Virtual Fun with Paint

I've enjoyed testing some of the colors that I've picked out for the house with the Lowes online virtual painting software . Below is a photo of what my kitchen cabinets *should* look like when they are finished. Mind you, the photo is not one of *my* kitchen, but it is just used to show how the wall and cabinet colors will look together. I think I've finally, for the 12th time, decided on Homestead Resort Parlor Sage for the walls. Yeah, I know. Last time it was something different, and the time before that, too. But I've decided to try and only use historic colors and this one is quite pretty, though it is a little darker in the photo than it's suppose to be. See how the kitchen and dining concepts are starting to coordinate? Remember, it's all one big room.




I'm still having trouble picking a final color for the living room. Everytime I think I have it, I start doubting myself. I really don't know if I should go with an ever so slightly orangy yellow, or a "yellow-er" yellow, or with a light yellow. Here are the three historical colors that I'm bending my brain around. Ugh. This is hard!







Saturday, Jeff and I got some work done around here, though I didn't get anything primed as I had planned. I needed to finish (yes, I said FINISH! I'm finished!) my last stencils, sand them all a bit, and then wipe down the walls. Jeff worked in our gutted bathroom. He moved the bathroom door over 10 inches to the right to keep it from banging into the newly relocated toilet (the toilet isn't installed yet, but when it is installed, we don't want to be whacking it - or whoever is sitting on it- with the door everytime we walk in). We also brought in the new vanities/sinks to try to get an idea of where we want them installed.

Before the weekend is out, I would like to get our living room ceiling painted and maybe the kitchen primed. We shall see:)

It really does get worse before it gets better...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my finally finishing up the "old pitted wall" effect that I'm adding to the walls in the dining room, kitchen and living room. I thought I'd share a few photos of me in action, hehe. As you may recall, I plastered my entire living room back several months ago, but I used a different technique (which later I decided I didn't like...so I did-it-all-again using the above mentioned technique). It goes without saying that I'm really sick of drywall mud now, lol. Notice me below giving my new bucket of drywall compound the "evil eye":)




After all the mudding was done this time around, the dreaded "light" sanding began. However light it was, it still created an awful mess that took FOREVER to clean up. Fortunately, the kidlets were out of the house for day so at least there wasn't the pitter patter of little feet through all the dust! Here's a shot of what my living room looked like right after sanding the walls:



Joy.

I wanted to also post a few pics of my husbands handywork. A few weeks back, he moved the unsightly,ill placed, and disorganized electical junction box from our hallway to inside of our laundry room/pantry area.

A couple of before shots of the box when we opened up the panel and wall...the sloppy wiring really drove my husband nuts!





And now, a few shots of the neat and tidy relocated panel. The first one is of the new location before the panel was installed. See the shelving with all the lined up canned goods? That, too, is an example of his handywork:)







I would be remiss if I didn't post a photo of one of our little helpers at work. Our oldest daughter is shown here priming a few exterior trim pieces for her daddy. That was one less thing his *bigger* little helper (Me!) didn't have to do! Thanks, dear!



In the latest renovation news, we're inching our way closer to painting. I have about four more plaster stencils to put up and a little more sanding before we start priming the ceiling and walls. Before we actually breathe life into the walls with color, I may go ahead and get started cleaning and priming the kitchen cabinets. Believe it or not, I'm actually starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

As promised, photos of my ceiling fan makeover

Well, I'm finished with the fan project and just put the blades back on this morning. As you can see in the "before" picture below, our living room fan was a standard fake wood grain/yellow brass ceiling fan. With a couple of coats of anodized bronze metal paint, it is remarkably changed with a whole different style.

Before:


After:


Yet another After:

Ceiling fan makeover! Good-bye yellow brass!

I haven't updated in a little while...everyone here has been sick (and I was on a several day fast/cleanse and was not at all focussed on work!), so not too terribly much has been happening around the house.

But I do have to share my ceiling fan makeover story. I really don't like ceiling fans in general but I do know that in some cases, they are absolutely necessary...like in our living room, for instance. Our ceiling is very high and we need the fan in the winter to push down the warm air when the fireplace is being used and we need it in the summer to keep a nice breeze going. I would love to see a simplistic chandelier in place of our ugly shiny-yellow-brass-with-fake-wood-grain-blades fan, but I know that function trumped beauty in this case. Until now, anyway.

I spent some time online looking at different ceiling fans, particularly ones with my favorite old fashion metal finish - oil-rubbed bronze. They *are* available, but pricey. And those that aren't too pricey look just like our current fan, just in the bronze finish. Sooooo, I decided to buy some Rustoleum anodized bronze paint made for metal surfaces and refinish our fan myself. I'm still in the middle of the project as the fan needs another coat and the blades still need to be done, but even with just one coat, it looks *great* so far! The difference is like night and day. From cheesy to tasteful just like that, lol. I'm going to be doing the blades with the same paint because I don't want them to stand out but just blend in with the rest of the fan. I'll be sure to post pics when the project is complete:) This would also be a great idea for other fixtures that have a nice form but an ugly finish. I may even do this with our current kitchen cabinet door handles and pulls and I'm even considering doing our interior brass door knobs. Can you tell I'm really excited to discover this paint? lol

Jeff did surprise me twice this week by bringing home our long awaited new bisque colored sink (pictured in white). And then later in the week, he surprised me with a new bisque colored GE over the stove microwave to match our stove:) We got the microwave installed yesterday and it looks great! I was so happy to get rid of our old black one. The old one worked great and was also a GE Spacemaker (16 years old!!!), but it really was an eye sore that stood out amidst all of our other bisque colored appliances. Our dishwasher is black and will someday be replaced, but you don't really notice it unless you're standing in front of it - you can't see it from the living room like you can the microwave.

We won't be installing the new countertops and sink until the cabinets are primed and painted Russet red, but with the installation of the microwave, I can already start seeing the cottage/farmhouse theme come together. I love the cabinet color! It's so cheerful and vibrant and homey.

I guess that's about it for now...this week I'll be working on the plaster stencils some more. Can't wait till I'm done with those!

Dining room progress and concept photos

This weekend, I slaved away at the dining and living room walls. I feel like I have a love/hate relationship with drywall mud, lol, because I love how the walls turn out when I'm finished but I *hate* the process of getting there! Putting on the mud, rolling it with a texture roller, smoothing them out a bit, waiting for them to dry, adding a smooth coat, sanding them, wiping them down...and then cleaning up all the sanding dust! So went my weekend. It was a dirty, dirty job, to say the least, but we now have nice dining and living room walls - a clean slate that only needs primer and paint:) I have photos of the mess but I'm going to wait and share those later because I don't even want to think about, lol. I'd rather think about what all this work is for- the end result that we'll someday enjoy.

So I've posted a few before, during and (future) after photos of our dining room. It's starting to take shape, though I must admit that it seems really bare now with those stark white walls. I *finally* settled on a paint color. I thought that I had chosen a shade of green called "Paris Green" but then I found a similar shade that I liked even better. It's called "Whispering Pine". It's a lighter, foggy green, if that makes any sense. The last photo below shows what we're going for in our dining room. I'll explain more down below. (click photos to enlarge)





On Saturday, I worked for about 9 hours straight on these dining room walls. I was so glad to be finished mudding! The table won't stay turned this way. The room is longer than it is wide and I think the table looks better turned longways. I'm just storing the white piece of furniture (in front of the window) in there for now. It's a future project, lol.



When we're all finished, this is what I want the dining room to look like (except for the ceilings - just pretend the photo shows white plank ceilings, lol!). The actual paint color I mentioned earlier is actually a smidgeon lighter than what is shown. I really like it! It's a nice soft peaceful green that looks great against the digitally added white window and door trim. The door you see there, that leads into the pantry/laundry area. We'll be replacing the bifold with a solid pine door painted "Russet" red, which is also going to be our kitchen cabinet color. Our dining/kitchen is just one big room, so I wanted to tie some of the colors together. I'm ashamed to say how long we've had this light fixture (still in the box!), lol, but it's just a very simple piece with linen shades. The dimensions in the photo below are askew - it's not *that* big, but about 25 inches across. The floors will be heart pine finished with tinted tung oil. My curtain fabric (that I've had forever) is a silk plaid taffeta- a sharp contrast to all the rustic, simple elements in the room. Though I'm not a taffeta kind of girl, I really fell in love with this fabric at first sight because the plaid element adds a colorful country touch that will tie all the colors in the house together. The curtain design will be simple - just long, straight drapes hung on an oil rubbed bronze rod. I'm still not sure if I want to go with a rod pocket design or just hang them with rings. I bought some white linen sheers that I may also use in here and they have a rod pocket, so if I use them, I guess the plaid curtains need to be the same.


So...I'm going for a really cozy and warm kitchen and dining room. Hopefully we'll be able to pull this off:)

Some before and after photos

Folks, what can I say? It's cold. I'm trying my hardest to thaw out so that I can get some work done around here, but I guess the best way to do that is to just start moving...

Before I do, I want to share with you some photos of some of the projects we've been working on. I finally found my photo editing software and can now upload new pictures. Remember to click on the photos to enlarge.

I posted a before and after video clip of our deck a few weeks back, but for those of you who didn't see it (and because we're so darn proud of it) here is a before and after photo.

Before (poor, poor, deck):


After (va-va-boom!):


On to the inside of the place...

Our living room fireplace wall before: (notice the dark heavy tile for the fireplace surround - it's ok but we wanted to lighten it up)


The fireplace after: (We went with small tiles that resembled limestone. The real limestone tiles were too thick and wouldn't slide right under sides of the mantle. To avoid "dismantling the mantle, we opted for a thinner tile that gives us somewhat of the same look for more than half the money and effort. It really lightens the feel of the fireplace, I think)



The walls in the above photo are now drywall mud white. You can't tell it in the photo, but I applied a certain texture to the wall. In a couple of weeks, we'll be priming them and then painting. Here is a photo that poorly shows an approximate shade I'm shooting for. It's warm yellow. We will eventually be putting pine planks on the ceiling, painted out white, but until then, we'll just give the ceiling a fresh coat of white paint.



It's been fun trying to figure out ways to turn a contemporary home built in the 70's into an "old" house. There is no trim around the entryways into the living room, kitchen, or hallway. Adding trim would be somewhat tricky because of how the corners meet. You may have read here before about the decorative relief that I'm doing around these entry ways. I now have photos to share:) The reliefs were done using a large stencil and drywall mud instead of paint. I still need to sand the reliefs to smooth out a bit, but they've turned out great! I have a couple other entries to do and it is rather time consuming, but it will give some character to otherwise boring entries. The stencils will be rather subtle - painted out the same color as the walls and maybe antiqued a bit.

These are a little hard to see...

The first one shows the pitted effect I've added to the walls.







I have other photos, but I need to get to work. Right now, Jeff is moving our electrical junction box from the hallway to the laundry room. This will get it out of view but will also allow us to raise the ceiling in our hallway from 7 feet to 8 feet. All the wiring was in the way above the 7 ft ceiling which made raising the ceiling impossible (unless we wanted to just box it all in with drywall, but I didn't want to have to look at that every time I walked down the hall).

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Kim

She lives!!! (And has photos to prove it.)

Over a month has gone by without an update but that's not because we haven't been working on the house. In the last entry, you saw our "beautifully gutted bathroom" as it was just a month ago. So I thought you might be interested to know that it's still beautifully gutted, lol. Yes, as the last warm days of the season quickly disappear, we decided that we need to finish our deck project. This has pretty much been our weekend project since the middle of September. It was in pretty rough shape and we even tore part of it down, which meant rebuilding more railing. I'm pleased to say that it is now repaired and stained and it turned out great! If the weather is nice this weekend, we'll apply one more coat for good measure. It's nice to be able to look out our dining room window and see fresh color instead of old ugly wood planks. I can't wait to put planter boxes along the railing!

Anyway, if you would like to see some of the before/during/after photos, click this link. http://www.onewomanslife.com/deck.wmv Needless to say, we are very pleased with the result! Oh, the lattice you see propped up against the lower half of the deck, that's to keep the dogs off until we do the second coat. I just sprayed the dust off the deck right before shooting those photos, so it's wet.