bits and pieces

Woot! Woot! Painting is being accomplished! Grandparents are here and giving me all kinds of time to work on the hall.

hoo ray.

I'm waiting for a video to download for you. It takes a little while for a vimeo video to be available to embed. Like 30 minutes or so. I used the time to get some photos off my card. The actual phototaking hasn't been the most time consuming part of Catch 36... it's been the downloads and editing. I'm downloading fifty to a hundred photos on a nightly basis. I don't keep them all... I like to see them on the computer screen, though, before I decide which ones to nix. Helps me check for focus and all that. It's too difficult to see whether or not eyes are in focus on the camera's display screen.

I still have a few minutes for the video, so here are some shots from tonight's photo dump... straight out of the camera without edits... I like this project :)

















And now we have the video! The hallway is really difficult to photograph because of the low light and tight space, so I busted out my flip camera. Painting a hallway is hardly thrilling, I know, but I had fun making it.



Mom and Dad are here through late Saturday afternoon. I was running out of steam by around 3pm today, so we'll see what I can get done. At the very least, I want to get the trim completely done. It's been finished but unpainted for over a year now!

See ya after the weekend!

Peace out.

a video

do you like to watch videos on blogs as much as i do? there's just something about posts with videos, especially if i've been reading the blog for a while... seeing photos, reading about lives. then, there's a video, and the blogger seems more like a real person than they did before. but, maybe i'm just weird like that.

i'm posting a video tonight. not because i think i'm this terribly interesting person or that you've been dying to see more of me, me, me. just because i think they're fun. and they do show a different side of things that photos alone cannot. and can i just say that i'm thankful for vimeo? i wouldn't feel comfortable uploading to youtube, but vimeo seems to have tighter controls in place and it's easy to use. after trying to upload in a slew of diferent ways, vimeo turned out to be the best option. so, props to vimeo.

we got started on our little list for the week. i figured since the painting was by far the biggest deal on there, that was a good place to start. plus, the day was pretty mild so i could have the windows open.

boosting morale from homeforthebetter on Vimeo.

i wanted the children to help. problem is i "don't do very well" when i have too many helpers in a small space all at once. but, i wanted them to be a part of the painting today. i want them to feel some sense of ownership when it comes to these never-ending house projects. and kind of boost morale in a way. we can all get tired of the paint cans and exposed walls.

so, the younger two (besides baby) helped with the first coat and the older two helped with the second. even with those shifts, i still broke it down more and worked with one child at a time. it went surprisingly well. i kept a wet paper towel nearby to wipe the excess paint off the baseboards and take care of any drips that dripped away. i was fairly relaxed. i think they had fun.

half of the room is done now.

yay!

more of the list tomorrow!


(what do you think? do you like the video post? should i do more of this kind of thing?)

Bedroom 2 Paint Color and Progress

I was reading tonight about Jenny's design process at Little Green Notebook. It's always so interesting to me to read how designers/decorators go about a project. Jenny always begins a room with a fabric choice. Her reasoning is that there are a blue zillion paint colors available - not to mention the ability to color match anything you can dream up - but there are only so many fabrics available. You can always find a paint color that will work, but finding fabric that works with a pre-existing wall color can be much trickier. Plus, fabric is her love and a pretty print instantly inspires her.

All of that makes complete sense.

Unless, like me, your primary goal with paint colors is to choose neutrals that pretty much go with any other color imaginable. Because you also really love fabric and because you know you're going to be switching out colors.

A lot.

Eventually.

You know, once you get this first layer thing checked off your list.



It should come as no surprise then that the wall color for bedroom 2 is another neutral. Honestly, when I swatched the color in bedroom 4 (I originally bought this paint for that room) it had a definite green undertone. Green shows up no where in this paint in bedroom 2. Proving, once again, that lighting is everything when evaluating paint colors.



Regardless, I really like the color in the room. It's very light, hardly noticeable in places. I'm glad, though, because this room is the brightest in the house and I didn't want to lose any of that. I just wanted a teeny bit of color. The big change is that it takes the room from a warm neutral to a cool neutral.



The color is Laura Ashley "Stone 2". Very soft. Very subtle. Totally ready for any fabric and color I want to bring its way.

Eventually.



We're getting there, though. I finished the second coat on the main door this afternoon, and we're very close to wrapping things up. Sam's mom, Susan, is coming on Thursday and I plan on having that room ready to use by then. One glitch that took far more time than we bargained for was the drywall mudding Sam needed to do around the window. When we had that window enlarged, the plan was for Sam to deal with the corners after the first bit of mud dried. It didn't look like that big of a deal.



But, we soon learned that outside corners like that are harder to do than they seem. Getting a straight, smooth edge was a challenge.



After several mudding sessions, though, look what a nice edge Sam was able to get :)





So, as of today, the walls are all done, the outlets are switched out, new outlet plates are up, closet shelves and the new, wooden closet rod are all drying and waiting to go back in, the main door is drying, and we're very, very close to finished.

That means that the next post on this room will be the official first layer "after" post :)

Not quite done...

When will I learn to stop making bold declarations about when we will complete projects? When was it? Last week that I announced we would be finished with Bedroom 3 by the weekend? Last weekend?

Well, we're still not quite done.

I really have to quit doing that.

I do have progress to share, though :) Both closet rods are stained, polyurethaned, and in place. Sam still has to put in center supports and we're still planning on adding a top shelf.

A while back, John & Sherry showed photos of their master bedroom closet and I really liked the quaint way the rods were installed. We took that idea and made it our own. The slant keeps the bar from popping out when it's bumped and it will be extra easy to remove the bottom bar when the children are older and we need to fit longer clothes in here.

The closet in painted Benjamin Moore's "White Dove" in satin finish and the trim is all the same color in semi-gloss.

I'm not sure I can really get across how much of an impact this white trim makes in the room. I painted the hall side, too, and it's really a dramatic improvement. I love it.

The door had to come off so I could paint the door jam. I still need to paint the hinge part of the black door - it was too tricky to paint while the door was actually hanging. It's been bare on that edge for months. While I'm at it, I'm going to do a few touch-ups on the door, too.

The trim feels more substantial now, and just has a fresh, solid feel to it. I admire it every time I walk by ;)

Just keeping things real in the house blog world. I've mentioned before that I don't tape off when I paint. I can keep a pretty good edge free-handing it if I have a good brush. Well, usually. But, something went dramatically wrong here. I'm going to blame it on a tired arm from all that door jam painting.

Yikes.

I did the same thing a little higher up. So, I just painted another coat of "Passive" on the wall there to cover up my "oopses". I don't have a photo of the fix, but you'll be glad to know that I did much better keeping a clean line the second time. As of last night, all of the door and wall painting for this bedroom is DONE! Woo hooey.

Next up, a few finishing touches before we move on. Somehow, it always seems like the last-minute little odds and ends take forever. I definitely don't want to skip over these details, though. So, hopefully before the end of next week...

Wait! I should've learned my lesson by now. How about if I say that there is absolutely no way humanly possible that we could ever get this room done by next weekend. No way.

There. Maybe that will help :)

Bedroom 3 Progress (cont'd)

So, hopefully Blogger will cooperate and let me upload photos in less than 10 minutes a piece tonight. I'm picking right up where I left off with our recent progress in Bedroom 3... just after the Navy Blue Carpet Surprise :)

Sam has been the cutting, nailing, caulking man for this room. That pretty much leaves me to do the priming and the painting. Since there isn't another set of little feet in the picture at this point and since the weather was bee-u-tee-ful last week, that worked out great! Sam finished the new trim inside the closet once I had the closet system out, and I got to work priming and painting that trim after he caulked it. I was able to work in small segments of time and get everything but the wall with the closet on it painted. Yeah, you read that right. I said I got everything but that wall painted.

Hmmmmm..... what's she up to?


Remember back when we painted this room last August? Remember how we painted it Restoration Hardware's "Silver Sage"? But we hadn't really swatched the room, instead we had painted one of those large pieces of cardstock and tried to get a good reading from that? And remember that then we painted the room and realized we should've swatched it after all? Because it didn't really look like we had envisioned? It was too blue-green? And too saturated? Remember that I'm kind of obsessive about color? The right color? And remember how I tried to convince myself that I wasn't really all that obsessive and the color was fine?

Well, I am that obsessive.

And it wasn't really fine.

Since I was painting all this trim anyway, and also painting the inside of the closet, why not go ahead and make the most of the room being empty and totally ready to paint, and just - repaint it? You know, seven months after I painted it "Silver Sage". You know, because I have nothing else to do.

My husband loves me.

You can see the new, lighter, less saturated color in the photo above, and - a little less clearly - in the photo below. It's Sherwin William's "Passive". Much grayer, with blue, but only very, very little green. I like it :) Sam says I'd better ;)

The closet trim was a little tricksy to decide on. I mentioned in the last post that we're using curtains on this closet and that the room really only lends itself to that option or sliding doors (which we didn't want). We had to decide where to end the basecap moulding. It was really six of one half dozen of the other. So, we just picked what we thought would look good. I like that it's a little different - like it doesn't quite fit in a way you'd expect, but it still looks good. The curtains will totally hide this part anyway. Someday, if we want doors on this closet, these little end pieces will have to come off. For now, though, I think it looks fun... and has a little character.

You can see the white walls in the closet there. The white feels sooooo fresh and clean.

So, now the walls (except the wall the closet is on) are all "Passive" and all the trim is done except for the area around the main door. Sam needs to remove the door and caulk the entire jam and the trim around it before I can prime and paint it. That's next up on the agenda... hopefully this weekend?

As I Type... (12:03 AM on a Tuesday)

Mad progress today, y'all. I finished the last coat on two of the doors upstairs and got the first coat on a third. More than halfway done painting those doors now. Sam and I cut the entryway in after we put the kiddos in bed, and now - thanks to my rolling fiend of a husband - it's white! :)



The wall on the far left gives you an idea of the creamy-yellow color it was before. Not at all a bad color. I just don't think this house is feeling the warm tones. The white is much crisper and works really nicely transitioning into the greige kitchen.

More soon!

(By the way - that trim color, Sherwin Williams Accessible Beige, was a "test". I liked it around the closet, but not around the black doors. The trim [and mostly likely the closet door, too] will be repainted the same white as the walls - Benjamin Moore "White Dove")


It's getting fun around here :)

Take Six

I'm up to six paint tries in SweetP's room now. I know, I know.

I know.

In case you're wondering how someone gets the color wrong at least six times, let me assure you that it's really not at all difficult. In fact, it's especially easy when you're a visual person who has a definite idea in her head, and you're just trying to figure out how to get it from your head to your wall. Make sense? I wanted a subtle, light, tan/beige. Not too yellowy gold, not too gray. Well, here's how I got to this point.

First, I tried Nicole Balch's nursery color - Behr "Wheat Bread". Lovely color - actually, very similar to our kitchen color. Loved it in Nicole's pictures. Too dark and too gray for what I was after, though. Perfect for Elenor, not perfect for SweetP.

Next, I tried a paint I already had - Sherwin Williams "Aesthetic White". It was one of the rejected options for the foyer - and it was rejected here, too. Super pale gray blue. Bummer.

After that, I gave Benjamin Moore's "Berber White" a try (also known as Manchester Tan). I had read lovely things about this color in House Beautiful. Swatched it up. And? Not at all tan in this room nor a white. Downright green, really. Granted, it was a really pretty pale gray green. But I didn't want green. Not the one.

What does that bring us up to? 3?

I think next I went over to Lowe's and grabbed a color that I thought looked about right, but maybe too dark. Laura Ashley "Stone 2". Since it looked a little dark for my purposes, I had them mix it at 50%. (I had actually asked for 75%, but the gal behind the counter convinced me to go lighter). Guess what?

Wrong. Way too light.

So, next I went back to Lowe's and got a can of Stone 2 as is. I was thinking this looked pretty promising. It was very pretty color on the wall - not too dark at all as I had originally thought - but it was grayer than I had been envisioning. Still - very nice color. Definite possibility.



But, I wanted to try just one more. So, Friday, when I was near the only local store that sells Benjamin Moore paints, I picked up a can of Carrington Beige to test in SweetP's bedroom and two whites for the foyer (per Erika at Urban Grace Interiors). It was totally green on my walls. There's a large tree in the yard in front of SweetP's bedroom window. All of the natural light in the room is filtered through its leaves. I have no idea how Carrington Beige might have looked had it been winter, but I know that in August in SweetP's room - Carrington Beige is green. Lighting is everything, remember?


So, tomorrow I'm going to try just one more color.

Ha - not really. I'm done. I think six is my limit. Laura Ashley "Stone 2" is the chosen color. It's not what I had in my mind's eye, but enough is enough already.


Besides, it's really a lovely color :)

Our Special Order Doors Are In!!!

Hot dog! The new doors are here!!!

Hoping to get them painted and hung within the week. Yes, in the picture below, the doors seem too large for the space. That's because they are. We had to custom order the doors ($) because they are sooooo short here (there's a vent that runs across the ceiling there - making the door opening extremely short). This is the smallest we could get them! Sam will have to take an additional 2" off. It's the best we can do with this weird ceiling height. There are no holes for knobs, either, because Home Depot recommended placing them after resizing the doors. Makes sense.

First, though, I have to choose a paint color... I tested SW's "Aesthetic White" on the entryway walls and "Accessible Beige" on the doors and trim. Aesthetic White turned out to be more like Aesthetic Pale Blue, so that's a no go. Accessible Beige is a definite possibility for the doors and trim throughout the entryway and family room - if the walls are whiter. Of course, this does not include the doors that will be black.

I'll be testing BMoore's "Carrington Beige" for the trim/door color next week, and also BM's "White Dove" and "Decorator's White" for the entry and family room walls.

Then, I can paint the new doors and finish up those entryway doors that I've been testing on. Hoorah for covered water heaters and furnaces :)



P.S. At risk of being really pitiful - I see you people lurking and not commenting. After yesterday's post, there were 12 people on here at one time, and no comments! C'mon, now. Make a girl's day and say something nice :)

Choosing Paint Colors

Among other ways, this is how I know that Sam really loves me.

A lot.

It always takes me several tries before I get a color just right for a room. And I need to paint the swatches on the walls. BIG swatches, on ALL of the walls. How can I possibly know if the color is right otherwise? ;) He's very patient with me.

Actually, swatching was forbidden in our family for a little while due to the 15 months (I'm not joking) that I had yellow swatches on the family room walls of our previous house. There was just no picking that yellow! Eventually, we realized that Sam had put energy-saving but yucky-light-warmth florescent blubs in the recessed fixtures. Aha! Not my fault at all! Any yellow I was going to choose was going to wind up sallow and slightly green at night because of those bulbs.

#1 Thing to Remember When Choosing Paint: Lighting is Everything.

So, I agreed that the swatching experience had been less than desirable that time (although, not my fault really), and I understood his negativity toward the whole now distasteful practice when I began choosing paint colors for the new house.



For the first few colors, I painted sheets of card stockish paper from Sherwin Williams. That was an okay process, but with rooms that have constantly changing light, it's a little tricky to keep holding the cards up on each different wall and at many different times throughout the day. The kitchen color and the exterior colors went fairly well with that method, but Shug and Punkin's room was a little "off". When it came time to choose a color for SweetP's room - I mean since I was going to be painting it very, very soon and everything - surely swatching this room would be okay. Right?

It actually took him a few days to notice. He looked at the wall and calmly asked, "Why are there swatches on my wall?". He loves me, I tell you :)

So far, I've tested around 4 colors in SweetP's room. One of them is really pretty, but isn't what I had been envisioning. It never ceases to amaze me how one paint can look completely different in two different rooms. That's why the #1 Rule up there in big, bold red is so important. And it's also why I test colors before I buy anything larger that a test pint. Think about it - what is color anyway? It's the light spectrum reflecting off of objects. When the light reflecting off of any paint changes, the color changes! There's no way to know how a color will behave in any given room without testing it out. Generously. I'm going to try one more color in this room after the weekend - Carrington Beige by Benjamin Moore. Hopefully, it'll be a go :)


By the way, the cardstock sheets from Sherwin Williams are not simply cardstock material. They are specially made so the corners do not curl up when wet and so the thick paper does not wrinkle up at all. It's important that the sheets stay completely flat in order to get a true read of the color against the wall. Any curling or bumps would affect the shadows/light and - theoretically, at least - affect the color. They aren't pricey, and they're very sturdy. I think around $3 per sheet. If you cannot swatch - that's the next best thing :)

Painting a Room in One Day (While the Little Guys Nap)

I painted Shug and Punkin's bedroom on the same Friday that I removed their trim.

A few weeks before, I had gotten started on this room and had one coat on one whole wall and 1/3 of another. This is how the room looked when I began cutting in the rest at naptime. My younger two children nap for about 2 to 2 and 1/2 hours in the afternoon. If yours are shorter nappers, you could work a video time in after nap in a room closeby (maybe using a portable DVD player that you use in the van?). Or you could just make this a two day project instead of one.

The cutting in took about an hour.

Admittedly, it went faster with the trim already removed. Regardless, though, I hardly ever tape off anymore. I use a small angled brush and freehand it. I think it gets easier the more you do it, and it's a really useful skill to have if you're often painting within a small window of time - like naptime! :)

Checked on the kiddos - sawing logs :) The older two were sewing and drawing within earshot.

It took roughly another hour to roll the first coat. Maybe a little more.

Later that night, I trimmed in a second time right after I put the children down to sleep. This time, it was the whole room at once. I didn't have one of the walls done ahead of time. It took an hour and fifteen minutes for the second cutting in. I waited about 2 hours - ate something yummy, putzed around on the 'puter (this is the weekend Sam was in Colorado, remember?). Then, around 11pm, I rolled the second coat, cleaned up, and went to bed around 12:30am.

Room painted? Check :)

Color: Restoration Hardware "Silver Sage" color-matched by Lowe's. I bought a tester can at RH, painted it on a swatch sheet from Sherwin Williams, took the sheet of painted cardstock to Lowe's for a match, and bought the paint. It's pretty stinkin' close. A little bluer than the original, and slightly more saturated, but pretty close. I think if I had to do it over again, I would've just forked over the cash for the real deal, though. The teensy variation in color probably wouldn't bother most gals, but I get really specific about my wall colors (ask poor Sam). If you're less particular and don't notice all of the undertones and nuances much, it's an idea you might want to try out.

Overall, I'm happy with it. I was more pleased with the color-match after the entire room was finished.

Have a great one!

Operation "No More Pumpkin Pie"

We've actually done something to the new house!!! After closing on the sale of our previous home (and second mortgage) last week, it took all of three days before I was ready to head over to the local Sherwin Williams and nab the paint we needed to get rid of the pumpkin-pie-colored walls so thoughtfully left by the previous owners. Everything in this kitchen was a shade of brown - brown cabinets, brown tile flooring, orange-brown walls, and even our old kitchen table was practically the same shade of brown! Time to change all that. Bye, bye pumpkin pie!!!

Here are the before pics (with the walls all cut-in with primer)...

We've painted the first coat on the walls now. It already looks so much better!! We still need to:

• paint the second coat done!!!
• replace the outlet/switch covers (they were plastic and smoke-stained) done!!!
• sand the cabinets 1/4 done!!!
• prime the cabinets 1/4 done!!!
• paint the cabinets 1/4 done!!! - NOTE: finally finished painting the cabinets in OCTOBER, for pity's sake.
• replace the cabinet hardware 1/4 done!!!
• replace the lighting
• decorate (yay!)
• maybe, maybe, just maybe, replace the countertops (moolah permitting)

And that will be all for the first kitchen go-around. We hope to do a more involved kitchen "remodel" down the road, but these cosmetic changes will have to hold us for now. I'm just pleased as punch to see something happening! I think these little changes that make the house more "ours" really help out with the transition. Right now I don't feel like our previous house is home any longer, but I also don't really feel like we've made this new house home, yet. It will come, I know. And more quickly if we can keep a steady pace on our to-do list :)