7.24.2008

Please excuse our mess

We are making slow progress on the painting front. Saturday night we finished painting the dining room and with lots of help from Philip's parents we almost finished all of the cabinets and the trim in the kitchen. We finished the kitchen trim Monday and the orange on Tuesday. Philip had the day off work Monday so he started on the living room which ended up being way more work (and paint) than we expected. Here are some pictures of our progress.


This is the dining room before and after. We still haven't settled on a color for the archway so we are leaving it unpainted until we decide on a transition color. Eventually, I would like to change this light fixture out with something a little more tropical to go with the tiki stuff. Guess that I will have to start scouting out the thrift stores for something cool. I get a 25% discount at the Habitat ReStore which is where I found the vintage yellow fixture a few years ago so that will probably be where I start looking.


Next up is the kitchen so far. As you can probably tell, we were overcome by laziness and we skipped painting the ceiling (I know that I am going to regret this, but it is something that I can deal with later.) The top cabinets are 1950's metal cabinets which are still in excellent condition. I took all of the chrome pulls off so we could paint without hitting them and I took some steel wool to them to make them beautiful and shiny. If I haven't mentioned it before, steel wool is my restoration secret. With a steel wool pad and about 20 minutes you can turn a rusty thrift store find into a shiny vintage find. The trick is learning to identify the different types of rust and chrome damage. If the rust is eating into the chrome, there isn't a lot you can do to repair the damage, but if the rust is sitting on top then you can scrub it right off.


Finally, here is the living room after four coats of paint. We still need to do another two coats on the edges, but I really wanted to show the progress since this room is coming out so nice. Philip picked out the red and it is this amazing wine color that really makes the room pop. Hopefully we will finish the edging tonight as well as the bedroom which I should have pictures of tomorrow.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Robyn, you amaze me with your energy and creativity! I would like to invite you to come to my house and work your magic!

Janis said...

Holy crap, color! Looks great. I hope to see yer place sometime when you're finished. :)

Allison said...

I really love the orange kitchen - it's so bright and energetic.

L. Marie said...

Oh wow I love the colors you picked for the dining room, my two absolute favorites actually. The new place looks fantastic!