Lots 'o pictures

OK, photos of our progress. Note that most of the colours appear a bit washed out here and are much more intense in real life:

The dining room before:



With a coat of paint (Behr Wheat Bread):



The living room before:





The living room now – new paint colour! Home Depot Behr Mocha Accent is the dark colour, Wheat Bread is the light colour (used also in the dining room and hallways), and we used pure white on the trim. Don’t ask me about those colour names – if I got a loaf of bread that colour, I’d send it back and demand to know what was wrong with it. And since when is mocha a dark grey? I’d love to do crown molding in here, but as S rightly pointed out, we don’t expect to live in this house for that long, and it’s probably not worth the money to install it and only have it for a year or two before we want to move.







I was worried I’d made a horrible mistake with the paint colour after finishing the first wall, but once I got it on all three walls I absolutely love it. It’s dark but neutral, so it doesn’t overwhelm you or make the room seem appreciably smaller. And I really couldn’t be happier with how the white trim contrasts with the wall. The two smaller Roman Shades should really be about an inch narrower, but I’m not motivated to take them down and alter them right now, and they look OK as is. Not perfect, but I can live with it.

The front hall with wallpaper:



The front hall now – wallpaper gone, walls and trim painted:



The powder room before:





The powder room after many coats of paint*, new mirror, light fixture, sink, and faucet. It’s the same yellow as the kitchen, which is a tad too bright for such a small space, but I had ¾ of a can left over that I didn’t want to waste:



I painted the countertop with a faux-granite spray paint and then put on approximately 12 coats of varnish. It looks pretty good.



*yellow is SUCH a pain in the ass colour to paint with. Although I really should have primed first, so it’s my own damn fault.

We also painted the upstairs hallway (also Wheat Bread with white trim), but that’s too boring to photograph. The basement is a mess again, so I’m not sharing photos of that disaster.

Some bulbs are sprouting in the backyard, which is exciting. Nothing yet out front, and I suspect the squirrels got into things out there, so I’m not sure if any of the bulbs I planted out there will show up.

What’s next? Have to finish the window treatment in the living room – some sort of valence and a cushion for the window seat. And the spare room needs new flooring and a coat of paint. And I want to try painting the closet doors in there as a test to see if it can be done, and if so, will it look better or worse than the current fake-wood ugliness. If it looks better, I’ll paint all the sliders in all three bedrooms. Plus that whole list of stuff in the last post. I’m slowly realizing that this home ownership thing is a never-ending series of projects!