Painting

When it comes to remodeling, you can't find more bang for your buck than PAINTING!! I especially love when the color you are putting up is drastically different from the one currently on there. It is so fun to watch the change roll on and transform the room in a matter of hours. So it's not surprising that paint day is my favorite day of re-build.

On day 1 of painting, we started with the white "pop" pieces. This included the window sill trim, door frame trim, the ceiling, and the linen closet. Matt handled the closet, which turned out to be a giant pain in the neck. Apparently the shelves were too short for the previous owners' liking, so they added some length by nailing 6 inches of board to the existing shelves. Functionally, that worked great, but aesthetically it looked gross and unfinished. So Matt caulked the seams and painted everything white so the shelves looked seamless. He also painted the walls in the closet, which was difficult given the small space and the multiple nooks he had to work around.

I handled the rest of the white trim, which was pretty easy. But it was not without its messes, and I ended up with paint all over my arms. As the day wrapped up, I was also able to sneak up on Matt and take a picture of his paint-frosted hair before he knew what was happening :) Fortunately for us, paint washes off of skin and hair pretty easily - it's the clothes you have to worry about.

Day 2 was all about the blue! We picked a fun color called "Tropical Lagoon" (or tropical dragoon, as we called it) - a far cry from the browns and tans in every other one of our rooms. It's my attempt to be braver at design, and it's a start. Matt did the edging in the room because I don't have the patience or the technique for edging. It's a lot of over-the-head work, which is tough on the shoulders, so my big strong man takes care of that :) Plus, I really like to cover the big areas with the roller because then I feel like I'm making the biggest difference in the room.

While I rolled on the second layer of blue, Matt took the doors out into the living room and painted them blue as well. Once we put them back on the hinges, they will be framed in white and the contrast will hopefully look cool. So there it is - our funky new wall color! The tans in the tile and the dark brown wood in the vanity will tone it down a notch once they're installed, but for now I'm totally digging our bold new look.