Painting the ceiling

One of the things we’re doing that I didn’t mention in my initial post about the upcoming renos is painting the ceiling. It was kind of an after-thought, to be honest. I’ve hated the ceiling since day 1, but Justin kind of likes it. Scraping all that plaster would be a bear of a job, and drywalling over it would be expensive and lower our ceilings a bit, so Justin won this one and it’s staying (for now). Painting it was also a lot of work, but considerably cheaper and easier than the other options. It also covers up the years of grime that have accumulated up there since you really can't clean textured ceilings. The general dirty look is one of the biggest reasons I hated the ceiling so much.

Now, if we were smart, we would have painted the ceiling BEFORE we painted any of the walls. But clearly that didn’t happen, so we had to protect the walls before we could paint. The floor didn’t matter, except for the stairs and landing, since we're down to subfloors right now anyway. I’d say it’s probably prudent to protect the walls no matter what if you’re painting a textured ceiling. It requires such a thick roller that the paint kind of flies around. There was a fine mist of white paint covering everything when we were done, and you don't want that on your walls.

To protect the walls, we started by running a line of tape along the top. We used delicate Frog Tape for the walls that have been more recently painted just to be safe, and regular Frog Tape for the walls that haven’t been painted yet.

Then, we taped plastic sheeting to the tape line to protect the walls. The reason we didn’t just go straight to that step is that we knew it would be harder to tape the plastic in a neat, straight line up against the ceiling.

The plastic static-ed itself to the wall well enough that in most places, I didn't bother taping the bottom. It wasn't flying around at all.

We protected the walls the day before we painted, so I cut the doorways out and taped the plastic to itself so we could get in and out. When it came time to paint, it was easy to take the tape off and let everything fall back down. This super-terrible cell phone pic shows kind of what things looked like:

Right before we painted, we tackled the stairs and landing. The plastic is slippery so we didn't want to be walking on it for any longer than possible.

The very last thing we did was take down the light fixtures. I bagged the dining room one, but it really wasn't necessary so I left the hallway ones alone. It was nice to be able to leave them on and take advantage of the light since we were painting in the evening.

Finally, after all that, it was time to paint! We used Zinsser Odorless Oil-based stain blocker and primer, which can be used without a top coat as a ceiling paint as well #winning. The downer was that it wasn't really odorless, which was to be expected really. It could have been much worse.

We went with oil-based since we’re not sure what type of finish is on the ceiling now, and we know it will stick to anything. I bought a brush specifically for oil-based paints, and we used a ¾ nap roller. I did the cutting in, and Justin did the rolling. The key thing here is that once you’ve painted an area, you can’t go back over it otherwise you risk pulling the texture down.

I did the cutting-in through the day and Justin rolled that night. You can see what a difference it made, pretty much immediately:

We only ended up doing 1 coat on the main ceiling, but I did the edges twice. The paint didn't go on quite as thickly with the brush, so you could see where the roller had gone over top of it after the first coat. The second coat fixed that right up.

The difference is absolutely incredible! The ceiling is so bright! I think once the darker floors and chunky white baseboards are in it's going to look really good.

Admittedly, we still haven't done the part directly over the landing - Justin left the tall step ladder at work, so that will be a project for this coming weekend. I'll show you pictures of the whole thing once it's totally done. It really never ends... but this is the first major step towards getting this reno done, and if anything, we're even more excited now!

Updating the spare room

Before all the crazy started, I got the spare room "done for now". And no sooner had I taken the photos did we have all the furniture moved out and our living furniture moved in to make a den of sorts while our living room is out of commission. As soon as the new floors are in, I'll be putting all the furniture back so the work wasn't lost.

Let's start with a before, shall we? Boring beige walls, like everywhere else in the house, a twin bed, and not much else. It needed some TLC.

As soon as I had the first coat of paint on, I knew I was in love. It's so warm and rich and darker than I would usually go for. It's Para Lifestyles Film Festival. This room is incredibly bright and I knew it could handle it.

The only new thing I purchased for this room was the desk chair, for a total of $3 at the thrift store. I was originally going to paint whatever chair I bought red, but I kinda liked the blue once I got it home. It's in rough shape, but so is the desk that I dug out of my parents storage room. We got a new mattress for our bedroom so we put our old one in here. This room will hopefully be a nursery some day, so there wasn't much point in investing a lot of money in it.

Ignore the dust and fingerprints on my laptop in this picture (and the old walnut chair borrowed from the keyboard in the living room). I didn't notice it until I uploaded everything, but I love how the photo shows the light that streams into the room in the afternoon.

Yep, I think it's all quite an improvement from where we started. I love it!

This explains so much...

The entire time we've lived here, I've thought that the doors and jambs, and some of the trim, looked...sticky. Or something. I can't really describe it, but they just don't look clean even though they are. They photograph fine, but in person, well, it's another story.

A little while ago, I figured out why.

You see, it appears that the doors and jambs, and the trim that hasn't been replaced, were pretty much all originally that gorgeous blue that still adorns our front entry way (for now...). I cannot imagine how many coats of primer and paint it took to cover all that, but it was obviously done a number of years ago since the white is now starting to wear away.

With so many layers of paint on them, it's no wonder the doors have an almost "sticky" appearance. Just one more reason I can't wait to replace them (more on that soon)! The brass doorknobs make me twitchy, too.

I could write a novella on the various issues I have with some of the finishing in this house, but the summary is that our beloved blue house has had a number of owners over 25 years who all apparently had very different tastes and very different skill levels when it came to home renovation. As a result, we have different closet pulls in every bedroom, a couple of doorknob styles (which we have only made worse, I admit, by updating the exterior locks), and at least 2 styles of baseboard. I *think* most of our casing is at least sort of the same... but then there's also the issue of colour. Blue, light blue, light green, green, and white. Oh! And dusty rose in the basement! It's everything but professional looking, which is at the core of every renovation we do.

That's all a story for another day though. In the meantime, I'm just going to continue glaring at the brass doorknobs and the peeling white paint around them and count down the days until they hit the dumpster (foreshadowing...).

Phase 1 office reveal

Now, I'm going to preface this post by saying: the office is one of the plainest rooms in our home. It's Justin's space, and he could not care less about decoration in there. But, that doesn't mean I couldn't inject a bit of life into an otherwise beige box. It's the first room in the house that feels somewhat pulled together, and for that, I am very grateful.

Here's where we started:

Not great. Very blue. Up close, the walls were...not pleasant. This had been a nursery for the previous owners, and I prefer not to think about what was on there. They were also in terrible condition - nails and screws and holes and peeling paint galore. So, step 1 was paint the place. It's Para Lifestyles Comfortable Chinoise. It's the paint we used in our last house, which means this little update was a freebie. 

Remember, we're leaving the trim and doors as-is for now since we'll be replacing them along with the rest of the trim and doors in the house within a couple of years. It's not cute, but I'm not wasting my time temporarily fixing it. Painting baseboards against carpet = the worst. If you're wondering about the too-short curtains in the progress photo above, I've already addressed that little oops. 

Once it was painted, the fun could begin. I was working with what we already had. We didn't buy any new furniture (with the exception of the hamper), which meant sticking with the black, white, and light wood we had in our old office. I tried to use blues here and there to add colour without competing with the trim. 

These are some of my favourite things in the room:

The hat belonged to Justin's grandfather and was given to us by his mom a couple of years ago. The blue beer bottle is from a brewery we visited on our honeymoon - QidiVidi. 

This tape measure was gifted to Justin from one of my uncles. It belonged to his father-in-law, and I think it's super cool (Justin just thinks it's practical). 

I hung a picture of each of our pets when they were babies above the dresser. This may be my favourite detail of all, since I see it every time I walk past the room. 

I am still working on the curtain situation. I don't love these black ones: they're flimsy and I think they look cheap. I bought some great blue and white patterned canvas on sale on the weekend, but while I was sewing the machine started making the worst noise, so I've had to take it in for service (womp womp). 

Overall, I am really loving this room right now. It looks a bit empty in photographs, but in person, it's a really comfortable work space which is really all we can ask for. 

Choosing colours and paints

We decided pretty much immediately that the first thing to go had to be the blue paint that covered 75% of our walls (see the "Before" pics in our House Tour). The outside of our house is blue, and most of the inside is too (including some trim, oof). Way. Too. Much. Blue. But, what colour was going to replace it? This grainy cell phone pic shows just how many paint chips I brought home (and this was after I pitched some a few days earlier):

The chip in the bottom left is the one we chose for most of the house (it will cover most of the parts that are blue). It's Olympic's Tightrope (middle of the chip), but we've had it colour matched to Para Lifestyles. It's very similar to the colour we had throughout the old house. Old habits die hard, I suppose. 

The second from the left on the bottom is Para's Snappy Dresser (second from top on the chip), and it's what we chose for the kitchen walls. It looks really close to Tightrope in this pic, and it definitely is, but it's more green. I wanted it for the main house, but Justin wanted something a bit warmer so Snappy Dresser was relegated to the kitchen. I'm not 100% sold on it for in there, but I just love the colour. We'll see. The big white chip is Valspar's Du Jour, and we plan to paint the kitchen cabinetry with it. 

The blue Para chip is for the master bedroom and bathroom. It's blue, I know, but I just couldn't get it out of my head. We'll be putting Book Worm (second from top) in the bedroom, and Sublime (second from bottom) in the bathroom. 

Overall, I'm going for muddy colours in this house so far. I might change my mind - the only colour that's been purchased so far is Tightrope - but I'm feeling pretty confident in the direction things are going colour-wise. I want it to feel cozy but not frumpy or old; modern, but not too trendy. I want it to be comfortable. 

You'll also notice that I don't concern myself too much with the brand when I'm choosing colours. We've used Valspar, Behr, Olympic, and Para paints in the past. We know now what we like and don't like (paint and primer in one = not for us), and we also know that any of them can be colour matched to the other. We really loved Para Lifestyles when we used it in our last house, and a year and a half after painting, it still looked brand new, so we'll be going that route again. 

Wish us luck on all this painting - as we're starting, I'm realizing just how much bigger than our old house this one really is (which was the point of moving, but still, it's taking much longer than it used to)!