First Floor Painting Project - Completed
CASA BELLA
EST. 12/2020
We bought our house right as the market began to become crazy competitive early December 2020. To make our offer stand out, we took it “as is” which can always be risky. The house was built in 1947 and had a few minor issues that needed immediate attention, but we were blessed with no major hidden issues (so far)!
Walking into this charming house, we knew right away this is was it. My husband and I both knew we wanted to paint but we also were drawn to the previous owner’s decorating style. Right before our final walk through we were informed if we wanted any of the furniture in the home we could walk through and mark with tape the pieces we wanted to keep for no extra charge! So we went shopping in our soon to be home and got keep some beautiful pieces.
The slide show above are the pictures posted by the seller for reference so you can see before and after pictures. Who doesn’t love a good before and after??
The timeline we chose to paint and move in, I would recommend to no one. Especially with a seven month old at the time. Between packing, buying painting supplies and attempting to paint, moving, final walk through at our rental place, unpacking (looking for everything we packed!), trying to buy Christmas presents, and feel the holiday spirit…Christmas was hard to enjoy. We put up our Christmas tree first thing so we could feel a little joy but it ended up dying under a drop cloth since we were painting ceilings.
When painting a large space, ceilings and all, it is tempting to cut corners. We learned a lot on the way about why it is important to be thorough so your hard work can last as long as possible. I will share a few lessons and tricks we learned.
Primer. Super important especially if you do not know what paint was used before. We had planned on priming from the start but we did buy a ceiling paint that had primer in it. Apparently not enough. In a past life of this house someone thought it would be a cool idea to put wall paper with flowers on the ceiling. We discovered this after we were just finishing up rolling the ceiling in the dinning room. With the last stroke of the roller the paint got tacky and clung to the roller which pulled off the layers of paint under our fresh coat revealing the wallpaper.
Wallpaper. This made us realize the ENTIRE house has wall paper underneath layers of paint. Well instead of increasing the length of our project by turning it into a wallpaper removal mess, we decided to let the paint dry, sand the spot down and do a little spakle touchup, sand again then prime, and finish with our final coat of ceiling paint. It worked out great!
Color Choices. As we were discussing our painting dreams and making the house our own we started to realize we both had different visions. I liked the idea of a light airy grey, and my husband wanted a dark grey with bold white contrast for the trim. We went with a compromise color and started painting the dinning room and my husband hated it. So we primed again, returned the paint and I figured why not try his idea. What was the worst that could happen? You can always change paint colors. But I am so glad we went with his idea, I love it. I was worried it would feel like I was living in a cave since we don’t have ceiling lighting in the living room yet, but thankfully we have enough natural light that it makes it cozy.
The first two pictures below are the original color we chose. It just wasn’t as deep and rich as Ola wanted. The last two pictures show the color Peppercorn, which we used for all of downstairs other than the kitchen. Our trim color we used is Fundamental White.
Starting the painting project I thought it would take maybe 3 weeks to a month max. It took almost 4 months to complete all of downstairs and upstairs. We were both working out of the house at the time, we had a baby, and were trying to get settled. I definitely had high hopes and unrealistic expectations.
Our moody downstairs did finally get completed and we love our space. Since then we have made a lot of furniture and rug changes but the lay out and paint color has remained the same 3 years later. We still love it.