making a room look finished. And it also helps my vacuuming time to have baseboards - the dog hair can't hide in the gap between the wood floor and wall! I still have more painting to do in the dining, kitchen and hallway, but it's coming together.

My current project is sanding the spindles on the stairs. Last night I finished most of the rough sanding; next up is going back over everything with a finer grit paper.

One exciting update is my new front door - I'm thrilled with it. The old one was single pane glass. The frame for it was cobbled together and wasn't well secured to a stud on the left side interior. Even with the storm door, there was so much cold air blowing in that I had to hang a large piece of felt over the door last winter.

In an effort to up the curb appeal of a front door that didn't have much punch, I also got a door surround. The curved arch pediment and pillars (made by Fypon) draw more attention and as Mom says "make my house look like it's smiling". Much credit goes to Alaina and Mom for sitting through endless questions about door, glass and surround combinations. We settled on this one from Pella - a 3/4 European door style with "Sheffield" glass. (still need to add a piece of Azek below the sill plate) The combination allows a lot of light into the hallway while giving more privacy; it's super nice to not feel like the neighborhood can see you walk downstairs in your PJs.

It was also fun to see the original siding while the aluminum siding was off. In addition to the new door, I updated the house numbers and doorbell. It's coming together!

I hadn't wanted to put pictures up post-move in since I had people coming to visit for my sister's wedding (and I wanted it to be a surprise!). So I'll do more catch-up now...covering at least part of the downstairs.

There's plenty left to do, but I hit a wall at the end of May where I was just burnt out, so I moved my stuff in. I thought I'd be more inclined to mix working on the house into post-job time but having stacks of boxes around actually make it kind of difficult to work. The wedding and the prospect of overnight house guests was a major motivating factor. So, there has been progress.

I've officially painted every room in the house now!
Here's the layout, so you can get an idea of how it fits together.


When I moved in, just my Master BR, the downstairs bath, and kitchen were in decent shape.

Downstairs, I finished stripping and repainting the moldings in the Living Room. Got my pictures up & the room is fairly well decorated. This pic is taken from the entry hallway.

The entry hall is still the biggest mess - since all the trim molding is off, it doesn't look the greatest, plus I haven't touched the stairs. Each post on the banister needs to be stripped and repainted.

I'm so happy with how the downstairs kitchen turned out. Most of it is IKEA (Stat white cabinets), so I was able to keep my costs down. I love the double bowl apron sink! I ended up using travertine tile for the backsplash (left over from my parent's remodel) and really like having the natural stone against the wood - it tones down the bright white. The floor is Allure - fake cork. ;) I know the lights are a bit modern, but I'd seen some similar in historical Victorian kitchen pics, so I'm happy with the choice. Oh, and that big lower cabinet panel to the left of the sink is a dishwasher - isn't that swish?
A word to anyone designing an IKEA kitchen: the one thing I wish somebody had told me is that there's a "fridge" cover panel that's deeper and taller than the normal cover panels. (It's also a bit thicker). I'm pretty sure it didn't show up in any of the catalog/design software they had. I had to make an extra trip to get it, but really like that all the cabinets are the same height and that the fridge is completely enclosed. My contractor had to build a box out to get the correct depth, but it all worked out really well.
The downstairs bath is really pretty - it's much more feminine than most of the things I designed. I did all white, sticking to different textures for interest. This picture doesn't really do it justice ;)


The back laundry room. (Looking towards the kitchen) In here I swapped out the back door for a Dutch door that was in the garage.
Both the front & back doors are painted a pretty rose-red color on the outside called "Frosted Pomegranate".

I still owe pics of the dining and library, in addition to the upstairs, but those have been particularly hard to get a good photo from!

What I love about my house so far:

1. Abby can go romp in the yard to her heart's content
2. The floor in my bedroom is crooked, so one side of my dresser is at least 3 inches higher than the other.
3. The morning sun in the kitchen.
4. The sound of rain hitting the roof just outside my window when I'm falling asleep.
5. Admiring the wall of book shelves (ah, zenlike)
6. My wi-fi hasn't once needed to be reset (constant, often daily problem at the 'rents)
7. All my stuff is in ONE place!

Mom bought me some geraniums and helped me plant them in the window boxes around the house. They look really pretty and less like a troglodyte lives here. It also makes me feel like maybe I won't kill everything I plant. Regular rains have helped maintain this illusion.

Things left to do:

1. Strip/Sand/Paint Stairs
2. Paint trim and doors in upstairs hallway
3. Touch up walls that got dinged during move-in
   
4. Strip/Sand/Paint other trim pieces in garage (fall/winter project)
   

Were I a poet, I would write an ode to Drywall - beautiful, clean, even, drywall.

It makes such a difference to have the walls closed up again.Here are a couple of before and after pics...Taping and mudding the joints is a dirty job - one I'm leaving to the pros. Meanwhile, I've been spending most of my evenings assembling cabinets in the garage.

Once the drywallers are gone, I'll finish stripping the moldings that abut the wood floors that are soon to be finished & prep/paint the kitchen so we can put in the floors and cabinets.

Guess what I did yesterday and today? If you guessed "pull down plaster" you get a gold star!
Here's why I wear a respirator. Some of the stuff falling out of the walls is nasty.

You know that part of human nature where the thing you tell yourself NOT to think about is the only thing you can think about?
That's what happened today as I'm ripping down lathe & getting rained on with crap. "Hmmm...wonder what's in these walls." Mice, mouse droppings, bugs, bug droppings. Just try to not think about it. It's the grey/black clumps of hair that creep me out the most - I'm just hoping its the horse hair binder they used in the plaster and not something else. bleh.

These wall pics are from Sunday night. I finished pulling down lathe in the dining room exterior wall. The other walls will just have drywall over the lathe.
A bit of Sunday & all of today were devoted to the front hallway. The pic, taken Sunday, shows the plaster down in a section. I actually have this corner down to the studs with what I did after work. I left around quarter of 9 & it was too dark to take a good pic.

I'm about ready for another trip to the dump.
Pic 1: 1 day's breathing in left mask vs. new one.
Pic 2: Living room down to the studs
Pic 3: Starting the plaster/lathe removal in the hallway.
Pic 4: Trailer 'o junk

The electrician is supposed to be here today, and in the middle of next week we're expecting the drywallers. So I'm working madly on pulling down the remaining walls we planned to do before the drywallers get here.
In the entry hallway you can see the plaster on most of the walls and a section of the old '70s paneling (since painted) on the right. Next up in this room is pulling down the plaster. The section under the stairs was really soft, so I'll hope the rest is as easy to pull down.
I've also gotten a bit more down in the living room.

Dad brought the trailer over, so I was able to take out all the plaster that was sitting in piles throughout the main level.

Brad got the kitchen windows in & they look really good! Shortening them will allow me to run a kitchen counter along much of that exterior wall. The kitchen was really short of both storage and counter space, so I think this will really help.
I also got the flooring for the kitchen ordered. I ended up going with the Allure cork-ish flooring from Home Depot. It's a vinyl plank floor - not unlike Pergo. It was the best option, since it was much less expensive (and softer to stand on) than tile, more durable than cork and wood, and thinner than all of the above (an issue with the match-up with the dining room).

Pic1: Front entry
Pic2: Dining room plaster - still working on it!
Pic3: Kitchen windows before
Pic4: Kitchen windows now - not quite to "after"!