Sprucing Things Up

I have been a busy girl around here.

  Last year I put a stain on the wicker furniture and it just seemed to soak it up, so, especially by this year, it was looking very blah again, as you can see above.   Yesterday I spruced it up with some brown spray paint and new pillows.   Much better I think.  Today I am going to get some red annuals and fill the flower pots.  I’ve never gone with red flowers.  It’s like pure excitement on the front porch!  Watch out!

Last week, I did something I didn’t think I could do and that was climb the tall ladder to paint the upper part of our stairwell.  I climbed up with my paint stick and just didn’t look down.  It worked.  Well, except I still couldn’t reach the very top edges and corners, so Gary’s gonna help with that.  This the view looking up from the stairs.  It’s a long ways up.

Ok, this is totally embarrassing but you know I am all about sharing it all…I have never experienced such gratification from paint as I did when I painted this upstairs hallway. 

The new paint on the bottom half here is actually the same color as the old paint, and the line of demarcation that you are seeing what I am calling the grime line. That’s what 10 years of kid hands grabbing the walls they go up to their rooms gets you.  Gross.  I know.  Covering that up was just an unexpectedly super wonderful feeling.  Loved it!

Gotta say I’ve learned a thing or two from this whole house-fixing-up thing and my main one is:  Don’t wait.  Just jump in and spruce up and replace as you are living in it.  Don’t wait ten years.  (Although I know it was next to impossible for many of those years with four babies/toddlers to get out of the paint, but still….there were locks on their doors.  Why didn’t we just lock them up and get our work done?!  Hindsight.)

      Lately I’ve also been painting the carpet.  Oops.  Good thing it is outta here in the very near future.  And see, more grime.  Sorry.  Gross stair carpet—be gone!  Forever!  I will not miss you one bit.

But the front door is looking spiffy, don’t you think?  Paint is a wonderful thing. 

 

  I’ve been trying out different colors in the dining room.  The wallpaper is going to stay (oy, enough wallpaper removal for me already), but the walls are getting a fresh coat.  I decided to stick with the same ol’ neutral off white.  I have five gallons of it.  Geesh.

When your paint bucket is nearly half the size of your kid, you know you’ve got a lot of paint. 

Here’s the kids’ bathroom with wallpaper removed.  Coloring is weird in this picture from the lighting (we kept the 70’s-Hollywood-dressing-room-light bar—why?), but the walls are now painted a light gray sorta color (before I bought off-white mega-paint).  No more floral wallpaper!  I painted the ceiling and also spruced up the grout of the floor tile, and I have a product recommendation for you if you ever need to do that job.  Took down the mongo shiny gold shower curtain rod and it’s in the yard sale stash.  Some drywall repair around the shower, new caulk, new stain on the oak vanity and mirror, and a new toilet seat, and we are looking good!

We’ve been working on the mini master bathroom also, but it’s not quite there yet.  I bet I have put on five layers of paint, trying to get the texture right.  Another thing learned:  Don’t use any kind of gloss paint unless you have a perfectly smooth wall.  And that a formerly wallpapered wall does not make. 

Soon to come is the new carpet, dining room window, roof, and gutters (all hired out—thank you and big yippee!!) and then we’ll tackle the landscaping. 

And then we might never want to sell it.