Wallpaper Going Up!

Wow! This has been a long time coming. We bought this wallpaper at least three years ago. I must admit, it is certainly easier to put it on BEFORE the molding is put in! I don't have to worry about perfect placement horizontally. What I have learned is that all inside corners are plumb until you wallpaper them. It becomes particularly noticable when you use striped wallpaper! I was fortunate to catch this early and devise a suitable solution. Here is the dining room from the kitchen;

The "Cottage" living room;

The main living room;

The parlor;

and the hall;

That's right, you can't view it from the hall right now because I have a sheet of insulation over the doorway to keep the heat from the pellet stove contained to the first floor! Yes there are five doorways to our dining room.

Here is that concrete fireplace hearth with a couple of coats of acrylic varnish. It brings out the color and the pattern much better;

The Dining Room Fire Place

Years ago we bought a fireplace front and over mantle for the dining room. It was a long time ago, I've got a picture from February 2004 showing how I used to have to prop it against the wall with some planks of wood.



Well. I finally got the polished concrete hearth set in place with mortar and have laid in the floor of the fire box so that I am now ready to build the sides and back. I finished the floor and grouted the hearth today. I decided to put the fireplace front in place to see if I could build up the firebox with the mantle in place. After determining that I can, I attached the marblized steel opening to the wall with some twisted picture hanging wire that wraps around the iron lintel that is embedded into the brick.
Tonight the room looked like this



The marblized face of the fireplace determined the colors for this room. Since we used a walnut color for the windows and floor we had to use earthtones for the wall and this olive drab green worked well with a burgundy ceiling. The next step is to get the black and gold striped floral wallpaper hung on the lower part of the wall and then we decide what color to paint the chair and picture rails as well as the ceiling molding. the current plan is to paint the molding gold and then finish with a turmeric tinted shellac.

Here is a close up of the fireplace mantle.



The finish on this thing looks great when it is wet so I am considering applying some "Mop-and Glo" to the marblized front so that it has an acrylic gloss finish. My concern would be if the finish should peel if we use the fireplace. At least with "Mop-and-Glo" it could be stripped and re-applied at minimum cost and effort. That concrete hearth looks good with a wet finish also. I see a gloss finish in its future too!