Alright people, we’re blogging to you today, not as the renters you once knew, but as proud new homeowners! And by “new” I mean, new to us. That’s right, we’ve really got our work cut out for us. I’m blogging through bleary eyes and a caffeine-induced typing speed of 60+ WPM. Pretty impressive, eh?
We made settlement on our house this past Friday, August 12th. Since then, we’ve painted 2 incredibly persnickety ceilings, 2 entire rooms (living room and master bedroom), and yours truly tackled the dirt and grime that doth come with a retirement-aged bathroom. (Stay tuned for some graphic photos of that nightmare). All-in-all, we’re chalking this up to a big win. However, we’re super ancy to get the rest of our immediate work done. On Sunday, Andrew and I removed all of the kitchen cabinet doors and drawers and removed the hardware from them. This weekend, in addition to taking delivery of a new dishwasher, a new refrigerator and several new cable and internet hookups/installations, we plan on sanding (we found some great primer that won’t require sanding!), priming and painting these beasts.
Ugh, talk about dated.
Speaking of dated, let’s backtrack to the painting for a moment. When we started this little venture, we knew we were going to have to do something about our atrocious ceilings. Here’s a “before” shot of these little monsters.
There have been several items on our to-do list, but painting these ceiling tiles has always graced the top of the list. There’s just something so unattractive about them. So we originally consulted with our home inspector and he was able to tell us that these were acoustic ceiling tiles. (Not to be confused with drop ceiling acoustic tiles; our acoustic tiles are actually stuck on). However, they’re so outdated that there’s nothing available in Lowe’s or Home Depot to really compare them to. So after speaking with a few people at Lowe’s, we basically went with our own guts and just purchased Valspar ceiling paint. We started off with the regular white paint, and then switched to the “goes on purple, turns to white” paint when we needed to crack open a 2nd can.
Above is a pic of Andrew’s Dad applying some of the Valspar color-changing paint. That stuff was fabulous! The process was super tedious and it took 4 – 5 of us about 2 hours just to paint the whole living room ceiling. Things were literally looking up – serious cricked necks abound.
Because acoustic tiles are generally porous, we had to apply tons of paint to the brown lines running between the tiles. Some of the crevices were deeper than others, so it took awhile to fill everything in.
Once we got all the lines filled in, we noticed a huge difference already! Then all it took was a little rolling action, and voila – no more yucky brown in the ceiling. Just clean, crisp white! The ceilings now seem several feet taller and your eyes aren’t drawn directly upward upon entering the room.
The above picture is before the rolling process, but you can definitely see what a huge difference the white paint has made!
Now check out the before and after, back to back. (The before also showcases our fabulous purple door)!
The picture of the final product comes complete with a peek at our wall paint; “Minted Lemon” (Behr paint and primer in one).
All-in-all this was a tedious process, but it was well worth it in the end. We did the same thing in our master bedroom and will eventually be following suit in the office. Until then, I don’t even want to look at a paint brush. 😉
We got a lot of work done over the past week, so stay tuned to the blog and our Twitter account for more updates about all of our initial home improvement projects!
Fresh Nest Blog 