Front Hall Finished

I finished up all my trim work on Friday and by Saturday it was time to begin painting the Sterling Grey so that my front hall could match the rest of the house.

It was a hard area to paint since there in no light in the hall.  I had to rely on natural light coming in through windows and the other rooms' lightbulbs.  This was particularly hard on Sunday when the sun kep ducking behind clouds but I finally for it all finished.

Not a huge difference but the color brightened up the area that was once drab beige.

Before

The hall now blends in when you see it from the dining room and entry area.

before

after

 I still need to finish the nasty ceiling.  That's going to require taking the vent out and spray painting it, painting the attic door and then finishing up the normal ceiling.  With 20 mph winds this weekend, I just wasn't up for spray painting.  I also need to replace the nasty string that hangs down from my attic.  I'm sure I'll get around to it.

Painting Resumes

Last night I convinced myself to pick the paint brush back up after a brief hiatus.  I blame all the Fall TV premiere season for this lazyness.  I finally reopened the white paint and started working on the doors in my office.

Not a huge improvement but I will have another coat to do.  While I was at it I decided to give my hallway outside the office some attention.  It's not a huge area but it has 4 doorways so it is labor intensive.  And since you can see this area from my front dining room, I'd really like to get it freshened up.  Here are the before shots:

Ideally this area will eventually look like the other hallway off the dining room that heads to the livingroom.

It is going to take some time, but at least I got the first coat of white on all the trim.  Just cleaning up the trim makes the area less blah.

These are the biggest updates but they are enough to motivate me to keep on painting.  Eventually the bathroom and guest room off this hall will be painted as well.  At that point I will have repainted EVERY piece of trim in my house.  Whew.  I'm about a year and a half in.  I predict all painting will be done by the 2 year anniversary, May 31, 2013.  Please note this prediction excludes ceilings.  Who knows when I'll get around to all that mess.

Fall To Do

I've finally put together a game plan for Football Season Fall.

Nothing too crazy, I'm just basically continuing my painting room by room.  Once it cools off a little more I'm going to get some color back in the front yard with some more mums.  I really like how the red and yellow looked last fall.  I plan on doing even more this year.

I'll also plant some more squash and other winter vegetables in my garden out back.  I have several empty squares that need filling.  Aside from that, I'll be focused on the inside of the house.  Back to battling the beige. 

I don't really have any photos of the front hall but you can see it here on the right side of the entry.  It's beige so I will probably just paint it Sterling, the same light grey in the other hallway and the living room.  My office has requested some attention and that I stop just treating it like a dumping ground for unused objects.

I will continue to search for my ideal console table for the front entry.  I have a feeling this search will be long.

I'd also like to paint the guest room.  I'm completely stumped as to what color would work best in here.  I'll probably have to consult my Ambassador of Paint, aka Mom.

And finally, I will once again try to save up to get rid of these floor tiles currently masquerading as my countertop.

I've got a lot of projects coming up, mostly involving a paintbrush.  Let's hope I can even knock out some ceilings while I'm at it.  Hook 'Em!

Painting Update

When I'm not doing yard work, I'm back inside armed with my trusty paint brushes.  I finally finished the hall ceiling and once again swore off ceiling painting for a while.

After that wrapped up I decided that my laundry room needed a little color. 

I was planning to paint this room a grass green color, something fun and bright, but I had so much paint left over from my kitchen that I decided it was more economical to use that color.  It will work perfect since my laundry room is visable from the kitchen when I leave the door open.

Hopefully once painted I will keep the area a little neater than it is in the photo above.  You can actually see some of my green paint chips I was considering, stuck above my hooks.  I am still going to use a little green possibly as a stripe or stencil but I will only need to buy a small sample amount for that.  For now I'm just focusing on getting my aqua on the walls.

This room will also need the trim painted white and after close consideration...the ceiling needs help too.  Rats.  I think I will paint it blue though, since I am out of white ceiling paint and promised myself I wouldn't buy any for a while. 

Hell Froze Over

I'm at it again, even though I swore I would never paint another ceiling.  I'm starting small with the "hallway" part of my house.

It is a small contained area that I thought I could knock out quickly last night.  Unfortunately I discovered I was out of rollers for my paint brush.  I did all the cutting in at least.  Now once I buy new rollers I'll be able to knock out a couple of coats in no time.

Even this small amount of ceiling painting has reminded me how much I hate it.  I'm thinking I might need to take another few months to recover before attempting my kitchen.  I need just enough time to pass that I forget how awful it is. 

Laundry Line

My laundry room is probably closer to a large closet than an actual room.  But compared to my past, it feels like a room.  At my condo I had a stackable that filled up an entire laundry closet.

Now I have a room/closet that I can actually walk into.  It has cabinets and wall space and a real door.

I've been trying to make use of all the space in my house in the most practical manner and this laundry room is no exception.  Occasionally I have clothes that don't go in the dryer.  When this happens I dry them on a fold out rack.  This rack doesn't fit in my wee laundry room so it usually ends up in the dining room.  And because of "out of sight out of mind", it usually remains there for a week or so. 

While I have no floor space for a drying rack, I decided I did have plenty of wall space and overhead space.  A light bulb went off and $10 at Home Depot later I had this:

A new clothing rod above the washer for drying clothes!  It makes it so easy to hang something up while I'm in the middle of moving loads to the dryer. If I'm too lazy to put the stuff away once it's dry, at least it is hidden behind the laundry room door and not in the middle of my dining room. 

I made sure to measure everything before installing the rod so that I would still have easy access to the top of the washer and to the cabinet shelves.

I'm pretty excited with my new install.  Maybe it will help get me a little more excited about actually doing laundry. 

Hall Complete!

I finished all the trim work in the hall and went ahead and painted the walls using my leftover living room/master bedroom paint.  Not a major project but a necessary one in order to move on the the dining room.  Here's a reminder of how it started off:

Pretty boring with molding that was darker than the walls...and not in a good way.  Now it is the same color as the back of the house.

Here is a before and after that shows the difference a little clearer. 

It is much more cheerful now.  Well, as cheerful as a hallway can possibly be.  I am about 50% done with painting the trim in my dining room.  As soon as that project is over, it'll be back to the grey drawing board.

I'm kinda dreading that.  Wish me luck. 

More Trim Work

It is really amazing what a difference freshening up my trim work makes.  The clean white brightens up the space before I've even touched the walls.  I still can't get over just how cream/beige my molding is.  In this picture you can see that it's pretty much darker than the walls.

This little hall is the heart of my house.  Not because it holds my laundry room and I love washing clothes that much, but because it's at the center of every other room.  You can see the living room beyond in the picture above.  To the left is the Kitchen and to the right is the aforementioned Laundry Room.  I was standing in the dining room/entryway when I took this picture.  Since it figures into my floorplan so centrally, I decided I need to paint this area before moving past it to my dining room.  I started the trim a couple of nights ago and the change is already drastic.  It's amazing how much work you can get done while watching tense ALCS games. 

Now this was taken from the opposite side but you can tell the difference in trim color. I plan to finish all of the trim in the hall and then tackle the dining room trim while I'm on a roll.  Those are my hot weekend plans.