color fail!

Remember way back in December/January when totally NAILED IT with our master bedroom and bath colors? Well, it’s time for a lesson in color humility. Here’s a quick list of our recent lessons learned.

1) Using leftover paint from one room for another is not efficient. You will have a new bucket of leftover paint.

2) Lighting and carpet color will completely change a paint swatch from wall-to-wall (and even on the same wall). Observe samples in all lighting conditions before buying the bucket.

3) Paint HUGE swatches. That 1x1 square ain’t gonna cut it.

4) If you don’t love any of your samples … try more samples. It’s still cheaper than buying a gallon of regret.

Lesson 1

A few weeks ago, I decided to take the half bucket of leftover paint from the main floor bath and paint the green room a less radioactive green. I figured it was a small enough room that I could probably get it all covered in one coat.

Cutting in with the half bath paint.

Uh, yeah. That didn’t quite work. I got through three walls and then ran out. But I could tell it would need a second coat, so a quart wasn’t going to cover it. Once it was all said and done, we now have a half bucket of green paint left. And we’re not thrilled with the bathroom’s green in this room. So, lesson #1) calculate before you try to be efficient; lesson #2) just pick a color for that room instead of trying to be “efficient.”

But wait! It gets better!

Lesson 2-4

Last week we got the itch to do something about the Blue Room, i.e., the guest bedroom. It is a very saturated and immature blue, in our eyes, and I was pretty much done with it. This is the second biggest bedroom and its future is in flux. 

Blue room during walk through

Right now it’s the guest room, but once there’s a kiddo in the mix, do we turn it into his/her room and move the guest room into the green room at the end of the hall? But what if we have two kids? We are pretty much guaranteed a room war if Kid #1 gets the Big Room and Kid #2 gets the Small Room and its #2’s own fault for being born second, etc. I guess the solution there would be to move each child into the smaller bedrooms and turn the big room into a guest room/Mike’s office (and force Mike to keep it tidy, at least when guests are coming over). But, of course, Kid #1 is going to resent moving “down” in class.

Obviously, we’re overthinking it here. But this logic fueled our color philosophy. We wanted something transitional, so it works with a guest room/nursery/mixed use room, so we don’t have to decide the room’s future right now. It’s a great guest room until we’ve got a munchkin in the mix.

So, we were looking at greige and grays. I favor blue-toned grays, and Mike immediately struck those down in his quest to keep me from painting the whole house blue (justifiable fear, folks). Yellows, reds, and oranges were out, too. So, we went through several chips of warm-toned grays (brown, sometimes greenish undertones) on the primed walls to narrow down our sample picks (NEVER choose off a chip alone!).

It’s amazing how something can look gray on a chip, but the moment you put it on the wall in your designated room, it can completely change. Many of our chips went instant beige or brown (a purple popped up here or there). The lighting in the room was definitely murky yellow at night and the brown carpet wasn’t helping matters.

We narrowed our sample selection to Olympic’s Quill and Valspar’s Granite Dust and Notre Dame (the latter two on the same chip set).

We threw Quill onto the wall … and it was an instant NO. It just looked like bland beige, not remotely gray. Paint color looks different from bucket to wet application to dry, so reserve your judgment, but this was a no all the way through.

Notre Dame, a darker greige, definitely had more beige in real life than the chip, but we did like it on some walls in some light. This had been my favorite while just on the chip. But ... it was falling out of contention.

Granite Dust was even darker and intriguing. A hint of green came through this darker gray and we both wondered if it might be too dark for the room, but it definitely looked more interesting that the other colors. We increased the size of the swatches to get a better idea and kept gravitating to Granite Dust.

There was hesitancy in both of us, though we did not clearly voice it to one another. I googled the colors to see how they looked in various rooms online. GD did not look as dark as it did on our walls, so I figured it must look so dark because it’s against the white primed walls.

So, off I went to get our bucket of Valspar Ultra (it was covering better in the sample than Olympic, and I was unimpressed with my last Olympic batch). Brought it home and started cutting in. The sun started going down. Mike came upstairs from working on another project and uttered the fatal words.

“Huh. It looks like camo green.”

“It’s still drying,” I said, though I could see what he meant. But I told myself the paint was going on so nicely as I cut in, covering so well, and the big sample swatches on the wall still looked good. And the paint did seem to be drying toward that color.

I got halfway around the room before stopping for the night. Each time Mike came in, he reiterated that he didn’t think it was the right color for the room. While the swatches still looked okay, down around the trim and carpet, there was a definite brown-green tone coming through. It no longer looked gray. On some walls it was fine, even in the yellow light of night.

Was it a mistint? I painted right up to one of the swatches. Once it dried, there was a slight difference with the bucket paint being a hair browner, but it wasn’t enough to call it a mistint. Could it be the difference from the satin sheen of the sample to the eggshell in the bucket?

Can you see the difference?

I was frustrated, both with the time and money spent on this color and that Mike now proclaimed he was never sold on it. After some tense discussion, we decided to see how things looked in the morning and go from there. Mike suggested rolling one wall to see if maybe the color would look less army and also change out the ceiling fan light. So, we went to bed hoping we wouldn’t be $30 and a Sunday down.

In the Monday morning light, I still liked (not loved) Granite Dust and hoped a lightbulb change would do the trick. After work, we reconvened in the no-longer-blue room and assessed the color. Mike swapped a bulb and there was an instant improvement (the other light had been a yellow 13-watter). But we couldn’t unsee the camo tone on every wall. Would it improve with white trim? Every picture online showed this color with white trim, and we had decided to go ahead and paint our scuffed trim. So, everything should right itself … right?

Mike was adamant that we shouldn’t waste our time forcing a color to work. It's just not worth it. So, it was back to our chip stash. It was time to bring blue back into play, so we grabbed some samples from our master suite decision days and brushed them on the walls to see how this tone would play. Surprisingly, Mike really liked the unabashedly blue Palisade, but we agreed that it was too blue for what we envisioned (and would be too similar to the Previous Owners’ choice). But it did give the green light for blue. (Ha ha).

We also played with the light Silver Leaf, which had a faint silvery blue tone in previous rooms, and Gravity, the glorious gray we love in our master bath. Gravity lost its vibrancy in this room and looked like a muted gray with violet undertones … not bad, but not great. Silver Leaf looked okay, but it just seemed lighter than what we wanted.

We decided on four colors, two lights and two darks: Olympic’s Cold Steel, Silver Threads, and Steel City and Valspar’s Polished Silver. Back to Lowe’s!

Silver Threads, like other light grays before it, turned beige. Instant no. It’s interesting that Silver Leaf did not do this when they looked very similar on the chips.

Cold Steel wasn’t bad, but it just looked dull, but I could see it working nicely with a darker gray if we striped a wall (we aren’t that ambitious). I loved Polished Silver as it went on and continued to love it as it dried. Steel City was also intriguing. It definitely has green coming through but in a cozy-not-camo way. Mike cast his vote for the City, but I was torn. Would it be too much for the room? It was a darker, deeper tone, but if you’re not going to have fun with your guest/whatever room, where would you?

As I primed over the Granite Dust cut in, Mike googled Steel City and Polished Silver to see how it performed in the “real world” and various lighting. We could find plenty of examples of PS but nothing on SC beyond the online chips (which are subjective to monitors and site settings). As I leaned toward SC for the adventure, Mike switched over to PS, because “there’s probably a good reason why so many use it.”

I should be doing a victory dance, because I had initally argued in favor of PS. But instead I’m more torn. The “not just another gray” aspect of SC is wooing me, even though PS is a good--and dare I say it “safe”--color. I don’t want the same color as everyone else, but at the same time, I don’t want to be repainting in a year or two (or next week).

We can always add some vibrancy with the built-in shelf and desk area (which has always been in our plan), and of course, window treatments and wall decor will change the room, too. Honestly, I think we’ll be fine with either color.

And tonight we chose the color and began cutting in. Stay tuned!

Schedule? We don't need no stinkin' schedules! Or half bath misadventures

Half bath remodel … where to begin?

Half bath on closing day.

You think you’ve got the task figured out … and then it laughs at you. Hard. The shrill cackles in this case came from our half bath. It’s been next on our to-do list, but we’d had a tendency to just pick at it. With the Super Wallpaper Bowl, we were lulled into thinking the hard part was over. So it kind of just sat there, with Mike periodically having a go at the adhesive backing. There was no sense of urgency.

Then my mom asked if we’d like to host Easter the following weekend (now this Sunday).

Urgency, you have arrived.

So last weekend we decided to give our semi-nude half bath a makeover. All we needed to do was remove that last bit of glue, scrub down the walls, and slap on some paint. Spray paint the dated brass light and cabinet pulls. Great weekend project with lots of satisfaction but less heartache than the master bath.

Right?

… right? Hey, are you laughing?

Saturday morning dawned, we rolled out of bed, sipped some coffee, and started the fun. This began with a breaker box adventure. Since Mike didn’t feel like electrocuting himself when he removed the light fixture, we had to shut that circuit off. This was our first clue our proposed schedule was going to need adjustment.

Mike headed to the basement while I stood at the top of the stairs, my eyes on the bathroom light. There was a muffled swear and then he appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“The switches aren’t labeled.” I’m sure he wanted to insert another word in there. “I need a pen and paper.”

So, then we turned on all the lights in the house and proceeded through a baffling 20 minutes that consisted of Mike throwing switches and me running around the house to see which lights had gone out. We concluded our house was wired by a mad man, because the oddest things seemed to be on the same circuit. Maybe it would make sense to electricians. Eventually we discovered that our half bath, laundry room, garage, and radon system all run on the same circuit. They are all on that side of the house, so it makes sense by location, but we have no idea if we’ve messed up the radon system or not. I guess you don’t know until it slowly kills you?

With the light removed and the switch fun complete, it was on to scraping off wallpaper glue. Which, we swear, had reproduced, because there was more than we remembered (and it had developed a stubborn streak). I had been assigned to prep and spray paint duty (for fixtures), but I had to wait for the outside temperature to warm up, and it became clear that Mike needed help if we were going to stay relatively on schedule.

While Mike stood on the vanity, scraping away, I got close and personal with Mr. Toilet. Like really close.

Obviously the toilet had yet to be installed when the wallpaper went up (or had been temporarily removed), but we just aren’t at the comfort level yet of removing toilets. It doesn’t leak, things seem to be holding up, minus its tendency to run, so we were just going to have to deal. The trouble with this, however, was that no matter how soaked things got in that tiny, tiny space between the tank and wall, you didn’t have a good angle with the putty knife. The wall behind there started to resemble a fuzzy sweater that had been through the wash too many times.

We’d grabbed some stir sticks at Lowe’s when we were getting paint swatches, so Mike had the idea to use those. This worked much better, though there was a definitive lack of angels singing. But I discovered something a little funny. Once I had most of the glue shreds off, it was just bare wallboard behind it. Everywhere else, once the wallpaper was removed, we had white paint. But not behind the central part of the toilet tank. So, that makes us think the wallpaper isn’t original and the toilet was originally installed before painting began, and it’s perfectly normal to miss spots back there, thank you very much.

A some point in my toilet contortions, I bumped the supply valve and some water dribbled out. I tightened it back up and put a towel under it, just in case, but then we moved on.

Sometime in the afternoon, when we were already weary and somewhat discouraged, it was time to whip out the Kilz Premium and get our prime on. We debated whether or not to paint the trim and eventually decided on it, because while the window and door trim is in great shape, the baseboards were pretty beat up. Mike wants to re-trim the house someday, but that’s in far off future dreamland.

I’m the cutter, Mike’s the roller. On the trim, I decided to try out a foam brush, just to see how it would work. I love my Purdy edger, but the Valspar paint we use on the trim really shows the brush strokes. I’d love to switch to something more friendly, but we have SO MUCH of it left from doing the master, it just seems wasteful. Verdict? Not a big fan of foam brushes, but it’s just primer.

I also tried the foam brush for cutting in on the walls and I started to worry if I’d lost my touch or something. I switched back to the Purdy and sighed with relief. With the angle and stiff control, I can cut me a pretty good line, if I do say so myself.

It took us Ghostbusters II to prime. Then we called it a night.

Sunday

Sunday came. I rolled out of bed (Mike grunted and went back to sleep), padded downstairs, and got the coffee going. While it brewed, I painted each swatch on each wall to see how they looked in different light. Especially in this small space, each color looks different on each wall. Fun.

Then, coffee in hand, I hopped online to revisit the problem we always get stuck with: do you paint the walls or the trim first? In the master, we had painted the walls first, and a few days later put up painters tape to then do the trim. But the fresh wall paint had flaked a little, so we quickly stopped that and risked some freehand (which was fine, because we were freshening paint that was already there, so I could cheat just a bit below the edge, then caulk the gaps).

Should I slap on a second coat of primer and just hope it’s dry enough by the time we choose our color and run to Lowe’s for the bucket to not be a nuisance when I cut in with the paint? Is it easier to paint trims or walls first? I’d looked up this question up, but the answer seemed all fuzzy.

The answer from professionals and DIYers: It depends.

Thanks, guys.

When Mike woke up, I posed the question and walked through the pros and cons. He said to wait on the trim, the wall was the big thing, and if we didn’t have the final coat on by next weekend, it would be okay. Any chips the kiddos might put in the trim could be touched up on the final coat. No Big Deal.

Whew.

On to the next thing: Paint swatches. Originally we’d started with a couple dozen swatches on the wall and whittled it down. We’d chosen what looked like subtle greens on the little chip cards and then one greige with a green undertone. That one, Plantation Moss, got an instant veto because it looked poopy in some lights. The other three, Ante Meridian, Sage Morsel, and Portico, looked much greener on the wall than the swatch. Initially we loved Portico but thought would it be too saturated for the small space.

Ante Meridian, Sage Morsel, Portico, and Plantation Moss

So it came down to Meridian and Sage. Back and forth, back and forth. We wanted some warmth in our color and Meridian might be a little too cool, but Sage would get a weird yellow tone on some walls that didn’t appeal. We worried about a green hay effect once it was all on the walls, so we went with Meridian. Which is funny, because it originally was just a middle runner in our selection.

But before we could paint, Mike had another task: the toilet supply valve. The towel we’d put under it the night before was slightly damp, so it was still dripping. My heart sank. This is what I saw happening to The Plan:

I did not disagree that fixing the valve was important. But was it urgent? Couldn’t we fix it after the Easter bash? Or at least later in the week, after the paint had fully dried? Paaaaint. Paaaaaint!

But sometimes as the wife, you have to recognize that your man is going to Do This Thing and he will not be deterred. And other than The Plan, The Schedule, I really didn’t have a good reason to argue against it.

So I did this to the plan.

Then our half bath makeover took another turn. To make sure we had all the right bits, Mike wanted to remove the valve and take it with us. So we had to turn the water off in the house. After revisiting the London Underground that is our water closet, we turned off the house supply and ran the faucets until the water ceased to come out.

Then Mike put a bucket under the toilet valve and started to loosen it.

Gushing is probably overdramatic, but the bucket was filling fast! We turned on the basement sink faucet again, just to check, and sure enough, some procrastinating water came out. Did it get lost earlier? Take a wrong turn? I don’t know. Once it ran dry again, the toilet supply valve sputtered to a trickle and then finally stopped.

Mike removed the valve, but we would still need to cut the pipe to get to the plate and a nut. Boo. So we schlepped off to Lowe’s with our fingers crossed this would be a simple, cheap fix and not become a disaster. Because we’d like to turn the water back on and shower. And flush toilets.

We grabbed a new supply valve, plate, and pipe cutter. The valve supplies cost around $25, and we hoped this wouldn’t lead to a $300 plumbing bill. We actually had the luck of bumping into a Lowe’s worker who knew what he was talking about and got us all the right bits, including pointing us to a different valve that will make future fixes easier (pops off with a release instead of requiring the chop).

Back home, Mike set to work. The cutter was funny to watch, because it just looked so loose and easy to cut the pipe.

Once the pipe was cut, Mike popped off the nut and grotty plate. He put the new shiny plate and valve on ...

... and then the supply line didn't actually fit with the valve. The sizes matched, yet it didn't work. I suggested he check the ridges in the line's end for gunk. In doing so, he realized there was an extra middle ring in there, and that was what seemed to be making the parts fit together. Hmm. How important was this ring? he wondered. Was it actually an adaption piece and this valve had been replaced before?

Mike took the gamble and removed the parts that just seemed to be in the way. And guess what?

It worked.

Old valve, plate, some random leftover bits, and the handy lil cutter

New valve, bucket ready just in case.

I marched down to the basement to turn the water on and Mike stood at the valve, ready to holler if water started leaking. To ease pressure, we turned on a couple of faucets, so if there was a leak, we wouldn't have all the water come shooting from one point. But lo and behold - NO LEAK!

And there was much rejoicing.

So, what did we learn?
- Label your breaker boxes ASAP.
- Water hides in the pipes, so be ready.
- Changing a toilet valve is pretty easy.
- The schedule is merely a suggestion.

Next up?
Paintin' time!

We three kings

This weekend we discovered that our bedroom is approximately three king beds long. That is a king mattress, the foundation spring, and bed frame lined up like very square wise men.

But let's start from the beginning ... which was weeks ago.

One Sunday morning, when we had grand ambitions for the To Do List, I spotted a Craigslist ad for a four poster king and a tall matching dresser. We had snoozed on our last bed opportunity and regretted it, so we called up the seller immediately. Could we come see it? Sure, if we could be there in 45 minutes, because they had places to be. The sellers were 30 minutes away, and we hadn't even finished our coffee.

So, we raced over. I immediately wanted the bed, but Mike wasn't so sure, because he's one of those who has to think on things, as a matter of principle. I like to think on things, too, but once I have considered the information and options available, I can make a decision and act on it fast. Here I was thinking this is a really cool, solid bed for $175, we would be nuts not to get it! But Mike had to do the "we'll think about it" thing and we left.

This drove me batty as we drove around the countryside (not home!) discussing the bed. Clearly we didn't have our Craigslist routine down. I wanted to buy it right then and there, and Mike needed to sit on it. Finally, we were on the same page, so Mike called them back. I only hear one side of the conversation, but I never hear, "We'll take the bed." Instead, he said, "We are definitely interested."

...

...

That is not a yes. That does not confirm anything. Apparently the conversation got sidetracked in regards to the rest of the bedroom set that the sellers weren't ready to part with but would think about and call us back tonight. Mike was hoping for a DEAL!

So we waited.

And waited.

I texted the seller to clarify that, yes, we wanted the bed.

Darkness fell and there was still no call or text.

Finally, Mike called. 

We got the bed! Sigh. Of. Relief.

Two days later, on a subzero day, we hauled out our handy trailer and went to pick up the bed. We like to think ourselves fairly deft at tying things down after hauling boats, mattresses, random furniture, and junk through two moves. But when it's 15 out and a wind at 30 mph, your gloves are pretty much worthless and wrestling with straps, posts, and blankets is absolutely miserable. We cranked up the heat in the car and would thaw our fingers on the dash vents between tie downs. Awesome.

The bed was wrapped in some cushy-paper stuff, some old curtains, and my car blanket.  Improvisation is key when you are on a Craigslist adventure with us.  Unfortunately, we wound up leaving a trail of wrappings behind as we toodled down the highway. I rode in the back, neck craned to watch for any slippage as Mike tried to not be a traffic disaster while still taking it easy on bridges and turns. We had half country highway and half city traffic to contend with to safely get home. At one point a tie down came loose and we had to stop, but the bed barely slipped, thank goodness. I sat in the back and kept an eye on things and got to see the quizzical looks of passersby. In this land of SUVs and pickup trucks, it baffles people that our little ol' Elantra hauls boats and furniture. It is one of our favorite pastimes to see the triple look as we pass by. They really can't believe that my little Hyundai is pulling something.

We arrived home safe and sound with our new bed, which may have suffered some new scratches on the journey. Our neighbors must have got the memo, because just as Mike is trying to back the trailer up the driveway, everyone seems to be coming home or leaving, so we had an audience. Mike's mortal fear is backing up the trailer in front of people and now we had the whole neighborhood watching us.

Anyway, once we hauled the pieces upstairs, we realized something is missing here. We had a four-piece frame: head and foot boards and two side boards. Our mattress would drop right through. Oops. Our bargain bed frame had just become more expensive. We needed a support frame and potentially a box spring to boot. So for a couple of weeks, our bed rested against the bedroom wall while we both went back and forth on what, exactly, to get for the bed. We finally arrived on this metal, springy frame that was supposed to also work as a box spring and seemed to be getting pretty good reviews. It was cheaper than buying a box spring plus Amazon would deliver it for free, winner winner!

The frame arrived on Friday and Mike put it together in minutes. On Saturday, the real fun began.

The bed was easy to put together, the trick was supporting it to prevent torquing as we moved everything into place and screwed the bolts. Our high-tech system consisted of a ladder for the headboard to rest against, the tool box, and me until Mike had everything loosely secured and could rotate through his final tightening.

Then it was time to go meta and put the frame into the frame. We had considered building the bed around the spring frame, but we were worried that it might not fit and mess with alignment. Midway through the process, we realized we should've videotaped our acrobatics.  So, yes, we dismantled the first bed and built the second without really knowing if it would work. It took some folding and slanting of the spring frame and Mike crawling under the cage to get it all in.

Success! It fit! Then we hauled our mattress onto the frame. And immediately started laughing. We have a bit of an elevation change. Our old Ikea platform bed set the mattress only inches off the floor. Now we had a tall frame, a mattress, plus 3 inches of foam pad, making our mattress about waist height. You just kinda flop onto the bed. It's an adult bed!

We also learned why bed skirts exist. Our bed looks awesome, except for those frame legs sticking out of the bottom. I kinda want to put monster feet on them. OMG, kids, there IS a monster under the bed!! Luckily, you can get skirts for $15-25 on Amazon (which Mike thinks is too high, but they're $40 at BB&B).

Check out some of the details:

The other thing we need to get? End tables. We used some white Ikea sliding shelves behind our headboard on the old bed, but they definitely don't work with this one. It's a long drop from the bed to the floor for books, lamps, water glasses, eyeglasses, etc. Hmm ... Decorating houses definitely creates a snowball effect ... 

We're leaning against buying the nightstands and dressers that are part of this set, because we think it'll look dated rather than elegant. And it would be fun to mix some styles, so I think we're going to look at more contemporary nightstands. Maybe something white, so we don't have to worry about clashing wood?

      

    

The trick will be getting us to agree, especially because Mike is very particular about the legs/feet of furniture. A drawer is a must, I think, because we both had a tendency to clutter behind the headboard on the old bed. It's also insane how expensive these little things can be! We're hoping we'll manage to score a deal like we did with our Menard's living room set ($60 for a solid coffee table and two nightstands!). 

   

Hmm, maybe I can convince him that nightstands don't have to match anymore, and we can both get what we want? They do it on Houzz! What style would YOU choose for our nightstands?