Painting

Since our plans were to get married at this house we of course set right away to painting over all the walls.  First was the bedroom, then the office, then the living room, the dinning room, the laundry room, and lastly the hallway.  So let me show you a few photos of us working on the office and the living room.

Yup, we painted over the old wood, and we've had more people lose their minds about that than anything else.  Some people act like I punched their grandmother, but everyone needs to just chill, the wood was not in perfect shape, and a lot of it would have needed to be fully replaced to look well again.  This was the best solution since we only had about three months to turn this place around before we were to get married...oh, and it also looks awesome now.

Anyway, here's the thing about painting: a good quality primer is your best friend.  Go to Lowe's and buy the five gallon bucket of Kilz2 and hit it.  Two or three coats of that stuff will take care of about anything, and you'll waste a lot less of your expensive paint trying to cover up the old stuff.  Here's another thing about painting: don't buy cheap paint.  Good stuff is thick because it contains a lot of pigment, and because it contains a lot of pigment it takes fewer coats to get to the color that you want.

We bought the expensive Valspar paints that they sell at Lowe's to do the bedroom first and it was so easy we thought we'd save some money and paint the office with something quite a bit cheaper.  It took at least twice as much paint to get to the final color, and every now and then I still notice a thin spot.  The rest of the house was painted with better stuff.

I don't actually have many really good 'after' photos.  I thought I'd shoot some yesterday before I went to work (I only work half-days part of the week), but it was cloudy and I really wanted some photos with sunlight coming through the windows.  So anyway, that'll be my next task...er, blogjective?