Since I have been writing about our house projects in the order in which we did them, I will tell you about the next thing we tackled: painting! Painting isn’t necessarily a “big deal” but when you have hundreds of square feet of both walls and ceilings to cover, it becomes a looming project that you had better just get started on or else you’ll never do it. Luckily, we were extremely motivated to paint the main areas of the house because we couldn’t move our furniture in until we did so! It was mainly the ceilings that we absolutely HAD to do first because we were on a deadline to empty our POD so we wouldn’t have to pay for another month of storage. Since we had some momentum going from painting the other half of the house, we just barreled through the rest of this very unsavory task and got it done. Dang. Painting ceilings? It really reeks. I will paint vertical walls all day long before I paint a ceiling. For one, it’s really hard to see what the heck you’re doing. There is always a glare from a nearby window, or a shadow from a nearby corner and even when you try to light it up sufficiently with all of your utility lights, it still doesn’t keep your eyes from playing tricks on you constantly. We used Behr’s ceiling paint and I don’t know if it’s just that particular paint, but it did not cover well at all. I’m talking a minimum of THREE coats to get an opaque coverage and possibly more since many areas had brand spankin’ new, thirsty plaster. There are a few areas that still need attention, but for the most part I was extremely picky about being sure that the ceilings were painted well because I DON’T EVER WANT TO DO IT AGAIN. On the bright side, I was getting a fabulous upper body work out for days on end which helped to balance out the fact that we weren’t exactly eating healthy, home-cooked meals everyday. Let me tell you, it was such a relief to get those ceilings done and it really helped to make the space feel “finished” after all of the new plaster work. By the way, we were oh so pleased with the work that our plaster and drywall guy did! He was an expert at matching the 1960’s texture with his new texture such that you cannot tell where the old plaster ends and the new plaster begins. I’m picky. Like, real real real picky. (I know it should be ‘really’ but I don’t care.) So if THIS girl is pleased, then you know it’s a job well done.

When painting ceilings, you should expect to have paint all over your body and hair for days afterwards. Unless you’re smart and wear a hat and long sleeves. Duh.

With the ceilings done, we were ready to focus on painting the walls, a much easier and more gratifying task. I had been excited to go with a different paint scheme than the one we’d had in our first house and I’m still really happy with the colors we decided on. So what did we pick? Black and gray. I had been pinning black and gray walls for months and the time had finally come to implement all the ideas I’d been hording in my mind. I originally wanted a couple of black walls but I found this rich and smoky not-quite-black color by Behr Marquee called “Peppery”. It gave me that boldness I had been craving without being quite so harsh as a pure black. For the rest of the house, we chose various shades of lighter grays and it took over a dozen paint samples to be able to decide on the right grays. Gray paint colors are either too green or too purple or too blue or too anything else but what you want them to be. And then when you finally find one that looks like it will work, by the end of the day, it has completely changed colors and looks horrible. This was our experience anyway. For our bedroom, we ended up mixing two different gallons of paint together to create a custom color because we couldn’t find anything that would work. For our dining room, we took a long time to find a pretty medium gray color that we ended up painting partially over so we could have a half black wall. I might not even keep that half-wall color but for now, I’m liking it. In all reality, paint is pretty inexpensive in the grand scheme of things and it doesn’t take a lot of time if you decide you want to re-paint something. (So long as you aren’t trying to paint/change everything all at once.)

Here is the best approximation of our paint colors that I can offer, using the samples from the Home Depot website and my own eyeballs.

Top Row:
Behr White Clay, Behr Silver Drop, Blend of 50% White Clay/50% Silver Drop, Behr Marquee Silver City

Bottom Row:
Behr Black Suede, Behr Evening Hush, Behr Marquee Peppery, Behr Marquee Black Evergreen

We hit the jackpot when a very dear friend offered to come over one day to help get all of this paint on the walls! Dave is a master at cutting in (I’m not holding those unfinished corners against you hon) so thanks to him and our friend, I think we had all of the painting completely knocked out in a weekend. (My mom helped a lot too, prior to that weekend.) Never had I ever been so addicted to the smell of fresh paint!!! In fact, I kind of miss that smell. Hmmm, what else can I paint right now? Oh yeah, all of the interior doors and trim work including baseboards. And a built in bookshelf. Ah, never mind. I’m good for now. (See what I mean about projects that loooooom over you?)

Here’s a little sample of “Behr Marquee Peppery”.