Master Bathroom

Another room in the "Finally!!" category!  While on the surface this was just a re-paint job, this project involved the following challenges:

• sanding uneven wall texture to even it out
• finishing a ceiling that was stuck up by remodelers years ago but never completed
• adjusting two light fixtures that were hanging all sideways
• scraping, patching, caulking, sealing, priming, and painting baseboards and door trim
• cleaning doors and walls before priming and painting
• sanding and smoothing out cabinet doors which had built-up stenciled paint all over them
• patching walls where decals were removed, which ripped huge holes in the paint underneath
• glitter.  so much glitter.  glitter everywhere. 

First of all, this room is shaped really weirdly, and it's really hard to photograph!  

This is a fairly decent representation of the new wall color, though, and shows part of what my roomie and I call The Poop Cave.  

Still Life w/ Ladder & Wonky Art, 2017

The Poop Cave even has a window, so your neighbors can watch you poop!  Okay, not really - the glass is frosted, and there's a giant tree right outside.  

I've debated putting up a wee curtain here, but I think I'll cover the whole thing in hanging plants.  

Art + towel rack =   o_O

Look, Nan: flip-flops!

I'm not sure what to call the wall color.  I mixed it using Sherwin Williams' "Tradewinds" and Behr's "Fresh Thyme Green."  The result came out almost identical to SW's "Comfort Gray" (which is green!), except it's more on the minty side. 

It's actually precisely the same color as Baskin Robbins' Daiquiri Ice sherbet/sorbet, which pleases me to an unusual degree. 

Now for the BEFORE pictures! 

As always, I forgot to take before pictures, so these are mid-project.  

This is...purple as fuck.  The previous painter mixed sand into the purple paint to create a sandy texture, and then went over the walls with gold glitter. The sand was a neat effect - I'd seen the idea on tv, and always wondered how it felt in real life. 

You can also see the 1984 shell-sink molded vanity in a lovely shade of "was this beige once??"  It's super yellowy, and as far as I can tell, it's supposed to be (no amount of cleaning/bleaching/ scrubbing/scraping has changed it).  

I sanded every inch of these walls before cleaning and priming, to knock back some of the over-textured areas (I literally cut my elbow on the wall once, I'm not kidding) and balance them out a bit with the bare spots.  I could have scraped the walls completely clean and re-textured them from scratch, but...nuh-uh.  Do not want. So my entire life was covered in purple dust with gold glitter in it for like a week. 

The Poop Cave cabinet doors had been stenciled with silver acrylic paint.  It was a pretty effect, but the cabinets needed cleaning and repair, and updating.  I sanded the doors smooth to knock down the edges of the stenciling, and just painted over it.  

I also removed the knobs and patched the holes.  Again - neat effect having them in the center of the doors, but it was way too high to reach comfortably. 

This is what I mean by a weirdly-shaped bathroom.  If I remember correctly, it was actually a huge rectangle, once - if you imagine away the closets and take the walls back into a more regular shape, and add a tub and separate shower.  At one point, the room was remodeled, and the tub and shower were replaced with a single, HUGE, walk-in shower with a bench, and these two closets.  It's actually a fantastic space to use, as odd as it seems.  I love having a bathroom large enough to walk around in; and the closet duo means that we have a ridiculous amount of space in which to store various linens and craft stuff (the master bedroom is our craft room, just like at the old house).  

The only thing I don't like is where the bathroom door and the Poop Cave doors meet up. That's just a recipe for smacking yourself in the face, that is. It may not be everybody's first choice, but, I took the door off the Poop Cave.  It's safer, door-smacking-wise, and lets more light into the bathroom from the window during the day. 

I love the way this color looks with both the silver fixtures and brushed-gold frames and accessories.  

And the mirror, apparently, since I re-did this room like three weeks ago and still haven't wiped off that paint smear.  

The floor tile (and shower tile) is a warm, yellow-beige, just like the vanity.  

The only other consideration I bothered with in mixing the color was that it be something that coordinated with my roommate's gorgeous cotton shower curtain from World Market.  We both love the way this works. 

The only thing I don't have a pic of (because my phone just *cannot* for some reason) is the ceiling.  Yeah, it's just white.  But when this room was remodeled umpteen years ago, the ceiling was never finished. Not all the seams were taped, the joint between the ceiling boards and the wall boards wasn't sealed, and there were still grease-pen markings all over the ceiling from the workers who cut and installed it - arrows and measurements and such.  The bathroom itself took me about three days, but one of those days was just the ceiling:  cleaning, sealing, taping & floating, caulking, priming, painting.  I used to get so MAD while I was taking a shower, looking up at those measurements. Now it's fresh and white and smooth.  Ahhhh. 

There are plenty more things, both done and yet to do.  I'm hoping over the weekend that I can at least post about a couple of smaller projects I've been working on, if not have a new, huge one to show you (I have five days off, after all).  

IN the meantime, happy holidays, if holidays are your thing. 

The @#$%@#!! Living Room Ceiling

Well, guys, I finally did it.  I painted the goddamned living room ceiling.

I started the ceiling project in 2012 - three years ago - with my then-master bedroom, followed by the dining room, kitchen, hallways, and eventually the guest bath and two small bedrooms as I re-made them a year ago when Sylvan moved in.  By the time that I got to the living room, I was out of steam, out of paint, out of time in which to work, and injured, to boot.  (I'm still injured, but fuck it).

The holiday weekend past gave me a much-needed break from working two jobs and filling every spare second of time with sleep, depression, and sewing projects (my Very Last Commission Ever is going up on the SCA blog shortly - it's a doozy).  What'd I do for Thanksgiving?  I painted the goddamned living room ceiling!  Yay!

Halfway there. Bye-bye, stupid blue ceiling that turned the whole house
into a cave. The paint is [two coats of] a self-priming latex interior which
I mixed to match the other ceilings in the house ("White Clay" by Behr).
The kitchen cabinets are the same color).

The "clean end" of the room (the other end still had paint stuff
all over it).  I love the feeling of height this gives the room.

And I adore this little corner.  Corner windows: check. 
Table fulla plants: check. Dog sleeping under the table:
heehee. 

YAY!

Okay, so, technically there IS still one room I haven't gotten around to yet, ceiling-wise: the master bath.  But I have plans for the entire master suite (which is now a gigantic craft room), and I'm not touching ANYTHING in there until I'm ready to do the whole room (and have time, and money, and my arm's not trying to fall off, and I'm no longer working two jobs, which I still am at present. Ugh).  

Shelly, the Biggest Derp.

P.S.:  Oh!  Idk if you noticed (does anybody even read this horrible blog? Probably not, but it's still fun to do), but I also rearranged all the furniture.  Pics of all very soon, I promise.

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Got My Colors Did, Part II

THE COLORS

MASTER BEDROOM

Oddly enough, the color in the master bedroom didn't have an exact match; but it's about midway between SW's "Comfort Gray" and "Rainwashed" - Rainwashed is a tad greener and lighter than Comfort Gray.  It usually looks more like the second picture here.

"Comfort Gray" via Pinterest

"Rainwashed", Pinterest

My master bedroom.  

MASTER BATH, LAUNDRY ROOM

It's always bugged me that the master bath and master bedroom are different colors. The laundry was painted with the leftovers from the master bath.  SW's "Krypton", which is just an *awesome* name.  :) 

Pinterest

My laundry room

My master bath

SEWING ROOM

Another color I mixed from scratch, just to use up this gallon of a very weird pink that I had sitting around, not being used.  I mixed a LOT of "White Clay"/"Aesthetic White" into it, plus a bit of yellow to peach it up a bit - the result is a very ballet-slipper color that I like.  Not quite peach, not quite pink; color, but not something so eye-catching that it distracts me from my work, which is exactly what I need in my work room. SW's "Abalone Shell"...

Zillow

My sewing room, which is usually much more cluttered.

So what now? 

I haven't mentioned it yet, but in December my BFF is going to be moving in with me!  YAY!  It's a move we've been talking about for months now - we could both use a hand financially, and, though my own space was ALL I wanted two years ago, I've decided that for myself, living alone is for the freaking birds.  Now I'll have a friend around!  I'm so excited!  

So, given that change, there's going to be a LOT of work going into the house in the next couple of months before Sylvan moves in.  I still haven't painted the living room ceiling, which I meant to do back in 2012!!! when I did EVERY OTHER CEILING IN THE HOUSE.  Talk about procrastination, jeez.   

I'll also be painting Sylvan's room (formerly my room-of-all-trades, which has been a guest room, art studio, and very large closet, over the years); as well as doing a loooot of fix-it jobs that I've been putting off all year.  

The biggest change - deep breath, here goes nothing - is that I've decided to move, too:  into my sewing room!  I'll be swapping the sewing room and my master bedroom; the master will become ONE CRAFT ROOM TO RULE THEM ALL - a gigantic craft space that we can both share, with it's own bathroom and washroom facilities, and a humongous closet for supplies and fabric.  

LOTS more to come in the next few weeks; though I've also got a lot of SCA on my plate, so I'll be staggering posts on that blog and this one.  

See you soon! 

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Bullet: Bitten

You know that decorating axiom, "It's only paint"?  If you don't like it, you can just paint it again?  That doesn't fly when you're talking about painting over wood for the first time.  Stripping, sanding, restoring, staining, sealing - not the same as just a coat of paint in a slightly different color.

 Granted, the kitchen cabinets were technically already painted.  They were an orange f'oak (fake oak) when I bought the house, and I promptly gave them a brush-down with some flat black paint on a wet chip brush - a step in faux bois painting - in order to preserve the wood grain look but darken the color.  It worked really well, and I've loved them ever since.


But then the jones for painted kitchen cabinetry that's been eating at me for years finally took hold.  I fought it for months before giving in; and then I spent weeks on end dithering over when to start.

There's no going back from this, I thought.  I'd better just dive in and get it over with.

TA-DA!!!  


Omg I love these.


I think the brown on the bottom is a bit out of place now,  but I'm not entirely sure just yet.  I'll take some living with.

The brown ceiling fan on the ceiling (asopposed to the one on the fridge) is balanced out by the brown cabinets on the bottom of the room, though, and it's not "all that brown" anymore, the way it was in the before picture.

Wow, I really LOVE this white.  Yup, it's Behr's "White Clay", .just like the ceilings.

It really brightens up the whole room.  It feels so *light* now, moving around in this very full kitchen.





<   isn't that an adorable little clock?  There aren't any batteries in it.

These are the same smokey-quartz colored glass knobs that were in the guest bathroom.

No, I mean these ARE those knobs.  I took them out to use them in here, because it turns out that I love them so much with the white cabinetry that I wanted to see them every day.   (There are dinky little silver ones in the guest bath now, until I find something else cool to put in there).










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Another Ceiling Done!

Have I mentioned how much I hate typing the word "ceiling"?  I'm a smart woman.  I'm an educated woman.  I type over 100 words per minute.  And yet "ceiling" is one of a handful of words I just can't type correctly on the first try (or the second, third, fourth) to save my life.  The name Kevin is another one.  I always type "Keving" first for some reason.  I do the same thing with "bacon"...bacong?            σ_O
Anyway.

TADA!! 

the CEILING is done!  Yay, I love it!  

It's a little thing, but I really love the way the chandelier
lights make a big starfishy shadow thing on the CEILING.
Also: the new round light bulbs I was talking about.

one of which has already burned out, and it made these
weird swirly patterns on the inside of the glass.  Neat.  

So, to recap, here's the way-before:  

Which got new curtains and a tablecloth, but still had blue CEILINGS: 

And now, well...see above.  Ta.


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Dining Room/Kitchen Ceiling: Slowest Paint Job Ever

With an entire three-day weekend at my disposal, I did not get the dining room/kitchen ceiling painted.  Well, not all of it.  In fact, all I got done was the wide border around the top of the walls.  So now it looks a little something like this:

yes, this is photoshopp'd - REAL pictures when it's done!

I did also buy little round light bulbs for the chandelier, so it really looks like this now.  So cute!

More later this week.

Bigger & Brighter Bedroom

Maybe Blogger will get its head out of its @$$ and allow me to make this entry on the third try.  Hmph.

BEDROOM YAY!   I spent my Sunday afternoon correcting some issues in the master bedroom.  It was dark, mismatched, the curtains were fugly (seriously, wth was I thinking??), and there was still an old, queen-sized comforter on my king-sized bed.  Also, I was tired of looking at the blue ceiling:  it looked alright with the blue walls, but it was a different tone, too dark for the room, and, er, I had never bothered to go back and touch up around the edges when I painted it.  Whoops.

σ_σ

Fortunately, last week a sale and a coupon happened to me at the exact moment I was thinking about the bedroom issues, and I ordered a new, white duvet cover and shams in the correct size.

Over the weekend I sorted through all the paint in my garage (I have a lot of paint, you guys), and mixed together all my various whites and off-whites, to produce a soft, creamy off-white to use on the ceiling.  I also picked up a white, king-sized flat sheet, and made it into a pair of curtains;  I teamed those up with a pair of those Ikea LILL sheers that I have a frillion of and hung them hiiiigh on the walls under the the new, wide, ceiling border.

Et voila: 

Muuuch better!  The room is brighter, and feels about twice as big as it was before.

I absolutely adore the big, wide border around the top of the room.

And the off-white looks fantabulous with the wall color.

It's hard to see the curtains against the morning light in the pictures;  the white sheet-curtains are on one half, and the sheers on the other half.

While I like the effect, I do plan to get another sheet and repeat the process so that I have two curtains on each window, with the sheers in the center instead, so that it's a bit more balanced.


I also moved that dumb little rattan chair over to the window.  It feels less crammed-into-the-room in this corner;  the dog crate that was here is now more out of the way, and won't be getting doggy dust and grime all over the new white curtains.








Other things to continue working on:

• That dumb little rattan chair.  It's falling apart, and, well, it's pretty ugly.  I really would rather have something comfy and stuffed, like this.  
• Note the obvious lack of an actual comforter in the new comforter cover.  Oops.  Also - the ivory sheets are getting pretty worn, and need to be replaced.  With white, or blue, or gray.  Not sure yet. 
• The nightstands, which are functional, but boring as hell (as opposed to the old ones which were cute, but not remotely functional).  
• The bed needs a skirt to cover those box springs; and I do eventually plan to adjust the old four-poster frame to fit this bed. 

Anyway - yay!  I love it.  :) 

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