Touch-up Painting

The tile I ordered for the kitchen backsplash isn't supposed to get here until next weekend. I had planned to have it earlier, and I would have worked on that this weekend. Since I couldn't, I concentrated on touching up walls and ceilings with paint. My mom's cousin also came over to patch up the sheetrock where the plumber had to run the second line. He also did small touch-ups where there were lines or defects in the original sheetrocking job.

My dad worked on the endless job of touching up the crown moulding: filling nail holes with putty, sanding, and painting over them. I touched up the walls of four rooms in the house. That leaves 4 or 5 others to go.

I also hooked up the blu-ray player to the big TV. I wanted to make sure the picture was good both when I looked it up directly to the TV and when I hooked it up via the long HDMI cable I have running over to the media closet. In both cases, it worked great! Good thing, because it would be really difficult to run a new cable now. The foam insulation in the attic makes it very difficult to get to the conduit running down that wall.

I also sealed the grout in the TV room and foyer tile, along with 4 closets that hadn't been sealed yet. With the TV and blu-ray player in place, I got to do this job while Star Trek II played on the big screen! Ahh, life's simple pleasures...

Still Painting Moulding, Trim Work Next Week

My trim carpenter was supposed to start on the day before Christmas Eve, which was Tuesday of this week. He had to push back until this Monday. That's given us time to paint more moulding. We've almost finished all the crown. I also painted a few lengths of baseboard and casing in case he needs them right away.


We're running out of space to put the painted strips. We've been stacking them in the front garage in such a way that there's a spacer between each layer and the moulding on top doesn't touch the one underneath. One sticking point now is that the trim guy and the garage door installer are coming on the same day. The garage door guy needs the garages cleared out to give him room to install the rails, etc. And the trim guy won't be ready to use all that crown on his first day (he's installing the doors first). So for that day, we're going to need to move all the painted crown somewhere else.

As you can see from the photos, these strips are each 16 ft long. We've used every space that would fit them to lay them out and paint them.

Underground Conduits in Place, Painting Doors and Trim

You know, there are times when I wonder why I started this process. It doesn't happen often, but occasionally I hit a low where it seems like this project will never end! It may last a minute or a few hours, and then I'm back on track. One of those moments occured on Saturday, Nov. 23 when I rented a mini excavator to dig the trench for the underground conduits. The conduits will hold the electrical, telephone, and coax cable running from the utility pole to the entry panels on the house.

The reason this got me down was that we worked non-stop 6 hours on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday, and this only got us a trench with no roots blocking it! We had to come back again to complete the laying of conduits in it. The problem was all the roots from two big trees I had removed at the front of the property. I tried digging a trench straight across the yard, but this went right through the tree stumps. Even when I dug a bit of a zig-zag around the stumps, we still had to deal with all the roots. The trench for the electrical conduit had to be at least 30 in. deep. We had to get down with shovels and electrical saws and whetever else it took to get through each root. That's what took the time.

It was fun operating the machine, but can you believe it: 2 days to dig a 50 ft trench? During that weekend, it just didn't seem like I was making any progress. All the painting was at a standstill and a whole weekend seemed wasted... But I'm all better now! ;-)

We're painting doors and trim inside now. It's a slow process to prep each door frame. First you need to remove any protruding nails or staples from when it was assembled. Then there's filling the holes and scuffs with wood filler. Once that dries, you sand it down. Finally, it's ready to paint. And it takes two coats to do the job. At least the doors won't have nail holes to fill when we get to them.

After the doors, I've got a LOT of trim and moulding to paint!

Painting Continues

Since my last post, we've finished painting all the ceilings. Most of the walls are also done. Everything is getting two coats. The only walls we haven't painted are the two extra bedrooms, the closets, the laundry room, and the bathrooms. Those won't take much time because they're so small.

I've used two brands of paint: Behr and Benjamin Moore. I'm sure they are both fine products as far as quality goes, but I've noticed a difference in how they go on. Behr goes on with a nice consistency and covers very well on the first coat. BM seems thinner, and takes a good second coat to cover everything. The first coat soaks in and lets a lot of the white primer show through. Now, it doesn't matter because I'm using two coats no matter which brand I paint with. But it was a noticeable difference.

Here are some recent shots of the painted rooms, starting with the tile I'm probably going to use laid against the TV room wall:

Also, here is the concrete pad we made for the air conditioner unit in the backyard:

Painting Started!

Here are some pictures after the first weekend of painting work. We've finished the office, and moved on to the ceilings in the foyer, TV room and kitchen.






And here's a bonus picture of some other tile I'm considering. The one on the left is $3.90/sqft and the one on the right is $4.95/sqft. They're close enough that I would obviously go with the cheaper one. But I'm still looking at other tile as well.

Colors, Colors, Everywhere!

Among other things this week, I've been narrowing down on the colors I want to use to paint the house. I have one question: just how many shades of beige and tan can there be?!

I've had a friend from church over to help me pick the first few colors. Now that I know what the finish on my cabinets should look like (a mid-to-dark cherry color), I'm ready to continue through the kitchen and the rest of the house. My mom's cousins also came over a week ago to give their input.

Everyone tells me that staying "neutral" is best because then you have a lot more leeway in how you decorate. By neutral, most people seem to mean beige or off-white colors. I'm okay with using colors that are "neutral" versions of themselves, like an earth tone color that's shifted toward the beige end of the spectrum. But I can't see painting every room in the house beige! Yeah, I know: you liven each room up with colored furniture and decoration. Okay. But it's hard for me to wrap my brain around that just now.

The local Helm Paint stores offer a service to come out and help you pick colors. It costs $35, but that get's credited toward your first purchase of paint. I arranged for her to come out on Saturday, and it was a good experience. She also pushed for a lot of beige, but I was able to steer a few colors slightly toward some other colors. Here's a snapshot of what we came up with:


Okay, alot of it is still beige. So leave me alone! :) The office and master bedroom colors actually look green when you see them on a wall. And the "sea haze" color in the master bath is a blue color. And even the alternative colors for some of these are (you guessed it) beige!

You can see my cabinet color in the kitchen part of the image above. The other insert in the kitchen are two countertop colors that might work well. I need to finalize the countertop and tile colors to finish out the selections.

Shower People, Paneling, Colors and Cabinets - Oh My!

So the owner from the shower place came out with another guy. They looked at it and reluctantly agreed to do more to get it better. He said it looked better than the original installation (which is true) and that you can only see the defect if you're standing right underneath it. Also true. However, I'm going to be standing right underneath it every time I take a shower. And it's still not acceptable. So they're supposed to deal with it when they come back to put on the last trim piece they've created. I also have to get the door put on. I hope I don't have problems with that also. At this point, I plan to go to the other man-made marble place in town for my bathtub alcove...

My Dad and I made good progress on Tuesday night putting the paneling up in the back garage. We finished most of one entire wall. The plywood sheets are laid horizontally, and with my 9ft ceilings, there are two full (4ft) sheets and an extra 1 ft to deal with at the top. We completed the two full layers. We're going back tonight and I'll get some pictures.

Like everything else, it's taking more time than I thought. If we could just slap each sheet up there and nail it, things would go fast. But we need to cut many of them so that two sheets will meet on the center of a stud. This allows you to nail the edge of both sheets. It's just time consuming, probably just because we aren't used to doing it. But the wall is coming out nicely. With the fluffy cellulose insulation behind it, there are some places where you can see a slight bulge outward.

My mom's cousin cleans houses. She got permission from the owner of one house for me to come and look at her wall colors. I did that yesterday. One room had the shade of green I'm really looking for. It's a but more muted than the avocado color I've been toying with. Most of the other walls were cream, off-white, or a light beige. I see the merit of using all very neutral colors so it's easy to match furniture and accessories later on. But I want to avoid a house that's all one blah color if I can. There's a happy mix in there somewhere.

On the cabinet front, I visited a woman's home who had cabinets done by my friend's cabinet guy in Hammond. They seemed to be built well, but she opted not to get the nicer drawer glides and hardware. Her cabinets were painted white with a fancy glaze. I prefer stained wood finish. She was very happy with the cabinet maker and the finished product. She said she's remodeled other houses and this guy was the best value by far. She had to drive to Hammond about three times during the process to see how it was coming and make design decisions.

I also met this week with someone from another local custom cabinet maker. She came out to the house to measure and talk about what I want. She had helpful suggestions to make and a women's perspective to contribute. I appreciated that. Her cabinets are made by a guy in Dallas, and they are finished at her shop before installation. She also measured for the office desk and the bathroom vanities. Today, she called with price of $8,463 for the kitchen, $2280 for the bathrooms, and $4,166 for the office. That's cheaper than the guy in Hammond (for the kitchen at least -- I didn't get the Hammond guy to quote the other rooms). I need to go to this local shop to get an idea of their work.

First Painting Pictures!

Here are a couple of shots of the front garage now that it has paint on the walls and ceiling. The corner with no paint is where the utility sink will go. I'm going to glue a thin piece of veneer (like formica) on the walls here to make a backsplash. I want to glue to the primer instead of the paint.



Last night, my dad and I put the first piece of the plywood on the back garage wall as paneling. it's thin, smooth plywood made for this kind of thing. I'll have pictures of that project soon.

Painting Begins Today!

One of my next goals is to get my garage doors. Before they can be installed, I need to paint both garage ceilings and install some Hardie Board as trim over the exposed wooden beams inside the doorway.

So this week, I picked colors for the ceiling and the wall of the front garage (the back garage is getting stained plywood paneling). I bought the paint last night. Here's the palette:

I'm using a flat sheen on the ceilings and satin on the walls. The only accent I can think of will be the sheets of Formica veneer that I want to install on the walls where the utility sinks will be. This will serve as a backsplash to keep the walls from getting wet.

We're going to start this evening painting the back garage ceiling. I'm looking forward to this. To see color actually go on a wall will make it start to feel like a real house!

Spraying Texture Today

This morning, we went to the house to open it up for the guys spraying the texture on the walls and ceiling. I'm getting a very light orange peel done everywhere. Yes, I've heard people say that perfectly smooth walls are coming into style. But if there is any defect in a wall at all, it will stand out like a sore thumb on a flat painted surface. My walls have been done really well, but I just don't want to risk it. I think the light orange peel will look fine.

We also brought over the plywood doors we made. These will go up in place of my real front doors until I'm finally ready to hang them. I was going to hang them now, but multiple people recommended against it. We hung one side, and we'll do the other one this evening when we lock up.

I need to call around for information on a paint sprayer. That will make it easier to paint the primer all over the house...

There was a heavy rain for a while this morning. It's coming from the outskirts of Hurricane Dolly, which is making landfall in Texas today.