House Update

So we’re in the new house as of this morning, and it’s a mess. Clothes everywhere. I can’t figure out where to put all my things, and keep pushing the fact that there is still another truckload of stuff coming from Germany into the back of my mind.

I need measuring cups.

Anyway, here’s how the painting went:

I’m so glad all this painting is done, you have no idea. Now I have to deal with bag after bag of clothes. I have to say though, having every item of clothing I own on the floor is a much easier way to find things. Just this morning I found a pair of pants I thought I’d lost, and my own mess is taking all the credit.

As you can see, the bedroom was this nasty green color. This is the first room we tackled. I had picked out a steel blue/grey color, and about halfway in I realized I’d kill myself if I had to look at it every day, so I started over.

With brown. (It looked kind of like this.)

As my dear friend Ian promptly realized, it was apparent that I was subconsciously hedging my bets by preemptively painting my walls a feces compliant color. After one large swatch, I ditched the brown, too.

I finally settled on one of my favorite room colors, a warm cranberry. I’m pretty pleased with the result, as the contrast with the white trim is beautiful, and it wears all the wood furniture we own nicely as well. Now all I need is the furniture. But anyway…

We had to go back and touch up the white in some places, but that’s about it.

The bathroom was the last thing I did, and that was simply because the window is painted shut (yay old homes with tenants who don’t know how to paint!) and the paint fumes were killing me. I did it in sections over the weekend. Thepurple it was before was so terrible, I didn’t even want to look at it for longer than a few minutes at a time. The finished product is much easier on the eyes:

It’s off-white or “bone white”. That’s what the good folks at Glidden call it anyway. The light from the window makes it hard to tell the exact shade of the color, but whatever. Having this much light in my bathroom has also informed me of just how many pores I have, and what exactly lives inside of all of them. I also found a strange eyebrow hair on what I can only describe as my forehead. If you’ve seen my tweezers, please send them my way.

I didn’t get a photo of the living room before I painted because the morning I was over here painting, my camera battery was dead. The former tenants had the living room, dining nook and kitchen this bright yellow color, which is fine in the kitchen, but terrible in a living area. Never mind the fact that I don’t own one single yellow accent piece to match that potentially devastating color scheme.

I better get back to work. If you don’t hear from me in a day or so, send help.

oh, i love painting! i hate the taping, but i love the painting. the prep work sucks ass. and doesn’t it feel AMAZING when it’s all done? good work!

*cute house, too*

Duh, not an LJ post.

Dear Paige,

Please come paint 445 Sherman.

Thanks.
The Hatfield Family

My god, that green…good for pea soup, not so much for walls.

HEY! We are live paint-blogging, too! And also have to deal with large expanses of pea-soup-colored walls! Check it out before we go insane! Should be starting on that section soon. I love the red. We’re doing something similar, but a little warmer, in the kitchen and one wall of the hearth room.

I love all the colors you have chosen it looks like you have a beautiful home.

If you need any other paint color tips, let me know and I can recommend a bunch. That’s a nice red, and reds can be tough — either too orangey or too pinky. We did our dining room in Ralph Lauren Maleyan Red and I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a good, rich red.

Love the cranberry! Boo on that pea soup color. Reminds me of The Exorcist. Make sure you’ve good ventilation when painting.

paige!
our new “house” (ok…apartment) has that same cranberry in the livingroom. we totally love it. our dining room is a orange yellow, which i kind of like (surprisingly). the kitchen and the bath are green and white and our bedroom is white stucco (barf). i’m going to get some paint and make the bathroom blue, just because that’s the color shower curtain we bought in a rush while in wisconsin.