Paint Your Wagon

Remember how I promised like 12 years ago to post pictures of our house? Well here it was in all it's foreclosed glory!!  

I'm going to show you one room at a time since painting is taking WAY more time that I originally planned...

I give you THE LIVING ROOM or THE FRONT ROOM or THE GREAT ROOM or 

THE FIRST ROOM TO BE DONE!!!  

*side note*

Do not be expecting any of the fabulously white rooms you're probably seeing everywhere right now. After 10 years of apartment living, and 18 years before that of a mom who loved white walls...I need color.

Don't you love all the shadows from the dirt that had collected around picture frames? They were everywhere - and they did not want to come off!! We scrubbed this house for more than a week before we could move in...it was not the most fun I've ever had. Especially since they must have had a child in here before. A child who liked to pick his nose. And wipe it on the wall. Everywhere. Not kidding. 

This is a look from the corner of the Family Room into the dining room and Kitchen. The Kitchen is my next room to do - I already LOVE it in there!! 

PS - check out that carpet. I wouldn't walk on it barefoot until Jer cleaned it. Four times. Seriously.

 PPS - The WHOLE house was painted this color. Walls - Doors - Trim - Everything. It was overwhelmingly blah... for reals....blah!!

It's so bright and open - I love it so much!!! It's perfect for entertaining, we've found out, too!! I love it!! Except for that fireplace. Normally I love red brick, but if you look closely it's the red brick that has been white washed and black washed and yellow washed...it's just not my style. Nor did it work with what I was picturing for this room....scroll down!!

Sigh.... I love it. I can't wait to get the pictures on the walls and I am so excited to decorate for Halloween I could scream!!! See my pumpkins....they are excited too!!!!

I have to take a second and tell you about this little vent cover. I am new to this whole home ownership thing, but do people normally paint their vent covers with pink and brown textured paints? Yeah I thought not. We bought new ones because the old ones were so gross. And I love them against my beautiful gray walls!!! Oh how I love this gray!!! Look above and you can kinda see the old ones...

Anyone ever painted a fireplace? Us either. But we took a class at Google University (I swear I'm going to have a sweatshirt made, so I can show my "school" spirit), and here's what we came up with.

You must scrub scrub scrub the fireplace. You must Vacuum and suck ALL ash (suck ash - say it fast - i laughed for days) and scrub some more to make sure it's clean so the paint will grab on to the brick. It took some scrubbing on Jeremy's part...If you look closely you can see ash on his nose...poor sweet guy!!! 

 

And look how clean the carpet is!! He did an AMAZING job!!!

This is the primer. We decided to prime so we could make sure the coverage was even, and to use less of the top color. It took so much longer than I expected to paint all the grout lines and especially inside the fireplace!








This is a progress shot...For about 15 minutes we were tempted to leave the grout lines white - I kind like how it looked, but then we decided we wanted to keep going, and have it be all solid. So it is. And we LOVE it!! I just keep looking at it and smiling. This wall makes me so happy!!







Although I do still have some touch ups to do....woopsie!!

What did you think??? Wanna come help me decorate for Halloween!!??!!!