Corbels: or why HGTV should be banned in our house

I decided well over a year ago that I wanted to purchase corbels for the breezeway that leads from our kitchen to our living room. This was the inspiration for that decision. The walls that serve as the transition point between the two rooms are pretty awkward and they ran straight to the ceiling. I always thought that the builder should have opened up the two rooms more but these are the cards we were dealt. Before: I spied an awesome set of corbels on Little Green Notebook's blog and immediately bought them off of ebay.

Online they looked so antique and beautiful. In reality, they arrived with dead bugs (a few ladybugs, some moths, some other unidentifiable beetle corpses), cobwebs and 19 coats of lead paint. Now let me start by saying I think DIY is a great idea...for other people. I always get started on a DIY project and halfway through that project I wonder why I didn't just pay someone else $100 to do it for me. This project was no different. Because the damn corbels were covered in lead paint I couldn't just sand the finish, prime and paint them. Noooooo. I had to soak them in this orange gel stuff that smelled like a bad magic mushroom candle (remember those?) for three days. Then I had to scrape the damn paint off with a plastic spatula, which led me to recruit my husband for help, which led us both to drinking. After which we were finally able to clean them off, prime and paint them. Our corbel project in pictures: Joe even bled for these things But in the end I think they turned out pretty awesome. We also added crown moulding in the room which I think also helps visually separate it from the kitchen. FYI - I don't style my house before taking pictures of it. So this is what it looked like when the corbels were done. In all reality it doesn't look much different now. I'm super excited to point out the fact the our kitchen has a tile backsplash in that picture! Yay! I still need to take pictures of our finished kitchen, and post the before and afters. It really is so much different now. Plus the day we finished the corbels our new Dash and Albert rug arrived and made it's way into our kitchen (you can see it under our kitchen island). And if you look in the bottom corner you can see the wing chairs we scored off of craigslist in all of their tartan glory. They're being recovered as we speak. More on that later. Anyway, I think I'm done with the DIY for a while. Thankfully our very long list of projects is darn near done. I have no idea what I'll do with all my free time after this list goes away.