More Home Makeover. Otherwise known as: Operation Save My Sanity

Since Mike was laid off for those 8 weeks over Christmas, everything relating to Operation Save My Sanity making over our new home ceased. Well, there was a little painting done just after Christmas and some baseboard trim installed but nothing more. We just couldn’t justify shopping for stuff and that saddened me, deeply, because I am very impatient. Seeing Mike home for 8 weeks and not a lick of work being done to our house was really extremely painful.

I’m a little frustrated that not one of the started projects has yet to be completed in its entirety. It all takes time, money, MOTIVATION!, and knowledge; all of which we have little of. But eventually we will get there. The Upside? If we don’t, maybe the styles will come full circle and everything will be in style again!

Carter’s room is the same colour as the hallways and common areas, which BTW make me retch in disgust and hatred every. single. time. I enter my house.

Now, imagine that paint, that wallpaper and NAVY BLUE CARPET throughout the entire upstairs. Then combine that wallpaper and paint with a on off-white and dusty rose diamond patterned linoleum.

That’s my front foyer.

Uh. Huh.

Anyway, Carter’s room: It was a neutral tan colour which really sucked for a little boy.

Coupled with the navy blue carpet, it really was unsightly, dark and dreary.

Outside his window is a full grown maple tree (which thankfully is far enough away that attempting to escape will be challenging when he gets older.) which lets little natural light in during the day (when it’s full of leaves, until now, in the winter). The bedroom lighting fixture is old, and well – crap. And nothing beats natural light, so the room desperately needed to be brightened up.

We painted the entire room in Bay Waves (Valspar from Lowe’s) accenting with a bright red stripe in well, Bright Red (Valspar from Lowe’s). The blue smaller accent stripes were made using the paint we had remaining from when we re-did his Big Boy Room at the other house.

I just spent the last 40 minutes trying, valiantly, to find a photo – or even a post – of the sheen striping I did in Carter’s room at our old house. Now I am pissed off because this totally reaffirms that I should be much more organized – even in my photo sorting. Stupid organization.

Moving on..

We painted the walls, waited a day and then painted the stripes. I am kicking myself for not investigating striping more thoroughly, because then I would have know how important it is to add a coat of the base colour over a bit of the tape in order to seal it. This will prevent bleeding of the other paints and leave cleaner, crisper lines. I never gave it a second thought because, funnily enough, when I did the striping the one and only other time before, there was no bleed like this room. Especially with the red paint.

I can’t even tell you how upset this made me. It’s still like that. I haven’t had the time or the energy to try and fix it yet. But it goes around the whole room. Some spots worse than others. Mike says just leave it, it’s fine (of course) but I can’t. I plan to re-tape the whole room and paint the Bay Waves colour over the edges of the tape, then re-paint the stripes. I’ve already sanded it smooth and washed it down in preparation for re-painting.

*sigh*

I am so not looking forward to doing it again, but I can’t leave it any longer.

I am in the midst of painting the room right now. After traveling 40 minutes to Lowe’s for another can of Bay Waves, I realized IN THE PARKING LOT that I had forgotten to record the sheen of the paint and had to go home to get the information.

Finally, after being there and back, and there and back (like a Dr. Seuss book), I painted over the blue lines and re-taped the whole room, widening the red line and re-doing the blue all together. I’ve painted the tape in an attempt to seal it from bleeding. I am armed with a utility knife and “precision tape” and WILL. NOT. FAIL.

I’ll let you know how it turns out…

:::

Hudson’s room was a simple paint job. No fancy striping.

We also stripped the popcorn ceiling, which wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. A simple gardening weed and feed hand sprayer, warm water, a drywall knife  and plastic sheeting was all I needed.

But now, the colour is so relaxing. I saw a nursery picture featured at Ohdeedoh using Tranquility and knew it would be perfect. I went to a Benjamin Moore dealer and got a paint chip which I then took to Lowe’s where I used their paint chip matcher to find a similar colour in Valspar paints.

The shelves with baskets and accessories, and photographs are still to be put up.

The light will be replaced with this one:

Very much still a work in progress… and until final payments are made our car (JUNE!!!) and Carter is out of daycare (SEPTEMBER!!!) the  there will be no tearing down walls, pulling carpets or replacing cabinetry. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to that stage! But for now, I just have to update the old! dirty! and relic! items to help progress towards this house being OURS…

If you’re interested, here are the posts on our kitchen up-date – which is also, no fully completed.

Next? Main bath.

Tagged as: changes, home, the renovations begin, updates