Craft Me Up

A continuation of the Master Dining Room project.. I moved on to painting the hallway walls a Poppy Glow Orange and I refreshed the white trim around door ways, and painted the linen closet door white.

We plan to replace the bedroom doors in the house one day so I didn’t bother painting them all white while I was working in the hallway.    I did decide that I wanted the end of the hall way to stay a bright white to help keep it looking open an inviting.

And here we are, all cleaned up, but just before I re-hung paintings.

I decided on some cheery oranges for the upstairs family room.

The ceiling got a few coats of white ceiling paint to get rid of the almond white color that was in the entire room, and then I went to work on the walls. I wanted to get done in a day, so I tackled the painting and took photo’s once things were done and I was in the touch up stages.

Poppy Glow & Fiesta Orange were the colors I chose, and I am very pleased with them. I was using a super bright shop light during some of the process, so that is whey the first few photo’s have the color changes in them. I like the effect, but lack the skills to duplicate them with paint *lol*.

And, a few shots after I cleaned up the space and just had the standard lighting on. The main wall and window wall are Fiesta Orange.

I decided a while back that our kitchen might need a bit of a freshening up. A brighter, cheerier color to really liven the room up and make it feel better to be in.

The next time we had a little extra money to spare I went out to Wal-Mart to pick up some 1-2-3 primer, ceiling paint and eggshell paint.  I choose a cheery yellow similar to the breakfast nook color and set the new paints aside until I was ready to start on the task ahead.

Closer to the weekend I started emptying and taping off the kitchen, getting it ready for the first coat of  ceiling paint and primer.

I was pretty busy working on the painting for quite a while so no photo’s were snapped until the ceiling and primer were on and drying.  But then I took a few photos to show my progress.  It already looked a lot better with the white primer than it did with the old dingy yellow that used to coat the walls.

Once there were several coats of white on both the ceiling and walls I called it a night and packed up until the next morning feeling pretty good about the progress made.

I woke up a bit sore and achy but ready to start adding some color to the kitchen the next day. I cranked up my audio book and went at it.

Again, too preoccupied with the actual task I missed taking shots of the progress until the cheerful yellow was on the walls and drying. =)

During the kitchen paint frenzy I took a few moments to remove the unusable cabinet over the fridge and build a shelf there instead (to keep things from falling behind).

Aaaand here are a couple shots taken recently, after the space was back together and a few other projects were done.

(Such as the Breakfast Nook cabinets being purchased, built and filled\)

A bit of a mess, but here is the computer area in the playroom, before painting..

After emptying out most of the furniture and removing the wall shelves I started taping off the area I wanted to paint Sorcerer purple.

After painting inside the taped off area I felt it needed something.  I decided to tape off another area to create a purple border around it to give it some pizazz.

Originally I had planned on painting the rest of the wall a lighter purple. But after reflection I decided to do a band of light purple instead.  I left a band of white on the top and bottom portions of the wall to help keep things bright.

Once all of the coats of paint were applied and all dry I worked on re-mounting the shelving. I even painted the mounts to match the wall.

And here is the end result. I still have some tidying to do, and I may paint the window wall with a band of light purple later on, but for now it is all finished.

Technically it’s the house’s dining room, but it and the living room are getting a total make over  ala Christina.

This will be our new breakfast nook and the old living room space will become our new dining room.

The first task after getting all the furniture out was to repaint the ceiling and walls a nice white.

You can see the drastic difference between the walls original color and the new white paint in this photo ..

We went for a cheery yellow color to use on this room to liven it up a bit.

I was pretty distracted for a while with the painting process so the next photo’s are of the room after one coat of yellow was applied.

I took advantage of the drying time for the first coat to snap a picture or two.  I decided to leave the top piece above the window a bright white.

Once it was dry enough I went to work on the final coat of paint and did any touch ups necessary.

I think it turned out quite nicely. =)

Nice and cheerful in there now. I am really pleased with the end result.

I do have a few furnishings to get to complete the nook look, but that will have to wait a little while.

At the same time we worked on our bedroom I prepped the adjoining bedroom half bath. It’s a fairly small space, but still a pretty decent sized task to tackle.  I filled some holes and imperfections. I painted the ceiling, primed the walls and put a coat of eggshell white on the walls while we were waiting for paint to dry in the master bedroom.

Once the paint had dried I started the hellish task of taping off the pattern we had decided on. Very time consuming and tedious, yes. But so worth it in the end. Originally the pattern was going to be on all of the walls, but after taping up the first two walls we discussed it and decided on chunky vertical stripes for the other two walls.  So that it didn’t look too busy or dark.

After the painters tape was up, and the way I wanted, I started paining with the Mint Lime paint. first.

It took three coats to cover nicely before moving on to the Apple Green paint. Aaron helped decide the color pattern for the vertical stripes and then I started to paint those as well.’

I will admit that at this stage I was a bit twitchy. It was past midnight and the room was looking very dark and muddled to me.  I was a little worried that it’d be too dark.

Aaron talked me out of my twitchy attack before I tried to ‘fix’ the non-problem and we started the task of peeling away the painters tape. =)  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at the end result. It isn’t too dark, the white lines intersecting help break things up nicely.

And finally, the finished result….

Voila! The half bath, cleaned up and all put back together again.   I hung up a metal bathroom rack instead of  putting back the toilet stand since it was a waste of space. The metal rack works a lot better, and looks nice too.

We also put in one of those shoe tree stands for shelf space as well. It seems to be working out quite nicely.  It’s a six shelf stand, but I left two shelves off so that there would be a large area for storing things as well.  Some time I do plan on either replacing or refinishing the vanity sink cabinet, but that’s a project for another time.