Some progress today, with the first coat of paint in the family room, which is Chloe’s old bedroom. Although the reflected light makes the ceiling look as though it’s the same color as the walls, it’s actually much lighter and completely different. I’ve taken the next week and half off to work on the house, so look for more progress soon!
First coat of paint in family room
The good and bad news is that Stephanie is now a week overdue. While it’s been helpful to have all these extra weekends to work on the upstairs, enough is enough! She is definitely ready for the baby to come out now. Yesterday and today I worked on finish coats for the trim, paint edging and cleaning up. While there are still a lot of areas that need further touch up, the rooms are looking REALLY good. We had taken pictures earlier today but then retook them at night to really show how nice things are looking. During the day, the mix of lighting is not as flattering and a lot of the details are lost in shadows. At night the lighting is much more even, which I guess really means that we did a really good job planning out our lights (OK, really we were just lucky).
Getting all the paper out from under the base shoe was a real daytime nightmare. I suppose there is some trick that professional painters use, but I sure don’t know what it is. After 4-5 coats of primer and paint, the base shoe and paper had become one. I ended up having to use a utility knife to score them apart, which sounds much easier and faster than it really was. It probably took me at least two hours to remove all the paper. And while I usually try to do everything by hand and without masking, there was no good way to get paint on the base shoe and not the floor. I know that everyone’s thinking “well, why not paint the base shoe before installing it?” And yes, that would’ve been a good idea, but I had so much other unpainted trim (sills, separator beads) that I just didn’t want to be bothered. Sometimes you get on a roll and don’t want to be slowed down by such tings. Of course, all I did was defer one lousy job for an even worse one. Not only was the paper hard to remove, it was even harder to slide get it under the base shoe in the first place (I wasn’t going to settle for a sloppy masking tape line!). This is how I do so many of my jobs…bounce back and forth between two methods that I don’t like, always thinking that the other one would’ve worked so much better. There’s always next time. Regardless of my construction inefficiencies, I’m really happy with the way it’s turning out.
No! But we’re almost done with the painting. A few design changes have been made in the short time since these pictures were taken, so these aren’t exactly what you’ll see in the end. For one thing, we thought that the front room (lighter pink) looked too closed-in, so we are changing the ceiling to white. Chloe, who did “help” with a little bit of the painting (“here, paint the inside of this bookshelf cavity that’ll get covered up later), is re-enacting the painting in each room…
We’ve got a long ways to go, but it’s great to see something that is a taste of the finished product. All of the closets have been painted, as has the play room ceiling and walls. Here’s an in-progress shot of the play room:
Wow, this looks different… even though the rooms will be full of color by the time we’re through, the stark white walls of drywall primer are an exciting milestone. The formerly dull, dark rooms are full of light, even with just a camera flash. The drywall is looking really good – we’ve only been able to find a few problem spots, all of which can be easily corrected. The funny thing is that I had nearly finished priming Chloe’s room before noticing that her recessed light was no longer there, or more correctly, was neatly covered up by the drywall. One of the hangers forgot
We finally finished up the paint in the foyer. Sometimes the easiest projects take the longest!
It will be a full 21 months before these edges are touched up. Writing a blog after the fact gives you a different perspective on each of your projects. Sometimes you’re surprised by how quickly something seemed to move along (even if it felt slow at the time), and other times the low priority projects seem to live on forever.
Test (and final) paint color. Having a color consultant/interior designer for a wife means that you usually get it right the first time.
