After my little breakdown yesterday over leaving our old house, I figured it was time to look forward now! While we haven’t started the major renovations yet on our new house, I’ve been keeping myself busy painting some of the upstairs rooms that are not going to be having any work done to them.
These aren’t going to be the most exciting before/after pictures ever to grace the internet, because we’re still hanging some things and sorting through boxes. But it feels like progress to me, so try to share a little of my enthusiasm, eh??
Let’s start with the kitchen. Yes, I know I said I’m showing you some upstairs rooms, but our 1st mini project actually started in the kitchen.
This cabinet that was hanging over the peninsula was the first thing to go for a couple of reasons:
- We are removing the soffits above all the cabinets, and this soffit seemed like a natural first one to open up to see what we were dealing with.
- It was seriously blocking my view and I had already banged my head on it a number of times and we weren’t even living there yet!
- The peninsula itself isn’t staying there, so that would be so bizarre to leave the hanging cabinet.
- The laundry room was in desperate need of storage and this cabinet fit the bill.
So with the help of a friend, he and my husband removed the cabinet and peeked into the soffit (all of them actually, not just this one). We were SO happy to hear that there is NOTHING in there! They seriously were just there for looks.
The cabinet got taken upstairs to the laundry room (yes, a 2nd floor laundry!), which is actually a closet in the main bathroom. This is what it looked like when we moved in. I will never, ever, ever understand sponge painting.
You can’t really tell in the above picture, but at the bottom of the sponge painting is a little particle board shelf. That was the only “storage” for the whole laundry closet.
So I removed the shelf and all the trim and painted the whole thing with some oops paint I bought for $5. Then the boys hung the cabinet and we’re already looking much better! I will eventually add some shelves to fill in the space to the right of the cabinet.
Right beside it, my son’s room also got painted. He started with just a plain builder’s beige color and this bulletin board that was already mounted.
I let him pick the color (he wanted navy) and then I chose 6 different options for him to choose the final one from. He went with Benjamin Moore’s Hale Navy, and I love it!
After patching and touching up the paint in his old bedroom this past week, I also love the bulletin board. (I have never seen so many holes in my life) This kid loves to decorate apparently! Once we get the rest of his room done (we’re waiting for poster frames to arrive), I’ll share the rest of it so you can actually see the paint color!
Across the hall, my daughter’s room started with a pale green. It was actually a nice shade of green and nothing really wrong with it except it wasn’t her at all.
She wanted the same paint from her previous bedroom, EasyCare in Icebox. This picture is a different angle from the previous shot, but the glare from the window was causing me problems that day.
It also gives you a nice view of her headboard that we built, which was easily one of the hardest things we had to move in the entire house! We had actually built it in her previous room, so never had to move it before! Yikes!
The only other room that’s gotten painted so far is the my office. It’s the room above the garage and right off the master bedroom. It has faux wood paneling on the short walls that was painted a very country blue. All the trim and doors were painted the same blue. Just not me at all.
Except that I love blue. I’m just more of a cobalt and navy kind of girl. My husband thought I was nuts with all the work that needs done on this house, to waste any time painting something that was blue already, another shade of blue. But I had the paint already, so it was a free project, and I knew it would make me happier.
I was already planning on painting all the trim white, so I just ended up doing it all! If you follow me on Facebook, hopefully you saw this cool hack I used to make the trim painting go faster. I just took a piece of heavy duty cardstock and shoved it under the trim (the upper trim and the baseboard), and just moved it with my brush! So much faster and cheaper than taping! I barely had to pause as I was moving along!
I don’t have a picture of the whole room since a lot of it is being used as storage right now until our 1st floor is finished, but here is a little shot of the office I set up in the corner! I love it so much more with “my” colors! The printer cart will get painted as soon as the weather warms up and I can use my paint sprayer again. I’m thinking a bright kelly green!
I also wanted to get this done quickly, because it’s so hard not to paint when it’s an empty room and you know you don’t need to worry about the carpet! (see that huge, round water stain on the carpet in the upper left corner of the before picture?? They had an inflatable hot tub in here!)
So we took the carpet from the downstairs family room and moved it up to the office!
The whole 1st floor is getting new flooring, so this was going to be going soon anyways. It’s also a very tight Berber and seemed much more appropriate for an office than it did for a family room. Love re-using items!!
Which is a great segue into my next project! See that wood stove up there? That’s getting moved to the basement to help heat the whole house. I’ve already got my hammer drill and all that brick is coming out, so we can open up this back room to the front living room!
Hopefully this goes as smoothly in reality as I have it planned in my head, so I can share more before/after pics soon!
