More painted wood...

Everyone knows I like to paint over wood.

I have a large dresser that is worn and needs a little makeover - aren't these so the way to go?

Love the cream with gold hardware

A more ornate version of the dresser we have. Also cream with gold hardware.

Soft color with bronzed hardware

I wouldn't do this but gorgeous nonetheless.

This is perfection to me! Cream with black hardware.

Oh, and this is the dresser (towards the left) and room I'm thinking of...

The most pitiful room in our house right now...

Paint colors

I don't think that everything in -or related- to the house has to be matchy-matchy, but I do believe that there should be some harmony between things.

So I started a little notebook to keep track of some things we have going around the house...
This page in particular shows all the colors we have in place right now. The center swatch is our trim and ceiling color - Decorator's White, surrounded by the colors of our living and dining room, bedroom, guest room, bathroom, and office.

One of the things that prompted me to do this was just a need to have all our paint swatches in one place, for future reference. But I'm looking at this page right now and thinking - there are no warm colors! I prefer cool tones - but one room in a warm color won't hurt... and it may balance things out a bit. Neutral camel, pear yellow/green - or even a soft raspberry pink! - might look nice in the third bedroom, so maybe I'll start thinking about that when I get back to painting this fall.

Golden Boy

My home renovation equivalent of Golden Boy. I can't imagine how I get any painting done without him, and I am already dreading his inevitable demise.

He was only like $2 at Lowes, but I can't figure out his brand name. It's all corroded around the metal part. I might have to take him on a field trip one day, do a little research in the paintbrush aisle. Buy all his cousins.

Bathroom - Part 8 - Told you so

I know you were all losing sleep waiting to hear if I ever got around to painting the woodwork in the bathroom. Last time I left off I promised I would persevere and get the bathroom trim painted by Friday night.

Well, told you so...

TA DA!
It only took until 1am Friday night. I was asleep by 2am. ppphhhhffhh.

Then over the weekend I whipped out the pint of Horizon by Benjamin Moore I was saving for such an occasion. (To think - some people wait for an occasion to whip out a pint of Ben and Jerry's!)

Anyway, I think we have a winner...

I wanted something to pick up the cool greys in the tile. I think this color does the trick.

Its the color on the wall and the color in the upper left hand swatch...
But I am too wimpy to set a deadline for painting the walls. Honestly, I'm waiting for a rainy weekend, but could be sooner if I get super motivated. Will keep you posted.

The Doors - Part 1 - and hopefully more parts to come

Our upstairs hallway has 6 doors.

Each needs both sides painted. Cracks filled in. Sanding. 2 doors need to be replaced with the original doors I found in the garage. They must all match. They must all have matching door knobs. I'm obsessed!

Two days after we bought the house, we were up there scraping the wallpaper away. But I needed to go over every square inch with sandpaper. I needed to fill in more cracks. We took a 8pm ride to Lowe's last Wednesday just so I could get more caulk to fill in the gaps around the molding that night. I took a day off work last Friday just to get the hallway done!

Until last week the upstairs hallway looked like this (multiply this view by 6, because of the 6 doors):

before

As I was painting each door I could see the stark difference between the new, white paint and the old, yellowy color.

After days and days of prep, I even managed to paint the ceiling and walls. Yes!

Now that it's done, it's so much better...

after

Notice if you look on the left side, the stairwell isn't done yet. Still more scraping, filling, caulking and painting there. Don't worry about us - we have plenty more to do!

The view of the hallway from bed is even better. So calming! You can even see a sneak peak of the bedroom wall color below:

after

Still need to replace the 2 doors and refinish the upstairs floor - little by little!

Living room Wall

Is livingroom one or two words? Oh, must be two words because spell check just corrected me...

Living Room.

Anyway, this is what it looked like when we first moved in:

before

We spent a bunch of time painting it recently! It looks so much brighter in here now:

after

We also replaced the mayonnaise-colored wall with the cooler grey-toned Balboa Mist from Benjamin Moore (Aura matte). The white trim really stands out nicely I think. We have the same exact colors in the adjacent dining room and the whole shebang is just so much better than before!

The fireplace was fairly simple to paint, but took a little more time. We simply put a coat of masonry-friendly white primer on the wall, then bought regular old Benjamin Moore in a semi gloss finish in the same Balboa Mist color. We didn't use the Aura paint because its a little more touchy to work with, unnecessary, and more expensive then the regular Ben paint.

I'm still debating whether or not to paint the bookcases. They look OK for now, but I think they may look better painted. I'm having the same doubts about the wooden staircase on the opposite wall. We also hope to replace the sconces someday. And add furniture. And throw something awesome in the bookcases. And tile the floor in front of the fireplace. I'm not sure I'm ready for a living room inspiration board so this list will have to do for now!

Paint

My Hero

I spent almost every waking minute this past weekend painting our bedroom and dining room. I haven't had a chance to take decent photos, because I haven't been home much during daylight hours. But lots of photos to come! And more painting!

In the meantime I can't say enough about Benjamin Moore's Aura paint. It costs more than the average can - about $55-$65 per gallon --- but it acts as primer, 1st coat, and 2nd coat in the first layer you put on. I've covered bright orange walls with a soft pale grey in one coat! So I've actually saved money using this paint.

You have to follow 2 rules if using Aura:

1) It has to be applied in a specific way. You can't "go over" an area that's halfway dry. If you do, your brush or roller will actually "pick up" the half dry paint, leaving the old color underneath exposed. To avoid this, you have to either let it dry completely before touch ups or keep your leading edge damp, or skip around the room. Or you have to do your "cut-in" edging and roller the wall very quickly and all at once. It sounds more complicated than it really is. You just have to stay conscious of these issues while you are painting. And if you mess up, which you will if it's your first time, it's ok, just avoid the problem area until it's dry, then go over with the roller.

2) You have to use a nice white roller, no yellow or cheapy-foam stuff. After all, this is the "Cadillac of Paints" according to our local True Value.

It dries very fast. I finished painting my bedroom 10pm on Sunday night and fell asleep in the same room shortly after. There are absolutely no fumes.

Love you Aura paint!

Dining room / wood work

When we first bought our house, the dining room looked like this:

I spent the better part of New Years Eve taping the windows...

Yes, I did this New Years Eve, the pictures were taken the following morning, ok??

Then one more task to do before painting... the house originally had a door between dining room and kitchen - how depressing! So I removed that weird doorway piece that no longer served any purpose - because humans don't live like this anymore! (The last time I can remember seeing a door into a kitchen must have been the Cosby show!)

weird doorway piece

At first I thought I was crazy - why am I ripping stuff off the house? I asked John - should I use a crowbar for this? He laughed as I trudged upstairs to find one. Well, I am officially a complete dork because I had no idea a crowbar weighed about 75 lbs (or so it seemed). I didn't even attempt to carry it out of our tool room extra bedroom. But I managed to wedge in a scraper tool thingy and hammer away at the doorway until the wood piece broke free, nails and all attached.

Sorry no action shots!

Next I scraped away as much excess old paint as I could, patched it with plaster, and sanded down for a smooth finish.

before                         after removal                    after plaster

At this point the room was ready for painting. 

Yes, this is actually what I did New Years Eve!

New Years Day - I spent about 8 hours priming and painting...

...and painting

...and painting

By nighttime I was done. For the day. This was harder than it looks! The old wood keeps leaking through and staining the paint. Errrrrr. So I did one more quick coat the next day (At least each coat gets easier and quicker). 

In total this is 1 coat of Kilz primer and about 3 coats of semi-gloss Ben in Decorator's White. Yes, 3 coats. And to be completely honest, it could use another coat. I plan on going back to caulk some troublesome areas and throw another coat up at some point in the future. I'm going to do all the touch-ups downstairs at once to save my sanity.

But look how pretty! Compared to the before photos, the room is so much brighter and happier!

Watch out, dining room, the walls are next...

Woodwork Saga

Almost every single person I know who has seen the house has said something about the wood work and what I plan to do to it (paint it while laughing my Evil Under-Lord laugh) I feel the need to set the record straight...

1) I've been looking a LOT at home design blogs online and print magazines. This is an obsession that has at time taken over many an evening and lunch hour at work. I've been squirreling away photos that I like; any photo of a room that appeals to me, for whatever reason, gets put into a folder on my desktop. I've amassed almost 1000 photos from online blogs and hundreds of pages ripped from magazines. This has been going on for about 2 years - long before we even looked for a house to buy.

2) When we found this house - my immediate reaction was - let's paint the woodwork! Of course a lot of nay-sayers said - NOOOO! Don't paint it! You can restore it!

I started bargaining in my head - well, maybe we'll just do this one room, maybe I'll just do these windows in the sunroom, or maybe I'm supposed to leave everything as is.

I was lost, confused! I didn't know what to do as we were closing on the house and I started obsessively looking at the snapshots I took of the house during our viewing - I even photoshopped a couple to see what it would look like if we painted the woodwork white.

3) I decided I needed inspiration and I turned to my aforementioned decor pictures. I looked through every last photo - I couldn't find one single picture that had dark wood trim (or even light wood trim!) All the rooms I loved featured crisp white painted woodwork. My original hunch was based on something!

4) When we actually closed and got the keys to the house - we saw things differently than at our first viewing - what's this thing? why is this here? Why does this window frame look as if someone had chewed on it?

We spent a whole weekend with our families, caulking, patching, sanding and cleaning the rooms with the wood work - it was a mess! And when we were done - the woodwork still looked dirty and dingy.

5) But wait! Another problem came up right away - we hated our wood flooring. It needed badly to be refinished, re-stained a better color. It was greenish puke brown. It was worn down and squeaking in spots (squeaking is an understatement!) We knew we wanted a dark wood floor. But a dark wood floor with dark wood work all over?

6) So we came to the conclusion - in order to even get the woodwork looking nice, we would have to spend a lot of time and/or money getting it into acceptable condition. Spending a lot of time and/or money on something that we didn't even like! Something that was making the house look dark and cave-like.

It didn't make sense - why would we live with something we don't like? We might be here forEVER!

So we painted it...

Bedroom - Painting Part 1

I decided to tackle the bedroom painting as the next project.  A few weeks ago we started removing wall-paper, patching holes, sanding rough areas and caulking all the windows and trim areas. So we've been ready for paint for a while. 

It took about a half gallon of Decorator's White (Ben Semi-gloss) to finish about 90% of the bedroom trim, doors, windows. It is already looking so much better. (Still have the backs of the doors to finish!)

One of the make-it-or-break-it reason for loving this house was for all the heavy trim work and doors. It's all completely original to the house - including the doorknob hardware. Of course they are all tarnished and some have been subjected to messy paint jobs. 

I'm starting to scrape away the paint as I do each door. It's not the easiest task. It's only kind of working. I know there is some kind of Martha-Stewart-y way to submerge the hardware in boiling water, or some such thing, but the hardware almost seems petrified to the surface of the door and I didn't want to make a bigger mess. Maybe someday that will be another project!

Next comes the walls - hope to have it done this weekend. Of course I bought the paint the weekend after we signed on the house, thinking it would be done before we moved in - HA! But now that the trim is done I think it's actually feasible! 

I picked Crystalline (Benjamin Moore Aura in flat finish).  It's a soft bluey-greeny-grey.  I've been obsessed with this color for a while and I'm hoping it will live up to my wildest expectations.