Painting

So, we apparently decided the whole house needed to be painted (thus the blog name). And my husband decided much of it needed to be painted before my mom came for a visit because he wanted to get more boxes unpacked before she arrived and didn't want to unpack the boxes until the walls were painted, since the boxes contained books that were to go onto bookshelves in those rooms.

If you follow that logic, and I either did or was too tired to argue at the time, the rooms needed to be painted and painted soon. And the rooms in this house are big. A good thing for living in, a bad thing when they need painting. This involved a exhausting schedule. We started prepping walls of my daughter's room and the living and dining room the day after my husband finished the trim in the kitchen. I painted my daughter's room the next morning while my husband kept her occupied, then that night we primed the dining room. We primed the living room the next day, then painted both the dining and living room the day afterwards.

The living and dining room didn't even need a new coat of paint. They were fine, probably painted just before the house was put on the market. But they were orange, and made the rooms look dark. So we painted them. Now they are a nice, cherry yellow.

The entryway, on the other hand, needed a new coat of paint. It was peach-colored, which was actually rather nice, if still a bit dark for our taste, but it had nicks and scuffs and just looked a bit dirty with time. We were going to paint it yellow, like the living and dining room, but as we sat in the living room the night we finished painting it and looked toward the entry, we decided we really liked the peach. So my husband went out the next morning for his first of three trips to Home Depot that day to get some samples of peach paint and a big heavy extension ladder that we needed to reach the part of the wall above the stairs. We liked one of the samples, so he went back for a full gallon and we painted during my daughter's nap.

While my husband went back and forth to the hardware store, I made a pie to bring to our friends' house, where we were going for dinner. We almost got it all painted during nap, but had to finish that evening. And my husband had to finish pretty much on his own because I was a klutz and tired, and was wearing bad shoes, and tripped and fell while carrying the glass pie pan home from our friends' house. The pie pan shattered, and I cut my finger badly enough that I was pretty useless the rest of the evening.

But now it's painted. And it's lovely. Here are some pictures:

Living Room Before

 

Living Room After

Dining Room Before

Dining Room After

Entry Before

Entry After

The after pictures aren't great quality. I'm not a photographer and was using my phone to take the pictures. I've been waiting for my husband to take some nicer photos and upload them on the computer for me, but he's been busy. So I'll update these with better pictures once they are available.

So the rooms we haven't painted are: the master bedroom, the guest bedroom, the bathrooms, the office and the attic. And all of those need new paint too, except for possibly the main bathroom on the second story and the office. The two bedrooms are arguably the ugliest in the house, but we couldn't get ourselves to do another round of battle with wallpaper after finishing the kitchen. It took several weeks before I decided to start doing battle with the master bedroom wallpaper. To whomever thought a wallpaper made out of straw was a good idea, I'll tell you from the perspective of the person removing it, it was not. It looks like our bedroom somehow got overgrown and then someone took a weed-eater to it. But that room will be a future post. We are in the midst of that project at the moment. And I still haven't shown off pictures of my daughter's adorable room.