Finally!

Back in February we got our Nest ("smart" thermostat).  When I had painted the dining room, I had painted around the old thermostat.  It was much bigger than the Nest, so when Steve installed it, there was a section of old paint and wallpaper showing.

He had asked me to paint it back when he installed it, but I kept forgetting.  It's located on a wall in our dining room, that I wouldn't see until the end of the day.  Then the next day I'd forget to do it.  Ha.  Then Bean has become more needy and needs more attention, so I just put on the back burner for a project to be done when Steve is home.  A vicious cycle of forgetting and 8 months later, I've finally gotten to it!

My mom popped in for a couple days (pretty much to babysit Bean while I went to the dentist) and I was able to take advantage of her being here to focus on this project!  It took an entire day from start to finish, but now you'd never know a different thermostat used to be there!

(The thermostat is located on the inner wall of the dining room that faces the foyer/stairs.  It is so easy to whip around the corner and not see it - at least that's my excuse for forgetting to fix it!)

(The room was originally wallpapered, of course! I am not about to undertake another wallpaper removal, plus, I had already painted over it when I did the dining room.  It's hard to tell, but there was a lot of textural differences between the green paint I did and what was behind the thermostat.)

(First I popped off the outer part of the Nest - oh and turned off the power to the wires!  Then I unscrewed the back part, taped it up - and put a piece of cardboard inside the tape to prevent dust getting into the wires.)

(Same as previous picture - just a little more focused showing the different layers.  I took a putty knife first and scraped off some of the paper and paint.  Then I took sand paper and smoothed it all out.  I forgot to take a picture of the next step, but I puttied in all the holes, let it dry, and sanded that.)

(I had taken out the anchors and patched up the holes for the Nest, haha!  I wasn't thinking when I did it and there were multiple anchors and lots of holes.  Oh well, I was able to just poke the anchors back in the spots with minimal effort.  This is the back part that I had covered up so it wouldn't get dust.  Look at all that old school wires. Ha.)

(All finished!  Now I think it looks a little weird with the Nest just chilling on the wall, but it's better than the old wallpaper showing.  My mom asked me when I was going to take the wallpaper out of that room. . . uhm. . . never??)