Week 4: Dining Room Repaint

First off, I have to say I am pretty excited about the weather this weekend!  And even though I spent much of Saturday afternoon and all of Saturday night prepping and painting the dining room, I definitely managed to take the dog for a walk to enjoy the 50 degree weather yesterday and the 59 degree weather today!  Granted it is going to drop down to 20 tomorrow, but it's days like these in the middle of winter that make me smile a little when I look and see that it is 7 degrees and feels like -17 in Minneapolis today.  I am really happy to have made the move to KC!  

Ok, back to the reason for this week's blog....to describe my dining room makeover!  Stage 1 was back in October-to repaint the dining room ceiling from orange to white.  I am not sure what it is about burnt orange that the prior homeowners loved, but it was the most common color used in the house!  They had the dining room ceiling and curtains orange, the kitchen orange, and the master bedroom orange.  Jake managed to convince me to keep the bedroom orange, but I convinced him we would be getting rid of it everywhere else then!  

So here are some pictures to go along with Stage 1.  

Original Owner Dining Room:

Dining Room with repainting ceiling: 

 

I've been debating on what color to paint the dining room for awhile.  Between looking up colors on Houzz, Pinterest, etc., I narrowed it down to a grey-blue or else some sort of lighter blue variation.  To start I went to Home Depot and got 2 gray-blueish samples and painted against the trim.  

During the daylight the paint seemed to contrast, but once there was no natural light in the room it almost appeared a shade slightly different than white.  So back to Home Depot I went and got 5 other samples.  Which I was happy I did get the samples because they all looked a little different and I ended up going with one that I didn't initially think I would want.  I taped up the paint cards next to each sample so I would remember which one belonged to each section I painted.  

Some were more aqua colored or brighter blue than others, so when all was said and done I decided on the Cumberland Fog color (which is shown as the middle sample of the group of three above and looks like this: 

I learned my lesson from painting the hallway and went through and when I wiped the walls off any time my dustrag caught on anything I sanded it down right away.   I also went through and filled all holes and the many cracks with putty before beginning painting.  This was the largest crack I found and knew if I didn't do anything about it that it would show through the lighter colored paint. 

I then taped everything off so I didn't have to be as careful around the trim and off I went! I was so happy with the final product as our dining room seems so much brighter and cheerier with all of that darker green gone.  All you have to do now is pay no attention to the orange curtains.  We did end up taking them down, so I'm guessing my week 5 or 6 project (Stage 3 of dining room overhaul) will be making some new ones to replace the orange from the downstairs once and for all! 

Rachel

Week 3b: Upstairs Hallway Lighting Fixture Swap Out

I'm sure I initially noticed the 1960's or 1970's outdated lighting fixture that was in our upstairs hallway when we moved in, but had either ignored or forgotten about how terrible it looked in our house.

Yes, it really is that bad!

Once I repainted the upstairs hallway described here in my Week 2 post, I quickly realized that I wanted to replace that upstairs hallway lighting fixture.  My first thought was that I could use some silver Rub 'n Buff on the gold part similar to what I did for the lighting fixtures in the downstairs hallway this fall that were originally black to update them a little bit:

  The Rub 'n Buff worked really well with the amount of intricate details on the downstairs lighting fixtures, but I wasn't crazy about the glass part of the upstairs fixture enough to try to save the upper part, so I decided to get a more modern looking fixture.   Jake has been whining complaining commenting lately how he has been bored this winter so I put him to work to take down and install the new fixture.  I managed to snap a photo of him after I heard many loud noises/choice words illustrating his frustration at how much of a pain it was for him to do.

After we went back and forth regarding how to get it balanced from all angles, we stood back to admire how much better it looks than the other fixture!

I think Jake is happy there aren't any other lighting fixtures that I want to replace at the moment to give him a break!

Rachel

Week 3a: Living Room Lighting Fixture Swap Out

One thing that I've wanted to change in our living room since we bought the house was the lighting fixtures.  Unfortunately our living room does not have any overhead lights and the current lighting fixtures only allow 60 watt bulbs.  Even when the dimmer lights are turned on as high as they go the lighting is still pretty terrible.  It did help brighten things up when I painted, but I still wasn't happy with how the room looked with the current lighting fixtures.  Here are a couple before and after pictures of the living room once I spent a good week repainting.

Before:

After:

The after pictures were before we got some new furniture for the room, but as you can see the light fixtures had paper lampshades to them.  I wanted some wall scones that wouldn't look too out of place in the room or didn't look specifically like they should be in a bathroom.  I finally settled on these fixtures from Lowes that were less than $40 a piece:

Now at our house I am the painter and my husband usually wears the hat of electrician so he was kind enough to swap these out for me.  Here he is in action! 

                                 

 

They definitely give off more than enough light since they each take 100 watt bulbs!  We were happy we have them on a dimmer to adjust the lighting since the 100 watts for each one might seem too bright depending on what we are doing in the living room.  

Here are some pictures of them and our living room after getting some new furniture after installation: 

Now if I can only figure out what I want to do with that blank space above the couch I will be good to go with the living room!  I smell a weekly project coming up down the road with that one!  

Rachel

Week 2: Entryway and Hallway Facelift

Well I am already starting the year out running a little behind with my blog posts!  January has been a crazy month for me.  I started the month out with a nasty cold and a work trip back to Minneapolis.  I joined a new gym near my house which I've been trying to spend time at.  Then about a week ago I got some bad news that my aunt passed away, so I was out of town to Springfield, IL for the visitation and funeral.  And to top off a busy travel month I spent this past work week in Houston, TX for some work meetings.  Despite my busy schedule, I have managed to keep up with my New Year's goal of doing a weekly project or home improvement update.  I just haven't had the time to document all of them!

So, on to my week 2 project! From pretty much the first day we looked at our house we decided that the bright yellow hallway that goes the length of downstairs, up the stairs, and on the 2nd floor needed to be repainted.

Here are some before pictures of the hallway downstairs:

And the hallway upstairs (taken after I taped the trim and ceiling off):

Side note: I went a little crazy with repainting things this fall right when we moved into our house.  I repainted the kitchen a light tan (was orange), the dining room ceiling white (was orange), the hallway ceiling white (was yellow), and the living room trim white (was unpainted woodwork), living room walls tan (were a greenish color), and living room ceiling white (was a darker ivory).  So, as one might imagine, I was WAY burnt out on painting so I gave myself November-December a break from painting and tackled some sewing projects instead.

After much research (via pinterest of course!) and consideration of a good hallway color I came across this "greige" color, shown in comparable shades of Benjamin Moore and Behr paint:

Some people have different paint preferences, but I usually go with Behr and have had decent luck with Behr Ultra with the paint and primer in one.  Plus my 10% military discount from Home Depot helps keep the costs down when you are like me and have been buying paint and supplies to repaint your whole house!

So to start things out I taped all the trim.  I know some people don't like to tape and are just very careful, but for me when I've tried to do that before I struggled a little to keep lines straight, so it's worth the extra time and effort to tape everything.   I attempted to patch any holes prior to starting to paint, but missed a few so I ended up patching and sanding down some some paint chunks left from the yellow coat of paint that were not even with the wall.  Here are some pictures of my progress:

When all was said and done I spent 3 nights from basically 5:30 pm to 11:30 pm prepping, painting, and cleaning up.  Not to mention the several hours I spent taking down tape and touching up the ceilings and trim.  I will say all of the time spent was well worth it as I am really happy with how it turned out! 

Now I just need to start getting some things up on the walls and I'll be good to go! 

Rachel