Remember what the front…

Remember what the front parlor looked like? All that white paint on the window trim and moldings? We're getting rid of that all through the house -- or at least as much as we can afford. Why do designers go so crazy with the white paint? I'm just glad that we have some lovely people doing the stripping for us, at least on the first floor. The smell is intense, and it's a lot of slow labor.

Sorry that photo is so dark; that's mostly just a shot of the room w/ scaffolding.

Here's the first window, stripped! So exciting! We're going to stain all the trim, so I'm not sure yet what it'll look like when it's done. There's a patch of wood trim in the kitchen that was behind the radiator, where the paint scorched off from the heat, and the wood is a deep caramel color. Pam is pushing for something in similarly dark tones; definitely a possibility. I do like the drama of dark wood, and it helps the place actually look as old as it is, since wood darkens as it ages. But I'm still worried that dark wood floors will end up showing dust and looking dirty a lot. And I don't know if it would look weird to have dark wood trim and medium wood floors...

That's a detail of the molding. I think it's called "bulls-eye"? Not positive, but seems likely, no?

And that's a window latch stripped of paint. Love it, esp. the similarity to the bulls-eye pattern. Don't know if that was intentional, but it's a nice effect. Love all the little ridges on the metal; it'll look so pretty when it's completely clean and polished. Sorry I couldn't get a better photo of the whole latch -- just not tall enough! :-)