The House Paint Saga Continues? Is Over? Is Over. Definitely over.

Perhaps you haven’t heard about the house paint color saga over here during the past two months? I’m quite certain J. is ready to divorce me over it by now, but we are so, so, so, very, very close to having a completed and fully painted home. And was all of the angst worth it?

Absolutely.

Last summer we started noticing how much our house needed a fresh coat of paint so I started squirreling tax refund money away (painting a house is EXPENSIVE when you don’t diy, and this is one project I will never attempt to do-it-yourself!) and we’ve been on the hunt for paint colors.

Those of you who have been around the block with me a few times know that I am SO not very decisive when it comes to picking paint colors. I love to look at them, debate them, and am always finding colors I like…I just can’t decisively pick a color to save my life.

Finally we narrowed it down to a color scheme that we liked on a house just down the street from us…also a Spanish style home with a lot of black wrought iron accents like ours. I have always liked the house, it seems homey and “well-put together” (can a house be well-put together?) with a nice neutral scheme that can work with a lot of different accent colors.

Yes, I suppose I could have gone up and just asked them what their taupe base color was. And yes, I suppose that would have saved me countless hours of agony. But it just felt a little creepy in a stalker-I-want-to-totally-steal-your-house-paint-color sort of way, so instead I sample painted up almost every corner of our house. Each day Jason (our friend who painted for us) would stop over or J. would come home, and they’d just sit and shake their head at me. In my defense, it is really hard to imagine what this tiny patch of paint will look like on a two-story, huge expanse of stucco. It was nerve-wracking. I did not want to get the color up there and find out too late that the taupe was “too poopy colored” or that it looked like a penitentiary because it was too gray.

Finally on the very last day before we left for our Michigan trip, I basically did an eenie-meanie-miney-mo between the two colors I had narrowed it down to, and voila! Garden Wall by Behr it was.

So we left and when we returned found that our freshly painted house looks like an entirely brand new home.

houseA variety of shots in many different times of day/light. I couldn’t love it any more if I tried.

Wellllll….that’s not entirely true. Jason had said that the front door really needed a “pop.”

If it was black (like it was supposed to be) it would be way too black hole-ish (yes, he did use that word) in the courtyard since we did all of the french doors in black. So he suggested the blue that is in our tile around the fireplace (bet you never even knew that tile was there, did you? NOW you see it. It is actually accented and so pretty!) and I said, “go for it.”

I didn’t love it. I didn’t really even like it. It was so…bright? Vibrant? BLUE?! So we toned it down and took the green color out of the tile, especially since I have a lot of vintage green pots and courtyard goodies already and just darkened that up. I actually haven’t seen the end result in person yet. We are on vacation (yes, again!) and Jason just texted this photo to me, but I think I like it better already.
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Yes, as you can see…that is just one side of the door, we totally had another 2 week long debate on colors just for the door, too. The light green-ish one you see there in the before shot, third one down, was our winner for awhile. It is close to the pot I have in the corner under our mailslot there in the “after” photo. But I worried that it would be just too “bright” too, especially with the more subdued taupe and blacks we had going on. So we went with Catalina Coast there in the middle.

What do you think? I think I can’t wait to get home and see it in person. And I think that I never want to paint the house again. For not doing any of the “real work,” this project sure was exhausting.

A little demo project.

So, to all of you who have seen our kitchen in person (or in photos), notice anything different?

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Nope…we still have that ugly linoleum and horrid light fixtures. It isn’t so much about what is there, but more about what is not there anymore...

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THAT cabinet that has been the bane of my existence since we moved into our house. I cannot tell you how many times I have hit my head on THAT awkwardly placed cupboard, or how broken up our kitchen felt and looked with it hanging out right down the middle of the kitchen.

So my hair-brained idea that has been stewing for a few years -  just take the whole cabinet out. Earlier this week I started Operation Destroy Cabinet and cleaned the cupboard out, reorganized the kitchen so we could “live with it” for a few days to make sure we could really do without the storage…and happily I can report we don’t need the extra space!

Then today, as I was prepping the trim to get a fresh coat of paint I simply thought “out loud” and my sweet husband knew that it was coming down one way or another. So he (only mildly grumbling that I waited til the END of the weekend to hint about the cabinet’s demise) set about to taking it down for me. About an hour later with a little help from Jeff, we have an incredible open and spacious kitchen.

Addie is excited because when the girls help me bake we can all work and not be crowded under the cabinet. I’m excited because I can see out my the windows when I’m in the kitchen – I can see from one end to the other! And…no more cranking my head. Yeah, definitely that, too.

Add it to the list.

Please tell me who thought it was a good idea to buy a nearly century-old house and that it would be “fun” to fix and update it all up?

Ohhh….right. Me. Yes…well…it was a truly brilliant idea. And since all brilliant ideas in my household seem to lead to even bigger and brighter ideas, today I’ll give you a sort of half unveil of our new bedroom. And then we’ll do a run down of the waterfall of projects that have stemmed from just wanting a new color on our walls.

If you recall, we decided after four years of living with our old lady wallpaper it was time to give our bedroom a new color. We roughly agreed on the color and after two coats of paint (Behr paint & primer in one – best paint ever! Color: color-matched to the Martha Steward color Hydrangea), we have arrived at this…

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I’m still not completely in love with the color. In the morning it is a little too light and blue for what I was going for. But in the late afternoon, it is exactly what I was hoping for…a nice dark blue. And at night it is perfect. So it stays.

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And of course the new paint needed some new bedding…

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…and I loved the blues, greens and browns in this duvet. And then once I opened it up I was thinking it isn’t too girly, so J. might like it and then I spotted the BIRDS! Love it…so it also stays. (And then I ended up getting it for $19.99 at Target on clearance when I went back for a price adjustment – so it most definitely stays!!)

But now? You knew that was coming, right? Yes…now, the black bed and nightstands are too…black. I think I’m going to repaint the bed a chocolate brown – it needs to be something other than that black. And I am toying with doing something to the nightstands so it isn’t all so matchy-matchy, too.

And notice how our behemoth of an armoire is over by the door now…it is slowly making its way out of our room. No, not on its’ own accord, but I purposely didn’t move it back to the corner so that we could easily move it out of the room. I have a plan for that as well that I haven’t quite sold J. on yet. We’ll see, you might see that armoire as the star of Crafty Tuesday in the not so distant future.

I want to put a little chaise and bookcase/library area over where the armoire used to live – which is a totally non-essential project, but it is staying on the “list.”

Oh…and also notice how we have no door on our bedroom right now, too? Well, once the color went on the walls it was obvious we needed to repaint the trim and I have visions of a nice, glossy white on all of the woodwork upstairs. And once I started looking to paint the doors, I realized that they are already 5 coats thick with paint and peeling…so I took our door down and started the stripping process. THREE DAYS AGO. I just rehung the ONE stripped door this evening. And only have a mere TEN more doors to go upstairs. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to get the upstairs done before Christmas.

And we need baseboards, too. Apparently someone decided to remove the baseboards at some point in time and just put the quarter-inch round shoekicks back up, which were also very shabby. So add baseboards in all three bedrooms to the list.  Which seemed completely do-able until as I was painting realized that we have rounded bullnose corners at all the archways.

These crazy “great” ideas, they never seem to help cross anything off this mythical list.

More painting. Can you stand it?

I have just finished a second coat of paint on our bedroom and I just have two thoughts:

1. Our bedroom is entirely too large.
2. I miss my painting buddy. The “rolling” role that is usually filled by J. is a lot of work.

I have happily graduated to doing the trim work without any blue tape, though. Come to find out I can freehand the trim much straighter and faster than if I had taped it.

So, in case you have forgotten here is what we have been living with for the past four years…

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It kinda looks like I haven’t cleaned off my nightstand in the past four years, doesn’t it? And while I kept saying the wallpaper “really isn’t that bad,” it is kinda old-ladyish and enough is enough.

So, we kicked around color ideas for many months, and we debated whether we should de-wallpaper before painting for at least as many months. We decided (after our big failed attempts in Em’s room) that whatever wallpaper glue they used in the 60s kind of disintegrates the 100-year old stucco that our walls are made. And our walls are incredibly smooth right now – you can’t even find the seams…so we decided that the wallpaper will stay.

The color debate was a much harder one to decide.

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I liked the Restoration Hardware Silver Sage there in the middle – J. said it was too “green.”
J. wanted a blue, maybe a robin’s egg color or “Tiffany” blue – I said they were all too “blue.” I can’t wake up to a room that is that…bright. So we finally agreed on a color – called appropriately, “Hydrangea.” It is really pretty. But, you will all have to wait til tomorrow to see a pic because it is just too dark to really see it tonight.

On a completely different wild hair…I’ve been cleaning out everything. Every time I walk through a room I’m constantly scouting things that I can Craigslist or donate or pass off to friends. Just Saturday I was eyeing up the girls’ play kitchen in the playroom and I thought to myself, “they don’t ever even play with it anymore, I should just get rid of it.”

Yeah. You know what is coming. The VERY next day…I walk out into the front lawn and see this…

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Every piece of food and every last dish from the kitchen was out in the lawn being used for a “family reunion picnic.”

Drats. It is like taking toys from a baby…

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…and I can’t deny my babies those little things that bring them such joy, now can I?

Thursday This & That

It is barely still Thursday, but I thought I’d sneak a This & That in since I haven’t done one in awhile and I have a bunch of random mish-mash – none of which makes a full post all on its own. So I say…let’s bring Thursday T & T back!

You might be wondering (or maybe you didn’t even notice at all – those few readers I even have left!) where the Team UP Thursday has disappeared to. My fearless partner and I decided that we just needed a little break. We had been participating for over a year and lately our hearts were just too full of other stuff to really be fully into TUT. In fact, most weeks we were both scrambling on Wednesday night just to get it done, and some of the creative process was getting lost along the way. So we said goodbye to TUT – at least for awhile. (But I do miss everyone and especially you, K! I hope you are doing well.)

Today we also said goodbye to our awesome a/c & heating crew who have been working hard this week and have installed a new unit in our attic for our upstairs. So perhaps this summer we will be stylin’ in cool, cool comfort. I think I might have freaked the crew out a little bit earlier this week, though. I asked if our condenser could be switched around the corner and the guys replied “of course, but we need to get that tree stump out of there.” So I tried to find someone that could do stumps quickly and when I did not find anybody…I took on the stump myself.

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VERY good therapy, let me tell you. And it was pretty cool to see the look of awe on the guys’ faces when they came into the backyard and realized that it was ME who got the stump out.

Of course, I quickly found someone to take care of the other 10 stumps spread throughout the yard. Because…yeah. One stump I can do…Ten? No.  Plus Addikins and I have some big gardening plans and we don’t have time to be grinding and digging stumps. Addie is obsessed with wanting to plant stuff. She has asked me no less than ten times in the last two days if it is time to put her bean and sunflower plants in the ground. “They need to have their roots in soil in the ground, Mama. They can’t stay in my cup.”  So clearly I really need to get her space ready for her.

I mean, look! She came home with garden plans in her backpack today…

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Eeeee! I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love this. I mean seriously? Ovkotow tree? (Avocado tree) Carits? (Carrots) Boobaes? (Blueberries) And Mashroom? (Mushrooms) How can you not totally love her sweet drawings and her completely phonetic attempts at spelling?! It is so darn KUOOT! (That would be “cute” ala Addie!)

And we do indeed have some lovely blueberry bushes that we need to plant, and I have a feeling the Easter Bunny just might bring some gardening equipment our way this weekend, too.

I hope you all have a lovely and blessed Easter as well, if I don’t make it back on here before the weekend is out.

Whew…Another Weekend Down.

But even though this weekend was non-stop packed, it was just a beautiful weekend all around.

We began on Friday with “THE” phone call that we had officially closed on the house. It was a wee bit anti-climactic since we didn’t get handed keys, didn’t get to drive by our new house slowly relishing in the thought of a “new home,” and didn’t even get to move all of our junk from one place to the other. Oh…wait – we have a new “house” and didn’t have to move! All good, yes.

In fact, we celebrated our new place with a rockin’ Spring Boutique. I think that my dear Erin may have taken a photo or two, so maybe I can talk about our crafty fun tomorrow with some photos.

Saturday we started making our “to-do” list and finding a few little things here and there that make a huge difference. All bets are off now – we are kind of house improvement obsessed. We spent this afternoon ripping out all of the overgrown bushes and flowerbeds in the backyard. And I have the sunburn and achy muscles to prove it. Addie is beside herself with excitement. She is itchin’ to plant a garden! And flowers! And anything that she can get dirty doing! Each flowerbed that we uncovered she was ready to replant, I had to keep telling her, “Soon, baby. Soon.”  I did remember to take photos before the deconstruction of the jungle, but I forgot to take photos before J. demo’d the rotten (literally – the wood was completely rotten!) pergola/arbor/thingy. I’m so disappointed because it makes such a huge difference in the backyard.

Even the small things make great changes. Like Daddy and Addie took the babygate at the top of the stairs down…and now it is crazy how different our hallway feels. While they were taking it down I made a little sigh and Addie asked me, “Do you still need the gate, Mama?” I said, “I still need you to be little enough to need the gate.” And she shot back with, “Well, you should put a brick on my head, Mama!”

Don’t think I wouldn’t try if I thought it would stop her from growing or stop time – for even a few minutes. But instead time marches on…and we are off since we still have lots more work to do.

Crafty Tuesday

Whew. Last week was kind of a blur and our Valentine/School obligations did not leave much time for much craftiness.

The girls put together nearly 50 valentines between the two of them. Em went with the bird/owl themed ones…

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We ended up using a lot of scrap paper up. And Addie went with the, what else? Cat themed ones…

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She was signing the back and didn’t like that the “back kitty” didn’t have a face, so she also drew smiley faces on all of them before we attached the lollipop…

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And I have saved a few bucks by making hairbows for the girls and as gifts. (Do they EAT the hairbows?) They both love to wear them, but rarely do they end up in the hair drawer. I’m not really sure where they end up.

I got an entire package of 25 alligator clips on etsy for $2.25. And some ribbon from the DollarSpot at Target (5 ribbons for $1). So each clippy bow works out to about .35 cents each. Not too shabby. Plus I don’t get all worked up if they don’t make it back home since they are kind of cheap.

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I had a few other good reasons for not attacking any of the sewing projects on my list, too.

The bedrooms of Thing 1 and Thing 2. The Great-Bedroom-Painting-Projects of 2010 took up The.Entire.Weekend.

I had promised the girls that they could pick out their paint. Of course I was hoping they would pick the pretty, LIGHT color on the tops of the swatches. But both girls went with the “middle,” very-much-brighter, colors. And both of them picked their colors because they liked the names. Yes, they did. Emmy picked “Watercolor Lilies” and Addie picked “Scent of Rose.”

She screeched, “ROSE? I should pick Rose for my color, because I am Rosie, right Mama?”

Riiiight.

So after the wallcovering debacle, (Should it stay? Should it go?) five coats of paint between the two rooms, the “help” of two monkeys, and a bit of testing our very stable 16+ year marriage – the girls’ rooms are finally back in order and we are crashed on the sofa.

The unveiling of the Watercolor Lilies. Hmmm…doesn’t look too bad…

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Em working the roller. She actually did a really good job and lasted for almost the entire four walls (I was betting 1 wall, tops!).

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I didn’t really take a before pic, but you can see the room here from a few years ago, it didn’t look too much different.

And here it is put back together. Sort of. I don’t want to hang anything on the walls now that we worked so hard to paint them!

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And then we have Addie’s, Scent of Rose. I think a “Taste” or maybe “Whiff” of Rose might have been a little bit more palatable. Scent is, well…kinda strong. It looks more like sugary, make-your-teeth-hurt-kinda sweet cotton candy. But she ADORES it. And really that is all that matters.

Addie really just wanted to write her name. She lost interest much sooner than Em did…

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Checking out her pink room after it had dried overnight…

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A little peek at her room, I haven’t put the curtains up or anything on the walls in here yet either. J. was helping me put all the hardware back on again. Her before room pics are also here, obviously the bed has been converted from the toddler bed.

I guess now that I look at it again, it really isn’t that bad. And it has toned down. A little…

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Of course, the problem with doing house projects is that they are very satisfying, once they are done that is. Such great improvements! Just imagine if we stripped the doors and repainted the trim, too? Or maybe that hideous wallpaper in the girls’ bathroom should come down? Or we could….

(Poor J. I just know he is trying to figure out when he needs to travel again to escape my home project madness.)