Just a girl with a hammer

Tag: paint

  • And now my greatest source of shame

    And now my greatest source of shame

    There’s one area of the house I never photograph because it’s so awful. I don’t ever want guests to see it, which means it’s always the first place they peek.

    Our bathtub looks like someone was murdered in it, after which time they cooked up a batch of meth. Or maybe the meth came first, but then something definitely died in here. I tried bleach, vinegar, scrubbing bubbles, Oxyclean, you name it. Ironically, it’s harsh cleansers that cause or intensify those discolorations. You live, you learn. (Can you spot all the Alanis Morissette song titles in that paragraph?)

    Our grout is cracked and missing in places and looks awful. We have both that weird pink bacteria AND black mildew. Greg flew to Germany for a two-week business trip this spring, so I decided to finally do something about it (that wasn’t a full on remodel).

    I had that f*cker refinished. Take that, meth corpse! Then I poured myself a glass of wine, put that one Neko Case song on repeat, and went at the grout with Q-tips and hydrogen peroxide. Then I patched the missing grout in places. It still looks pretty terrible but it’s MUCH better.

    The tub didn’t turn out perfectly. There are tiny holes where bubbles formed in the finish and there’s what they call a “sag” where it looks like the paint dripped.

    I called the guy at Premier Glaze and asked if this was normal or something he wanted to fix? He came out to see the results and declared, “I want to redo this for you.” So that’s still in our future. But our bathroom no longer looks like a crime scene! It just looks like a pretty normal bathroom with mauve shower tile from the 80’s.
    Then, since I wasn’t having enough fun showering at the gym, I had the walls replastered. Before, we had a giant hole in the wall where the previous owner had removed the medicine cabinet. I kept the hole, hidden behind the mirror, just in case I wanted to install a new medicine cabinet later. It’s been five years, so I’m guessing that cabinet ain’t going to happen.
    The wall was terribly rutted and poorly patched (by me!)
    I used John Macnab and the process took two days.
    The finish is SO DREAMY. The walls look beautiful. I wish I’d had him replaster all the walls instead of just these two.
    Last fall when Anna helped me pick out a color for the living room she tackled the challenge that is this room. The original purple and yellow tile is easy but those awful pink shower tiles throw everything out of whack. Anna ended up finding a color (BM Hampshire Taupe) that matches the grout in the purple and yellow tile. Then she picked out a metallic (Ralph Lauren York Purple) for the wall over the shower. 
    The main color initially went on the color of a flesh colored crayon and I totally panicked. Then I decided to just go for it because hey, I can always repaint. And you know what? I love it. It’s the perfect taupe-gray with just a touch of purple.
    I know what you’re thinking: “That looks like the same color.” Greg couldn’t even tell that I had painted it a different color, but look:
    We refer to this as “the butt painting”
    The new tub finish cleans up beautifully using Scrubbing Bubbles and a soft sponge. Did I mention it only cost $355 to refinish? Why didn’t I do this earlier?
    And some day I will have the money to hire either Tommy from This Old House or Chris and Meryl to retile the shower and there will be great rejoicing.
    And just to recap, when I moved in:
    And then:
    And now.
    Yay!
  • Entryway, take two

    Entryway, take two

    A year ago, right before Thanksgiving, I decided to paint our entryway. The color didn’t turn out quite like it was supposed to but we lived with it. 
    So shiny! So blue!
    When I consulted with Anna to pick a paint color for the dining room she noticed that we have a lot of mid-range brown furniture and suggested French Press by Benjamin Moore for the entryway. 
    The color has really grown on me but initially both Greg and I missed having blue in here. How silly is that? I really like mixing brown and black but Greg isn’t a fan of the black doors with this color. 

    I’m really, really, really over gallery walls (I blame Pinterest) but I still like them in very small spaces. I’d love to cover every inch of our bathroom in artwork . . . too bad humidity is so bad for it. I crammed all the spare artwork I could find to juj it up in here.

    Greg was teasing that some day someone else will own this house and they’ll see all the layers of paint and think they were applied over a 60 year period when in reality it was over three. For now I think this is staying. I finally admitted that our baseboards are so layered in paint that I can’t freehand a straight line and used Frog Tape. Holy shit, that stuff actually works!
    I’m thinking a more colorful rug will make me fall in love with this entryway. Any opinions?
  • The bedroom! An outward manifestation of my capriciousness!

    The bedroom! An outward manifestation of my capriciousness!

    While Greg was gone and I was painting the dining room, I also painted the bedroom. For anyone keeping track (me, Greg, psychiatrist), this is the third time I’ve painted it. I picked this color out myself so I can’t even blame Anna if people don’t like it. It’s Stained Glass by Benjamin Moore.

    I promise it’s not the same color as the dining room. It’s darker and bluer (and very hard to photograph).

    I think whoever prepped this house to sell was worried that they would run out of paint, so they decided to paint two walls in each room one color, and the other two walls a different one. The paint colors were all mis-tints bought from the clearance bin at Home Depot. I know this because they left me the cans in the basement. This bedroom had two pale green walls and two French blue walls.

    I initially painted it Cilantro Cream by Behr and it was okay.

    Then Greg was going to move in and I decided I had to repaint the bedroom. So I tried to get a color match to the spare bedroom color, which was a Metro Paint color. Because Metro Paint is made from recycled paint, there’s no consistency to their colors. The color match wasn’t very good, but again the color was fine. Pale blue. Like the dining room.

    Mid-painting

    But now it is dark and delicious and I love it. Why are interiors so hard to photograph?

    I really want brass swing-arm sconces instead of those dinky bedside lamps. I don’t care if I’m blindly following fads, I think they’re pretty:

    I used to read books but then I discovered TV, which is like reading except it’s less effort and you can surf the web while you do it! This TV is old and weighs over 60 pounds, so I had to con my friend Bill into helping me get it off the wall before I could paint.

    I love the color of Dracaena ‘Limelight’ against the walls

    I have something in the works for new drapes, which will hopefully be less labor intensive than when I sewed the living and dining room drapes. The sweater rug at West Elm went on sale recently so we got an 8×10′ rug for $350 but now I’m wishing I’d gone with the darker colored rug. And not just because I’ll probably spill wine on it.

    At the very least we need a new duvet cover, no? I think this one deserves to be replaced after all the wine it’s put up with. What color would you go with?

    I’d like to incorporate more plants in the room as well, but being so accident prone = no plants on the bedside table. Two things recently made me laugh until I almost peed: an article from The Onion “Man Puts Glass of Water on Bedside Table in Case He Needs to Make Huge Mess in Middle of Night” (thanks Scott) and this photo on Pinterest:

    Everything was fine until I got up to pee in the middle of the night, tripped over the stack of books, and impaled myself on the antlers hanging on the wall.

    If you’re wondering what Greg thought, he likes it! In fact, he’s digging the more saturated colors so much that he thinks we should repaint the spare bedroom.

    I’m thinking I should let him have the fun this time and I’ll just watch. Painting is a lot of work and I have so many things to spill on the new rug.

  • And then I painted everything

    And then I painted everything

    Greg recently went to a trade show in Europe and was gone for two weeks. Two weeks! I have a habit of painting while he’s gone (proof here, here, and here) and this time was no different.

    Except that he was gone for so long that I had to paint multiple rooms.

    First up was the dining room. For anyone keeping track (so far that’s me, Greg, and my psychiatrist), this is the third time I’ve painted this room. The first color was a disaster, so I painted it again two days later.

    The color(s) when I moved in

    First disastrous paint color, minty fresh

    Two days later, second alright color

    The second color, that washed out blue, was never something I was in love with. It just didn’t make me shudder the way that minty green did, so it stayed. Also, I was sick of painting by that point.

    But! Now I had holes in the ceiling to repair and a ginormous hole in the wall to fix. When you’re very lucky, your house comes with TWO fuse boxes.

    This fuse box confounded three different electricians, who couldn’t figure out WHY there would be two boxes in one house, one upstairs, one down. It powered a very strange set of things, like: the refrigerator, the outlets in the bedroom, one switch in the living room, and, somewhere in Mongolia, a single lamp that an ancient man cooked by. The main box in the basement powered everything else.

    One reason that our electrical upgrade took so long is that our electrician removed this and properly rerouted our wires to one single box in the basement, which he then balanced and upgraded. This is all fancy talk for saying that we had a huge hole in the wall now, and the lights no longer dim when you run the microwave. Huzzah!

    Blah blah blah, patchy patchy patchy . . .

    I finally got smart and got professional help on the paint color. Anna Kulgren is a gardening friend who I came to learn also has degrees in architecture, interior design, horticulture, and loads of other things. She’s also a brilliant color specialist and runs a small design-build studio in Portland called Optic Verve. She came over with her suitcases full of color swatch decks and got down to business.

    In no time she found the perfect color for the dining room. You guys, she’s SO GOOD.

    But first I also had to patch the ceiling where the old light fixtures were. I think I did a pretty okay job.

    We chose Benjamin Moore’s Caribbean Teal and I’m head over heels for it.

    I cannot recommend Anna enough. If you are struggling with finding the right colors for your home, call her. She also figured out colors for our crazy blue entryway and our bathroom. I can’t wait to get painting again. That’s really saying something, considering I spent two weeks prepping and painting. I’ll show you the bedroom next!

  • Bursting with failure

    Bursting with failure

    When I moved into my house all the doors had padlocks on them, which was . . . disconcerting. Padlocks on the bedroom doors and a padlock on the door leading to the basement were the creepiest. And all of the doors has long scratches covering them.

    If you know me at all you can guess that my mind went to absolutely terrible places with this. Some half-goblin/half-human monster was locked in the basement . . . her goblin mother would scratch at the door, trying to get in . . . This is why I don’t watch American Horror Story anymore.

    So I looked online for some reasonable explanation and found documentation that the fire department requires banks to padlock all the doors in foreclosed homes. That’s the story we’re going to go with, for my sanity.

    The scratches on the doors weren’t so noticeable until I painted the doors glossy black. My theory is that a previous owner had a dog that would scratch at the doors, causing these marks. That seems more likely than a human scratching, right?

    Right?

    When I painted the bathroom door I took the time to fill the gouges with wood filler and sand everything smooth. It looks great! The weekend before our dinner party I decided that I should re-paint this door (which leads to the basement), as well as the rest of the bedroom and hallway closet doors. Greg had just bought a new tube of wood filler but it wasn’t the soft stuff I’d used before. It was seemingly made of concrete. But I didn’t know this, so I overfilled all my gouges so I could sand it down level after.

    And then I started sanding. And sanding. And sanding. And ALL OF THE SWEAR WORDS. Sanding.

    I spent an entire Sunday trying to sand these down, working with the vacuum and the air purifier and still there was dust everywhere. And you know what? My door now looks like this.

    With the contrast upped. It’s very obvious in real life.

    Like someone flung blood all over the door and we painted over it (I might be watching too much Walking Dead?). So the plan is to take it get dipped-and-stripped and to start over. With the nice soft wood filler and an electric sander. Outside.

  • A happy new year to you

    A happy new year to you

    Whew you guys, we made it through the holidays. I have no excuse to dislike the holidays but I always have a hard time enjoying them. They end up so busy, so expensive, and so jammed with things like work parties (seriously, we see each other every day, why so many work parties?). It didn’t help that 2012 was a really bad year for a lot of people. I can’t remember a year where I knew more people who lost loved ones or jobs or their health. Greg and I have been hiding out for a week, working on jigsaw puzzles and staying in our pajamas all day.

    I also painted more black doors.

    I’ve been reading everyone’s “What we accomplished last year” lists on their blogs and I was feeling so lazy but then I realized that we painted the house and landscaped the front yard plus I painted a whole bunch of stuff, so that made me feel better. I still have no quarter round on the floors upstairs but the year of little things was fairly successful. We have curtains in the living room! We have a real light fixture over the kitchen sink!

    Our biggies on the list for 2013 largely involve the basement. I got a gift certificate to Mr. Plywood for Christmas so we’re finally going to install baseboard and window trim in Greg’s movie lair.

    And on the laundry side we’re going to demo a useless built-in and install shelving. Greg thinks if we do this I’ll stop leaving the tape measure in a different place every time I use it, which makes me laugh and laugh. Variety is the spice of life! Where is the fun in home improvement if you don’t spend the first half hour looking for the hammer that your girlfriend inexplicably left in the bedroom closet?

    From me to you, I wish you good health, happiness, and peace. I’ll be over here poring over all the gardening catalogs I’m getting in the mail. Spring is coming!

  • Surprise!

    Surprise!

    I’ve been painting again.

    Greg and I always joke that whenever he goes away on business he comes back to find that I’ve painted a room. I try and wait until he’s gone so he doesn’t have to deal with paint fumes. Also, I like to sing while I paint and Eternal Flame is still such a good song you guys, but Greg doesn’t need to hear that.

    Hang on to your hats, this is dramatic (we’re looking at the spot above the door).

    Before:

    After:

    I KNOW. I know! It’s crazy. The old color was the off-white from Metro Paint, which smells terrible and is made from recycled paint, so the colors were totally different from batch to batch. The new color is White Chocolate by Benjamin Moore, a color that looks exactly like white chocolate. Why would I bother? For starters, there was a spot over the door where I started to paint three years ago, then realized it needed to be patched, so I painted around it, then spackled it, then never painted. And I guess I got rid of the paint can at some point? So I was never going to find a match for that spot.

    Then we installed baseboard in the kitchen, which I still can’t show you pictures of because Tinkernation has neglected to publish my final post. I am contractually obligated to keep it under wraps until they do. But I had to patch the wall, which means the kitchen really needed to be repainted.

    I bought a quart of White Chocolate and put up a swatch above the door, since Greg was away for the night. Then I was having so much fun I decided to paint a little further. Then I realized I was just painting the kitchen that night. I almost had enough paint to finish, too. Instead I had to pop over to Benjamin Moore the next day after work and hustle to get it finished before Greg got home.

    It didn’t work. He walked in and I was behind the stove with a roller and I weakly yelled, “Surprise!” and he was like, “I see the roller and the paint can but everything looks the same,” and I had to explain the minute difference between the two colors.

    All of the paint fumes with none of the dramatic impact! You’re welcome, baby.

    The good news is I really love the color and we have no visible patches. And it turns out I still know all the words to Eternal Flame and Walk Like an Egyptian.

  • I can’t leave well enough alone

    I can’t leave well enough alone

    This is our entry way. It was fine but I’ve been itching to paint the doors black. I’d been resisting this because black doors are de rigueur right now and I try to avoid trends. But then I realized I was being a stupid hipster and it’s okay to follow trends sometimes. It’s just paint.

    So I painted the doors here and in the kitchen and I freaking loved them.

    But then I started looking at the paint job in here and how the previous owner didn’t even cover the old orange paint in the area between the front door trim and the coat closet trim. I started to get itchy to repaint the walls. Thanksgiving won’t be perfect if I don’t repaint the entryway!

    Greg was like, “Wait, what, you’re painting again? I thought you were all done.” and I was like, “La la la, MORE PAINT FUMES HOORAY!” I had pinned this image a while back onto my “awesome paint colors” board. It’s ‘Peaceful Night’ by Behr.

    Image from Design*Sponge

    I went to Home Depot and grabbed a gallon because I was like, “Oh, it will be so awesome I’ll want to use it everywhere!” Without testing it first. Do you see where this is going?

    Uh, that’s not the same color. I know, Internet browsers, photography filters, blah blah, I should have tested the color first. Because it’s electric cobalt blue. Cobalt blue is having a moment, so our entry way is totally on-trend but it doesn’t really fit with the color scheme of the rest of our house.

    I ran to Ikea and bought the largest natural wood frame I could find and threw a Fatsia japonica leaf in it (think it will last until Thanksgiving?) and tried to break up the blue with some scavenged artwork. No dice, it’s still crazy blue. So we’re going to have to repaint it. I don’t hate the color (as I’m sitting here I’m realizing it’s very similar to LeAnn’s garage, which looks amazing) but it stands out from the rest of our house. We employ a pretty consistent color value throughout our house and this is off the charts in comparison.

    If you’re in love with this color and want the almost-gallon I have, just let me know. It’s all yours. And then I am not allowed back at the Home Depot for at least a month.

  • Hoo ha cherry soda!

    Hoo ha cherry soda!

    I am the Ron Paul of home improvement. My plan makes no sense, everything is backward, but I’m having a good time and people seem content to let me keep on with it because it’s mildly entertaining. But I don’t send out racist newsletters, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

    I’ve been painting this alcove for two months. Painting with this color (Benjamin Moore Whirlpool) is a pain in the ass because it essentially goes on white. I don’t use painters tape because I can usually cut in with a pretty straight line with a brush. But this color makes it very difficult to see where the white trim ends and your color begins. So there’s been a lot of repainting around the trim. And then after I painted it I decided to patch some of the holes. And then I had to repaint those spots.

    Then I filled the gaps where the door hinges used to be and primed and painted those sections. Then I slapped a coat of paint on the trim. Then I decided that I should put wood filler on the thousands of dents and holes covering this poor doorway. And THEN I primed it. And painted it. Again. What’s wrong with me and why am I at this debate?

    I’m sick of having a purple bathroom (it was supposed to be gray) and I’ve been hunting for the perfect color for three years. With our new gray-with-a-purple undertone house paint I thought, “Aha! I can just lighten up our exterior color and have it put in an interior paint base!”

    I had them mix up a 25% mix of our house color and then decided to put it here in the bathroom. Because touching up TWO colors is the best.

    Our house color has a blue undertone, not purple. I know this now.

    I’m pretty sure the white alcove was painted with Killz primer, something I don’t have on hand. You guys, don’t do this.

    Hoo ha! Cherry soda!

    Have you watched the Bad Lip Reading videos already? They (along with that cat from Japan who jumps out of boxes) are some of my favorite things that the Internet ever created.

  • Housepainting. Oh my god.

    Housepainting. Oh my god.

    After almost a year of obsessively walking our neighborhood and discussing the merits of other people’s paintjobs (that’s what the song OPP was about, right?) we booked a house painter. We’ve been playing with the Sherwin Williams color visualizer, which is a pretty nifty tool. Our painter dropped off a book of color combinations and we plugged in a couple of our favorites, only to find that they looked terrible once we pulled them up on the visualizer. Accidental finding: it’s really helpful to have your neighbor’s house in your photo so you can see how your house will look next to theirs (the house on the right side of us is white).

    Sherwin Williams Peppercorn with Saucy Gold on the door

    Sherwin Williams Roycroft Pewter with Offbeat door

    I’d love to paint the house a warm white and let the landscaping provide the color, but Greg won’t go for it. He says it will get too dirty. This from a man who hates that I ask him to remove his shoes inside the house.

    SW Porcelain with Deep Sea Dive door

    We are both leaning toward blue at this point but blues are *so* tricky. Complicating things is the fact that our house doesn’t have much trim, so we don’t have a whole lot to diffuse or play off of a bold color. Our windows don’t have a paintable inset, so we can’t use two colors on them. And our roof is kind of orange. I love the orange but gray would be way easier to work with.

    In fact, the more I look at this picture of my house the more I realize that my house just isn’t that great to look at from the outside, bad paint job aside. I never really realized this because I’m in love with my house. I imagine this is what it feels like when a parent realizes that their child is not beautiful to other people.

    You guys, my house has a good personality. *Sniff.*

    We are tentatively booked for late February. As in this month, holy sh*t. The painter will paint three different swatches on our house for free, after that we have to pay extra. He said one client had him put up 16 different swatches . . . and then never paid him. As long as it’s not raining, they can paint during the winter using a special paint. He claims it’s more durable so it’s a good deal for us. I assumed they only work in the summer so this is a nice surprise.

    SW Downing Earth with Marigold door
    SW Sage Green Light with Butternut door
    SW Pewter Green with Bengal Grass door

    Our friend Maura warned us that we would hate the first swatches we put up, no matter how much we liked them in the visualizer. This makes sense; it always happens with interior paint colors. So we’re kind of resigned to paying more for more swatches. Part of me wants to ask the painter to “surprise us” with his favorite exterior color, like you’d do with a server in a restaurant, but I know our painter won’t go for it.

    Considerations:

    • Hot pink tree in April – May.

    The bloodgood maples are always this purpley color

    • Lighter colors supposedly make your house look bigger but I’m confident in the size of my house. This isn’t California, I don’t need to compensate.
    • Future landscaping which will not include a lawn but will include a rain garden with tall grasses. I want another cryptomeria, which has a deep russet color in winter.
    • HGTV claims that reds, greens, and blues fade out faster than neutrals, leaving your house looking washed out.
    • We already have two pink houses on our street, so don’t anybody go suggesting it. 

    SW Coming Up Roses with Grounded door

    Has anybody painted their house? Any mistakes you made or words of wisdom? Go ahead, get opinionated.