Sitting Room Painting DONE! Praise be!

The sitting room is DONE!!!! (Well, the painting at least. Well, the painting except for the shelves. But for tonight, I'm just saying DONE!)

How did that miracle occur, you ask?

Danny came over. (Of course.) He did a final coat of trim paint and all of the walls in a few hours on Saturday. He managed to do in those few hours what would have taken me several days. I mean, he does it for a living, but still. He's so good. Then Sunday morning he came over and finished by painting the back walls behind the built-ins in...dum dum dummmm...all Sea Salt!

You'll note in these pics the baseboards are missing. We pulled them out in order to replace them with chunkier, more substantial baseboards down the line (to match the entryway baseboards).

The master at work. Look how warm the Smoke Embers color looks here - almost beige!

Goodbye, brown!

Final coat of paint on the trim. It looks SO gorgeous all painted white. I was seriously considering pulling out the arches - or AT LEAST taking off the decorative wood twirly bits on the front of the arches - but I'm so glad I didn't. That chunky crown molding is just to die for. Gorgeous. And there's the story of how you can take cheaply done built-ins and trim and make them look substantial and custom and beautiful just with some paint. 

Thank you so much for your opinions, guys. You honestly helped me. All Sea Salt was the consensus, but there were a lot of really good arguments for each of the the different options, and some options presented that I hadn't even considered before. And truly, I think any of them would have looked good - but in the end I went with the Seat Salt for two main reasons:

1. To tie that wall into the dining room (as you can see into the dining room from the front door through the sitting room)...

and

2. To warm up the room. I love love love love the Smoke Embers color and I love love love love the white trim, but with the tall ceilings of the sitting room, it was looking pretty stark in there. Obviously adding the furniture and a big rug would warm it up and make it cozier, but I think the Sea Salt wall helps with that a lot too.

We popped the drawers back in and replaced the hardware on them - from dated gold-plated handles (but very heavy - I bet they were $$$$ originally) to simple oil-rubbed bronze pulls (the same ones we have in the family room built-ins). I also moved the new buffet into place (although...it kind of grew on me in the dining room where we were storing it. I might need to look for another one??) and cleaned up a little bit. I still need to finish painting and installing the shelves but probably won't get a chance to work on that until later this week.

Carys displaying the before and after hardware swap, and helping out with the installation.

So here's the final (painted) product!

Staging by Carys. She's available to hire.

I'll mix things up and throw the "before" pictures right here in the middle to make it easy to see the updates.

....and back to the "afters" now.

Looking from the dining room into the sitting room

I made the Sea Salt x3 call, but we'll see what I think once the shelves are in place and they're covered with frames. I went back and forth and back and forth between all Sea Salt and Sea Salt just in the middle, but it will be easy to paint the sides white if I decide I don't love it later. And fear not, ye who urged a stencil or pattern - I'm still considering that for the middle section. I always feel the need to live with something in basic mode and see it "finished" before taking it to the next level.  I'm also considering going with an even darker version of Smoke Embers down the line, maybe. It's a airy room so I feel like it can handle that.

Now I can think about furnishing the room! Exciting! Except we have no furniture for it and we have no money to buy furniture (#reallife), so it will be a while before that's done. We REALLY need a rug in there as well (and a rug the dining room, and either a rug or carpet in the family room) so we have lots of needs but none of the dolla dolla bills ya'll to buy that all yet. I'll be watching Craigslist, but in my many years of Craigslisting, I've only seen couches/chairs in the style I want for that room maybe twice and both times were way out of my price range. I'm hoping for something like this:

 

 

Sources - Left to Right, Top to Bottom:

(1) World Market, (2) World Market, (3) Target, (4) Target, (5) Target

That first one from World Market makes me tingle. WANT. Too bad it's a) $350 and b) not available anymore. Something kind of slim and streamlined and not overstuffed - modern, clean lines - but still comfortable to sit on. Like the holy grail of chairs, right? And then a matching/similarly styled loveseat (although maybe a contrasting color?), with a small table - I picture a rustic, warm/dark wood trunk, maybe. In the end, I want it to be a nice place to sit and have a conversation away from the commotion (and endless toys) of the family room. It gets the best light of the entire house, so I imagine many quiet hours will be spent reading in there as well.

Goals:
1. Paint sitting room built-ins and walls  ☑
2. Finish shelves.
3. Win lottery.
4. Furnish sitting room.
5. Profit (?!?)

I'll leave you with a few rooms that I've pinned as inspiration. Hopefully I'll end up somewhere in this ballpark when all is said and done.

_______________________________________

This makes me want to a) Go Goodwill-ing for a gazillion books and perhaps a giant coral and DEFINITELY a globe and b) add a chandelier of some sort to the room.

  

(source)

Look at those gorgeous black window frames. I have that on my "maybe someday" list.

(source)

Not so much the colors/patterns here, but this seating arrangement is exactly what I have in mind. I love the greens and yellows and grays together, but the two patterned chairs plus the patterned rug is a little busy for my tastes. Also I'm kind of over that Ikea light. The lines of that couch, though - yes please!

(source)

I pretty much want to steal this inspiration board straight up. Except replace the polished chrome with a mix of metals, anchored with oil-rubbed bronze. (I just threw words together there, I don't even know if they make sense. #notadesigner)

(source)

Absolutely adore everything about this. Livable, comfortable, not too stuffy. They even have my trunk coffee table!!! HEART EYES. A little on the "white" side for life with two small children, but sub some darker neutrals for the white chairs and we're good.

(source)

Built-Ins Decision Time

....with shitty Photoshop mock-ups!

Okay, so I'm trying to decide what to do with the built-ins in the sitting room (the infernal sitting room). Three options:

1. The entire back of the wall white
2. The entire back of the wall Sea Salt (the same color as the dining room)
3. Just the middle section Sea Salt

I mocked up some VERY terrible, 2-minute-each (but spending more time on it wouldn't have made it any better since this is not my skill set, haha) representations of what each option might look like - one with the bare walls, the other as it might look after adding furniture and pictures to the shelves (since I want to turn it into a gallery wall of sorts).

Sea Salt is REALLY FREAKING HARD to get a good picture of, people. I cannot get it right. I might need to pull out my nice camera and give it a shot, but it just reads so different in pictures than it does online.

The walls will be Smoke Embers, the same as the rest of the house.

(Also, this post is going to vary wildly based on your specific monitor - the colors/saturation/brightness are completely different between my computer and Chris's, so if they don't look much different to you, that's probably why.)

Since these are terrible Photoshops, here's the original image as well - your mind might do a better job with these renderings than I did, ha! In these pics the back of the shelving units are white. The middle section has a couple test swatches of Sea Salt - it looks SO blue/mint in these compared to the dining room (both in pics and in real life). I think the light from the big windows is making it appear so much more saturated than the dining room, maybe? You can see the dining room through the doorway on the left.

Bonus pic thanks to Carys's amazing faces.

OPTION ONE : ALL WHITE

(My apologies to Carys's face in all of these)

OPTION TWO : ALL SEA SALT

OPTION THREE : MIDDLE SEA SALT

I really want to do something with Sea Salt because I feel like it really would complete the circle of the house colors - the kitchen is tied to the dining room with the blue/green/gray colors, the dining room would be tied to the sitting room with the Sea Salt accent, and the sitting room would be tied to the rest of the rooms with the Smoke Ember walls.

But....I'm kind of digging the all-white?????? Am I??? I think??? TELL ME WHAT I AM THINKING, INTERNET!

What say you??

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.

PROGRESS! psych lol jk

So it's been almost three weeks since I started on the built-ins and crown molding in the sitting room and I've gotten virtually nowhere. I have: added another coat of primer, basically. There are now two coats of primer on everything (except the baseboards since those are being replaced). I started caulking the gaps (there are so. many. of. them.) and when I'm done with that, I'll start the ACTUAL painting process. I won't lie, though, at this pace that will be after Christmas.

Starting the second coat of primer - you can see the difference between the first and second coat in the lower left. Also you can see the light in the middle that I knocked out of place while I was painting. Whoops. Although to be fair to me, it was held in place with screws that went into the ceiling maybe 1/4 inch. So it was hardly secure.  AKA NOT MY FAULT.

I keep finding irritating things like this. This piece of trim clearly snapped in two before being put in place,but instead of replacing it, they used it anyway and just pieced it back together. 

Just showing some of the detailing in the built-ins. I think they're going to look incredible when they're done. On the top one you can see another irritating discovery - the back panel and side boards don't go all the way up. They stop about three inches from the ceiling....and it's very obvious when standing at the bottom and looking up. I'm going to paint that strip the same color as the rest of the built-ins to help it blend in. 

If you're curious, painting the crown molding has proved just as NOT FUN as I suspected it would be, what with the constant moving of the ladder and climbing up and down over and over. It's really hard to see in the pics, but one strip of the molding has a delicate floral pattern (the same pattern pictured in the broken trim piece above) and I'm a little worried about losing all detail in it. But part of the the dining room wall panels had a similar pattern, and they turned out just fine, so hopefully it will be okay.

I'm also trying to decide what to do with that built-in wall. Should I do the back of the built-ins the same color as the middle wall section? If so, should I do it all white so that it looks like the middle is part of the built-in? Or paint it all the color of the dining room? Or should I paint just the middle wall the color of the dining room and leave the rest white? MAKE MY DECISIONS FOR ME.

I forgot to post about it when I was sharing an earlier update, but in other exciting-not-really news we added another Craigslist score to our furniture collection right before Carys's birthday party. One that gets used daily. And is actually probably the most-used piece of furniture in the entire house. 

A new kitchen table!  

It's a beautiful, solid wood piece that we got it for a steal. It was just $150 for the table (with  two leaves. leafs?) and six chairs - and I saw the same brand of table in a similar style online for $1800, not including the chairs!!

We only had one dining table when we moved here, but since this house has a space for both an eat-in kitchen table and a formal dining room, we started watching Craigslist for a second table before we even moved in. We knew we wanted a round table (I had visions of the girls scooting their chairs next to each other to collaborate on a mess project WHICH HAVE TOTALLY COME TRUE) and we wanted this one to be standard height (the other table we have - also a CL find - is bar-height, and it totally did not look right in that space). It took months of watching before this beauty popped up, and I jumped on it immediately (even though it actually took another 10 weeks before we brought it home, due to their new table being backordered at the last minute). I love that it has both lighter wood and white, which I think works really well in tying the white trim into the oak cabinets in the kitchen, and it manages not to look "country" while doing it - like many of the oak tables we saw (if I'm crazy and it does scream twang country please don't tell me and let me live with my delusion).

I really should have mopped before this pic but #reallife

Slowly....very very slowly....we're adding the furniture to make the house feel more like home and less like a cavernous space.  Once we carpet the family room (CHRIS*) it'll feel so cozy and homey. Oh and also once the ladders and paint brushes and general construction zone part is gone. So basically in ten years.

*Chris wants to put down the same engineered wood that we're planning on putting everywhere else, while I want carpet, because I feel like a family room should be snuggly and warm and cozy. I'm totally right, right?