Friday, June 14, 2013

Farmhouse Renovation Day Five & Six: Making a little more progress!


Things are starting to look up around the farmhouse! 

We came upon some more major adversity- in the form of a mysterious substance that was seeping through the "Quiet Moments" paint in the dining room. But after a fierce bleach-and-water scrubbing, followed by a layer of tinted Zinsser shellac-based primer, things were significantly improved! More interesting: The lady at the paint store tinted the primer a little too enthusiastically and it was actually a good deal darker than it should have been-- but John and I loved it! So we decided to make a bold move (okay-- not that bold) and painted the dining room one shade darker than we'd originally planned.

YES. I HAVE BROKEN OUT OF MY QUIET MOMENT CYCLE. 

I am now officially exploring the world of Benjamin Moore's "Beach Glass". Wild woman. You can see the dining room shown above, but I'm not sure that it really captures the depth and beauty of the new color. I'll try to take more photos tomorrow when the sunlight is in full effect.

I'm TOTALLY thrilled! 

However, I wasn't ready to TOTALLY throw off the "Quiet Moments" paint (particularly since I'd already purchased two gallons of the stuff!) so I've changed my overall plan and here's where we stand as of this moment:

Dining Room: "Beach Glass"
Living Room: "Quiet Moments"
Kitchen: Seriously considering the possibility of "Artichoke Heart". Is that nuts???

You can see the photos of the living room above and below-- now in "Quiet Moments". Next step: I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with the gallons of "Old Prairie" paint that I previously planned to use in the living room. Maybe somewhere upstairs?



We also started in on the wiggy temporary bathroom renovation. The bathroom, if you remember correctly, was essentially the grossest place on earth. The previous owners of our house didn't really go whole-hog when they built the bathroom. And by "not going whole-hog", what I mean is that they chose to use cardboard to close up the space above the bath tub instead of dry wall. Yes. Cardboard. Like from a box that they cut up to fit above the tub. There is a handle hole on one of the pieces. That is how much just used a random piece of cardboard. TAH-KEY!!!



So-- obviously the first step was to remove the cardboard and replace it with a couple of new pieces of drywall... I solicited John's assistance on that endeavor, which he whipped through in no time. What a champ!


After we rectified the obvious "short coming" over the bathtub, I started by priming everything. I mean EVERYTHING. I wanted to put a definitive layer OR TWO between us and the previous owners. We like to use "Aqua-Lock" when we're doing more mild priming, with great success. The Zinsser stuff (which we used in the US vs. MYSTERY STAINS in the dining room) is pretty expensive, so we save it for special occasions only. : ) 

I've now completed the first layer of painting in the bathroom, but there are still a lot of finishing steps: adding additional molding where it is missing, doing a second coat of paint, installing a new light fixture, and then the fun part-- decorating! (I've got a genius idea for the shower curtain that's going to transform this bathroom. Just you wait...) 

So that's where we stand tonight. Hopefully my big bathroom reveal will be ready for tomorrow night and I can post some photos pronto! 

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