The long title should prepare you for a long blog post. Granted, there are a lot of pictures, which is what you really came for, but..... :)
The honey oak has left another room upstairs! I was able to stick to schedule and cover all that nasty honey oak during the month of August. As a matter of fact, it only took me 3 weeks of August.
Here's what the room looked like when we put an offer on the house.
The picture shows the previous owner's furniture.
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| Pictures I took the day we put an offer in. |
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| 2nd view of the room from the day we put an offer in that shows all that honey oak trim work. |
Then I painted the walls and we pulled up the 20 year old carpet and had tile installed.
We were good with that for a while.
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| Update 1 was grey paint on the walls. The carpet wasn't changed out until later. |
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| Another view of Update 1. My bed is a king and really makes this room look tiny compared to the previous owner's photo. But I don't want a smaller bed! Can't see any honey oak in this picture. Just more to show the wall color. |
But now the honey oak is gone! TA DAAAAAAA!!!!
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| Gah! In certain light (like overcast skies outside), my room looks light blue. It's grey. But man, greys are hard to choose. |
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| Another view you haven't seen before. Bathroom door on left, closet door in middle, main door on the side wall on the right. |
The window gave me 1 extra step . Mr. & Mrs. Previous Owner had blinds in most windows and the nimrod (sorry, not sorry) stripped many of the screws when he/she installed them, making it nearly impossible for me to get them out. For most, I had to break the head off the screw and then use a pliers to rotate the screws out, often scratching the woodwork making the hole worse. Sigh. So, wood filler and a sanding block were the first steps to new white window trim. Easy enough since it dried in hours allowing me to sand and get 1 coat of primer done the same day.
Something Learned
I experimented this time and I found that plain old masking tape is just as good to tape off my tile floors while painting the baseboards. And it's way cheaper! I still used the blue painter's tape on the walls when I needed to protect those. But for protecting the tile edge, cheap masking tape was a much better choice on the budget!
Something Learned
I experimented this time and I found that plain old masking tape is just as good to tape off my tile floors while painting the baseboards. And it's way cheaper! I still used the blue painter's tape on the walls when I needed to protect those. But for protecting the tile edge, cheap masking tape was a much better choice on the budget!
Something Unexpected
After my master bathroom reveal in my last post, I realized that I wasn't quite done with the bathroom after all. See, I took the final photos as the paint was still curing and I hadn't replaced the window screen. The window screen frames were an ugly greyish-goldish, nasty color. Technically, so are the window locks and cranks. The original screen didn't look good on fresh white windows. Eyesore is a more appropriate adjective. So after messaging a friend who has become quite the professional painter herself, and sharing my thoughts, I decided rather than replacing the screens and buying new ones, I removed the screens and spray painted the screen frames with simple spray paint. I had a half a can left from an Easter project, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was even able to reuse the screen and the rubber tubing and I already had the roller tool. Time will tell how spray painted metal screen frames hold up. I'm guessing they won't hold up long and will surely scratch like crazy, but we'll see. Even if this is just a temporary fix to get us by for a while, I'm totally fine with that! And the original locks and cranks will do for now too. They are small and not as much of an eyesore.
Another Something Learned
Oh, and 1 more thing. When painting the inset part of the window frame where your screens slide into, only go with 1 coat of primer and 1 coat of paint. I did 2 of each, plus 2 coats of spray paint on the screen and I could barely get the screen back in. YIKES! Even just those few coats of paint made it a much tighter space. Doing 1 coat of each on the bedroom window and it was much easier to get those screens back in! And again, that's just on the screen inset part; the rest of the window trim got 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint. Phew! That was a close one!
Another Something Learned
Oh, and 1 more thing. When painting the inset part of the window frame where your screens slide into, only go with 1 coat of primer and 1 coat of paint. I did 2 of each, plus 2 coats of spray paint on the screen and I could barely get the screen back in. YIKES! Even just those few coats of paint made it a much tighter space. Doing 1 coat of each on the bedroom window and it was much easier to get those screens back in! And again, that's just on the screen inset part; the rest of the window trim got 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint. Phew! That was a close one!
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| Before. A gold-ish, grey-ish ugly screen frame. Looked fine with honey oak, but would be gross with white trim. |
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| After. Spray painted white. This will look so much better! |
Believe it or not, I got the window, baseboards and all door trim all done in 1 quick week. It was work (window and door frames take time, but baseboards are super easy and super fast), but I didn't want my husband annoyed that our room was torn up for too long. All our furniture was literally in the middle of the room so I could crawl around and get all the baseboards done.
What took the most time were the doors: bathroom door, closet door and bedroom door. It was a lot of hauling and heavy lifting to get those solid 6-panel doors down to the basement, but my garage is still full with Jay's car in stall 3, the camper in stall 2 and the wave runner in stall 1 (it just went to the cabin this weekend finally!). I will say, that predicament allowed me to find a good sized plumbing leak in my basement, so I'm secretly grateful that I had to paint those doors in the basement, even if it took a lot of muscle to get those down 2 sets of stairs! I don't go down to the basement more than once a month (if that) to add salt to my water softener, so going downstairs to paint made me see an ugly leak. $450 plumber later...... :(
By the time I was ready for the doors, I also had to strain my paint through old pantyhose. Too many clumps of debris in the paint can. Old hose worked like a charm!
I give my oil painted items LOTS of curing time, thus the extended amount of time to get these doors done. Even though dry to the touch within 48 hours, it is still VERY easily scratched up to a week or more depending on the humidity level, so you have to give ample drying time before you can flip the door and prime/paint the reverse side. I did side 1 in 4 days, waited through the weekend to flip, then did side 2 in another 4 days, waited through that next weekend to dry and cure, then installed them again on week 3. That's a long time without doors.
Thank God I had the paint and primer already to complete this room,so no expense spared other than a roll of masking tape for a whopping $2.00. Next time, I'll have both primer and paint to buy because I have used it all now.
My hopeful schedule remains:
September: Kids' bathroom trim, cabinets and door
October: Super E's bedroom trim, windows and doors
November: Quiet Tiger's bedroom trim, windows and doors
