Category: Home Improvement

We’ve been busy over here as usual, but it looks like we’ve made it thru the coldest darkest part of winter and spring is within hoping distance.

We just finished repainting out living room, having started last weekend. Since our house has a sort of open plan, this necessarily included the hall to the bedrooms, the kitchen, the stairway and the downstairs hall as well the living room itself. Like the family room last month, we were using the same color paint and the main purpose was to freshen up the heavy traffic areas, so we didn’t move very much furniture or do much cutting in on the edges, just started in with the roller. Last time I painted this area right when we bought the house, and I mind I kept flashing back to that time. Unfortunately when the paint dried the color was different enough to be noticeable, so the next I had do go back and do all the edging and blend enough to make it look proper, which included a high wall on our vaulted ceiling. The one place I couldn’t reach was the high walls above the stairs, so I had to wait a week to finish that.

The main challenge was finding the correct ladder. I have a 6’ ladder and a 12’ telescoping ladder that gets up to 20’ so I can get up on the roof of my house and clean out the gutters once a year and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the 6’ ladder was way too short, but the big ladder was too big and to heavy to maneuver in the stairway. Luckily I was able to pull it apart and use just one half, which was a good foot shorter and much lighter, so with that I got the job done.

Next up, in a month or so, we’ll start in on the ceilings. The living room and family room both have the original coat of paint from when the house was built and could use a fresh coat. Both are pretty big spaces though, so we’ll see how long it takes. Luckily once that gets done, just the trim remains and the whole house will have gotten a fresh coat of paint this year. Hopefully we won’t have to repeat this job for quite a few more years after this.

Our major home-improvement project this fall was to paint the bedrooms. They needed to be done cuz the original paint was kinda cheap and thinly applied and beginning to show it’s age, and the girls had both done a good job making a mess or their walls when they were toddlers. Plus there was some spackling to be done as house has settled and there were some cracks. We did one bedroom a month in September, October, and November. We’d do the ceiling one weekend and the walls the next, and then take a couple weekends off between rooms. The setup, moving furniture, taping and putting out tarps, and then tearing it down again and putting everything back is actually substantially more work than the actual painting.

Last year we tiled and painted our bathrooms. This was the first introduction of color into the house interior scheme. Our house is fairly new, and everything is white walls and honey oak wood. Very nice, minimalist and classy. When we did the bathrooms, we did one in a very pale green and the other a very pale blue. Subtle and light. This fall when we told the girls we were going to paint their rooms, there was a clamor for color.

Now lots of people have strong colors in their homes. Some of them even look really good. But not for me; my taste is more just plain white or light shades. Luckily we all agreed we wanted pastels, so we set about helping the girls pick their colors. One bedroom was a pale yellow, and the other a pale lavender. So far so good. Colorful but still airy, and they go together well, and go with the bathrooms, and the whole place is like a musical chord.

So it was down to the master bedroom, and we had to face the question of what color to make it. We already had one room in blue, green, yellow and purple. Where to go? Somehow another blue emerged as the natural choice, although I was concerned it would be too close to the bathroom so as to be discordant. The blue we picked was a bit brighter and bluer, and knowing that you can’t always trust the little paint chip, went ahead with it.

It seemed really nice while we were painting it, and Jeannie liked it without hesitation from the start, but once all the tape was off, I felt kind of overwhelmed. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was not quite right to me. I suppose I would have preferred a lighter shade of pale, but then it would have been too close to the bathroom. Also, unlike any other room in the house, this one does not change color in daylight versus electric light. Still, that was two weeks ago now, and alot has happened already and the idea of going back to do it over again seems unlikely. Jeannie says I should think of it like a jazz chord. So I’m growing to like it more and more.

Anyway it was a large amount of work and I’m happy it’s done and everything looks great. There will be some touch-up painting to do in the hall and stairs and on the trim, but that can mainly wait until after the new year. Now I can get back to working on my book!

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In the irony department, we had a big crowd over for Thanksgiving and the next day I discovered some kind of pencil or metallic scratch marks on Michelle’s freshly painted wall, so there’s a new repair job already!