Preparing to paint the living room

Labor Day holiday.  What to do?  I woke up Saturday morning with the idea of painting the living room.  I had bought the paint back on Memorial Day during Home Depot's paint sale. I didn't think it would take much work from me as Tammy planned on doing all the painting.  I was wrong.

First I had to take stuff off the wall.  The pictures were no problem.

The elk wall hanging was my dad's.  Our family had it since the 1960s and some of my earliest memories are of his wall hanging.  I am keeping it.  But Tammy doesn't appreciate it.  So I am moving it from the living room wall by my computer down to the basement.

Then I had to take all of my home theater speakers off the wall.    Oh yeah... my TV is mounted on the wall.  All that had to come off the wall.

Also the curtains are ugly and falling apart.  They and the curtain rods had to go.

I was left with very dirty walls.  Too dirty to paint over.   Yes, those are the wall's studs.  The dust collected more on the wall where the stud's were located than the rest of the wall.  This is where the elk wall hanging hung.

After a few hours of hard scrubbing the walls were clean.  Then I noticed the uneven patterns.  The walls are plaster and made up of circles.  The ridges were great dust collectors.   They had to go.

I had drywall mud left over from the bathroom work.  Tammy and I used up the half of a box of mud applying a thin layer of mud on the walls.  When done the walls seemed smooth to the touch though one could see the circle patterns under mud, as shown below.

Tammy painted small area and it looked like we could still see some of the circles under the paint.

Sunday morning we bought another box of mud and Sunday afternoon applied another layer of mud on the walls.  Most of the circles were covered by the time we finished.

Now to sand the mud.