Color!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously by the time we got to actually putting color on the walls I thought we were going to need padded ones.  We had already stripped very stubborn wallpaper from the entryway and master bath, primed those two areas plus the hallway and bedroom.  We were desperate for some color.

So without further ado…

You can see where we’ve stopped the one color just under the cabinet.  At some point I’m actually going to go in and put in a backsplash of some sort.  For now I just have to deal with the abrupt color change.  I’m also going to have to paint the ceiling some day.  And the windows- although we liked the brown wood with the blue (after we had primed the window sills), we couldn’t get the primer off the sills in order to leave them wood.  So paint them I will.

Here’s a shot from the kitchen to the backdoor.  The door on the left (with the dog leashes, which have since moved) is to the dining room and then the accordion doors are to my laundry closet.  We decided to make the wall on the right (which is part of the cabinet surrounding the fridge) white because we feared it would get too dark in the pass with another wall of blue.

These are the walls of the den.  This picture reminds me that I need to go in and paint over that little drip of white on the back wall.  We did two different colors of blue called (I do believe Valspar’s either Laura Ashley or Eddie Bauer collections) Bayport and Peninsula.  We decided to bump up to a little higher quality of paint than Valspar’s normal line due to the fact that it will be the most used area of the house not to mention it is home to two dogs.  A definite need for scrubbable paint!  

Here you can see the difference in the two colors pretty well.

Here’s a shot of the rest of the den.

Please excuse the mess in all these (and future) pictures.  Outside of a few kitchen boxes, nothing has really found a home yet and is just floating aimlessly around the floor and counters.  Anyways, you can see where we made the side of this cabinet white as well.  The overall feel I was going for was beach house, airy, open, not oppressive dark wood paneling.  It is a much more cheery room than it was before.

Which leads us to the most difficult thing to paint in recent memory.  The section of cabinets that I had originally intended to take down.

Instead I decided to go ahead and leave them open and get some different colored glass pieces to display.  To say painting this was a pain is a huge understatement.  For the top shelf we had to stand on the counter and have our faces laying on our shoulders in order to see the top.  Then you had to kneel on the counter for the next shelf (even 30 years of being a good Catholic didn’t prep my knees for that adventure).  For the next cabinet you had to go between kneeling, crouching on the stepladder and sitting on the counter.  For the last shelf- well I don’t remember what we had to do for the last shelf because I actually ended up spilling almost an entire tray of paint on that shelf and spent a frantic few minutes trying to get it all spread out.  Craziness.

One important thing I learned from painting these cabinets.  They sell those paintbrushes with no handle for a reason.  It is for painting cabinets.  I ended up taking my nice Purdy brush and actually dremeling the handle off.  It was much easier after that.

Because it was such a pain- here’s another picture of it.  I’m on the lookout for a few more pieces to fill it out.  I did grab some fun glasses from Kohl’s which you can barely see in the bottom left corner.

I am working on getting the cabinet doors done.  We had a few days of questionable (read: terrifying- we actually made the Weather Channel!) weather.  Even the primer was taking forever and a day to dry so they aren’t quite done yet.  I’m hoping to have them dry and up in a couple of days.

But I was able to get another project in the kitchen done.  

Another middle of the night picture-

Here’s what they look like finished.

I’m ready for my close up Mr. DeMille- 

The fabric is a (I think- too lazy to go check for sure) “Brother and Sisters” pattern that we got from Hobby Lobby.  We were originally looking at doing each chair a different pattern and had all four picked out until luckily my sister realized that we’d be putting them on bright white chairs and each fabric we had picked out was cream based.  Disaster averted!

Well, that about does it for today’s installment of This Ugly House.  I’ll do the master bedroom tomorrow and then it all depends on how much I get done each day as to what I’ll post about next.  I’ve got wallpaper to remove in the dining room, and the hallway/entryway/living room to paint.  And of course I need to finish the cabinet doors!

Until then- I’ll leave you with this.  I find BS much easier to take when it has a little seasoning.

Until next time!