Painting the town (well, the dining room) red

Master

We've been busy painting the last couple of weekends. Now, every room has color!

Here's the breakdown of colors:
Master- Labradorite
Guest room- Privilege Green ( or supposed to be- I'll explain further down)
Upstairs bath- Beeswax & white
Small guest room, office, halls, stairwells, kitchen- Canoe
Dining room- Showstopper red (or supposed to be)
Downstairs bath- White
Living room- Pewter Tankard

Dining room

Last weekend we really went crazy painting and put color on the walls in most of the rooms. Fred went and picked up the red. They didn't carry that color in the line we had been getting (We're using the Harmony from Sherwin Williams (low voc)). They only had it in the Duration, so we got it in that. It claims to be low voc, but it's not! It smells like feet! I put on the first coat which was extra bright and hurt my eyes. That and the smell gave me a massive migraine. I told Fred he could put on the rest of the coats. It was supposed to get darker the more coats we put on, but it's still bright red. I'm kinda of irritated about the fact that it's not the color we chose. I know that the swatches are typically a bit different from the actual color, but this is way off. Like fire engine red vs brick red off.  Fred loves the color though. It may grow on me, or I may not ever be able to go in the dining room without sunglasses.

Up the main stairs

Guest room

My other issue is with the guest room. I put the second coat on Saturday. It was late in the evening so it was kind of hard to see if there were any lines. The overhead lights are not very bright. So Sunday, I checked on it only to find that halfway on the wall, the color changed! It was where I had opened a new bucket of paint. They're supposed to be the same color, but they're not. The second bucket is an entire shade LIGHTER. So we had to repaint to that line and completely cut everything in again, to get the room the same shade. Grrrrrr. I'm thinking we're going to have a talk with the paint guy.

Office

Small guest room

The rest of the painting went well throughout the house. All of the rooms have had two (or in the case of the dining room- four) coats of paint. All that's left is edging to the ceilings and around the trim with the color. A few rooms have that done. I've been working on painting the trim. I still have one room left to paint the trim and then all the baseboards. There are a few missed places that need to be completed and then the stair spindles. Those, I imagine, will take me a day to do. I'd say we're getting pretty close to finishing the painting. Then, we get to scrub the house, clean the floors and somehow protect them.

Anyone know about old hardwood floors? We're pretty sure they're too old for the poly trend. We think they're waxed, but aren't sure. We've been trying to research the best way to clean and protect them, but it's hard to decipher through all the opinions online.

We have color!

It has taken us over six months to get to this point, but yesterday we made it! We finally started to put color on the walls. My house is no longer white, brown and blue. (white-primer, brown- hardwood floors, blue- blue painters tape). We still have a long way to go, but we're way beyond the half-way point.

Stairs and spindles primed

Living room primed

Last weekend, Fred's dad and I finished priming the house. Most of it had been completed, but there were a few odds and ends that needed to be done. I had to rim out the corners of a few rooms and take on the task of priming the spindles of the staircase. We have 90, so it took forever! Thankfully, Fred's dad helped too. He had also found another spot in the plaster (this time in the dining room) that needed to be taken out and redone. So that pushed us a bit behind, but we got it done and the dining room is ready for color- RED!

Master painted- Labrodorite

Fred spent the weekend painting ceilings, while I painted the closets. All seven are now done! Once that was done, I was able to start with the most wonderful sight of this renovation.... painting the master bedroom. We chose a color called Labrodorite (From Sherwin Williams). It's close to Williamsburg blue. Since there was so much of the W-burg blue in the house that we scraped away, we wanted to pay homage to it, by painting our room that color. It looks much better on the wall than as the trim color. Once I finished the walls in the master, Fred's dad started trimming out the edges and corners. He's almost done with it and the trimmed out parts look so good and gives it a great finished look. I also cools the room off some. With four windows in there, the rooms gets a lot of light and the color tones down the blinding sun coming through.

Guest room painted- privilege green

My next task was the guest room. This room is a color called Privilege green. It's a little lighter than a forest green. Once again, there are four windows in there, so it will get plenty of sunlight. The rest of the house will be a color called Canoe, which is a cappuccino color. It's also the same color as the kitchen. We're testing out some reds and trying to decide which one we like best. We're going for a deep red in the dining room. I don't want it fire truck red. We really like a color called Show Stopper, if we can get it to the right tone. That may take several coats. And did you know that if you paint a room red, you need to use a P2 primer? It has a gray tone in it to mute down the color. White comes through red easily) So now we need to reprime the room, so we can get the right tone. I think using the P2 primer will be better than having to put five coats of red on the wall.

The house is continuing to be a work in progress, but we're getting there. Two of the largest rooms have been painted, which gives us hope that we can get the others done rather quickly. Then it will be getting all of the trim and windows painted (24 windows left to paint). We're just a few weeks away from finishing- we hope....

It's Primetime!

Bookcases all sanded

Well December has flown by, but we have made some more progress on the house. As of yesterday, we have finished scraping and sanding the walls and trim. Now, it's Primetime!

Trim on stairs scraped and sanded

We're hoping to get to the house a couple of nights this week and this weekend to get the 5 rooms left, primed. We have the guest room, dining room, office, living room, and downstairs hall/foyer to do. I have been dreaming of this day for 6 months! We still have some small projects to do, such as scraping, sanding, and priming the doors and cabinet shelves, but those are not immediate concerns.

The plaster patch- in process

There have been a few setbacks... we have tons of cracks that we've had to gouge out and fill. We think they're a mix of the house settling over time and possibly some from the earthquake in August. Fred's dad has worked diligently on getting all of the cracks filled. He also repaired the huge place in the guest room ceiling and wall where there had been a water leak at some point and that caused the plaster to crack. He replastered the wall and ceiling and it looks phenomenal! He did a better job that the "professionals" who replastered the dining room wall.

The basement seems to be dry, even after the storm the other night, which makes us very happy. It also gives us some hope that we're getting the moisture issue in there under control. Fred may have his wine cellar before we know it!

Laundry room!

Nice chair that was given to us :-)

Now that we're getting closer to painting the rest of the house, we've started to change our minds on the color for the dining room. Now I'm thinking RED! I know red dining rooms are very popular, but I think it would look so elegant in the house. I'm still planning on gold curtains, and they make a great combination. Plus, the rug for in there is a deep red with gold tones.  Other colors for the house- Majority of the living areas will be the same color as the kitchen. It's called Canoe, but it's like a cappuccino color.  The Master bedroom will be a Williamsburg blue and the guest room will be a sage green.

So the to-do list is a little shorter. Still to-do:
Prime the remaining rooms
Paint walls and trim
Clean and wax floors
Finish some items on Misc list, such as doors and shelves

We're getting there!

Christmas is around the corner and we're proud to honor the reason for the season. We are truly blessed. Merry Christmas to you and your family!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Upstairs hall primed

As the holidays approach, (and I must say, they're coming faster than I'm ready for) we're trying to increase speed in our productivity in hopes of completing the house by Christmas. Fred thinks we can finish and be moved in by Christmas... I'm more realistic and think it'll be at least mid-January. I hope he proves me wrong.

Small guest room primed

Fireplace scraped. How may colors do you see?

We're almost done with the upstairs. The smaller guest room (the "nursery" for those who know the references. And no that is not a declaration of pregnancy, but what the room WILL be when we are blessed.) and the upstairs hall have been primed. The windows work and they have been primed as well. So, now we've moved on to the guest room. It's quite a large room and it has been our makeshift command center, so cleaning it out took some effort. But we got it cleared and I cleaned and papered it. We scraped and sanded and realized that some of the plaster is cracked and is coming off. So Fred started peeling it off and half the plaster on the wall came down :-(. So now we need to replaster that section to be able to prime. Other than that, the guest room is ready to go! We also papered all downstairs and started on the living room. I scraped and scraped and scraped the paint off the bookshelves and baseboards. There's still a little bit left to scrape and then I can go crazy with the electric sander! We're getting closer. Three more rooms to go (the foyer, office and dining room).

Guest room before

Guestroom after cleaned

Hopefully, there won't be anymore hiccups and we'll be able to get things finished quickly. One of the issue we're contending with right now is the water heater. At first, we thought it wasn't working due to a very old timer hooked to the water heater line that turns it off for certain hours of the day.  It's a great product for those who don't want the water heater running all day using energy and from what I've seen they're fairly inexpensive. However, this one is old and needs to go.Turns out after bypassing it, that the timer is not the issue. So now we're trying to figure out if it's a bad breaker. Fred and his dad finally got the stove installed and now my kitchen is basically finished! (Some trim still needs to be installed).

Fred and his dad working on windows

Stove is in!

Fred counted the windows that still need to be opened and he has 1 left. He's proud of the fact that he's gotten the windows functioning after years of them being painted shut. There were layers and layers of paint. Not that we'll open them when we move in because we need screens (and screens don't look right on those kinds of windows) and Fred's allergies keep us from opening the windows as pollen circulates the whole house, which makes him miserable.... but I love the fresh air!

Medallion

"New" Chandelier

We were also given a gorgeous chandelier and plaster medallion that we'll be putting up in the dining room. Fred's brother and his wife gave it to us... it's from Smithfield Inn. They rescued it when the Inn renovated a couple of years ago. We're so excited because they are just so beautiful and will make the dining room look fantastic! the medallion needs a bit of repair work, but other than a few places, it is in unbelievable shape. We're so blessed to have received such wonderful pieces.
 
So the holidays are around the corner and we're busting butt to finish. I'm hoping everything is primed before Christmas. I keep hoping that Santa's elves will pop up and finish the house for us.... until then we'll keep the Christmas music blaring and the scrapers and sanders going.
 

Hurray for small victories!

Working on getting the Master sanded

We've gotten a few issues resolved... the refrigerator seems to be working now that Fred and his dad leveled it. Who knew!?! The gutters are also up, which has helped a lot with the water issue in the basement and the short when it rains. When it rained last Friday, the gutters kept water out, so when we got to the house Saturday the basement light worked! Hurray for small victories!

Door/trim in Master down to bare wood

Last weekend, we had the help of Fred's brother and his wife. Fred's brother was a huge help in that he finished priming the back stairwell that we had been neglecting mostly because it would be a huge pain in the rear to do. But he got it primed with no issues! He also went through the house and fixed the numerous cracks in the walls from settling. His wife and I worked hard on scraping doors and trim in the Master. We managed to get the trim scraped and sanded to start priming. And, we finally got the Master bedroom primed this weekend! One bedroom down, three to go!

We're now starting to work on the smaller bedroom and hallway. We worked this weekend on scraping the trim, door frames, and windows in hopes of getting both rooms primed this coming weekend. I also started working with the belt sander on some of the flat trim and once I got the feel of it, it was awesome!

The Master primed

Starting to use the belt sander

Fred's dad spent most of the day fighting with the new light fixture for the back stairwell. It's a pain when dealing with an older home that it is not to today's "standard size." So, after several trips to the hardware store to get the screws he needed (yes, the fixture came with screws but they weren't long enough to get it to stay in place on the ceiling, so we had to get longer ones) he finally got it in place. And it looks great! It's as close to something that would look original to the house as we could find. It's similar to the fixtures that are original and still in the house.

We stopped by the house last week to check on things and found that the electrician had been back to work on some of the issues. He was also wonderful and installed the microwave (it's an over the range microwave). It looks great! The only thing left to install is the stove. Fred is antsy to get it in and thinks he can install it. I told him to let the contractor do it, since I'm sure he's done it before and I know Fred hasn't. But the kitchen is getting closer and closer. I know I say that every time, but now there's only a couple of things left to do. We finally got the kitchen cleaned up today of boxes and other random items and it looks so much bigger!

So it's been a productive couple of weekends but we still have a lot to do. I'm hoping we can get the upstairs knocked-out soon. It's looking like we won't be in the house until closer to Christmas or maybe even after. I'm not happy about that, but I want the house ready before we move everything in because it would be a bigger pain to move furniture around to work in the rooms. Besides the floors need to be cleaned really well and a good waxing before any furniture goes on them. We may have to resort to begging for help, but so far we're moving right on a long. I just can't wait till we're done.

We're still trucking....

What a crazy few weeks. We've had all sorts of things going on.... and so has the house.

The kitchen still isn't complete cause we're still waiting for the electrician to come finish his stuff. All that's left is getting the stove and disposal wired and hooked up. I can't wait until the stove isn't in the middle of the room anymore. Then it might look like a real kitchen! We got the refrigerator hooked up... but that is not without its own issue. So we went to the house on Sunday and opened to the door to a pool of water in the kitchen. Apparently, the plumber used one of the plastic water hookups for the ice maker and when the refrigerator was put in place the hose was kinked and the plastic cracked, sending water everywhere for three days! We got it cleaned up and tried to find the metal one we had bought when we order the appliances. Couldn't find it anywhere, so Fred went and bought a new one. We got that hooked up. One issue solved. Now the freezer had lots of water in it that froze up. We're thinking it's from the hook up but aren't sure. And now the refrigerator beeps saying the door isn't closed all the way when we know it is..... so we may have to get a repairman to fix the refrigerator, or return it. UGH!

We did manage to get the upstairs bathroom painted. We opted for yellow (Beeswax) and white. I like it a lot. Sunday, Fred's dad and I were hard at work painting, when he stepped off the ladder and into the yellow paint can..... it went EVERYWHERE! A nearly full can of yellow paint. Thankfully, we had a drop cloth down that got most of it. After trying to clean that up enough to move it, we got the drop cloth out and realized the yellow seeped through to the white tile floor! I've never run so fast in my life to get a wet towel. I grabbed the towels we had used to sop up the water in the kitchen (I knew they'd be handy) and started scrubbing the tile floor before the yellow paint dried. I managed to get it all up.... I blame myself really. I had made a comment about an hour prior that I didn't think we needed a whole gallon of yellow for the bathroom.... well, we didn't and managed to only get about a third of a gallon to use... but it was enough.

We got two of the upstairs bedrooms and the hallway papered to protect the floors, which is my number 1 priority. That took forever cause we needed to clean the floors and then tape the paper down, but it'll be worth it if it keeps the floors from being any more scratched up. I also got the bathroom door and shelves painted and they are ready to be put back. I'm very excited about the the bathroom door being reinstalled!

Fred opening window

Fred and his dad and a family friend worked hard on more windows and managed to get three of them open, top and bottom! Only 23 more to go. It's great, but an issue since we told the guys who painted the outside trim, that they needed to get the windows open before they painted. Well that didn't happen and they further painted the windows shut. So now that we've gotten some of the windows open, the outside trim needs to be touched up. It ticks me off that now there are more steps to be done. They should've just gotten the windows open like they were supposed to before painting... but I'm learning that it's hard to find good help. I'll let the contractor deal with them.They really don't want me to confront them.

I'm realizing that the deeper we get into the house, the more my stress level rises. We still have random electrical issues. The electrician seems to think that there's a short in one of the wires to the outside lights that when used triggers the breaker and shuts off the downstairs lights. So we taped off the switches to the outside lights until we can figure out where the short is. Well, that may not the the only issue. Fred went to the house after it rained the other day and the basement light tripped again. So now we think that there's a short related to the moisture in the basement. As a friend of mine so eloquently says, "Oy vey!"

But we're trucking on. Fred's dad has started stripping trim in the master and we'll move onto that room and keep going. I have days that I want to throw my hands up and quit, and then I have days that I just want to sit there and cry. Everyone keeps telling me it will be worth it when we're done. Lord, I hope so. I know that God doesn't give us more than we can handle, and I'm trying to hold onto that so I don't pull out my hair.

One step forward, four steps back

I thought we were finally starting to cruise through the work. It seemed like the contractors were on task, and then some of it stopped. The kitchen should be completed, but we've had to wait for the electrician and plumber, as well as the cabinet installers to finish the cabinets. The back splash is in though....

Primed bathroom- the blue is gone!!

I'll start from last weekend. We worked in the upstairs bathroom finishing scraping and prepping to prime. I told Fred and his dad that we had to stay until the room was primed. Thankfully, most of it was primed before we left Sunday. There are a few places we had to fill in that still needed to dry, but they'll be easy spot priming places. I got one side of the bathroom door primes and finished priming the shelves for the bathroom closet.

Red door!! :-)

While we were there, the crew showed up to start working on the outside. The fascia, trim and windows all need to be repainted. The windows also needed to be re-glazed. They also repainted all the exterior doors. We kept the same color except for the front door, which was painted a bold red. I love it! The trim and fascia were painted white. They used to be a beige color that just made the house look dingy. The white really makes the brickwork pop. We still need to take the protective film off the windows but it looks so much better. The crew also removed the rest of the shutters and we're going to go through them to find out which ones can be salvaged, repainted and rehung.

The trim painted white

There are a number of rooms in the house that the lights don't work for some reason and we've been begging to get the electrician there to finish.... he finally showed up and put up the light/fans for the living room and each of the bedrooms. He also managed to get the lights working in the basement again. Of course, he still has the rest of the kitchen to do to for all the appliances and a bunch of other tasks. I'll be glad when he's done so we can finally get the kitchen finished. Until then, we're still without power to the kitchen :-/

The plumber showed up this week and started getting the pipes in for the kitchen and installing the water heater and new sump pump, but we didn't realize that the water was off again until we arrived Wednesday ready to paint. We had planned it all out that we were going to go and finish spot priming the bathroom and prime the other side of the door and put a coat of white on the shelves. That didn't happen, since it's really difficult to paint when there's no water to the house, so once again we're way behind on what we need to do. Now we have to do that stuff Saturday and won't be able to paint the bathroom since we'll have to wait for the spot prime to dry.

I'll be so glad when the electrician, plumber, and kitchen guys are done and I won't have to wait on anyone else to get their mess together before we can finish what we need to do. Here's hoping that by the end of next week, we won't have to worry about anyone else and can get it there and work our butts off....