Painting the Living Room

About two years ago we painted the living room. It had been a gorgeous dark blue-green, but comments had been made that it was so dark that entering the room in mid-winter led one to dream of slitting one's own throat. So, in an attempt to lighten up, we painted it "Filbert" by Devine Paints.

(first photo, before)

Some of us liked it. Some of liked the lightening effect, but didn't like the color, which (when applied over a whole wall rather than a foot-square patch) resembled a smear of anemic peanut butter (creamy style). Some of us didn't like it.

We couldn't repaint right away; one doesn't. But the statute of limitations has passed, and now we have. It took several ballots, all of us voting across 14 different colors (children included in the vote -- they showed solidarity, both wanting "no change" or a brilliant blue which no one else liked), and in the end I think we got a color that everyone (even the children) likes a lot, and the room looks great. It's the Miller Paint Historical line: Wainscot Green.


(third photo, after)

The big difference, however, was not the paint, but the woodwork. After the discovery of the dining room's box-beamed ceiling, the single line of concave quarter round around the ceiling of the living room looked unpleasantly modern, bare and wimpy. So HomoDommi and I picked out crown molding and picture rail, and created a ceiling edging to balance the dining room. (He did all the actual work: the staining, many layers of gloss, the measuring, cutting, recutting, application, swearing, removal, reapplication, re-recutting, etc. I just supervised and gave opinions about color).

If there's a problem with the new look, it's that, after all that work (and expense, although as housing projects go this wasn't bad) it doesn't show. The woodwork looks likes it's always been there. Which is a good thing, I suppose.

For perspective, Lou and Peter Berryman question, "Why Am I Painting My Living Room?"

Actual Progress - Porch Railings

We had a spot of good weather last weekend, and painted the new railings on the front steps. These are before railing, before painting, and after railing and painting shots.


The house from the northwest corner, last summer. The japanese maple kind of gets in the way, sorry. Note the gray concrete, the wide steps with metal railings.







Long after the metal railings removed (in order to replace porch flooring) and the painting of the concrete steps and new porch floor.









The not-quite-final product. We have lots of detail-work/finishing to complete before we can cross this project off the list. But most of the big stuff is done.




Here's a link to the entry about when Mike built the railings, last January.

The under-a-dollar, under-a-minute Easel

HomoDomi has been deep cleaning his studio, in preparation to do some painting (the walls of the dining room are merely one project). We'll have a blog entry about the studio when it's done (or rather, when HomoDomi tells me it is done -- it looks done to me already). However, today I'll show you his latest project, an artist's easel, built for less than a dollar (all the wood was leftover bits from other projects). It is custom-fitted for the studio.





I am supposed to point out the nice details, for instance, the adjustable cross beam that securely holds the canvas in place.







Also, note the built-in ledge for pastels and pencils, with pegs for paintbrushes, and wipes, and holes for water bowls. (And here I thought that was a coffee cup holder.)









The easel swings up to hang flat from the crossbeams across the ceiling, so we can watch movies on the screen behind it (the projector is also attached to a ceiling crossbeam). Here is my first attempt to blog a video -- you should be able to see HomoDomi (with Celtic music in the background) swinging the easel down into place in less than a minute.

[As a side note, it took me half a day to edit and create this little movie (which was only 1:10 minutes to begin with, but off the camera was over 100 MB -- and now is compressed to about 4 MB). You can see both the good and the bad of my new camera in the movie -- 7.1 megabits makes for a sharp long distance movie at the start, but there's bad striations on the horizontals when I zoom in. I'm still learning the new camera.]

Painted Steps

The actual re-painting of the concrete steps didn't take that long, although it required, in advance, re-sweeping, re-washing, and letting the concrete re-dry -- while waiting for the weather to warm up to 60° so the paint would dry quickly.

(Molly is wearing a party hat to remind us that her birthday is very soon, although not as soon as she would like. She wears it every day after school.)

The red is a much nicer color than the tan stain was, bold and bright. At least 4 people have stopped on the street to compliment us on the color and the overall effect. One of these was a complete stranger (a mother picking up her child at the pre-school in the church next door; she said she's been watching us at work all summer).

Another was a neighbor -- the one with the tidy lawn which ends abruptly at the sidewalk with no stray grass-blades hanging over the pavement. You know, that neighbor, the one we all have. We sense in their approval also a vastly relieved sigh, that the neighbors (i.e., us) have once again pulled back from the precipice of Trailer Trash Yard.

Personally, I'd give the red a 90 out of 100, where 100 is the ideal color. I expect the dark green that I had wanted would have been a 92 -- assuming it was the shade of green that I thought it was, and not the shade of green that Mel thought it was, which would have clashed. Mel is better with colors than I am, so she's probably right. Even so, a difference of 2 points -- and when the red works well enough -- is certainly not worth a re-paint.

The final photo is by Molly, if you hadn't guessed from the shadow-silhouette (showing pigtails), of the stairs at the base of the entry sidewalk. Another artsy shot.

Staining the steps

So, we were unable to get the old paint off the concrete. And let me say, we all hated the old paint. It is kind of a gray-blueish white, and once cleaned, the stairs and walkway looked ghastly against the green house and red brick pathway (demonstrating that cleanliness is not always a good thing). Faced with the choice of choosing a paint (a choice involving going out again to Home Depot, and then having to decide on a color -- I don't know which part of the task is more dreaded), or just trying out the stain, because we already have a gallon: we stained.



Not much to say -- the pictures say it all. The stain -- which admittedly I just slapped on -- is streaky, blotchy and too transparent. It just looks dirty, and not even as nice as the nice balanced layer of dirt that had been there before we cleaned.

Actually the front looks kind of nice if you stand across the street, maybe because the tree blocks much of the view. However, we haven't a force field to install to keep all viewers of the house at least 45 feet away. Tomorrow we paint. The question is now, Green or Brick Brown?

Porch Painting

Today we finished prepping (filling in all the holes we could find, sanding, sweeping, washing) the porch and then primed and painted it once. We'll have to paint it again before we're through. Andrew is building the railing at the top of the stair. It and the columns are being repainted too, which requires that we wash the house wall (the fresh paint elsewhere makes that look shabby).

Photos tomorrow, when it is closer to finished. In the meantime, it's an I Spy game. I spy with my little eye something that begins with "H". He's been keeping us company for several hours every day in the garden in front of the porch, apparently unfazed by the noise and construction.