Last week, I had the privilege of speaking with my friend, Gina, over the phone. She told me they were currently undergoing a “repainting” of almost their whole house. I hung up the phone with her and suddenly I was motivated in a whole new way to repaint my living room. I guess I was jealous. Why have I put up with boring walls for almost two years anyways? Steven and I started “experimenting” with color that next day. And so, our quest for color began…..
Amy let me borrow some orange paint she had leftover from her awesome kitchen renovation HERE! Thanks, Amy, for the paint!!! We then started mixing with it….black, white, more orange. Just not right yet. Steven said to add some yellow. There you go. Just perfect now.
So many, many samples later, we found one that would work. I took our sample to Lowe’s and had them color match our special paint. They did a great job! We loved it!
I brought the paint home at 11:00am. By 11:30, I was trimming all the windows, doorways, and baseboards with my angled brush, while our little man played happily nearby on his train table. Mommy may just let him get away with extra stuff while she paints.haha.
Before: (the walls sporting a very boring “cappuccino” color, that I painted when I was 7 months pregnant with Nathan). Yes, I am crazy. I’d do it again, too.
Starting to trim out the room, and cover nail holes that I was painting over:
Joy’s tricks of painting:
#1) Use two inside out grocery bags to cover your paint tray. You’ll never have to wash it out again. And it = a quick cleanup.
#2) If my painting takes longer than one day, which is usually always does, I keep my roller and brush from drying out by placing it in a plastic bag, with the air pressed out. If you’re going to finish your painting job in a week or month, then you can place your brush or roller in the freezer at this point. Overnight for a day or two at room temp in the plastic works wonders for me.
#3) I really never cover the floor with drop cloth (unless I’m doing a ceiling). All this painting experience later I’ve learned how to coat the roller evenly so that it doesn’t drip or spray me, or the floor. I just roll the roller evenly at the high end of the paint tray back and forth until I have an even amount of paint covering the whole thing (wet, but not dripping).
And what our room looks like now: I put some of the decor back, but I’m still contemplating to curtain or not, and some new wall decorations in the near future.
For now, we are exceedingly happy living in color now! We are in this room most of the time, and so we wanted it to feel more cozy and warm. And thank you, Gina, for painting your house, so that I can finally get the motivation to paint my own!!!
