It's on... and we're prisoners in our own house.  We're finally getting around to redoing the living room and kitchen a bit, and for the next four days we're basically relegated to the bedrooms, Kylie's craft work room and my photography gallery room.  No TV for the next 4 days either, so now I have to find somehting to do from 12:20am to 12:45am each night.  I might even {gasp} read something.  Also essentially no kitchen functionality. It's kind of a sad day really.  I mean, I'm gonna miss all those pears in the kitchen wallpaper that have been such an eye sore blessing since I bought the house in August of '08.  Today they died a quick and hopefully painful death as the painters tore the wall paper off in about 4 minutes. Here's the living room after day 1:  Painted wood paneling and picture-frame moulding removed so I can put larger photography collections up.  Walls still to be painted (obviously).  Fireplace to be painted.  Mantle to be replaced or sanded adn stained darker.  Updated ceiling fan to eventually replace the current gold one. Plasma TV (hopefully) to be mounted on the wall. Ceiling and beams to be painted.

Here's the kitchen after day 1.  Wall paper gone.  Skip trial texture added to wall.  Cabinets and walls still yet to be painted (cabinets going darker with new hardware).  Hideous ceiling fan still present for now (searching for replacement).  New appliances (microwave, oven and gas cooktop) get installed next week.  New tile backsplash going in, too.

I've gotten to be quite the buddy with Morris down at the Benjamin Moore Paint store.  Current running total:  3 trips, 12 paint tester samples purchased, and 1 new friend.Kylie thinks it's funny (or at least she's trying to laugh) that we're one day into the transformation and I'm still painting samples to finalize the colors.

My office/gallery room has been transformed in to a jungle gym/obstacel course for teh week, too.  Just a tad cluttered as the painters moved a bunch of stuff in there while they do their thing this week.