Tag Archives: paint

Kids’ bathroom progress part 2…almost done!

Posted by Melissa in Design, DIY and tagged with , ,

So, so close.

Since last week, I finished painting the gray walls, installed two shelves on the wall over the toilet, hung the beadboard wallpaper, scraped and sanded the old caulk off the baseboards and reinstalled the shoe moulding, caulked, and painted the beadboard wallpaper. It’s obviously not a big room, so it took 15 minutes here, an hour there. Still to do: paint the baseboards and perhaps give the beadboard a second coat, and finish hanging artwork. I was on a roll and probably would have finished yesterday, but I ran out of paint. But if you don’t look at the baseboards, it looks good!

For fun, here’s the evolution of this bathroom over the past 6 years:

Before

Before

This is how it looked before we moved in. Certainly not terrible, but the details became annoying after we lived with it for a while. Wallpaper, shower doors (have you tried bathing a squirmy baby when you can only reach half the bathtub?), two-toned hardware. And a toilet paper holder waaaay too far for a kid to reach when he needs it!

First attempt

First attempt

After the first major set of changes to make this bathroom more functional for three small children: removed the shower doors, installed hook rail for towels, painted the vanity and changed the hardware, moved the toilet paper holder, stripped the wallpaper, changed the light fixture. At this point I wasn’t really sure where the color scheme was going.

After

After

Now, the gray and white is a cool backdrop for the kids’ bright towels and accessories. There aren’t any heavy glass shower doors to clean or worry about safety (one fell off the track once–very scary!), and there are plenty of hooks to hang towels, robes, and wet bathing suits. The colors feel more like us, and the room functions much better.

How much did I spend on this final stage?

  • Ikea shelves: $30
  • Ikea towels: $22
  • beadboard wallpaper: $19
  • wallpaper paste: $5
  • 1 quart Heather Gray paint: $2

The rest of my supplies I already had…caulk, white semi-gloss paint, etc. I got my wallpapering tools from Freecycle! Even though I need to buy more paint to finish the baseboards, I have lots of other trim in the house that needs a fresh coat.

I’m very pleased with the beadboard wallpaper. For a novice like me, it wasn’t difficult to hang. As I hoped, caulk and paint disguised my sloppy edges and less-than-precise measuring. It only took about an hour to measure, paste and paper that half wall.

Ikea towels come with loops for hanging!

Until I get around to buying that paint, I’ll focus on hanging the rest of the artwork. Miss Seven will be pleased when I get the stack of frames out of her room and onto the wall.

Bubble prints made at the school art fair

Painting oak trim and doors

Posted by Melissa in DIY and tagged with , , , , , , ,

I know some people think it’s sacrilege to paint over wood trim, but I feel fully justified in this case. Here’s the deal: Most of the doors and trim in our house were painted white by previous owners. Our kitchen cabinets and crown molding are white. But in a few spots–most notably the foyer, hallway and family room–there was newer yellow oak trim and hollow-core slab doors.

This isn’t lovely original millwork that ought to be preserved. I assume these were added when the hardwood floor was replaced at some point, because they don’t match the original baseboards and trim upstairs. Unfortunately, these spaces flow right in to the living room and kitchen, where the trim is white. So we’ve lived with all this strange conflicting trim–some of it even on the same wall!–for five years. It hurt my eyes.

Oak trim around the white sidelights and black front door. Too many finishes!

A few weeks ago, I finally got out the paintbrush and began on the trim in the foyer. Today I’m priming (maybe I’ll get to a coat of paint) the trim and three doors (pantry, bathroom and basement) in the hallway. For the foreseeable future, we’re leaving the family room alone. The room is more self-contained, so the conflicting finishes don’t stand out so much.

Finished front door and baseboards.

This is still a work in progress. I’m reasonably confident I’ll finish the painting this week, but I still need to remove the closet doors so I can paint the inside of the door frame. I would also like to add trim to the slab doors, like this project I found on Pinterest.

Like most of you, I don’t have great swaths of time to work on these projects. Just 30 minutes here and there, between writing projects, laundry, supervising homework, chauffeur duty, and today, a sick child home from school. Too often I put things off because I don’t think I’ll have enough time to complete them. But usually, if I just start something, it doesn’t take very many of those small pockets of time to complete it. And the results are worth it.

One door primed, one to go.

If you’re tackling a project like this yourself, you might want to know what products I’m using. Even though the oak has a glossy coat of polyurethane on it, I’m not doing any sanding. I wiped everything down with a liquid deglosser, then used one coat of primer. Two coats of good quality interior semi-gloss (we’re using Benjamin Moore’s base white color), and it’s done. I’ve painted some trim without using the deglosser first, and it required at least two extra coats of paint, so I’d definitely recommend it.

Already, the streaky coat of primer on those doors has brightened up the dark hall. I’m off to prime one more, and tomorrow I’ll do a little more.

Primer done! Tomorrow: paint.

Painting lampshades

Posted by Melissa in DIY and tagged with , ,

We have this brass chandelier in our dining room that came with the house. I don’t love it, but anything I really like is not exactly in the budget. A few years ago I bought some cheap Ikea lampshades for it, but there wasn’t any color selection, and they have yellowed and just look dingy.

I looked around for new shades, but for six plain black chandelier shades, that could be nearly $100. If I’m going to spend that much, I’ll put it toward a new fixture. Then I saw this tutorial for painting a lampshade. It’s taken me a couple months, but I finally gave it a try. What did I have to lose?

 

I used the same exterior semi-gloss paint & primer that I used on the front door. I started out with a little artist’s brush, but it took forever to paint a single shade, and it seemed a little streaky. I looked at the row of five more shades lined up on the table, and I switched to my trusty two-inch paintbrush. MUCH faster. It took two coats of paint, and I did use the small brush to paint the rolled hem.

My kids accuse me of painting everything black. They exaggerate, but black seems to give everything a little more weight, a little more style. The new black shades will give the brass chandelier a reprieve until we find a fixture we love at a price we’re willing to pay. It could be years…

Painting the front door

Posted by Melissa in DIY and tagged with ,

Why did it take me so long to get around to this?

I’ve been meaning to paint the front door for ages, and yesterday I was finally moved to just get it done. Well, I did the exterior. I was waffling on whether to paint the inside of the door as well, but after a quick browse through some inspiration photos on Pinterest (just search for “black door”), I was reassured. Today’s project: paint the interior side.

Before

I dropped Little Four off at preschool and went straight to Home Depot and bought a quart of Behr Premium Plus Ultra exterior semi-gloss enamel in Black. I looked at some paint chips, some more greeny-black, some more gray-black, but when it came down to it, I just asked for plain old black. I’m very happy with it. Somehow the glossy black makes the entrance more impressive, and I like how the brass hardware pops out.

First coat

As I expected, it took three coats of paint–maybe an hour, total? All I needed was a 2-inch angled brush and some painter’s tape (to tape off the hardware).

After

I’ve got about two hours before I need to leave the house again…time to put my painting clothes back on and get the first coat on the other side!