Yolande

House renovations take two Painting up a storm

My biggest project in our house thus far has definitely been painting. Nate hates to paint and so he's mostly focusing all of his time on the kitchen, which is fine by me because pulling down cabinet doors and fixing up wood holes sounds awful to me. I love to paint and volunteered to tackle the massive project of transforming our house with a little COLOR on the walls. Plus painting every other conceivable surface out there, but we'll get to that in a minute. I love picking paint colors even though it's pretty stressful for me, too. Nothing like painting the interior of a 1700 square foot house in just a few weeks to make a lady crazy, right? But we have to have the paint done before we move in---it just makes more sense to do it before furniture and people are in the way. Want to see what I've done so far?

MAIN ROOM transformation:

This was the room that had all cream colored walls, crown molding, and ceilings. Along with blue carpet. It's also basically huge which is great for when we live in the room, but not so fun while painting every surface of the room. At 24 feet by 13 feet, it's easily the largest room of the house and where I forsee us spending most of our time. Wanna see the true before picture again?

Bam.


I decided to go with Behr's 'Cloudy Day' for the wall color, and picked two shades lighter for our ceilings in there (which was basically 'Wave Crest' plus another 25% shot of white). Next came the fun part of removing ALL of the hideous window coverings including about 5 types of rods and screws and hinges on each window. This was not fun, guys. I wiped off all the walls and woodwork and got to town. I think it took me about 5 hours to paint these walls with some help from my mother-in-law on the edging (I prefer rolling it on, she likes edging, therefore we are a perfect pair.). The ceiling and crown molding paint jobs took another 5 hours. Ick. And so?

Main room walls during the painting day. Also, note that the ceilings are still white at this point and the crown molding still 'creamy'. Which, to me, is such a waste because the crown molding is SO pretty--why not make it pop out more?


Main room after walls and ceiling painted, but before crown molding turned cream into white:


And after the crown molding was transformed by the white. Isn't it insane how the ceiling looks a lot less blue with that white against it?


During the crown molding paint job:




All that is left to pain in here is the dark woodwork :::dodging the stone-throwing from the crowd again, as I type that phrase:::: I really do think it will be amazing with bright white wood everywhere though. It's very 'us' and I know it's going to suck big time to put in the hours for painting wood work. But I really do think it will be worth it!

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DINING ROOM transformation:

After a lot of debate, I decided to keep the dining room the same color as the family/main room. They flow together very nicely so it makes sense and plus, this dining room will be one that keeps some of it's dark woodwork (the built-in and the windows will remain) so I'm sure that will make the blue walls look totally different than the main room. I wanted to paint the ceilings in here, too, but it sucked so bad in the main room I just can't bring myself to break my neck in there again. Plus I ran out of paint although I thought I bought enough of the 'Wave Crest' ceiling shade for the two rooms. I take that as a sign from God that the ceilings might remain cream colored in there. We did paint the crown molding bright white though. 

Built-in buffet before paint and before I hacked away those ugly curtains:


And after the paint. Also shows a nice shot of our new floors! Never mind that the buffet is a huge storage area for us right now.


After blue goes on the walls, looking into the sunroom. But this doesn't show the crisp white crown molding just yet. It's there but no pictures to show it off.


Only remaining paint project in the dining room will be the baseboards and door frames. Plus those French doors that lead into the sunroom. Sigh. Lots of painting still ahead. I believe it took us about 3 hours to paint the walls and another 1.5 hours to do the crown molding. That stuff is no joke with all of those little twists and turns but I love it. :)
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SUNROOM transformation:

I haven't gotten any great pictures of our sunroom to show you just yet. Must work on that. But this is the room that I painted Behr's 'Peridot' green and I just sort of like it. I am hoping that with white woodwork I will love it though. I have yet to paint the crown molding a bright white and I think I will actually muster up the energy to paint the ceiling two shades lighter than the walls, which is Behr's 'White Willow' color. It's only 10x12 so it can't be THAT bad, right? 

Before painting walls, and before floors:


After painting the walls green, and after floors are refinished:


Painting this room, including the rolling and edging, only took us about 3 hours. Gotta love smaller rooms.The ongoing paint projects in here: crown molding, all woodwork, and ceiling (plus French doors).

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BEDROOM transformations:

I don't need to do much else besides the walls in these three bedrooms. I'm not going to bother with the ceilings, and I'll probably just leave the crown molding the off white color. The other woodwork is all white, except for the baby's room---for some unknown reason, they painted that entire room a pastel yellow that is really ugly, if you ask me. So I guess I will be painting her woodwork white in there. Luckily the other two bedrooms are already the color I'd choose for the woodwork, though.


Master bedroom:
I chose Behr's 'Honey Bird' yellow for our room. It's a bold choice, probably the brightest room of the house, but it's going to be SO awesome combined with our gray and white bedspread. There's nothing like a warm, inviting color in the master to make this a fun room. It took me about 3 hours to do this room.

Here is the true before, carpet and all:


During painting day:


After! The floors aren't stained/finished here, though. And I swear the real color is not such a bright 'highlighter yellow'. It's actually quite pretty in real life (aside from iPhone pictures).


Truman's room: 
This is turning out to be the room that is the thorn in my side right now. I wanted T's room to be a nice, pale gray. And I KNEW it would be hard to nail the right shade but I was still too cheap to actually buy samples first. As soon as I put Behr's 'Gentle Rain' color on  his walls, I panicked. I really thought it looked lavender and I was seriously thinking about returning the entire gallon and starting from scratch. But I kept plugging away because Nate and my mother-in-law (and everyone else that I've shown) swear it's a fine gray, not too purple. I'm still not 100% convinced, though, and I'm hoping that by adding T's bright colored accents in there I barely even notice my pet peeve wall color. Truman didn't yell 'PURPLE' when he saw it, either. So that's a great sign. It took me 3 hours to do this room (apparently that is how long it takes me to do most of these rooms)

Before:


During the painting episode:


After painting, floors only sanded but not stained in this shot:

It really does look purple in this pic, huh? In real life I don't even think it's *that* bad.

Baby's room:
This room also took me 3 hours to paint and I actually did it one night after Truman went to bed. I picked Behr's 'Wildwood Spring' which is a pretty robin's egg blue to me. I just really hate that I still have to paint her woodwork white because it almost looks white in this 'before' picture from online. I wonder if the owners repainted the whole thing after this picture was taken and went with the yellow instead. Should have asked me first !! :)

Before we moved in:


After I painted the walls, but before floors were stained, and before I bother to paint the woodwork WHITE and not this ugly yellow:

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So that's that. A ridiculous amount of painting on my part, huh? I just added it up and that looks like about 27 hours of straight painting and I'm not even done yet. I really do enjoy painting, thankfully, but man---it's a lot of work! Luckily, with my trusty mask and lots of fans I am still following doctor's orders and not killing my baby from fumes or anything.

Really not looking forward to prepping and painting all of the dark woodwork on the first floor. But I think I have convinced Nate to help with this large task. And I didn't mention the kitchen at all just yet, since that is it's own separate project and painting the walls won't come until much later. We also haven't touched either bathroom or any of the hallways with paint. Not sure I have enough energy to bother right now anyway.

Off to paint some more...