more painting...

I admit I'm not a beige person. I love color but since we want to sell this house soonish, I figured I would need to get rid of my bright colors. So since I don't want to paint later, I'm painting now (even though we probably won't sell until next Spring).

Color is Rice Grain by Sherwin Williams.

Hallway:


See how the yellow paint doesn't looks so hot anymore.


Dining room is the same color even though it doesn't look like it. I think I will add the stenciled wall back in. It needs something.


Now I need to get the living room painted. It will be Rice Grain as well but I think I will reduce the darkness by 50%. The living room doesn't get as much light.

painting again...

Rice Grain by Sherwin Williams.



Cutting in is the worst.




Of course now the yellow door looks bad so I'm going to paint it black.

bunch of stuff...

Before:


During:


Now:


Love it and I can't believe we lived with that dinky doorway for all these years!



On the kitchen front, we got some of the tongue and groove up. We took down the 1970's paneling and it looks so much better! There was quite a bit of sheetrock to fix. We're waiting to install the rest until after we get our new countertops. This is going to be our backsplash as well.

I'm putting together a new color palette for the house and I don't know what I will paint the kitchen above the tongue and groove. I'm trying for a more neutral palette because I don't want to paint before we move (which we hope is by the end of the year) So the aqua walls are out. *sniff*

Here are the colors I've been jotting down while browsing various blogs.


The tans/greige for the living room, hallway and dining room. I'm trying for something with green undertones to counter our orange oak floors. The blue/sea salt for our bedroom. Greens for the school room and maybe the little kids bedroom. I'm not sure what I will paint upstairs, probably whatever I paint in the living room. I'm trying for safe colors because we want to sell our house as move in ready.

We can get wild again in our new house! Well I need to get back to priming kitchen drawers and put a coat of paint on them. I would like the kitchen project finished by the end of March. We'll see.

what I did today....

I couldn't take the half sanded banister anymore so yesterday I finished sanding it, primed it with oil based primer and this morning taped it off.

I'm using Miller oil based paint in black thinned with a little paint thinner (tip from my paint guy). It went on really well and almost perfectly covered the white primer. It says to wait 48 hours before recoating so on Saturday I could do that except we have some company coming over after church on Sunday and I don't want the fumes knocking anyone over. So I'll probably wait until Monday, otherwise we'll all be a little high on paint fumes. Might make for an interesting evening.

Way before, notice the little doorway and a chalkboard.


Primed. I kind of like the white but we are going for black countertops in the kitchen and I want to pull the black color to the stairs. Consistency and all that, what! (said in my best British voice.)


After 1st coat:

another hallway redo...

Since we built in bookshelves in the hallway, I've been wanting to repaint it. I loved the orange stripes but am trying to keep a very tight color scheme and orange wasn't in it. Since this is a small hallway, I could do fun stuff.

I first painted the lower half of the chair rail and the built in telephone table a pear/chartreuse green and stuck a vinyl decal on. I'm not sure I like it but it's staying until I can think of something better.



Then Brian and I stenciled the bottom half.




You can see the new black bathroom. I'm going to post more pictures of that soon.

Here is the before:




Now I'm done painting anything in the year 2010. :)

Linking:

our own library...

We finally finished the built in bookshelves in the hallway! Now I have most of my homeschool books there and it frees up the space in the schoolroom to build a custom long desk for the girls. Our plan is to have three computer stations on the long desk and shelves above. First priority though is to finish the upstairs bathroom.

Here is what the hallway looked like before. I loved it but it was a lot of wasted space.


So after Brian tore out the chair rail and the baseboards we discovered really cool old wallpaper. It had been painted over so many times (including 3 by me) we couldn't save it but we did create this mess.


Oops! So I decided I would really like having beadboard paneling behind the bookcases since there was no way we were going to rip out the lathe and plaster and sheetrock.


Brian built the frame work.

Then we had to stop for a quick trip to Urgent Care as Brian had cut into his fingertips with his new circular saw.


Okay, back to work. After the base went in and before he nailed it down we put in a letter to future homeowners and a copy of that days newspaper.



Shelves up and ready to be caulked, primed and painted. I painted it with our trim paint, tried and true Behr Decorators White in semi gloss.


I layed some really cool contact paper down so the shelves wouldn't get scratched or dirty and we loaded it up with all our homeschool books.




Please ignore my pull up bar. I'm doing another round of P90X and this is the only place I could put it and still see the tv. I guess I could have taken it down for the pictures though.


Brian even found a library stool that needs some work. I'll probably play around and rearrange books for awhile but it's fully functional as is and I love having the extra space. My favorite part is the trim around the top and bottom. It makes it looks like it's always been there.

Linked to:

redo: hallway

Did I ever show pictures of the hallway we repainted? It is a small hallway so I wanted to go big and fun. I still think I may do something on the top of the wall but that will have to wait until spring.

Before:




After:

This view is the same as above. We took the door off. The frame is from Goodwill and I painted some scrap wood with chalkboard paint to put inside.








Now I want to find another room to paint stripes in.