Tag Archives: paint

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

8 Nov

Painting continues at 12 Oaks. We’ve now painted all but 2 rooms (both bathrooms, one of which was completely demo’d this week.. more on that later).

We painted the current Master bedroom this week. The color is a bluish gray called Metropolitan by Benjamin Moore.

Before:

Master Bedroom

After:


The “pig in lipstick” comes into play in the master bathroom. Originally we were going to rip out this bathroom right away and use the hall bathroom. However, we only had a total of 1 shower each in the hall bathroom before it started leaking and Ben had to rip half of the shower out to find the problem. So now we are going to renovate the hall bathroom first and use the master bathroom.

It’s tiny and outdated, but the best part is the beautiful seashells and god knows what else they painted on the vanity.

Master Bathroom

So we gave the entire bathroom, vanity included, a coat of Metropolitan. We also switched out the toilet. This should get us by until we gut this bathroom.

My apologies to the previous owners for painting over your masterpiece. Apparently this was a family affair, even grandma was in on this. Babcia= grandmother in Polish. Thanks to my Polish friend Alex I knew that one right away.

The next pig in lipstick is the entry and staircase walls. These were a lovely gold faux finish which will now need to be skim coated or re-drywalled to get them smooth again. For now, we just painted over it with the upstairs hallway color, Perfect Greige by Sherwin Williams.

Before:

Entry

During:

After:

Back to the hall bathroom which Ben demo’d yesterday. Everything is gone except for the pink cast iron tub, which we can get re-enameled white for about $300.

I put together this mood board for what I am thinking in here. Blue/green walls, white subway tiles in the shower, weathered-wood vanity, etc.

That vanity is $1,600 from Pottery Barn so we are going to try and make it ourselves. We’ve ripped off some Pottery Barn furniture in the past, so hopefully it works.

Lastly, Ben cut down and burned all the weeds that were up to 15 ft! tall around the pool.

Before:

After (yeah it’s going to look worse before it looks better):

Between the chainsaw, 4 wheeler, ride on mower and all the fires, Ben is like a kid in a candy store.

Fine by me, I am busy making mood boards, picking paint colors and scouring Pinterest for decorating ideas!

Tags:

Sayonara Sharapova

29 Oct

The title will make sense in a second if you don’t get the reference yet. We had a marathon first weekend of painting and moving. With the help of Ben’s friend Lee and my Mom and little brother, we were able to accomplish a ton. We moved all of our things from storage, the basement and garage, plus painted 5 rooms, among other misc. projects.

Ben and Lee doing the heavy lifting

We also spent our first overnight in the house on Saturday! My mom and Jared stayed the night too so they could help bright and early on Sunday. Even our cat Macy came and stayed the night.

Ben and Jared relaxing Saturday night

Macy inspecting the place

We’ll start with paint before and afters, because that is always fun.

This is where we said good-bye to the first Maria Sharapova.

Before:

Yellow Sharapova room

During:

After painted “Soft Suede” by Glidden. All of these only have 1 coat of paint & primer-in-one and need one more coat to cover the horrendous colors and writing on the walls.

Here is the upstairs hallway painted “Perfect Greige” by Sherwin Williams.

Before:

Upstairs hallway before

After:

The “Purple Sharapova” room is now Mineral Alloy by Benjamin Moore.

Before:

During:

My mom, the master “cutter inner”

After:

Here is the dining room, which we painted “Cliff Rock” by Behr above the chair rail. Under the chair rail will be shadow box molding and be painted all white, so we just primed it white for now.

Before:

Dining Room before

After:

Finally, we decided to slap a coat of paint on the kitchen walls. We’ll be removing the main wall and renovating the entire kitchen but this will get us by until then. We used leftover paint from our last house called “Crisp Khaki” by Benjamin Moore.

Before (grody):

After:

In addition to all that painting and moving, we did some small projects including replacing a broken window in the old purple room.

Cleaning out the leaves from the pool and filling it up.

Jared helping out.

Not only will filling the pool before it freezes ensure our pool doesn’t pop out of the ground when water around it freezes, we will get to go ice skating! Score.

Pool filling up, slowly but surely

The beauty of being on well water is that all the water to fill this massive 20′ x 40′ x 12′ foot deep pool is FREE! My mom said it takes $300 to fill her much smaller pool on city water, so we lucked out there.

We also chopped down a half dozen dead trees/weeds around the property. This is one of those things where its going to look worse before it looks better, but its a start.

Ben hacking down a tree by the pool with a machete

Pretty much everything you see in the picture behind him is eventually coming down too. They are all weeds. Ben is investing in a chain saw before then.

We also put a few homey touches around including hanging the American and Kiwi flags and a front door wreath my friend Stacie made for me.

Iwo Jima pose

Lastly, check out this amazing sunrise we caught this morning from the bedroom window. Don’t mind the piles of logs, we’ll be burning them up this Friday in a big bonfire for Ben’s 30th!

Tags:

Let There Be Paint

27 Oct

It’s truly amazing what a coat of paint can do.

Exhibit A. Our scary basement went from this:

Basement

To this:

Basement with Kilz paint

Our garage from this:

Garage before paint

To this:

And my favorite, the living room painted 2 coats of Analytical Gray by Sherwin Williams.

Living Room on Closing Day

New living room paint

Excuse the badly lit pictures, it was dark by the time I snapped the photos.

Here are a few more “afters” of the living room. We love the color, it’s a good mix of gray and beige (aka greige) and should go great with our furniture.

The problem with painting one room, it makes all the others around it look even worse!

Ben did the majority of the rolling, and I did most of the cutting in. I loved using Ben’s scaffolding to cut in on the ceiling. I call it my tight rope, but it makes it so much easier than moving the ladder every few feet.

On my tight rope

In addition to painting those 3 rooms, we’ve also changed the locks on all the exterior doors, ripped out a moldy bathroom ceiling (and sprayed it with bleach), patched some holes in the walls, defrosted the fridge, filled some pot holes in the driveway with gravel and cleaned the place within an inch of its life.

Not bad for just 3 nights of work. Here’s a few pics of us working away.

Spraying bleach on joists to prevent mold

Tomorrow morning our friend Lee is coming over to help move our stuff still in boxes and furniture that we didn’t move into the rental to the new house. Most of it will go into the garage or basement so we have room to work before we move in.

We’re also hoping to get a majority of the rest of the painting done this weekend. My Mom and brother Jared are coming on Sunday to help. Wonder what they will think of our progress so far!

Tags: