Paint!

Nope, the bathroom isn't totally finished yet, but thanks for asking!  Actually, the giant pile of drywall and plywood is preventing us from even using the bathroom right now, but that's a story for another post.

Once we mostly finished up the bathroom we moved on to the rest of the main floor that was ripped up.

Just after we removed the wall separating the dining room and the soon-to-be-library, it looked like this:

April 11, 2010

Shortly after that, the old plaster came down and it looked a little like this:

April 23, 2010

All of that useless vapour "barrier" (aka wax paper) and pitiful 1940's excuse for insulation came down, Roxul and good, proper plastic vapour barrier went up and then we got to drywalling.  After that, it looked a little something like this:

July 25, 2010 

(yeah, it took a while, so what?!)

Then, it was time to pick out paint colours!  Oh joy.  When looking around at some dining room pictures, and watching LOTS of HGTV and DIY networks, I fell in love with the look of wainscotting.  I looked up many different blog posts on the topic if diy'ing it, and decided that it was definitely something the Derek and I could handle.

One of my main inspirations was the dining room from the show Home to Flip.

Image from cherishtoronto,blogspot.com

I love everything about this room.  I love the wall colour, and the print on the wall, the wainscotting, the crown moulding, everything.  I knew I wanted to go with a teal for the walls, so we started out with a few paint chips that we thought could work.

Since we're planning on making a built-in bookshelf/desk in the space we're calling the library, we thought we'd paint the wall that will the be back of the bookcase in a fun colour.  With the teal we'd already imagined, and the blue of the bathroom, a nice grassy/mossy green was our first thought.  Into our hands when a slew of possible paint chips.

Next, we decided that we'd like a nice sand/wheat/beige-but-better colour to run through the common areas of the house.  This colour is basically going to run along the main floor hallway, up the stairs and onto the second floor.  It was important that we picked a colour that would work well with the teal and the green that we choose.

So, we did what any smart DIYer would do, and taped the paint chips we liked up to the wall.  At first, there were many, however, it was quite easy to throw away some, as they were just too pink.  Having lived in peach for the last 10 months we wanted to steer far far away from anything that even hinted at peach or pink.

We left the chips up for a few days and looked at them in different types of light.  Occasionally one of us would tear down one that just wasn't right and move some things around.  We ended up pulling these three colours together:

On the left is Woven Stray from the Behr Premium Plus Ultra line, on the right is Dragon Fly, also of the Premium Plus Ultra line and in the centre is Grape Leaves, from just the regular Premium Plus line.

At first we were hesitant to buy the "fancy pants paint" that is the Premium Plus Ultra, but after asking around (thank you August '09 ladies) the verdict was that it really was worth the extra money.  And man, do I agree.

First up we painted the library.  It took two coats to get a good, even covering.  And yes, we primed first, don't worry!

Oooo, pretty.

Then, like any good nerd DIYer we busted out our (new) laser level and marked out the boundaries of the dining room paint.

Then, we set to painting.  In our house we usually paint as a team.  I cut in at the corners and, in places where there won't be crown moulding, at the ceiling while Derek goes through and rolls out the rest of the wall.  Generally, we finish up at about the same time.

After having to do 2 coats of the green to get good covering, moving to the Premium Plus Ultra paint was a significant difference.  As long as you take your time, you can easily get great coverage with one coat.  There were a few spots that needed a second pass with the roller, but you're totally fine to touch those spots up while the paint is still wet.

We've still got a little bit of mud work to do in the hallway (where we had to cut open the wall because we thought the shower valve was set too far forward) so we've only gotten a little bit of the Woven Straw colour on the wall, but here you can see all three new colours together. 

Also, you can see that even though the dining room isn't done, there's a whole pile of stuff in there now.  Where did that come from you ask?  Well, the back room of course!  But that's definitely a story for another post.

To complete the series of pictures you saw at the beginning of this post, here's what the space looks like now:

September 5, 2010

That's it for now.  Next time I'll tell you the story of the uneven addition and the hump in the floor that is no more!