Progress

Paint:

It seems like we keep running to store for two things: paint and blue tape. I swear we've spent more money on paint and supplies than on anything else.

The lamest part about painting is all the prep work. Taping off trim + walls + touch ups after you peel off the tape = no fun. It seems like the paint job is never ending...especially when you're painting every square inch of the house. Literally. Sure needed to with mustard yellow walls in the bedrooms, pepto bismal pink in the bedroom closets, and hunter green in the pantry and linen closets. Disgusting. Took lots of primer and two coats of paint to cover that ish. Sherwin Williams cashmere was recommended by a close friend and I've loved it so far.  

The light gray and crisp white are much better. 

Texturing:

Here our contractor is texturing the ceiling so the texture upstairs is consistent throughout. It took one coat of primer and two coats of paint to get it just right.

Once the ceiling was textured and painted we could move onto the walls in the main living area. Love love love the color. Our necks were so kinked from painting the ceiling....3x!

Wood Paneling:

Now that most of the upstairs walls have been painted, we needed to start tackling the wood paneling. 

First we sanded. Then that wasn't enough so we went over it again, wiped down with a cloth, then primered. Now we need to decide on a color to paint it. The ceiling and walls are white, we're leaving the wood primered until we decide on a color. We have extra gray from the upstairs but we don't want every room in the house to be the same color. We're thinking a dark gray. I'm thinking just all white. Simple and clean. Eric thinks its boring. Suggestions?

My father in law said we shouldn't paint the paneling because it's coming back in style. Everything always does, all you need to do is wait a couple years. Not this wood paneling Mike, it's gross. The night we got home from painting it he showed me a picture of Matt Damon in his house (I think) and the whole wall behind him in the photo is wood paneling. It looked good because it's updated, not from the 80's. But it did give me second thoughts. Will we regret painting over it? Could we make it work with the right furniture? Nah...this wood paneling won't come back. It's too late anyway.

Cabinets:

Cabinets have been down and are just chillin' in the garage waiting to be given some much needed TLC.  First we went to Home Depot to see if we can turn any kind of paint into a spray can, like the paint we have. I think spraying them would prevent brush strokes, I don't want that. The guy at the paint counter said we couldn't do that unless we wanted to buy spray paint. He recomended we just brush/roller the paint and showed us a smooth roller to do it with to make sure it's extra yummy.

We also asked if we needed a special paint for cabinets, anything will do he said but mentioned we should get a good primer, the can is at the house so I don't know what it's called, but it sticks onto everything so we don't need to sand, sweet! Saved us time and eliminated one step. He suggested we use a high gloss for easy cleaning but said a semi-gloss is just as good. Think we'll stick with the semi. Painting the the trim with a high gloss sucked because it's like elmers glue and you can see every brush stroke. No thanks, I want my cabinets to look brush stroke - free.

So we primered the cabinets without sanding and spray painted the insides white (they don't need to be perfect inside as long as they seem white). The uppers are ready for paint. Hope they come out looking great. We'll have to wait to do the lowers until we tear out the counter top and can afford to get a new one - which will be a while. We're thinking quartz or butcher block. 

Eric learned a valuable lesson, wear long sleeves and a face mask when spray painting. It got all over his long arm hairs and up his nose. No bueno. It doesn't look as bad in the pictures, but spray paint is 10x worse than regular paint.

*Note: It may look like we've done everything in one day due to our clothes...we just wear the same paint clothes so we don't ruin anymore. I'm not really clean when painting and tend to wipe paint all over me.