Quick update on the living room

I spent all day Sunday painting the ceiling and trim, which is a terrific way to spend a lot of time doing something unpleasant with no real visible change.  But then my car door busted and I had to take it to the shop, so I got a bonus day for painting.  At least this time you could tell I had been doing something in there.

Here's a quick reminder of what it looked like before:

I had to repatch an area over the fireplace where I did a bad job the first time--that white stripe will be going away soon.  I'm really digging the white on the fireplace and the brighter white of the newly painted window.  

After I finished painting for the evening I somehow ended up obsessively scraping paint off the wood floors with a razor blade.  All of my floors look like this because the previous owners couldn't be bothered to use dropcloths. 

And the fact that I feel the need to do this is the number one reason that they will have to drag me off to the loony bin someday.

Because nothing can ever just be *easy* with me.

So, about those bedroom curtains.

I ordered a swatch of the fabric I posted last week, only to find that it really has an olive undertone that makes the bedroom paint read really minty.  It was disappointing.  I was holding up different swatches to the wall and *all* of them were making the paint read mint, actually.

The boy was like, "Why don't you just paint your bedroom?"  Oh Greg, you can't put ideas like that in my head or it riles up the home improvement demons!  So yeah, now I want to paint my bedroom.  Again.

Now, the path of least resistence would be to paint the room something that goes with the curtains I currently have but no, goddamn it, I love this fabric and I want to waste my time and money sewing new curtains. And the fabric looks really nice with the paint in the spare bedroom!

Effing home improvement demons.

Money well spent

Sometimes I do things that, if a girlfriend was describing them to me, I'd be like, "Girl, what are you thinking? Don't do that," but then I do them anyway.  Hiring my coworker's husband to do some work for me was one of those things.  The bathroom fan has gotten really REALLY noisy lately and I suspected that the duct in the attic had rattled off the motor body of the fan.  I made my boy go up in the attic with me because of the SPIDERS, OH MY GOD SPIDERS.

We found this.

They actually make clamps to hold ducts together and I believe they're quite inexpensive.  But why waste $.60 when you can just duct tape everything together?  When I had the vents put in the roof my coworker's husband, who works as a licensed contractor, set up the duct for the bathroom fan. He apparently decided this was the correct way to do it.

We pulled off the failing duct tape and put new duct tape in the same place. If it's good enough for a licensed contractor, it's good enough for us. What's the worst that could happen?

The big picture

I've never storyboarded (is that even what it's called?) before, but this is sort of the master plan for the living room.  Until, you know, I change my mind again.

And I think I agree with the majority below: the fireplace should be white, even if it will show smoke and soot.  Hey, my fireplace doesn't work anyway!

Help me pick a paint color.

I like to paint a large area when I'm waffling over color choices but I think the color swatches, combined with the 6 existing paint colors, skidded right past "helpful" and right into "confusing." The walls will be the olive green you see on the lower half of the wall.

It looks sort of awesome the way it is, no?  *Sigh.*

But seriously, which looks better? Dark gray or white? Or something completely different?

poll by twiigs.com

Update!

Rachel makes me realize that I haven't specified what the color scheme will be in this room.  This is the inspiration photo for the room:

The rug will get swapped out for a light blue one and there will be pops of red.  So I'd like the fireplace to have some drama  . . . but more of the black-white spectrum kind. And of course I'll put a bird on it. :)

Things are happening!

One of the things on my wishlist for my reveal was for the living room to be painted and the mirror above the fireplace be removed. When the house stager informed me that she'd have to hire painters and a contractor to remove the mirror, I told her to forget it and just focus on getting me furniture. 'Cause I paint and labor for free.

I had no idea what was behind the mirror--it could be water damage, an exposed fireplace, an envelope of money . . . who knows. I conned the boy into helping me remove the mirror this weekend.

The mirror was really heavy but it came down pretty easily.

Then we just had to remove the wood structure behind the mirror.

Next I just have to clean, patch, sand, and prime that area, and then I can get started on painting the living room.  New year's house resolutions, I WILL OWN YOU.

Great sadness!

The weather gods decreed that the sedum planter is yard trash.

At some time during the night that leaning bit of gate fell over, squished my mock orange and took out my little shabby chic drawer of sedums.  You'd think I'd learn and finally put that bit of gate (which I intend to turn into a compost bin) in the garage but, no, I just leaned it up against the fence again.

Ha ha, weather gods! I have another bathroom vanity drawer in the basement! And I never learn my lesson!