Living Room Updates

My life right now.

Last October I tested three paint colors on the walls of our living room. You might remember this, because I wrote about it here. After three months (!) of contemplating goldish-tinted hues, I marched through the doors at our local Hirshfield's armed with fabric swatches from our furniture and demanded that one of their color consultants pick the color for us. I'm not sure why I didn't try that approach earlier. I left the store with giant paint cards in "abbey stone" and some shade of blue that looked okay in the store, but horrendous in our living room. "Abbey stone," however, appeared to be a good match.

I purchased paint and supplies, prepped the room and walls, and got to work. Wanna know what really sucks about painting? The touch-up work on the walls that takes place before you even open the paint can. I spent a couple of hours spackling, trying to remove hardware and nails from the walls, sanding paint drips and taping. Trust me when I say there are few things more frustrating than rolling your paint brush down the wall and noticing paint drips that you missed.

I found lots of them.

C'est la vie.

I finished my painting job late Thursday afternoon. The husband and I then decided we should update all of the electrical switches and outlets since the original, almond-colored switches and plates were decorated with several colors of paint from many, many years ago. We spent Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday disconnecting and reconnecting wires and screwing in new plate covers. As part of that process, we learned that three-way switches function much differently than regular switches. I'm glad G had the smarts to navigate our way through that process, because I don't think I could have ever figured it out. In addition to requiring a completely different switch, our wires weren't marked correctly so it took some serious thinking combined with a bit of trial and error problem solving to get the switches to work. It's amazing what that update did for that room.

We also removed the paint covered, dated heat registers and installed new ones. One of the covers was an irregular size and replacing it turned out to be a bit of a headache, but as of last night our new one was in place and looked okay. We'll see what our parents think about that particular piece of handy work...

Next up, we need to install the hardware for our curtains. I tried last night, but I don't have the muscle to get the screw into the wall. G is going to try tonight. I'm anxious to attach the hardware so we can clean up the mess/drop cloths, wash the floor, and move our furniture back into the room.

In related news, I just submitted an application for a kitchen renovation television show. Who knows what will come out of it, but I think our kitchen is a good candidate for a full renovation. We'll see what happens!