I started our remodeling saga with the outside of our house in the first part of this series . This second part shows how we transformed the main living areas, mainly by using paint. When we bought our house, every piece of molding, all the wood, doors, ceilings, cupboards, and floors (the ones that were wood, anyway), were stained DARK walnut. The walls were all a dull yellow.
I do not feel cozy with all that dark (I live in Oregon!), I feel claustrophobic. Dark ceilings just seem to be bearing down on me…
This is nothing against those who like wood. Men, especially, seem to think wood is sacred and should never be painted. I have no clue why. I heard the people we bought the house from built a log cabin (see, they’re “wood people”) and that they’re horrified that we painted everything.
If you feel this way about wood, stop reading, for heaven’s sake! We PAINTED everything (and I do mean everything).
Hooray!
Sprayed everything creamy white. Left the top of the half-wall wood for contrast and dirt-hider (ever seen what a ledge painted white looks like after a year?). New doorknob in bronze to replace the dated “antique” brass (it wasn’t fooling anyone into believing it was old…), “new” vintage light fixture from the 1930s with a sweet rose painted on the shade.
There was a long shelf running the length of the wall to the right that we removed (dust, anyone?). You can see the outline where they had painted around it. We found an outlet the shelf had been hiding (for the doorbell) and placed a wall plaque there to hide it after disabling the doorbell.
Disclaimer: this was taken when the previous owners were still in the house, so we’re seeing their furniture and decor. Enough said.
We spent a week prior to moving in taping and spraying (and peeling wallpaper, which you’ll see in part 3 of this series…).
Sprayed everything creamy white. Left the brick because it wasn’t too dark or orange and I knew we’d be using the insert (wood chips and pieces…) I made three “unstructured” roman shades for the windows out of cotton painter’s drop cloths (same as the slipcover on the couch). They cost me about $25 total after adding the cost of the cording, etc. I needed to make them.
Sprayed everything…um, I think you’ve probably gotten the idea already. Replaced ALL the brass hinges with silver and all the knobs with glass.
About a year later, we were able to pull the carpet out of the hallway and continue the wood floor from the main area down the hall. We found salvaged oak that actually matched ours at a local sale for only $60! Such a deal.
Now if we could just find enough to do the living room…
I’m calling this the dining room because we are looking towards the dining room…and because it’s the only before picture I could find.
In addition to painting, we replaced the light fixture (looked like something from a saloon) with our $10 vintage chandelier we brought from our old house. It’s special to us because we found it when we were first married before we even had a house and have carried it with us since.
At the same time as our garage remodel (see the outside here), we had the single door and window replaced by a pair of 6′ French doors. Oh the light they let in!
I’m sorry, I’m so not a wood person. Just looking at the after picture makes me breath a sigh of relief!
Now this is mystifying. This is the only before picture of the kitchen I could find and I’m sure we took others. This hardly shows the kitchen at all. Crud.
It does show my stepdad, Mike, telling me we’re pretty much out of our minds to take on all we want to do, though. I remember telling him I’d keep at it if it took me 5 years…Um. I’m still at it.
Anyway, it’s enough to get the idea: dark, dark, dark. And dated tan tile. Perfect.
Taping and spraying, taping and spraying. This was our life for a whole week.
I’m using this as the “after” shot because it’s somewhat similar to the before, but again is not showing much of the kitchen. So I’ve got three more photos to help give you an idea of some of the low-cost things we did to bring the kitchen up to par without doing any major remodel.
OK, gallons of paint. Here we used a semi-gloss. There was wallpaper in the kitchen area (it just stopped at the dining and living walls- just this line of paper going down the wall, I just don’t get it).
Here was our first clue that peeling the wallpaper in the other areas of the house was going to be a problem. The paper was attached directly to the unfinished wallboard. When 22 year old wallpaper is attached directly to the wallboard, it doesn’t want to come off. And if it does, it will be in 1/2-inch wide strips (if you’re lucky). Or so we found out.
Then we were left with walls that weren’t textured coming right up to the walls that were. Oh joy. Thankfully, our friend Dan had done quite a bit of texturing and was our angel of help during this first week.
New silver hinges, new glass knobs, new fridge. Replaced the light fixtures with vintage finds off eBay. Removed the center panel on the doors on either side of the sink and replaced them with glass. Removed the under-sink doors and added a curtain.
This angle shows the cabinets on the far wall and the door leading into what used to be the garage and now is our laundry room, office, and guest/catchall room.
We removed the center panels from all four doors across the top and replaced them with glass and it made a huge difference in the look of these cabinets.
We were lucky we had good quality cabinets made out of solid wood with center panels, routing and crown moldings. It’s one of the reasons I knew the house would work for us.
This was a stop-gap for the kitchen before we did more involved remodeling.
Um, its been five years.
We’re still stopping that gap, I suppose.
There’s really only a couple of things I’d like to do: replace the awful counters with wood counters from IKEA, get an over-the-stove microwave to gain more counter space, and upgrade the sink and faucet.
That’s not so bad. We should be able to get to that this next year.
I think.
-Jami
I believe a cottage can be anywhere or anything (condo, ranch, farmhouse) as long as you have a "cottage mentality" which puts people above things, celebrates imperfections, embraces simplicity, and finds joy in everyday life. Thanks for joining me!
AMAZING! We have an old 60′s house with dark wood paneling, dark beams, orange plywood cupboards and wallpaper attached directly to the drywall. This gave me so much hope! Very fresh and bright and clean and shabby chic. Love it!
Jami I have to agree with your taste!
I love the way just a coat of paint can change a room so dramatically. I do have a question though. Why the curtain to replace the doors under the kitchen sink? Do you find this more functional or was it done solely for aesthetics?
Also, can you add a link to your re-modeling part 1 post. I seem to have missed that one.
Jenelle
Thanks!
Jenelle, thanks for the heads-up about the link- I totally forgot to add the link in the place I had set for it! I’ve added it now and also added a new first sentence with reference to the first part.
Also, I added the curtain under the sink for two reasons: I like the look, mainly, but also our cabinets recede there about 2″ and our garbage can wouldn’t fit with the doors as well. The curtain gives it just a little bit more room. BTW, I’ve saved the doors if I ever decide to go back to them!
We have wood cabinets and door trim and window trim that we would love to paint someday? Did you have to sand much? What type of paint did you use?
Ashley- We didn’t sand at all, though we probably should’ve on the cabinets. We were spraying everything and had only a week, so we primed everything with a water-based primer, then sprayed two coats of eggshell enamel on the walls and semigloss on the cabinets, doors and trim. We’ve had a few little places peel, but not much really- certainly not enough to equal all the time and mess sanding would’ve needed.
oh, wow, I am so glad I found you. we just bought a house ( i left a comment on another one of your posts about the hardwood floor) and we have an upper room that is covered in raw pine wood. The Man cave. It is dark, even though it is pine. There is no window there and I feel so claustrophobic. So I told my DH we need to paint creamy white!!!!
Here is my question… everything is wood… the ceiling, the walls, the built ins have black hardware but the rest is all pine… the floor is a darker wood. I thought of painting everything creamy white… just leaving the floor and the hardware as the contrast. What do you think?
I don’t know much about decorating and I am scared of messing up. Why did you spray instead of roll the paint? did you just purchased a sprayer??
thanks again,
tereza
Tereza-
Oh, you will LOVE that room painted a creamy white. Seriously. Yes to leaving the floor and the hardware. If the hardware is too much contrast when you’re done, you can always paint it with a brush later. I think if you put other touches of black- lamps, a couple pillows or footstool, picture frames, etc. – the hardware will fit right in when the room’s lighter.
And we sprayed because we were painting everything in it’s way easier and faster, even with the prep time needed to cover in plastic everything you want to keep paint from getting on. Basically, once you get everything covered, the whole thing can be painted in an hour or two with the primer coat (depending on the size of your room), with the next coat ready after you’ve eaten lunch.