Front Entrance

I'm delving deep into paint-world again. Our front vestibule needed help, our staircase too. The whole corner of the house faces north and all that dark dark wood meant dark dark corners, even in summer time.

Two weeks ago we were here:

before

Two coats each of primer and paint later, here we are:

after

And the front door:

before

after

Peeking inside of the vestibule:

before

after

The Landing Strip:
before

after

I love projects like this because I have such a different FEELING just looking at it. Going from dark wood and mayonnaise yellow walls to white with pale blue has made such a HUGE difference.

But, yes we still have that HORRENDOUS sconce to deal with.

Must... get... new... one.

Something that doesn't look like a quilting bee is about to take place (did somebody say granny chic?). I would leave the bulb bare for a while, but let's just say the electric-works underneath seem a little "raw" and the shade is like the lesser of two evils. Almost.

And if you've noticed - we (as in the paint and I) are inching closer and closer to that dark wood staircase. And pretty soon something's going to give.

Extreme Controversy

Warning! Warning!

This is the Most Controversial Topic To EVER Appear on It's a Good House...

It is an extremely sensitive matter, that requires extreme care and consideration. And I would like your opinions. Please! I invite you to leave your comments regarding this matter. I can't promise I will listen to anyone, but this is a speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace situation.

Ok, so it's like this... When we bought our house, we had a lot of dark woodwork downstairs. This wasn't historical quality, Vanderbilts' summer home woodwork. This was 85 year old dust-encrusted dingy wood. I made the decision about painting most of it pretty early on. You can read more about my decision making here, if you feel so inclined.

One of the last areas that needs painting in the house is also the first area you see when you walk in. After 6 months of staring it down, I think I'm ready to take the plunge. This area needs help.

I want to paint the staircase white:

This is one side of our living room, the front vestibule is right through the arched doorway on the right (and will get the same white woodwork treatment). The rest of our living room is painted a soft greige with white trim. The wall behind the stairway is waiting for paint and it is half-stripped of wallpaper. The floors have been refinished dark brown.
This is another photo looking straight on at the stairway. We have already had white quarter rounds installed along the floor, although it wouldn't be a problem to have the pieces taken out and replaced with a stained wood.

The wall opposite the stairwell has built-in bookshelves. I also want to paint them white:

They just don't make sense right now!

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Here is my question. Do I go through with my painting? Do I??? It's kind of like no-turning-back territory. The wood isn't in the best-looking condition as is. It needs patching. The color of the existing wood doesn't match the floor. It's worn. It would need major repairs. And while I think I could appreciate a dark wood accent wall in my house, every ounce of me is SCREAMING against it.

I leave you with this image (from Sarah Richardson, via Bryn Alexandra):

So, what should I do?

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...