My arms hurt, I can’t lift anything above my head, or even just lift my arms above my head, and I’m oh so grateful for my office job. No, I haven’t been working on my CrossFit skills (ha!). I’ve been trim (and wall and ceiling and window and door) painting for days now. But having a painted landing, hallway, staircase, and entry is oh-so glorious. GLORIOUS! White never looked so good before!
We decided to paint everything White Dove by Benjamin Moore. And by everything, I do mean everything. The walls and the ceiling have a satin finish while the doors, windows, trim, and baseboards are all a semi-gloss finish. Painting these spaces was our first major painting excursion in this new to us (but oh so old) house of ours. We debated a ton of different colors, and couldn’t decide on anything since we still don’t really know how we’ll be furnishing/accessorizing spaces yet, so white seemed like a natural choice for now. We already had a gallon of White Dove on hand since I had purchased it to redo a room in our old house just before we decided to sell. It seemed wasteful not to use that gallon of paint. Besides, White Dove is one of those great whites that feels soft and warm (no coldness here) and one of the most recommended whites from top designers. It’s hard to go wrong with White Dove and I love how it’s looking in our home.
Here’s a before shot of the landing on move-in day. You can see all our move-in day pics in our first home tour.
And another before shot looking from the landing to the front of the house. I know it’s hard to tell in the pictures, but the paint and trim were a creamy almost yellow color before we painted.
Conveniently cropped out of the photo above is a ginormous hole in the ceiling, one of the things we fixed before painting. I had a “how to fix a ginormous hole in your ceiling” post but then Colby decided to fix it with duct tape. Yup…duct tape. Granted, he mudded over it, sanded it down, painted over it and now you can’t even tell it was there. But duct tape. #unconventionalDIY
The biggest painting game changer and the part of the painting process that took the longest was scraping, BIN-ing, and painting the two windows…mullions and all on both sides.
While working on the entry and the landing, we decided to take down all the crown molding as we did in the guest bedroom makeover. The crown was a base cap used as a picture-hanging crown but it ended up being a breeding ground for flies. It was so disgusting underneath all the crown and we’re anxious to remove it from the rest of the rooms because of this grossness:
BIN to the rescue! I love BIN primer. The good, stinky, fuming, oil-based BIN. It’s an amazing stain-killing primer. If I could get a side gig as a BIN spokesperson I totally would because I can’t say enough good things about this product. We used it in our last house to cover all the knots in the kitchen ceiling planking and it stain-blocked like a champ.
All it took in this house was a little wall sanding to get as much of that disgusting fly stuff off and a couple of coats of BIN before painting the wall my normal two coats of paint. Worked like a charm. While I was at it I also BIN-ed the windows and mullions since I pretty much scraped them down to the bare wood. When BIN-ing, just remember a little goes a long way. It’s deceivingly watery but is a devil of a product!
Back to some pretty white space pictures. Here’s a shot of the landing looking down the hallway from the front of the house to the back.
And another shot of the crisp white trim in the hallway. We’re also slowly changing out all the cream outlets and switches. And by we I obviously mean my electrician, Colby. Outlet switching isn’t terribly hard and is something any homeowner can do. Just Google around for a YouTube video that steps you through it. That’s what we did and now we (the royal we) are pros at it.
And another shot looking from the guest bedroom into our bedroom. Ignore the hanging light fixtures. I’m planning on switching those out and just don’t see the point of reattaching them just to switch them out in a few days.
The landing is technically the space I’m working on for the One Room Challenge but while I was at it, it seemed appropriate to also paint the staircase:
And the formal entryway as well.
Now that both the landing and the entry are clean slates, I’m itching to start adding furniture, textiles, and accessories….oh my! However, we need to get the workshop in order so we can start building some furniture pieces. I keep catching myself moving around the few pieces we have and love.
