OK! Get ready for some updating. Here is the first of many house posts.
We closed on Sept 4, the Friday before Labor Day, on purpose. It gave us a three-day weekend with Mom and Dad and Susan to work on the house before we moved in. The plan was to get as much done that weekend as possible, and for me to work on the house during the week, and then to move everything in the following Saturday, the 12th. The only failures of the plan were that I didn't get a whole lot done during the week owing to how stressed I was, and that it rained on moving day. Otherwise, it was really smart to do things before moving in furniture, etc. It meant asking the landlady in Westover for a half month of rent, which not everyone can do, but for us it was perfect. Ok I realize I briefly mentioned this scheme in my first post, so moving on:
Painting weekend! It was great having Mom, Dad, and Sus at the new
house! They Ooh-ed and Aaah-ed appropriately, and we painted every.
single. room. Our original palette was a little ambitious, and we
realized that the yellow color John picked out for his office was almost
indistinguishable from the existing yellowy cream we both disliked, so
we dropped that. We may add the darker color (Mink) back in as a feature color
at some point, since we both love it, but for now we just wanted to get
the base colors updated. So the whole house ended up brown and gray, with a large feature wall in light teal. The dark deal is eventually for the front door.
[top to bottom: Sherwin Williams Nomadic Desert, SW Mink, SW Interesting Aqua, SW Gray Screen, (yellow eliminated), and HGTV SW Mermaid's Tale]
The most dramatic transformation was the wood panel wall at the stairs.
(check out this handsome guy)
BEFORE
...
AFTER!
Flippin' gorgeous. I am absolutely in love with this color (Interesting Aqua).
Ok, so in order to paint paneling, you have to first give it a good rubdown with mineral spirits. It got us all high for a while. Here's John doing the Tiny Room.
You can also see we did the living room brown. Here are more befores:
...
....And after! OK, it's hard to see that one in photos because of the light. But trust me, it went from semigloss (EW) yellowy-beige (EW EW) to what I call chocolate milk brown (SW Nomadic Desert). We painted the buildout above the mantel white for contrast because I had a vision. More on that later.
You can also see the awful, awful curtains in the before pictures. Honestly, just taking them down made John and me both see the house in a whole new light (no pun intended, but dang that was a good one). Removing the layers and layers of frou frou brought the house up to the twenty-first century and the paint did the rest. Each window had the full treatment: a shade or blinds, sheer curtains, full curtains, and a valence. It's a small fortune in window dressings. We hardly rehung anything.
It was a long weekend! Here's Mom, eating lunch on a ladder and painting. So typical.
And the dogs, who were not into it at all and just retreated to the softest spot they could find.
Ok, this post is long and photo-heavy, so I'm going to split up the rest!
~S
We closed on Sept 4, the Friday before Labor Day, on purpose. It gave us a three-day weekend with Mom and Dad and Susan to work on the house before we moved in. The plan was to get as much done that weekend as possible, and for me to work on the house during the week, and then to move everything in the following Saturday, the 12th. The only failures of the plan were that I didn't get a whole lot done during the week owing to how stressed I was, and that it rained on moving day. Otherwise, it was really smart to do things before moving in furniture, etc. It meant asking the landlady in Westover for a half month of rent, which not everyone can do, but for us it was perfect. Ok I realize I briefly mentioned this scheme in my first post, so moving on:
[top to bottom: Sherwin Williams Nomadic Desert, SW Mink, SW Interesting Aqua, SW Gray Screen, (yellow eliminated), and HGTV SW Mermaid's Tale]
The most dramatic transformation was the wood panel wall at the stairs.
...
AFTER!
Ok, so in order to paint paneling, you have to first give it a good rubdown with mineral spirits. It got us all high for a while. Here's John doing the Tiny Room.
You can also see we did the living room brown. Here are more befores:
You can also see the awful, awful curtains in the before pictures. Honestly, just taking them down made John and me both see the house in a whole new light (no pun intended, but dang that was a good one). Removing the layers and layers of frou frou brought the house up to the twenty-first century and the paint did the rest. Each window had the full treatment: a shade or blinds, sheer curtains, full curtains, and a valence. It's a small fortune in window dressings. We hardly rehung anything.
It was a long weekend! Here's Mom, eating lunch on a ladder and painting. So typical.
~S
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