While it was not completely frightening when we bought the house, it was a little lackluster with its off-white walls. Although, we could see where furniture and wall hangings had previously been from the dusty and sooty outlines. On the short list of good things about the lack of color on the walls, is that one good coat of primer did the job since we weren't trying to hide a color.
Step number one was to cover the hardwood floors... one of the few salvageable surfaces in the house. Two and a half rolls of paper and several rolls of tape later, we had craft paper flooring!
And camp style seating!
With that done, we were able to get into the cleaning/sanding of the walls to prep them for priming. We were originally going to wipe down all the walls with TSP, but it was brought to our attention that giving them a once over with drywall sanding mesh would make the job easier. So we proceeded to sand every painted surface in the house. Sore backs and shoulders followed.
This is where I really began to question the decision to buy a house that needed work. I was becoming physically, mentally, and emotionally drained. I felt like this would never be "our house." I constantly felt grimy and aggravated by the smells and the heat. More than once, I just broke down and cried, wanting to lay down somewhere or lean on something, but never finding spot that wouldn't make me feel gross. I began to curse the very name of Joanna Gaines and her staff of people to do the dirty work.
Very slowly, as the primer went on and little things were completed, I began to feel differently.
You'll notice in the picture above, that I removed the curvy/scalloped molding from the sides of the built-in around the fireplace. I would have liked to take the scalloped headers off too, but that would have created a trim project I did NOT want to start! I'm just not a scalloped kind of girl... unless you're talking about potatoes or corn! Those built-ins proved to be a bit of an extra project themselves. They had been painted the same off-white color as the walls, but in a gloss sheen. They did not want to participate when I tried to paint them with the semi-gloss paint that we used for the rest of the trim. I ended up de-glossing them with a product that came with the cabinet re-facing kit I used in the kitchen (I'll talk about that in the kitchen post) and it worked out well. I still needed three coats to make it look decent, but at least they didn't peel off.
The living room was actually one of the last rooms to be painted. We had placed priority on finishing painting the rooms that would be getting new flooring so that we wouldn't risk dripping on new carpet or vinyl. It was surprisingly easy to choose the living room color. I had purchased several samples so that I would have options, but in the end, I chose a color almost exactly the same as the what I had used in the living room in our old rental. Go figure! It's a nice, bright, clean color.
The night before we started moving, we were finally able to pull up the brown paper and clean up our hardwoods! It really started looking like a place to live once that was done. Quick tip: no how badly your husband wants to install the baseboards, make him wait until that paper is pulled up, because you will have a very difficult time getting the making tape out from under there. Trust me.
When we finally got all of our furniture in (moving will have its very own post), I must admit it looked pretty darn nice, if not a little sparse. We have about 50% more living in this house than we did in our rental, so we are still looking for just the right pieces to look less like a bowling alley, at the same time trying to keep it from looking like a used furniture store.
The windows remained uncovered for a few weeks until we decided on some pretty, clean white medium weight curtains with industrial inspired rods (which Mike would have used on every window if given the chance).
One of the ceiling fans that had come with the house was not in working ordered, so we decided to replace them both. The first one went up with the average amount of struggling and arguing that a couple installing a ceiling fan for the first time would expect. Like many other things in the house, somewhere along the line someone had done a "that'll do" job on installing the old fans, making it an interesting job to replace them. When we got to the second fan, I made a blunder of "we'll laugh about it later" proportions when I knocked the motor housing off of its installation hanger, ripping apart the wires I had already connected and sending it careening to the floor after a bounce on the mini-scaffolding we were standing on. Ugh. We just wanted to be done, so after checking that the same fan was in stock at our local Lowe's, we drove to the store to get one. Know what's really disappointing? Going to the fan aisle to get one of the two fans that are in stock, only to see both said fans in the cart of a couple still in the aisle. Womp, womp. With that option off the table for the day, we went ahead and installed the dropped fan with our fingers crossed that it would work... power back on, flip the switch, push the remote button... nothing. (You can see the sad, non-operational fan, missing its light cover in the photo of the entryway.) We'll be calling our electrician friend to give it a look, like we should have done in the first place, but for now, the ceiling at least looks balanced!
So here is my big living room reveal...
Our list of "still needs to be done" consists of: building new doors for the built-ins, getting that ceiling fan to work, getting the fireplace operational, and doing a crazy pinterest experiment to obscure the windows on the front door. I'll update when those are completed!
Particulars:
Wall color- Valspar 7004-5 Homestead Resort Sky Blue in satin sheen
Trim and Built-ins- Valspar 7006-24 Ultra White in semi-gloss sheen
Fans- Harbor Breeze Lake Cypress
Curtain Rods- Threshold Curtain Rod French Pipe Nickel
Curtains- Threshold Grayson Grommet Curtain Panels
