Painting Woes

Ya'll.

I am so sick of painting. Like I physically cringe when I walk into the sitting room. I'm sick of feeling like I'm making no progress and I'm sick of my back aching from standing up on the ladder and I'm sick of having the room in such disarray and yelling at the girls to stop walking on the shelves that are laying on the ground.

I'm just totally over it.

How it looks today, as of this second. Two coats of primer and one coat of trim paint. 

(I'm so over it, in fact, that I'll just be interspersing pics of the "progress" in this post because I can't bring myself to actually write about it in a non-bitching way.)

I read all these DIY/Decorating blogs and they're demo-ing and installing entire kitchens in the time that it's taken me to get this far. I try to remind myself that a) I'm doing it entirely by myself [no help from Saint Danny - yet - and Chris hasn't even looked at a paintbrush in months thanks to a busy work schedule] and b) I have other things to handle that are a higher priority and c) I'm not a professional, but.

It's still so discouraging. I'm trying to focus on what I have done. I sanded and cleaned the entire thing. I did two coats of primer. I caulked a thousand gaps and filled in a thousand nail holes. I got three coats of the actual trim paint on the drawers (they are DONE! mostly so I could move them out into another room to give me more space to work in here). I got two coats on one side of the shelves, one coat on another side of the shelves, and one coat on the built-ins and crown molding.

Another "current" shot.

Viewing it in that light would be the smart, uplifting way to look at it. ALL HAIL ME, QUEEN OF THE BUILT-INS. However, that line of thinking is not actually happening. All I keep thinking is "two more coats of this???"  And I keep thinking, "OMG I've been working on this room since the beginning of July and this is all that's been done." And then there's the "And I still have to paint the walls...."

Normally I do not mind painting walls, but thinking about painting the walls of this room after spending so much time on the trim and built-ins is breaking me. I might literally need to beg Danny to finish that part for me.

Going back into the "progress" pics from a week + ago - here's before and after caulking the sides and bottom of the bookshelf, which weren't previously attached (see those dark lines running down between the side and back, 
and then between the bottom and the sides?)

To create the thick, chunky crown molding (which I love) the previous homeowner (or builder?) put together multiple pieces of trim. However, there were large gaps in some areas between the pieces. They were noticeable with just the stain, but they REALLY stood out once I started painting it all white. So that all got caulked. 
You can see where I stopped caulking on in the middle there (I had to move the ladder to continue). 

I am not one for slow progress, apparently. It's just frustrating me. Although I tell myself my goal to finish this room is Thanksgiving-ish so we can possibly host the holiday and so that I can put the Christmas tree up in front of the windows, in reality I want it done like last week.

The shelves, one coat of paint over two coats of primer on the left; just primer on the right. I think it's really the second coat of paint where you really start to see what it's going to look like. The first coat of paint still looks uneven.

And there's the #reallife tale of DIY. None of the "Presto! It's done!" magic of the professional DIY blogs. Just endless painting that never stops and spawns grumpy-ass blog posts like this one.

Also, I lost my wire brush to clean my paintbrushes and instead of just ordering a new one I keep just looking for the old one. I'm so sick of painting I can't even bring myself to buy anything painting-related, apparently. #pantingfatigue #paintingennui #paintingcangofuckitself

In other news that makes me slightly less insane and a little happier, I've been working on our little entryway gallery wall. Right now it's unbalanced and full of gaps, but the plan is to eventually have this entire wall full of frames and fun stuff.  (See the stack of frames under the console table? Those will eventually go up on the wall. Or maybe in the built-ins in the sitting room. But eventually somewhere other than under that table.) (Also see the white splotches on the floor? The sitting room is right next to the entryway, so there's always paint on the entryway floor thanks to two small children who are constantly tracking paint all over the place.) (Also also I kind of hate the security camera sitting there. I need to figure out something different for that. Or maybe I can disguise it somehow.)

I love this little Nebraska art that I made (in literally two minutes out of scrapbook paper and a brown paper bag). HOW VERY HIPSTER OF ME. And Carys found that little hummingbird (?) nest.

I also drew/painted the "Be Kind" picture. The watercolor background was supposed to be a pretty blue/purple abstract...thing...but it kind of looks just moldy. OH WELL.  We stopped and picked sunflowers from the side of the road the other day and I love how they fill in the space next to the "H" on the wall. 

That part might call for some sort of permanently rotating floral display.

Finally, in my quest to finish the stairs, I decided to mock up what it'd look like with dark stair kicks by putting some of our leftover flooring boards up. LOOK AT THAT ADORABLE BABY BOOTY. Anyway, we love the dark, yes?? I think this is it. I'll do the same with white paper at some point and see which calls to me on a deep, existential level the most - but this is making me lean towards the dark option.

Quickie House Update

Back when we finished the dining room last month, we also updated the doors from regular fake-wood, hollow-core, flat doors to nice paneled doors.We'd taken the doors off to paint and meant to replace them, but that kind of got set aside in favor of working on other things. We figured it might be nice to give Carys's birthday guests a bathroom WITH A DOOR, though, so we hung four doors before her party: one going to the basement, the laundry room, the bathroom, and the entryway closet. We didn't do solid-core (hello $$$$$$$$$$$) but we did find some foam-core ones that seem to do a great job blocking out the sound and were less than $50 each. 

Since we were replacing like with like (and could use the old doors as templates) and the framework for the door was in fine condition, we just went for the slab doors instead of the pre-hung doors. This was a TOTALLY new experience for us - we literally didn't know that slab and pre-hung doors were types of doors or what the difference was. We'd never hung doors before. Chris did a fantastic job figuring it out. He bought a guides/template kit to help drill the knob holes and carve out a shallow area for the hinges, used the old doors as templates for hing and hole placement, and sanded down the top, bottom, and sides of the doors asneeded until they closed smoothly. Getting the tension on the hinges and right depth for the hardware was tricky - if not done right, they wouldn't stay closed without latching (you know those doors that swing open? hinge problems!).  

I actually was kind of digging the look of the primed doors - the doors being a complimentary but slightly different color than the walls. I'm keeping this look in the back of my mind for future updates. Maybe with a slightly darker gray than the walls? Slightly lighter? Hmm. But in the meantime, we painted them white. In retrospect, yes, we should have painted them before we hung them. I don't know why we didn't. We're not a smart people.

LOL at my finger at the bottom. I'll have to replace this with a better picture if I remember. 

I can't wait to get the new floors put in everywhere. It will feel like a completely different house. 

I cannot get over the difference that just simply replacing the doors makes. It's huge. It looks so much more custom and high-end and elegant. If you can't spring for a whole-house makeover, REPLACE THOSE DOORS!

After surviving the mad dash to finish the dining room and the doors before Carys's birthday party, I really didn't feel like doing anything else. I still don't. But. BUT. That darn sitting room. Having every other room on the main floor done (except the kitchen, which we aren't touching) just really made it stick out like sore thumb. So I decided to go for it. Albeit very, very slowly. Like I started it around July 16 and it's now August 2 and it's maybe 20% done. A generous 20%. 

The before/listing picture

And where I was starting from, after removing the window treatments. 

Those built-ins were really intimidating to me. That room has a higher ceiling so you need to break out the ladder to reach the top of the built-ins and the crown molding. And climbing up the ladder, painting, getting down, scootching it over, getting up, painting, getting down, etc. times like a hundred was super unappealing to me. 

So I decided to ignore them for a few weeks and do the windows only. Like everything else in the house, I did two coats of primer and three coats of trim paint, and caulked the many, many seams between the primer and the trim paint. 

First coat of primer

Before and after caulking.

Because of the light that comes in through the window during the day and the very LITTLE light that we have in that room at night (like two tiny wall sconces in between the built-ins and some can lights inside the built-ins) it's hard to get a really good picture of the final product, but, like all the other newly-white trim in the house, I lurve it. 

We've been trying to figure out what the hell to do with that space between the built-ins. The previous owners had a piano there, which worked well in the space. However, we don't have a piano. My ideas included knocking out the arched tops of the bookcases to give them a more sleek look, building out the built-ins all the way across the wall, and taking them out completely and starting over with new built-ins. Ultimately, since I WASN'T sure what I wanted to do with them, I decided to leave them as-is, paint them, and then live with them for a little bit in order to decide down the road. Painting them is a relatively inexpensive update, and everything else is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Like a lot of $$$$$$$$$$$$$. $$$$$$$$$$ that we don't have to spend on this. 

And that's what I'm working on currently. Painting the built-ins and the crown molding. The baseboards are coming off when we put the new floors in, so for now I'm just leaving them. 

Priming the shelves for the built-ins

Work in progress. The tree is hiding the primer that's gone up on 1/2 the built-in on the left.

I had been watching Craigslist for a good piece of furniture for that middle section - a buffet, or dresser, or bench, maybe. AND I FOUND HER. I love her. They were asking for $250 and I got her for $190. 

It's supposedly an antique that originally belonged to the seller's grandmother. It's been painted, but still has the original hardware. Apparently there was a table that matched but she'd sold it previously. (DAMN!). The color is perfect, the size is perfect, the look is perfect. There's not a thing I don't love about it. I don't know what era it's from (if it's actually antique and not, like, IKEA), I don't know what style it is, but I love it. (If anyone wants to fill me in, please do!). I even think it's solid wood. Such a score!

I painted a couple swatches of the "Sea Salt" dining room color in that nook. I like it, I think?? Maybe it's a good way to continue the color flow through the entire house? And I like that it brings out a little bit of the slate blue in the buffet???? I think?!?!?! It looks WAY more blue/mint green in this space than it does in the dining room, though, so it might end up a bit bolder in here than in the dining room. Which I like. 

And a huge canvas artwork (abstract watercolor blues and greens and browns and grays??) leaning on the buffet filling that space?? YES? I'm thinking the built-in shelves will be a pseudo-gallery wall, full of frames and canvases. Hopefully it will encourage me to actually print pictures!!

I literally think it might be September before this room is finished, but at least I can now say I've started it. And that buffet makes me smile every time I pass this room, which is 100 times a day, so it's basically already paid for itself. 

House Update : Two Months Later

To see the house before we moved in, click here.

To see the one-month update, click here.

Coming into this post, I actually felt like we've basically gotten nothing done, but when I started writing the list out I realized there was more than I anticipated. Not a lot of HUGE things and no changes as drastic as the last update post, but there have been things done. Work on the current house kind of stalled out while we focused our efforts on updating the old house to get it on the market (yes, it's taken this long. yes, I want to cry. yes, I just want it gone. yes, I'm going to cry when it's gone. yes, it's a lot of emotions, I'm sorry.).

Sniff. Old house. Sniff.

The sunroom is virtually complete for phase one. I'd like to get a big indoor/outdoor rug for the area, and a few of the windows have broken seals that need replacing, but it's done otherwise.

As a reminder, here's what the sunroom looked like before:

It's kind of hard to tell just how blue it was in this picture. Blue/tan tile, blue walls and trim, blue ceiling, blue window shades. Very blue.

You can see in the picture above some vertical lines in the beadboard were pieces of the board met - I caulked those, then painted the walls with Sherwin Williams Requisite Gray (chosen because I'd liked it when I had the swatches for the rest of the house, but it was too warm/brown for what I wanted in the main area). Normally, I'd have painted the trim first, but in this case, the trim was pretty straightforward with no curves, while the beadboard had lots of grooves that needed paint splooshed/squashed/smashed into them (technical terms there), so I did the walls first this time.

Once the walls were painted, I taped everything off and painted the trim Cotton White by Sherwin Williams, which has just the tiniest yellow/beige twinge that's not really visible unless it's next to stark white. I carefully considered hundreds of swatches to find the best white to match the Requisite Gray and to bring a bit of warmth to the room due to the coolness of the tiles yeah no I just grabbed a white that was in the garage and didn't even realize it wasn't white white until halfway into painting. But it's fine and works perfectly.

THREE COATS!! Three coats! later, the trim was done. Then I began the tedious process of scraping the paint off the French door windows. The doors were actually painted over a month ago but have been sitting there with paint just covering the window panes since then. 

There were 15 panes of glass in each door, with two sides that needed to be scraped, so 60 areas in all (look at me doing basic math!). Scraping the paint took an assload of time mostly because I was using a super rusty old razorblade that basically gave me tetanus just touching it. And it broke about 1/3 of the way into the first window so it wouldn't stay locked in the 'blade out' position. And then after like four more windows the blade broke off, but not along a scored line, so then it was worthless. And then courtesy of my husband, I got an actual paint scraper (novel concept - use the right tool!) and the rest of the windows went about 200x faster. 

One door done, one to go.

Pajama bottoms with a dress. It's how we roll.

I love the room now. It's crisp and bright and contemporary. And the greige walls really pull out the browns and tans in the tile and minimize the blues, so even with the blue shades remaining, the color blue hardly registers any more. And it really feels connected to the rest of the house now, so it feels more like an additional room rather than an add-on.

Man, whoever painted that wire to camouflage it did a BANG UP job. (Hint: it was me.)

And for all you before-and-after fiends:

So that room is basically done, at least for phase one.

Shit, wait. No, I take that back. I still need to do the (blue) ceiling. I was actually hoping to see if my cousin could do it for me with his extend-a-roller thing so I didn't have to break out the ladder. But he's been working on the old house. I should probably just suck it up and do it.

Phase two for the sunroom involves replacing some or all of the windows with ones that open. Right now, only one window in the entire room opens, so it gets absolutely no ventilation even when the window is open. I'd love to be able to open almost all of the windows in the room so it can be more of a screened-in porch on nice days.

The upstairs shared bathroom is another room that had a big change. As a reminder, here's where we started and left off:

This month I painted the lower walls and the trim.

I still have a few things there I want to do in there, but I'm not even really sure where phase one with the bathroom ends and where phase two starts. Like, I know I want to update the cabinets, but I have no idea into where on the overall timeline doing that fits. And I'm not 100% sure whether I want to paint them white or gray or black or stain them darker.  However, Phase One definitely includes new cabinet hardware and the mirror framed out and some shelves/decor (suggestions?? I have no idea what to put in there!). Then I'll figure out the cabinets down the road. And possibly the wave tiles removed or painted over and the upper blue walls painted and the floors replaced, depending on how long I feel like I can live with all that blue and whether we come into a shit ton of money anytime soon. It's not bad, it's just not me. Which is a little weird because this blue is basically like the exact same color as the master bedroom at our old house but apparently living with a room that color for ten years made me sick of it.

Also I want to give myself FULL credit because I did the sunroom and bathroom completely solo without one single brush stroke of help from anyone. #masterpainter #orsomething

I also finished a bunch of small, random shit.

- Finished Carys's room and got some stuff up on the wall and hung curtains (still to do: paint trees on the blue wall, hang the rest of the decor, eventually paint trim)

Shortly after painting, while trying to figure out the configuration of her furniture. 

Final-for-now furniture placement.

- Finished painting Emmeline's room and hung black-out shade liners and curtains (still to do: hang decor, paint trim eventually)

Do you love the pile of clothes on her closet floor? Those are her winter clothes that I pulled off the hangers to put away when it started getting nice, but then the weather decided to be a COMPLETE bastard and be cold and rainy all fricking month so I left them there for now. 

I need to re-position the alphabet plaque. I hung it before the curtains so it was centered on the wall between the corner and the window, but now that the curtains are hung it looks off-center. :/

SHE LOVES IT! Or the bouncy bull, but I'm choosing to believe she loves her room.

- Hung a mirror and clock in entryway (ISN'T THIS LIST SO FASCINATING)

- Tried to update the chandelier by replacing the lightbulbs with round clear ones and removing the glass to give it a more modern look (still to do: decide whether to live with it as-is in this deconstructed state [in which case I want to get wire cutters and cut off the hangers] or replace entirely or DIY an orb around it?)

Before and after removing the smoked glass and as I was replacing the lightbulbs. Somehow I don't have a pic of the bulbs all replaced, just this mid-change one.  Also look at all those moving boxes in the background! I wish I could tell you they have all been unpacked and cleared out, but....no.

- Got rid of too-big couch, replaced with too-small temporary Craigslist couch (but $100! Leather!)

- Put covers on all light fixtures/outlets! NO MORE HOLES!

- Got the shelves up and put things on them (just temporarily styled like this...it need more STUFF! Don't tell Chris!) in living room. Whatever final thing is going to be above the fireplace needs to be MUCH bigger. I want to do something like this or this or this or this on the top shelves going all the way across (the same on both sides). And actually I'm looking at the shelves in these pictures and they look pretty terrible but I SWEAR that they look pretty nice in person. Is this how bloggers post hideous projects that get them featured on sites like GOMI and everyone hates them and questions their style and the blogger is at home like, "Yeah, looks good!"???? (Still to do in this area: spray paint brass parts of fireplace)

Oh hai Carys and Chris watching You Tube videos together. 

Yes, my husband wears cargo shorts. Don't judge him. He's lovely and has nice legs.

- Started priming dining room (still to do: ENTIRE DINING ROOM BASICALLY)

- Put door knobs on all the doors in the upstairs hall! We have doors that close!! WHOA!

- Hung up some decor in the playroom, continued to organize it (still to do: eventually paint trim. get craft area - not pictured for good reason - organized.)

- Painted the door of the playroom with magnetic and chalkboard paint

- Spent 100 hours pruning bushes and pulling weeds outside (still to do: pull 100000000 more weeds)

There's still so much to do for phase one - from giant things like painting entire rooms (dining room, sitting room) and replacing the flooring (goodbye tile!!!), to smaller things like installing new switches and getting covers for a few of the outlets still that were oddly-shaped.  And then we still have a ton of practical things like getting a new permanent couch (and moving the Craigslist couch to the basement) so that more than 3 people can have a seat in the living room. And, you know, actually finishing the unpacking and organizing which is NEVER GOING TO END. Much like the unending saga of the PAINT ALL THE PAINT.

Oh, and after all the paint-color-picking drama, I don't think I ever mentioned which color we went with for the entryway and halls and family room: Smoke Embers. After not liking it initially, after worrying it was first too dark and then worrying that it was too light, after trying to sell it on Craigslist only to get a hit 15 minutes after we started painting....we kept it and I absolutely LOVE it. It's the perfect light gray with just the tiniest bit of warmth.  Basically this paint color was my white whale. Which I have now found so take that, Moby Dick.

Focus on the wall color and not the adorably eccentric girl in this picture. 

You can see how it varies from warmer to cooler here, but it always has just the tiniest smidge of warmth.

*yes that's a repeat picture, I'm sorry. But if you noticed, you're really reading 

and paying attention, for which I commend you. 

I don't even want to think about phase two.  What I'd really love is to win the lottery so I can just hire it all out. I think that's a safe plan. Sure to work out!