Paint with All the Colors of the Wind

I realize that we've done a ton of painting in this house; so much so that even I lose track from time to time.  To help everyone keep things straight, I figured I'd do a rundown of what we've painted so far and what color everything is incase anyone is interested.

All the colors are Sherwin Williams and I'll try to give the numbers along with the colors just in case anyone wants to know.

First off, outside we went with Mega Greige (SW 7031) for the main part of the house and Brainstorm Bronze (SW 7033) for the trim.  They are both warm grays and look nice with the stone (which is yellowy) and the red/orange shingles.

Then we have the guest bedrooms.  Bedrooms 1 & 3 (the craft room) got painted Wool Skein (SW 6148). It turned out to be a kind of greenish/khaki color that's a nice neutral.  It's hard to see in photos, but it looks nice in person.

Bedroom 2 is the only guest bedroom painted a different color.  It's Discrete White (SW 6266) which is a very very light purple color.  It almost looks white until you put something white right up next to it.  The reason for such a light color in that room is that the bedspread that is going in there is a very dark purple and I wanted something that wouldn't compete with it for attention.

I swear the walls are painted.  

The Guest Bathroom is painted Filmy Green (SW 6190) which is my designer friend Ann's go to bathroom color (just kidding Ann).  It is, however, the color of at least two of my friend's bathrooms.  It has a really awful name, but it really is a great bathroom color.  It goes really well with our accent tile, and I'm super excited about how well it goes with the shower curtain I got for the guest bathroom.

The Master Bedroom is maybe my favorite color in the house.  It's called Languid Blue (SW 6226).  It's the most perfect relaxing blue.  Just dark enough, but it doesn't really make the room feel super dark.

The middle is Languid Blue.
The Left is Meditative and the Right is Sleepy Blue
 (which will be the Master Bath Color I think).

The accent wall is the living area is painted Clary Sage (SW 6178) which I also love.  It is probably my second favorite color in the house and will almost certainly be the paint color for the family room when we start painting it.

The rest of the house that has been painted so far is painted a color called Kilim Beige (SW 6106).  It's a very nice neutral color which goes well with everything.  The foyer still needs to be painted the same color, and there's a very good chance the Master closet will get a coat of this too.

So, if you are keeping score, the only parts of the house that still need paint are the foyer (Kilim Beige), the Family Room (Clary Sage), and the Master Bathroom (Sleepy Blue).  We also still need to do the trim on the sides and back of the house as well as the siding on the back of the house and above the garage.  Oh yes, and we've painted every inch of ceiling in the entire house so far.  Literally every inch.  I have a feeling by the time we're done with this house, I won't want to paint anything for a very long time.

Witchy Woman....

So, the title of this post has nothing to do with anything except that it's a great song by the Eagles and it always makes me think of fall.

I finally got back to the house when it wasn't raining and got some good after shots of the work I did last weekend outside.  It really does look a lot better.

First the Before shot of the front of the house.  This was before we took down the tree in between the windows or did much of anything other than weed the flower bed.

And the After.  There is still more work to do, but you can actually see the house now.  We haven't painted the wood over the garage yet, but once we get that done, it will finish off all the painting on the front of the house.

The crazy trees on either side of the garage are gone now too, so you can actually walk down the sidewalk and see the stone on the sides.  Why anyone would want to cover that up is beyond me.  We're still not entirely sure what color we'll paint the garage door, but just getting the wood painted and the light replaced will help out a lot.

Also gone are the giant green bushes that dominated the big flower bed next to the driveway.  They were huge and scratchy and totally blocked everything.  Now they are gone!  We left the juniper though.   I like him.  He's small and tidy.

Before:

And After:

There's still a little more do to outside.  We need to replace the trees that were on either side of the garage with something and I need to pull up the weed paper in the bed along the house, but it looks a lot better than it did when we bought the place.  We've even had some neighbors stop by and thank us for all of our hard work.  Hopefully we won't ever be "that house" on the block again.

Stop Baby, What's That Sound?

So the last two weekend (and the week in between) have been crazy busy.  It's midterms for me at school, so I've been swamped with homework, papers, projects, and exams, and work at the house has accelerated dramatically.

Last weekend was Landon's birthday, but that didn't stop us from getting a lot done.  Work continued on the ceiling in the living area with lots of drywall mud and sanding.  The ceiling also got primed on Sunday (which made both me and Landon sore for two days after).  It might have had something to do with the fact that we also primed and painted the master bedroom ceiling.

Me, wiping down the ceiling before we primed it.
Sponge + Ceiling = not much fun.

Lots and lots of plumbing work went on in the basement with the sink in the guest bath finally getting hooked up.  Which of course means that the vanity cabinets and the vanity top went in.  Fun fact:  before you install a vanity, you should check to make sure that the wall behind it is flat.  Ours was not which leaves us with this situation:

It's hard to tell from here, but the sides are flush while the middle is about 1/4" away from the wall.

You can see it better here.  It's not a huge gap, but you can see it.  

We're working on trying to find a solution.  We're thinking (thanks to Ann again) that we might frame in the mirror and set it right down on top of the backsplash.  If anyone has any other ideas, let me know.

This week, Alan cut out the drywall in the ceiling of the guest bathroom where the old vent fan and a really bad patch was and installed a new piece with a cut out for our new vent fan/light.  It's totally awesome.  It looks like a pot light but is also a vent fan.  Best idea ever!

It doesn't look like much, but it's great!

We had purchased a vent fan/light from Lowe's but when we hooked it up to test, the light was so dim it wasn't going to work as the primary light for the room.  It went back and we ordered the one from Amazon.

We also have the vanity light installed, and I love it.  The guest bath is nearly finished.  We only need to finish the ceiling, paint it, and get the mirror and cabinet hardware installed.

Nicely sealed grout and tile.  Not a fan of sealing the grout, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Alan spent a good portion of the weekend working on putting in the baffles on the back of the house and installing more insulation.  Then he spent the next couple of days framing out the rafters so we can reinstall the soffits along the back.

The hallway also got primed, and then had more drywall work done and then got primed again.  So much fun.  We're buying Kilz by the 5 gallon bucket now.

And, because we were trying to get most of the painting done, I picked up some samples for the master bedroom and living area paint colors on Friday, applied them, and by Friday night, we were painting.  I didn't get a photo of the living area colors, but I did snap one of the bedroom colors.

From Left to Right:
Meditative, Languid Blue, Sleepy Blue

And we decided to go with Languid Blue in the Master bedroom.  It's absolutely gorgeous and makes me silly happy.  I can't wait to move into that room!  Landon and I spent this Friday night painting the room and Saturday morning it was even more awesome.

One wall done

Two walls down.

All done and dry!.  It's a little darker in person.

Saturday morning, we painted the ceilings in the hallway, foyer, living area, and kitchen.  It took about 3 hours and I had paint all over my face, but it looks okay.  We probably need to do a second coat, but I'm not sure I have it in me.

We then moved on to painting the walls in the hallway and main living area/kitchen.  I went with a nice neutral (Kilim Beige) for most of the walls and the hallway with our TV wall done in Clary Sage.  I love both colors, but the green is so nice it will probably end up being our Family room color as well.

Around noon, Alan rented a Dingo to help grade the dirt in the back/side yards and hopefully stop water from coming into the basement.  I think the boys enjoyed using the new toy.  But they did get some dirt moved and the posts left over from the pool pulled out.

Adding dirt next to the house so water flows away.

Where did the dirt come from?  The hill in the back.

Now what?

Taking out the pool posts with Brad Mattix.

Almost got it!

While the boys were outside playing in the dirt, I was inside getting the floors in the bedrooms/hallway/main living area ready for hardwood to go down.  This involved lots and lots of vacuuming, sweeping, scraping, and repeating.  And let me say this:  if you are going to be vacuuming up drywall dust, invest in the extra filter bag for the shop vac that's made for fine dust.  It's a life saver.

But, by the end of the night, all the floor were ready for....well floors!

And Sunday, while the boys were playing outside again, I touched up some paint and painted the widow frames.  And then I went outside to work on the front flower beds.  I needed to finish cutting out a lot of the black weed paper that was left behind.  About 3/4 of it was exposed now, and the rest had weeds growing on top of it.  I also moved some plant around, thinned some out, and generally cleaned up the front of the house some more.  Until it began to pour the rain!  I got soaked, but at least some yard work got done.

While I was digging in the front, the boys were digging in the back.  The chain link fence came out, was rolled up, and loaded up.  And the backyard got more grading work done and all the honeysuckle trees ripped out.  You can see the yard portion of the back yard now!

It's a muddy mess, but you can see the back now!

So much clearer

The same area before.  

Another before view.

The former home of the pool.
One day there will be grass here.

And the before.

And, while all that was going on outside, something even more exciting was going on inside.......Floors!

First signs of flooring:  Tar paper going down.

And the starter row.  

What's under the boxes?  

Floors!  So pretty!

Yup, the floor started going down.  And they look awesome!  I can't wait to see them more finished, but as of tonight, most of the hallway is done and about 3/4 of the Master Bedroom.  I love my Maple floors!

The Sky is Falling.....

Last weekend was a busy one at the house.  I worked on finishing up some painting in the three guest bedroom closets so that they were ready for floors.  Mostly it was painting ceilings and touching up walls.  Not too exciting.  I also worked on getting the guest bathroom cabinets painted and ready to install.  Again, not too exciting.

This is what they looked like before I started.

Doors and drawer fronts primed but not painted.

The sink cabinet

And two drawer towers.

All done.

The cabinets, fronts, and drawers are all painted now, and ready to go into the bathroom.  And, if you're wondering, the color is SW Alpaca.  It's a nice, light gray.  I was going to do white, but the countertop we found (on clearance!) is white and I didn't want to have to worry about matching that white, so I went with gray.  It looks nice with the floors and pulls some color from the glass accent tile in the shower.  Hopefully it will look nice when it's all done.

Speaking of the bathroom, we got the walls in there sanded, primed, and painted over the weekend as well.

I know it's really hard to tell from this photo, since I had to use the flash because it was dark outside by this time, but it's a very nice green.  And, those of you who know about such things might recognize it.    It's SW Filmy Green!!!  I was going to go with a slightly darker shade, but it was just too dark for such a small room.  The filmy green, however, works great.  The only problem is that when I pulled the tape off, some of the paint came with it, so there will be some touch ups coming.

Now, while I was doing all that, you might be asking what the guys were doing?  Well, once we got the main living area opened up, we noticed an issue with the ceiling.  It was wavy.   I kind of looked like the waves at the beach.  And because the droops were in between the ceiling joists, there wasn't much we could do about it.  Basically, our choices were (1) live with it, (2) put new drywall up over top of it, or (3) take it all down and redo it.  We chose option (3).

When I was helping out with the baffles on the exterior, we discovered that I am highly allergic to insulation ( like I break out in hives and get super, super itchy) so it was decided that I would stay away while the boys were pulling down the ceiling and clean up the mess.

The first step was a trip to home depot to get the drywall the replace the old saggy stuff.  The truck almost didn't make it.

Then it was time to drop the ceiling.  I was told this part took all of 15 minutes.

Before shot....you can kind of see the waves here.

And after.  Such a mess.

They we got to spend the rest of the weekend putting it all back up.  At least it made cleaning up the electrical and putting in the light boxes easy.  

All clean again.

Needless to say, it took much longer to put it back up than it did to take it down.  

Working on getting it all back up.

Now that's done, we're working hard to get the back half of the house ready for floors.  The three guest rooms are ready, but we still need to paint in the master bedroom.  It had a similar wavy ceiling, but we didn't drop that one, instead we were able to add some screws and fix most of it.  The mud in there is nearly done, so that ceiling is nearly ready for paint.  And then the walls can get painted.  The hallway also need some paint on the walls and ceiling (after some patching) and then we can start with the floors!