Before & After: Painted Rooms

I'm baaaaack....Sadly, I've been sitting on this post since July. I've just been THAT lazy about getting the pictures cropped. Because what use is a before and after post without pictures? I could paint you beautiful pictures with my words, about the richness of the green in my hallway, the warmth of the cappaccino in the living room, the coolness of my new bedroom walls. But really, it's not like you guys are Stevie Wonder. You've got eyes and you want to use them for more than reading. So let's begin, shall we?

It's been about 10 years since I've painted. And now that I'm done (practically) painting my whole house, I hope it'll be another 10 before I have to do it again!

Things I've learned:

• You ALWAYS needs to do two coats. Even if you primed. Even if you're painting white on white. A-L-W-A-Y-S two coats. Boo.
  
• Painting trim & crown moulding blows.
• You can reuse painters tape. Yes, I'm that frugal.
  
• Wash your rollers and brushes yourself if you have people helping you that way you can only blame yourself if they don't get cleaned well enough to reuse (sorry, Stephen).
• Don't paint the same weekend a killer surf swell comes in. Surfing twice a day plus painting for 5 hours in between surf sessions leads to immobility.

Amber's Painting Bootcamp
Before we get to the pics, let me take a minute to whine about how sore and exhausted I am! Like I said above, I surfed a ton while I was painting. Southern California got a rare, extremely good summer swell the weekend I had dedicated to painting (remember, I started this post around July 27th, for the surfers reading, that's when we got the super awesome swell in for a few days). So my painting weekend was more like a bootcamp workout (I assume; I've never worked out).

Saturday & Sunday:
9-11:30ish Surf Black's Beach, then climb back up the 1/4 mile cliff by the Torrey Pines Glider Port
1-5:30pm paint, paint paint. I already knew painting was hard on the arms, but it's just plain painful after paddling against a current for hours. Plus stepping up and down off the step-stool added a whole extra level of physical endurance to the process. I bet by the end of the weekend I'd done several hundred steps.
6-8pm Surf Black's. Paddle, paddle, paddle, catch my first overhead wave. Haul exhausted butt up cliff.

I was physically exhausted all weekend and by Monday the actual pain started to set in when I woke up and couldn't really move.

The Living Room
Team Kelly came over on Saturday to help me with the living room. They kicked ass! Hayden is a SUPER fast painter and taper. Hayden in action:


And Kristen...well, Kristen looks cute when she's sweaty. See:

And she does excellent clean up work. (she paints good too!)

Thanks to them I was able to get a first coat on the living room and did the second coat myself on Sunday. Did the baseboard trim during the week. Here's the final result:

BEFORE
Cream walls. Blah. Not terrible. Bot not terribly pretty either.

AFTER

The Breakfast Nook
I took Monday off and did the nook myself (you'll remember Stephen helped me tape and prime this room previously).

BEFORE (way before...the wallpaper is still up!)

AFTER

Mater Bedroom
I did this room on my own. Walls Sunday and Monday. Trim Monday and Tuesday. I'm so excited to not have to look at the primed walls anymore (it was primed for 5 weeks)!

BEFORE

AFTER (yeah, you can't really tell the color, but it's one of my favorites in the house)
AFTER (night time, color looks different)

So I did those 3 rooms at the end of July. Then I had to wait for payday so I could buy more paint and tackle the rest of the house.

Kitchen
I picked this green mostly because I like how it looks next to the blue in the nook when you look that direction. The whole kitchen needs to be redone (I want to sand and stain the cabinets a dark walnut and replace the gold, blingin' hardware). I'm a little mad because I bought the wrong paint. I got a semi-gloss instead of the satin which is less shiny. So I might have to repaint. Luckily there's hardly any wall and it's pretty quick. Except I have to tape again... =(

BEFORE

AFTER

Hallway and Trim
Here's the hallway. Not much to say, but I really love this color! And this was probably the worst because of all the doors and trim (I still have to paint all the doors and half the trim; but it's primed).

BEFORE (waaaay before, there's still carpet!)

AFTER

Guest Bedroom
I'm on the fence about what I did with this room. I went out on a limb and bought some dark colors and it's just really masculine and makes the room feel smaller. But the light bedding and furniture tones it down a bit. And every male that's visited always comments on the color of this room and how much they like it, but say nothing about the rest of the house =)

BEFORE

AFTER

So that's it. I only have one room left, the office. I'm leaning toward orange/something warm.

I really like how all my rooms have turned out, except the guest room but it's grown on me the past few months. Paint makes a big difference. Plus it just makes it feel more like mine. Particularly since I did 85% of it on my own.