I Knew You Had It In You!

How many 5 gallon buckets of paint does it take to cover this house? Well, a lot, and if you want an exact answer I’ll pull out all of our receipts that I’ve hidden to try to forget how much money we’ve spent in paint thus far.  All we have been doing the past weeks has been painting.  We’ve managed to complete the four bedrooms upstairs, upstairs closets, hallway, front living room and well, that’s it.  My gosh it feels like we should have a ton more done, but covering this red trim took all the time in the world.  Rooms that are 1/2 way there … the foyer, dining room and laundry room.  All to be completed by this weekend.  We are leaving the kitchen and great room to be the final tasks prior to moving in.  One room at a time this time around, unlike our last house where we bounced back and forth.  We are tackling in a strict manner, and actually getting much better results in time management.

We currently have contractors at our house prepping our floors for the flooring to be put in later this week.  Which, obviously, we are over the moon about. For one, we’re not doing the work, which is a great feeling every once in a while to let your DIY bones take a rest.  And two, we will slowly be able to start moving things in after the floors are complete, so our house can officially become our home.

Our stairs had a ton of potential from the very beginning.  Even when they were covered in carpet, and surrounded by that barn red trim, we knew it was just waiting to be polished.

 Tearing off the carpet, priming the red trim 3x was the first step.  The first 5 stairs have real wood tops, so instead of covering them with the laminate flooring that were putting in upstairs, we opted to stain them to match as close as possible.  Why cover up the real-deal?

The walls received a fresh coat of our Revere Pewter color (at 50%) and the trim has been painted in an Ultra Pure White semi gloss.  We have started to paint the backs of the stairs white (still have to finish) and took the railing off to add more dimension with different stains to be decided.

See the difference already?! Ah – I LOVE these stairs now and it isn’t even a complete job yet.

To give you an idea of the importance of trim finish, for us we made a BIG whoops.  We originally primed, and then painted the trim in eggshell.  Because we wanted to be able to roll the ceilings and bust out the trim simultaneously.  Not a good idea – eggshell has a rougher finish, little shine, and would have been a mother to clean off with the kids.  So I, took the extra few days to go over ALL, yes ALL the trim with a semi gloss.  SO glad I did though, the trim now pops and will be far easier to wipe clean when my little men mess it up.

(RIGHT – semi gloss, brighter, shinier.  LEFT – eggshell)

It is no longer that hard to envision the finish product of this home.  The wall color we are big fans of.  It is a perfect balance of grey/beige, and will look fantastic with all of our new/old decor.  The kitchen and great room will be a different color, to lighten things up even more (right? or should we keep it uniform throughout) – Still stumped on that one!

I knew these stairs could look 1000x better.  We were well aware that it was going to take a lot of our time, and that we still have to check staining the first 5 stairs, and painting the risers and completing the railing off of our list… BUT. It will get done my dear, no fear.