1970's Called.... It Wants Your Paneling

November 2013

After the wedding, Josh and I took a much needed month vacation from any house or life projects.  It was glorious!  Then it happened, I started to feel the itch and needed to find a quick and easy house project that wouldn't cost me anything.  Just so you can understand how much I need house projects I started this on November 9, 40 days after we returned from our honeymoon. 40 days and 40 nights without house project, the longest I had gone in over 4 years. Impressive.

 

 

Ever since painting the windows in the guest room I had the urge to paint the dark wood panelling in the space.  Originally, I embraced it in all it's 1970's glory, but the fact was it was in pretty beat up shape.  There were several areas that needed patching and repair. So it started on a Saturday when I spent a few hours moving everything to one side of the room and patching and caulking a few holes, gouges, and cracks.  A quick sand and wipe down and I was ready to rumble. 

 

 

We only have panelling on two walls, so this was going to be a quick project. I decided to put the primer on Saturday night right after dinner so it had a good 10 hours to dry.  Very quickly I discovered our primer had gone off (apparently 3 years is all you get with Kilz). It was chunky and smelled horrible. After spending 30 minutes trying to salvage it by mixing and adding bleach I had to call it.  I managed to find another primer deep in the depths of our basement hoard.  By the time I restarted it was 8pm and suddenly my easy project had me painting late into the night in a grumpy mood. Sigh.

 

This photo was taken with my cell phone- not classy

Sunday ,I woke up early so I could get two coats of paint on the panels.  The primer had essentially absorbed into the wall so I knew multiple coats may be in my future.  I decided to paint the entire wall with a brush.  I figured I could get more paint on, get into the crevices of the panelling and wood grain and hopefully give the panelling a more wood work look.  I used a three inch brush and moved through the room painting our bone white acrinamel.  It definitely was slow in comparison to a roller, but it wasn't horrible.  It took me about 90 minutes to finish the first coat.  Later, around dinner time, I went back and did a second coat.  Luckily, that seemed to be all the room needed. 

 

I cleaned the floors and dusted the furniture and then put everything back into place on Monday.  This is now the brightest room in our house.  It gets both South and West light so with the new white panelling it practically glowed afterward.  A small mini update and the room was ready for my parents to visit for Thanksgiving.
 

Brick: To Paint? Or Not To Paint?

January 2013

After I finished staining the mantel I spent the week applying the poly protective coats.  It took three coats that I applied with a foam brush.  By Thursday, I knew I could no longer ignore the lower portion of our fireplace.  This was my dilemma: I love brick, heck I am from Virginia.  Our clay soil means we are the biggest producers and users of brick in the US (I just made this fact up, but it could be true).    Our brick had problems- big problems. One, it was not the nicest brick, just kinda of a boring 'I am brown' brick, not that I was going to hold it against it.  Worst, the mortar was pink, yes, pink.  Urgh I hated that mortar.  On top of all of that: the brick was covered with 80 years of soot and general dirty house funk.  Just to remind you what the brick was looking like:      

I had some choices.  I could clean the brick. There were several methods I found online that were home made and involved a lot of elbow grease.  There were also several expensive solutions I could purchase where I slathered some goopy gel on the brick wait a day and then according to the pictures have an amazing before and after moment.  The problem was none of these options would help my pink mortar.  This meant I would have to pay someone to come and repoint my fireplace with more attractive mortar- namely any other sensible color such as gray or tan. Read between the lines: very expensive for little change.

The other option was to paint the brick and mortar and be done with the darn thing.  Gulp.  This was tough, there was no going back, once painted brick would be painted forever. There is no stripper for brick. I liked our rustic living room and painting brick felt modern and cold to me.  The problem was I didn't really want to spend any more money of this fireplace. I looked online and searched painted brick fireplaces. Honestly they did make a huge difference to rooms. Rooms that felt old and tired looked fresh and bright.

On a Saturday, I decided to do a quick clean to brick to see if it made a difference. I cleaned the brick and cleaned and it looked exactly the same: sooty sad brown.  I made the decision- we were painting. 

The next step was what to paint the brick?  We could go with the same brown as the chimney breast or the standard bone white of all of our trim and ceilings.  Josh and I decided since our new surround was dark brown we should paint the brick Bone White to stand out.   I bought masonry primer and with way more confidence then I felt I started painting the bricks. 

It was pretty quick work, one coat of primer on Saturday night, then two coats of bone white acrinamel the next day. Getting in the cracks and mortar lines took a long time.  Luckily, small detailed oriented projects are my jam. The best part was since it was January and I had my Downton Abbey to replay over and over.  I had to make sure I had memorized every scathing Maggie Smith reproach.

By the end of the weekend the fireplace looked like this:

Regret it- no, Love it- maybe not totally?

Sunny Hallway

February 2012

Hallway part two!  After we let the plaster dry I went ahead and primed the entire room.  This proved to be one smelly situation since our primer decided it was old and was going to be stinky.  It quickly became one very small and very smelly room. It seems painting in the middle of the winter with no exterior windows allows odors to linger for a long time (who knew?). Can you say fumes? After going back and forth about colors and painting 12 samples on the wall we decided to go with a creamy gold color for the hallway. Since the room is so small and all the surrounding rooms had such vibrant colors we thought this was the warmest way to transition between spaces. We went with Benjamin Moore Concord Ivory.  Which is not ivory for the record but more of a butter color. 

I bought a color-matched gallon of Miller Acrinamel Satin and pulled out my trusty Bone White Acrinamel Semi-Gloss for the trim and ceiling and went to town.  By went to town I mean I hand painted the entire space.  It was slow going.  There was a lot of cutting in since there were so many doors.  There was virtually no space to roll anything.  Also, the room is 9 feet tall so I couldn't use a step stool,  I had to move my 8 foot ladder up and down the hallway as needed. But three coats of Ivory and two coats of bonewhite on the doors and trim and I felt like I had a whole new space.

At the same time, I stripped the hardware for the closet door (which someone had slopped paint all over) I also ordered a vintage inspired light on Etsy and picked a clear glass shade to allow as much light as possible. Smaller changes included adding oil-rub bronze light switch covers, painting the thermostat bone white (a huge bonus since it was a gross 1970's gold color) and getting some frames for all of our national park posters.

The end result was light and bright and a huge difference from the blink and you missed it dirty white hallway.  Part of me wishes the color was a little more orange and went with the rug a little better but I didn't want to sacrifice the brightness for matchy matchy requirements. All in all, I was pretty happy with the space.

Just as a reminder: Before 2010

After 2012

A round up:  plaster repairs $200, Concord Ivory wall paint $43.00, Bone White trim/ceiling paint $0 (because we bought it a year ago), vintage inspired Etsy light $75.00,  oil rub bronze switch cover $8.00, Michael's black frames for three posters- $60.00, and Pottery Barn sale runner $75.00.  That's a whole new space for under $500.00! Although when you realize the space is about 8 square feet it may not work out to such a great deal.

Hello Storage, Have We Met?

February 2012

Soon after we finished framing in the wall, our carpenter Jason arrived to start our built-ins.  The first thing to go in was a bookcase that we designed to go in the small recessed area around the chimney.  We designed it to have a small cabinet on bottom and three movable shelves up above.  The first day it went in was a huge break through! One more hole in this room was finally filed up! Next, Jason installed new baseboards and door trim throughout the room.  Instantly our shanty half constructed room started to look a little more professional. 

Last, he started building in the two closets along the eave wall.  The last step was for him to make the solid wood shaker style doors to match our kitchen cabinets. He then dropped the doors and shelves off for us to start painting, and painting, and painting before he installed them.  We had 6 doors in all, 7 shelves and endless feet of closets and trim to start priming and painting.  We pulled out our trusty Benjamin Moore Bone White Acrinamel and went to work.  We set up the doors and shelves in the basement and I circled the room countless times painting the trim.  Slowly the spaces came together and we started to imagine what life would be like with four walls in the bedroom and enough closet space for all of our clothes. In the meantime, we kept painting.