One gallon

One gallon of paint got me cutting in the entire downstairs plus all of this.











Yeah, it's one coat. But dude, one coat gives such amazing coverage.

I should have tried this paint a looooong time ago.

I cracked open gallon number two and continued working and made it to bed around ten o'clock last night. When I saw the room in the sunshine today, it was totally worth all of the yawns!







The new color and the kitchen color are really good friends. They told me.



Good morning living room!



I used Duration Home Interior (the one in the plastic can with the green sure label). Get it. There's a reason it's so expensive. And you can buy it on sale so it's not so expensive. But don't trust their calculations or you'll end up with three extra gallons like me.

One coat gives amazing coverage, but we'll be doing a light second coat for longevity's sake. Even with the second coat, I really can't see us using more than 4 gallons. I've used about 1 and 1/4 and I'm halfway up the stairs.

Paint Progress

I know I didn't do so great on the Post Along part of my weekend project! But Sunday, I did a lot of wall repair and ended up cutting in along all of the baseboards and the chair rail throughout the living and dining room, as well as painting around the windows and doorways.

And as I finished, I couldn't resist painting the wall with the smallest amount of surface area, since I thought I could get away with just my brush. Luckily, I was right!



And the verdict is in. In case my smiling face doesn't tell you, I'm butt crazy in love with this color. It's completely perfect and I'm so glad we chose it. It's a little lighter than we expected, but it turned out to be exactly right.

Then tonight, while dinner was in the oven, I cut in around the crown molding downstairs. I'm taking the day off tomorrow to have dinner with my husband at work, and then I might start with the rolling on Thursday night!







Josh Lyman was my painting buddy tonight, as you can see. The lighter areas in the dining room aren't dry yet.

I just can't wait to see this room completely done!

As for this coming weekend, I'm not sure if we'll spend it relaxing or working. But I don't know what we're dreading more. Corralling all the cords and painting the fireplace black, or tackling the final layer of wallpaper in the upstairs hallway. Probably the latter. We've tried all the tricks we know and no dice. We've scored it with the Pirahna thing, tried vinegar, tried detergent, tried Dawn, tried a spray bottle, tried a sponge, tried a ScotchBrite, tried our fingernails. Any suggestions?

We're down to just the paper backing, and it's on top of flat paint, which is making things very difficult.

Post Along Project: Pictures

Here are the pictures I said I would post last night. Since I took these, I've put the vent covers back up, and it looks pretty swell. I love the subtle, gorgeous gray.





I love our new schoolhouse globes in the stairway!



See those touch-ups? The stairway is completely full of spots like that. I will pretty much need a second coat up there, but I'm waiting until we rent a scaffold or figure out whatever solution we can to the very high ceilings and stairs.

Today, Brett is spending his last Sunday morning at work. I'm about to make my first attempt at drywall patching.

Since we moved in, we've been curious about the presence of a couple of vents, high on the wall, with no discernible purpose. One, to the left of the fireplace.



And another above our bedroom door. It turned out that the one above the bedroom door is hiding a hole in the drywall about the size of a golf ball. Okay?



Because who needs to fix something when you can just out a vent over it?

The other one is hiding a non-functioning infrared motion detector. We can only assume it's non-functioning, because, you know, we've been walking around our living room for a year and a half and we've never set it off.

So I'm going to attempt to patch them. I'm using the mesh, spackle, sand approach. And I have a can of the orange peel spray to match our drywall texture. And, cross my fingers, start painting!

Post Along Project: Break Time

After four solid hours up and down the ladder, plus 4 or 5 more painting the ceiling, plus three more karaokeing, my body was screaming at me to take a break. A real break.

So today, we made the list and got the stiff for dry wall patching. We'll put the lights and vents back up (once they dry, we washed them and we're waiting for the little sponge parts to dry), and then tomorrow I'll do some more work. I don't know if I'll even get to painting the walls this weekend.

Last night, I finished the ceiling. My husband texted me at ten to meet him at 11 and I still had the dining room, plus I had paint all in my hair. I was painting like a mad woman. Literally, RUNNING around the house. Y'all, I was huffing like Tom on Design Star. I wish you could have seen me.

But I finished painting that dining room ceiling in a half an hour. And I showered and was at the bar by 11:05! But I'm paying for it today. I slept until 8 and woke up so sore! We cleaned up (no time for that last night) and then watched a movie. And we're just relaxing.

I got the cutest schoolhouse globes for the stairway light fixtures! We're about to nap for a bit, then we'll put them up and maybe I'll post some picture of them and the ceiling tonight. It's so pretty!

Post Along Project:: Day 1 Dinner Break

So it's just before 7 and my back and neck are killing me. But I THINK I'm done with the ladder for the night. I think.

I'm all done cutting in for the ceiling! It took for ever. Over four hours of climbing up and down the ladder, and I'm shot. But I think after some rest and food, I'll be able to tackle rolling tonight!

After Brett gets off, we're thinking about going out for karaoke, so we might get a late start tomorrow! :)

The plan for tomorrow, assuming the ceiling is all rolled today, that is: wake up and make a plan for wall repair, drywall patch, etc. Then I'll take a trip to the hardware store, and work on the walls so we can start painting!

Here's a couple pictures of the ceiling color! I am really loving it against the wood tone of the ceiling fan.





These are phone pictures. Excuse the quality.

Post Along Project: The Prep

I've heard that the preparation should take you twice as long (or is it just as long?) as the painting. Now, that's never been true for me, although sometimes I wish it was! But there has definitely been a lot of prep work involved in this project!

We started bright and early with the taping. Our room has crown molding, a chair rail all around (which I don't get in the living room, but okay) and thick baseboards. And it's a big room. Add in the baseboards up the stair way and 13 doors, and that's a lot of tape. We started at 7 this morning, took a lunch/goodwill run break, and I just finished (at 2 pm).

But in that time we took quite a few breaks to take off the vent covers, get all the lights taken down for painting, take down the curtains (and took them to Goodwill), and started stripping the wallpaper upstairs.

Is there anything more satisfying than tearing off an old, ugly wallpaper border? We tore off a burgundy and navy paisley one, and found pastel hummingbirds underneath. It was actually sort of pretty. Although, I wouldn't choose a wallpaper border of any kind, probably, I'm sure I would have picked something like this when our house was built in 1991! Since I love birds so much, I kept a small piece, and I'm thinking I might frame it to have a piece of history from our home!

Now, I'm taking a water break and about to start painting the ceiling. Hopefully I can finish that tonight! Dream big!

Post Along Project: Paint

I'll be totally honest here. This is completely about motivating myself to actually start painting the living room/dining room/hall/stairway.

Ugh. It even hurts to type. I actually still have no idea how I'm going to do the stairway ceiling/wall transition. Brett has an idea that includes a paintbrush on a very long stick, but he hasn't adequately explained that one to me yet.

I figure that posting here will help give me the motivation to actually do something! That really worked with the chevron curtains I mentioned last weekend, right?

Right...

But I have an excuse. I decided to tackle kitchen lighting instead, which turned into a huge disaster which I have no pictures of because it bled over into the week (and we still haven't put up the new ceiling fan. Yes, we have ceiling fans in the kitchens here in South Lousiana) and we got some great news.

My husband got a big promotion! Yay!

But he'll be working evenings, and since I work 7-4:30, that means we'll only see each other on the weekends. Boo.

So rather than work on the house or take pictures of our beautiful new kitchen light and the new plate that's covering the gaping hole in the ceiling, we concentrated on spending time together.

But this weekend, he'll be training for his new position, so I'm taking advantage of the alone time and starting the great paint of 2010.

The goal for this weekend is to paint the ceiling.

Sounds easy, no? Quit looking at me like that! It's a very big space!

The stretch goal is to finish painting the ceiling and paint the dining room.

We'll see how it goes!

I can't wait until the tan is BANISHED from the house (except for the ghastly tile. Ugh).