How not to paint . . .

Today, I'm going to focus on one particular area of our new home that I mentioned (here) is an all-consuming eye sore.  Remember this?

It looks nice from a distance right?  Here's an even better picture of the previous owner's setup:

All those neat little cubbies for all your electronic toys . . . Nice you say?  I took the shelves out to thoroughly clean it and this is what I was left with:

There are multiple things that went wrong with this wall hogger.  They painted the entertainment center with the REMOVABLE shelves intact, which made them quite difficult to remove since paint was stuck to them.  Can you see the brushstrokes?  

This is what happens when you attempt to use white latex paint on laminate.  If you are going to paint (even if it is with the wrong type of paint), don't be lazy.  Go ahead, paint the whole thing.  Take all of your little electronic toys out and outlets then PAINT!  Don't leave this behind:

Above all else, do not allow your little four legged hairball coughing felines to walk on wet paint all the while embedding their forever shedding hair to dry in the paint for some poor unsuspecting future homeowner to find while scrubbing out the dirt and dust you left behind. 

Did you really think this post would not include me ranting about cats and cat hair?  When I'm done cleaning, scrubbing, and sanding cat hair, I won't blog about it anymore.  Until then, just remember the source:

Courtesy of the previous owners- I give credit where credit is due

He is one of many . . . don't be fooled.

Stripes

So, I finally took the plunge and painted stripes in a bonus room off of my daughters' bedroom.  I consider this to be quite bold and is definitely something I have never done before.  Try not to stare at the pictures too long because you might capture a glimpse of all the spots I need to touch up with paint.  No one ever told me how difficult it is to paint stripes on highly textured walls.  Let me just share that this project certainly was filled with plenty of opportunities to learn.

  Benjamin Moore's Super White and Sherwin Williams' Dragon Fruit

 

 

Here's the view from their bedroom painted in Sherwin Williams' Cloudless:

There is another room just off of this bonus room that will be their playroom :

This is painted in Sherwin Williams' Gleeful.

The girls are really excited about their new space, which makes me happy . . . mission accomplished.

Time after time . . .

Every time I look at the calendar, I am reminded of how quickly this month is going by.  All of our free time is spent wiping down walls, patching holes, priming, then painting.  When people offer to help us move, I laugh and say, "That's the easy part!"  Choosing the paint is also no easy task, but that is nothing compared to deciding on the flooring.  My head is spinning just thinking about it.  I think I will just show you some updates.

This is a picture of a wall in the master bedroom.  

Step 1- wash walls, baseboards, blinds, and ceiling fan.

Step 2 - Patch and Prime

Just ignore the tacky little box on the wall; more on that later.

Step 3- Paint walls, baseboards, trim, and doors

Benjamin Moore's Ice Cube Silver

 

Step 4- Repeat in the office

Benjamin Moore's Silver Gray

  

 Repeat in the girls' bedroom

Sherwin Williams' Cloudless

Repeat in Playroom 1 . . .

Sherwin Williams' Gleeful

. . . and soon to complete in Playroom 2

Yes, I'm embracing color and STRIPES!  This bonus room off of their bedroom will have some Dragon Fruit stripes.  We'll see how that will go.  

We still have one more bedroom left, three bathrooms, the living room, and kitchen.  There's more, but I don't want to think about it.

My to-do list

It just seems like my list of home projects is getting longer and longer.  At this point in the game, I have to choose my battles. Right now, the battle is over dust, dirt, and felines.  But as soon as that is conquered and we are moved in, we will start addressing our little nuances.  For example, as soon as you walk into the living area you spy this:

This is a built-in entertainment center complete with surround sound.  "Great" you say?  Well, I say a bookcase or fireplace would have made better use of this wall.  Believe it or not, we don't watch television and we don't have cable.  Occasionally, we may pop a DVD in, but that rarely happens.  Our life does not center around the tube so we really don't care to have it as the center of our living room.  I have a couple of ideas on how to mask or completely get rid of what we perceive to be an eyesore. 

Next up, the kitchen. 

 
I love the storage in this space.  In fact, I'm not sure if we have enough stuff to fill all the cabinets and drawers.  I absolutely love it.  We are going to take care of the wall color over the next few weeks so that isn't the issue.  However, the counter tops are going to have to go at some point.  The color of the cabinets . . . well, I'm tempted to paint those too.  My husband gave me a "are you sure about that" look.  Honestly, I'm kind of scared to paint the cabinets.  If I did paint them, I would make them white.  I have all sorts of ideas in my head, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will ever come to fruition. 

Let's take a look at the master bath.

Once again the color choice on the walls is not my forte, but I can easily look past that.  The sinks and the vanity on the other hand, are not so easily ignored.  The sinks are shaped like shells and the vanity has no cabinet doors.  Those little white slide-out drawers are going to have to go.  I do not run a beauty salon so I truly have no need to store hair rollers and cutesy hair things for everyone to see.  I know exactly how I want to remedy that (hopefully it will work).  

Speaking of bathrooms, check out the bathroom my little girls will use:

Does anyone see what's wrong here?  Okay, okay look beyond the color.  Now do you see it?  Something must be done about the separate sinks, the mirrors, and that awkward space between them.

I think that's enough to keep us occupied for a while.  What do you think?

Just in case you're wondering . . .

Just in case you're wondering what's taking us so long to move in, I want to show you something. 

What's the matter?  Can you not see it?  Come closer . . .

a bit closer, I'll show you more . . .

You're getting warmer . . .

There you go!  This was on the back of the door to a bedroom (not a garage) that once belonged to a teenage girl.  Once again a case of pure yuck strikes.  I've never gone through so many scrubbing pads and sponges.  But see, this is not the best part of the teenage girl's room.  There is also a bonus room attached that will be my daughters' playroom.  In this bonus room, there were plenty of extra bonuses . . .

Can't see it . . . come closer again . . .

As if the textured wall isn't bad enough, do you see the little black hairs intertwined?  That is CAT HAIR!  I think this texture was created on these walls for the cats to scratch their backs.  I couldn't wash the hair out of the walls.  I had to sand it off with my poor little sander.  I think this deserves three YUCKS!  Yuck, Yuck, and Yuck!

This was just a snippet of what we endure day in and day out.  We are cleaning machines here.  Walls, ceilings, ceiling fans, blinds, windows, windowsills, doors, and floors are no match for us.  Our house will be a cat hair free zone.  It is so amazing what you don't see when shopping around for a house.  Sellers maneuver furniture and pictures to cover up their ugly truths.  They use air fresheners and temporary fixes in order to mask odors (which never work when animals are involved).  We knew we wanted to paint the walls and get the carpets out of there, but we didn't know they never cleaned their house.  I'm not exaggerating.  There was thick dirt and dust indicating that they never wiped down anything other than their furniture and counters.  I should have taken a picture of the ceiling fan in the master bedroom, but I didn't.  Once I don my gloves, there is no stopping me.  More to come later . . . And by the way, I still haven't taken a picture of the outside of our house.  We're too busy trying to get moved in first and that is all my tunnel vision allows me to focus on.