upstairs hallway: a fresh look

Remember this hotness? Our upstairs hallway and foyer was your standard cream/light beige, which isn't awful, just bland (especially with the lovely beige carpet). Once we had started painting rooms, the scuffed hall walls (say that three times fast!) were really starting to bother us. Plus, the trim was worn and scuffed and warranted a fresh paint job, too. So, while I worked in the guest room, Mike primed the hallway trim.

Guest room + hallway progress + paint thoughts

Ah, the experiments continue. This is hopefully a less meandering rendition of our current thoughts regarding painting the guestroom, hallway, and paint in general. I tried to break it down into little sections. Hopefully it’s more interesting than watching paint dry.

**crickets**

Ahem. First off: The Guestroom

Remember when we were in the throes of agony that our first round choices were a total bust? And then we did another round of swatches and were stuck between Polished Silver and -------? Well, we went with Polished Silver and love it!

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!

Safety first ... or not

Yep, that's a knife under a cracked mirror.

Last Sunday Mike took a very personal dislike to the bedroom door. It just could not stand, man! So, while I started to work on the trim in the bathroom, Mike took the door off its hinges and basically took a knife to the problem. Better than an ax, I guess?

The mirror was not made of tempered glass. At one point, Mr. Safety realized that flying shards of glass could be bad for the eyeballs, so he went off to find some safety goggles. When he didn't find them, he re-commenced with the cutting (and some swearing). I offered to run to Lowe's down the street and buy some ... but that's a silly wifey thing to do.

As you can see, one set of P.O.s used a lot of super sticky mounting squares to put these 6 mirror squares on the door. Why they couldn't just get a regular mirror, throw nail in, and hang it all normal-like is beyond us. At 6 square mirrors, you're not really saving any money. Just what is the story behind this?

Eventually, Mike got every square off. Then it was time for the Goo Gone scrubfest. I had been painting and pretending my husband wouldn't need 911 at any moment. He survived. I survived. Now the back of our bedroom door has a big brown rectangle in the center. We'll prime and paint at some point. 

In other news, here are some paint sculptures!

The coolest part about latex paint is the fun of peeling it off buckets and trays after it dries. We get a ridiculous amount of satisfaction out of this. Once we figured this out, we stopped washing out trays and buckets during clean up. Then the next day, we just peel the paint off and toss it. Or ball it up and marvel.

Olympic vs. Valspar

Enough painting has been done, that we can now call ourselves experts (har har). At the very least, we can now with confidence share our preferred paint. So here's a breakdown of Olympic Icon vs. Valspar Ultra.

Olympic Icon
Zero VOC, Low Odor
Used in laundry room (Harbor Light, satin) and bedroom (Cozy Corner, eggshell)

Coverage: Each room required two coats of paint. The laundry room was primed, because the original yellow was very powerful, and we were doing a very light blue gray over it.

Texture: The paint seemed easy to work with. Liquid in the bucket and tray, but as long as we didn't overload the brush, it seemed to go on smooth (not drippy) on the walls. It also seemed forgiving when it came to brush strokes, such as getting into those tight nooks and crannies or touching up spots.

Odor: Mild. I never felt "fumey."

Valspar Ultra
Zero VOC, Low Odor
Used on trim (Ultra White, semi-gloss) and master bathroom (Gravity, soft gloss, Kitchen & Bath line of Ultra)

Coverage: Trim in the laundry and master both required two coats for good coverage. On the walls, it seemed to be uneven: some spots had excellent coverage, others barely any, even though it looked even while wet. Two coats for even coverage.

Texture: Thick! And dries very quickly, almost two quickly. We experienced this both with the trim and KB paint, so we don't think it was a fluke. Brush strokes in cutting in areas definitely show up, and even though the paint is thick, we still needed to do 2 coats, some areas three. Even though the Lowe's guy said Valspar is superior, we're not convinced. It's just too temperamental for us and amplifies any mistakes made. Part of this could also be due to the glossy finishes.

Odor: Valspar's definition of low is different than Olympic's. We had to take some breaks outside of the master to get some fresh air. It has a sharp odor, or at least the KB paint does. Then I remembered that one reason Young House Love prefers Olympic is that the colorants used are also low-to-zero VOCs, and so perhaps Valspar used the old cancer dyes and we were huffing carcinogens. So, I'd advise you where the proper mask if using Valspar K&B. The trim (Ultra in Ulta White base) seemed to be less pungent.

Verdict
Definitely Olympic Icon. Nicer on the nose and feels easier to work with. Plus it's $5-7 cheaper than Valspar. I'm sure there are DIYers out there who prefer Valspar, and that's okay. It's just not for us.

Accent troubles and lessons learned

The master bedroom is not yet complete. The original plan was to paint 3 walls in Olympics Cozy Corner, which Mike is rolling in the above photo, and then paint the fourth wall, the bed wall, in Admiralty (the dark swatches). The colors do look fantastic together, and we felt the oversized master was a great place to go bold. But as we threw on a bigger swatch to see how we still felt, and feeling the walls coming in with the new paint, we had reservations.

1. The room is already darkening, in a good way, so would this uber dark wall have an adverse effect?
2. Cutting clean corner lines is difficult. Any mistake is going to be shouted out to us. Every. Single. Day.
3. Coordinating furniture would become more complicated.

It was the latter two issues that gave us the most pause. If we didn't like the accent wall, we could always prime over and paint. Yes, it's time and money, but we were willing to try it out. But the more we inspected the corners and thought about how we'd have to decorate, we felt less and less excited about Admiralty. We may still incorporate that color somewhere, even in this room, but we didn't want all of our decorating and furniture decisions to be dominated by that wall.

So, all corners and walls will be "Cozy."

But in this process, we realized we are doing things reverse order. What we should have done was paint the trim first. Why? We could tape a little above the trim, caulk in the gaps, take up the tape, and then not really fuss over clean lines, because we'll just paint over mistakes with the wall paint. By doing the walls first, we have to basically prep twice. And progress has slowed. Now we have to allow the walls to cure enough that we can tape over it in order to caulk and paint the trim. 

Lesson learned? Paint your trim before your walls. Grumble.

De-radiating your laundry room

Yellow is often associated with cheery moods, sunshine, daisies, butter, omelettes … you know, good things. There are good yellows and bad yellows. The yellow in our laundry room was a sickly yellow that radiated. It bounced off the beige floor and made that glow, too. And not in a happy way. So, naturally, this became #1 on our project list.

They call him Mellow Yellow (that's right) ...

But to be fair, the laundry room was also our first project because our new washer & dryer were set to be delivered on Dec. 30. Painting a box is a lot easier when you don’t have to paint around other boxes.

The laundry room is also our designated lab rat. It has cabinets and trim, and since we are considering painting the kitchen cabinets and trim elsewhere in the house, the laundry room seems like a logical place to try things out. If we mess up, it’s no big deal. It’s the laundry room. A nice one, sure, but we don’t plan to parade people through it or enter it into competitions.

So, we had to choose a wall color that neutralized the yellowness of the floor, brightened the room in a healthy way, and didn’t clash with the gray W&D moving in. Originally, I was going to choose whatever color we were going to use in the master bath, just to bring some cohesion to our wall colors and not have 20 different paint buckets sitting around. The swatch in Olympic’s Harbor Light seemed the best contender, and while I selected it for the laundry room, it did not win in the master. That one is still to be determined.

Habor Light in the center

Young House Love primarily uses Olympic Premium in their homes, because its zero-VOC and low odor and, even better, their colorants are now also very low VOC. You can buy zero-VOC paint and then cancel out the benefits when high VOC colorants are added. We would up with Olympic Icon, which is also low odor and zero VOC, because according to the Lowe’s rep, they are phasing out the Premium line (supposedly they are the same thing). We went satin for the finish for some wipe-ability but not super gloss.

While throwing up swatches, we realized just how powerful the not-so-mellow yellow could be, so we bit the bullet and primed with Kilz Premium, which is a low odor and low-VOC primer that also contains stainblocking properties. I’ve read several DIY blogs that have used it for priming their trim and cabinets, so we figured one to prime them all was the way to go.

First order of business was to cut in with the primer. Initially, I used a 2-inch, angled stiff brush as per all the other DIYers out there but have since bought a 1.5 inch angled brush that I feel works much better. The 2-incher (both Purdy) was just too thick, IMHO, and I made more mistakes with it.

Btw, cutting in gets tedious. It is the longest part of project. Rolling is a beautiful breeze. You see me rollin’? I be smilin’. (Yes, I know that doesn’t fit the song. Pssh.)

In cutting in, we experimented with taping versus being very, very careful. Taping means you can go faster and not freak out, but if you have bleeds, you’re kind of SOL. Also, while priming the walls, we didn’t think MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST PRIME THE TRIM TOO BECAUSE THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE. No. We taped/cut in all around that trim, primed the walls, painted them, and then primed and painted the trim. Side note: Mike is claiming he told me to prime both together. I have no memory of this. But apparently I was "in a mood" so he "let it be."

Live and learn, folks. If you’re priming the walls in a room you’re going to prime the trim - GO NUTS! Get sloppy with that brush (just not on the floors, plzthx). Oh, you got some on the trim? Give it some more! You know it wants it.

Anyway.

Primed and ready

When the first coat of Olympic went on, I liked it. But a few hours later, I was getting a bit frustrated, because some yellow was poking through in a way that looked like it was repelling the paint. As in Harbor Light just couldn’t handle the cosmic rays. There’s no such thing as a one-coat paint, I told myself.

And it’s true. The second coat went much better and proved to be all we needed. I love the color, especially how it neutralizes the vinyl floor, so now I don’t even want to replace it. I’ll just throw a cute rug down and call it good.

So, then it was onto the trim. We primed with one coat, and then painted two coats of Valspar Ultra in Ultra-White Semi-Gloss. It’s also a low-odor, zero-VOC paint but supposedly higher quality. We wanted to experiment between the two different brands from Lowe’s and see which we preferred. Olympic Icon is around $5 cheaper per gallon than Valspar Ultra.

I found Valspar a little more difficult to work with. It was thicker (more solids for better coverage), but it seemed to dry too fast. I’d reload my brush and try to continue and then the recently applied paint felt gummy while trying to blend it with the fresh strokes. The first coat looked like enough in some spots and not-so-much in others, probably wherever the primer was thicker. The second round was more consistent (just like the walls with Olympic), though I still had the problem of the paint acting up between brush loads. Mike pointed out our opinion might change as we get our technique down.

I do love painted trim in this room, but the experience does give me pause before other main level rooms, such as the kitchen, halls, or dining rooms. It’s a tedious and sometimes curse-inducing process. We’ll finish painting the trim in the master (looks like the P.O.s only did one coat), and probably do the trim in the other bathrooms, but that should keep us busy for awhile. We also need to figure out good stop points before starting something in rooms that connect.

Please don't mind the camera phone shot for the after. I left the camera at the house and we haven't been back since ... eek, last year! Back to continue painting the master bright and early tomorrow!

For now, I actually don’t mind having the cabinets as dark stain. I think it gives the room more interest. But we will likely still experiment on them before painting in the kitchen, because those cabinets are too nice to ruin on a learning curve. So, someday there will be more updates in this room, but for now I’m satisfied to let it be.

Now the before and after, for full effect:

Btw, the tale of finding a washer and dryer is something for another day.