How I Did It-- The "Striping" Part

Good news, got stung by another bee today. I was over at camp though. My finger is taking it better than my ankle, but it's still pretty swollen.

Sooo, here's part II of that post earlier.

On to the project…

Despite the fact that we have, uh, three days until we actually move in and I have a BOATLOAD of other things to do—I decided that I had four hours to spare. That four hours turned into eight and so the story goes. 

10.30 am

I decide that I want 9 inch stripes of Spring Hills (a slightly darker green) on the walls. I was reading some websites last night and I saw that most people use two different glosses of paint—but I’d already bought both of ours in eggshell finish, so that’s what we got.

Then I made 4 9” pieces of tape to measure the Spring Hills stripes and 3 7” strips to measure out the Palm Breeze stripes. Both colors of stripes are nine inches when they’re finished, but you tape over the base color and the tape is 1” each, so you have to account for that.

Then I spent 4 hours taping, re-taping, measuring, and taping. I’m pretty sure I have no stickiness left of the pads of my fingers. The “Xs” in the picture are to remind me of the the stripes that I should not paint in case I inhale too many fumes and get a little wild.

2.30 pm

Regardless of the brand, lots of people seem to have problems with colors bleeding under the tape. I got around this problem by sealing each of the edges I was going to paint with Palm Breeze first. Any paint that got under the tape would be the same as the base color, so no problems! It took an hour and a half, but I’m glad I did it because I’d be pretty angry if the color bled under the tape after I did all that work.

4.00pm

Time to paint the stripes! The most wonderful part. Paint the top, the bottom, and then roll the rest. You have to take the tape off while it’s still wet to get the clean lines—so it’s like instant gratification. Granted, I still spent 3 hours doing this part but it didn’t seem like it took as long as the other parts.

Post project work

Cleaned up some drop cloths. Washed the windows and window trim. Jeremy swept the floor and fixed the noisy closet doors. Tomorrow I hope I’ll get to washing the floor. We’ll see.

Here are some nighttime shots of the room with the floor showing!

Pardon

Hmm... the blog site deleted half of the post I just made and I'm not sure why. I don't have time to deal with it now-- but hopefully I'll reposting the rest of how I got to here soon...

Strippin' and Stripin' (wallpaper and paint, that is)

So this is a real project post. Not one that I wrote late at night and didn’t feel like elaborating on (okay, it was 11.42 pm when I wrote this, I'm just posting it next day when comcast is feeling benevolent). So, I realllly wanted something different in the room that we’re going to be using for our room until the master bath is done. I got this sweet quilt that my Gram made that I knew I had to match the room to. Unfortunately my Mom accidentally packed the quilt and took it to Colorado… so that quilt picture will have to make an appearance later. 

Pre-project prep

First, I stripped the wallpaper in the green room. It came off remarkably easily. Kelly dropped by and I’m pretty sure I impressed her with my not-so-impressive wallpaper stripping.

Then I washed the walls and ceiling. We then painted and primed the trim. We got this done in a fairly timely fashion with our teamwork and late nights. Yesterday I painted the walls Palm Breeze (a pale green) and we were ready to go.

 Original room color. The wallpaper is on the wall that you can't see....

Yeah, I spackled that.

Master ceiling painter.

Prime time.

 

Palm breeze or as Jeremy said "White!" (It's not... it really does look green, most of you with eyes will see that) Heh, just kidding Jeremy! Love you! :-p

Living Room Fun

The living room has taken for-ev-er to get in order. Steps to far: Put down drop cloths. Strip ceilingpaper. Patch ceiling. Patch walls. Wash walls. Sand walls. Prime ceiling. Prime walls. Paint ceiling. Paint walls. Paint upper trim. Paint lower trim. Paint lower trim again. Paint upper trim again. Other stuff. Pick up drop cloths. Like I said, forever.

Here are some random shots of the projects I've been doing...

Me looking out the window, wishing the living room were finished.

Before (right) and after (left) shots of the spray painted air vents. With my Mom and Dad's move they had to give away 25 years worth of accumulated spray paint, hence my newly-white airevents. I didn't take real before shots so I had to flip the vent over to the unpainted side.

 

Then I installed them in the ceiling...

With a little too much help from Katie the cat... She insisted on standing on the stool while I was.

Glamour shots of the newly cleaned floors.

Windows taped and ready to be painted.

 

Proof of why you should always wash your walls, trim, etc...

Our mostly-done living room! I would say it's a big improvement over the yellow....

... remember?