Home Makeover: The Parlour

Post by Lara

22 January 2014

First off, let me take a moment to wish Kevin a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY! We will be attempting to make German Chocolate cake tonight. Wish us luck!

When we first moved into our house, our parlour (that's what people in former British colony Sierra Leone call a living room, by the way) was pretty plain.  Over the course of several months, about 6 gallons of paint, and a whole lot of elbow grease, we turned it into a comfortable space that we like spending time in. Here's the overview:

This is one of the first days we moved in.  The green vinyl flooring is a very popular option in Sierra Leone-- but see the doorway? The door is too close to the floor, so they cut out a semi-circle and duct taped it to the floor. Not pretty.  Also, every wall in the house was this color. I think it's called Cameo.

Another view, showing the spare bedroom door

Both bedroom doors. See the clothes hanging up? That's where they dry in the rainy season.  Also notice the rectangles of missing paint on the walls-- this is what tape does to emulsion paint. Once we repainted, we vowed not to put tape on the walls again.

One of the first projects we did was to take up all that horrible green vinyl and paint the floor. Our Sierra Leonean friends and neighbors were incredibly wary of this move at first, but they came around. After a coat of gray, we "sponged" black over top. This pattern hides dirt like a fiend-- which is both a blessing and a curse.

I (Lara) am really bad at avoiding wet paint, apparently. Our friend Mike also left a footprint. Kevin seems to be the one who's capable of remembering what's wet and not stepping there.

The first section of sponged paint.  Our next-door neighbor liked this so much he had us help him to paint his own floor the same way-- so if you slide next door, the parlour floor looks almost exactly the same.

After the floors were done, we came into some furniture through a friend (delivered by tractor!) We kept one loveseat and one armchair and gave the others away. Now to take care of the walls!

In a venture that ought to be titled, "Anything but Cameo," we started repainting the house with the parlour. We bought a 5-gallon tub of blue paint, most of which finished up this room.  Now we had nice walls, a nice floor, and a soft place to sit. We were almost done!

Our "To-Do" list is hanging on the door-- now it's two of those papers and we have it nearly full.  We'll do a post on that system someday.

Next, we hired a carpenter to make us an end table and a coffee table. The drawer of the coffee table can be opened on either side. Pretty nifty! Our neighbor thought so too-- he had a carpenter come look at our table and try to emulate it for his parlour (no joke!)

This corner of the parlour has actually spruced up even more -- we have a second row of hanging space and some comfortable wicker chairs. We'll try to post a more recent photo sometime.

So there's our parlour project-- start to finish! If you're anything like me, you were shocked to find out the Peace Corps volunteers could have things like separate rooms in a house and furniture (specifically couches!) and fresh coats of paint.  I kind of imagined we'd be living in a mud hut with a grass roof and sleeping on rice bags. I'm glad I was wrong about that. Our little house is something we're very proud of.  Thanks for stopping by!