The house was basically move in ready. Although the finishes weren’t quite our style, it definitely didn’t need any updates. So the only thing we really wanted to do before all our furniture got in the way was paint.
Before
The entire first floor and second floor hallway were a sort of mustard yellow color, on both the walls and ceiling, except for a maroon accent wall in the living room. The baseboards also needed a little TLC (Did I mention this house is over a hundred years old?!). You can see the original colors in the picture below:
(Note: I actually took a bunch of pictures of all the rooms right after we got the keys to preserve the true before state of the house. But I am pretty sure I accidentally erased them. Sadface.)
During
We knew we wanted to paint the ceiling white - it would make the room feel less dark. I also knew I wanted a warm, neutral color that would go well with whatever new furniture or interior decorating we planned on doing. I also didn’t want anything too bold because this is such a large space. We went with a beige-y sort of tan-y yellow (great description, I know). I thought it would also play nicely with the oak-y floors.
Side Note: Speaking of floors and in case anyone is curious, they are laminate throughout the house, except for the hardwood stairs which I suspect might be original since they aren’t at all uniformly cut.
Mike did nearly all the work on the ceiling. I did only did some cutting in - which for you newbies means painting along edges with a brush as opposed to with a roller. Mike had to constantly correct me saying “edging”. I did however do most of the baseboard caulking (I got sooooo good at caulking) and baseboard painting, which one has to do with a brush so it is pretty time consuming.
Mike painting the stairs:
View towards the kitchen:
In Memoriam
There were some casualties along the way. While painting, we sort of broke the living room fan (by “we”, I mean “Mike”, but I forgive you, Mike). You can see its sad little, useless nubs in the picture below. Sniff sniff.
We also destroyed the vertical blinds on the front window because they were rather unwieldy and we had to wrestle them off of the track. No tears were shed over those blasted things.
Postmortem
In all, it took us 2 weekends and some week nights to paint and that wasn’t even the whole house. We finished the living room and the second floor hallways, got tired, and stopped.
It’s always a little nerve racking choosing a primary paint color - what if it doesn’t look good?! But in the end, it turned out well. The house feels rather cozy.
One goof though: we accidentally bought flat paint for the baseboards. I realized it a week or so after we were done. My preference is to use semigloss on baseboards because it’s easier to clean and baseboards tend to get dirty. On the flip side, it may have been fortuitous because these baseboards are pretty old and have a number of dings, which flat paint hides really well. I suppose time will tell.
Stay tuned for next time when I shall take you on a house tour!