The living room and dining room have the finish coat painted completely twice - second time by the excitable dance paint and joke team of Sara and Jay - there are small corrections on the trim here and there. The laundry room needs the eggshell white trim to be done, but the walls are done (I took the racks down over the washer and dryer and spackled prodigiously). Plain looks good - wouldnt it be wonderful if we could live like this in a plain uncluttered manner?
Eggshell trim and flat wallpaint are the perfect combination for an older house that has had a lot of use. Then there is also the perfect $10 armchair I purchased on a whim at the secondhand donation place for temporary seating at the house because all the furniture was removed; it is so popular someone is always in it, including the fat gray cat, Nermal. We plan to recover it for "Day of Show".
On the bathroom I started yesterday by mixing up a grey slightly purplish trim paint and light brown wall paint to match the putty - gray colored tiles - covering more of that pasty orange tooth-fairy colored paint. I removed the small mirrored medicine cabinet from above the sink and placed it over the toilet, replacing it with a 1930's style lightly engraved mirror instead. The rings for the shower curtains are matching mirror pieces in the same engraved style - time to find a shower pole thingie of the correct width and length.
Then someone (perhaps moi?) will sand the bathroom door frame, fill it and paint it the gray color which matches the bathtub grout - both sides of the door will be white semi-gloss. I am using matchstick blinds for the window next to the sink but am not sold on them - the shower curtain warms up and livens up the bathroom with a relaxed Italian ornamental look with tone on tone grays and browns, and a little simplicity of the Japanese hot tub feel. Sort of unusual for a small bathroom but the huge Jacuzzi tub and large gray tiles dominates the room so it works best to emphasize it.
Next up is to complete the south bedroom painting with the wonderful golden yellow color and white trim - the new lighting fixures couldn't be better. Then the closets at the top of the hallway are to be painted pure white semi-gloss. The walls in the hallway that our architect friend David spackled extensively will be painted with wallpaper prepping paint and size, and I hope this week to have the wallpaper installed by Liz our professional - we'd all feel better about getting one story of the house completely finished. After the trim in the bedroom and the stairwell are painted white then the rugged off-white carpet can be laid.
The other team is moving towards getting the reading room complete which means hanging the new door - I'll stain that to match the upstairs doors. They will paint the reading room the same as the living dining laundry with the Home Depot Behr yellow (not much of it left now). I love their fine paint - it goes on like butter on hot bread.
The old dryed up paint drops are being removed with GoofOff where ever there is wood floor. Then wood putty will go on the holes and a bit of stain applied. Goof Off strips the varnish too - so I will oil it when complete and then gently talk the main team into letting me varnish lightly with something to restore the wood's glow.
I am glad I stuck to my gut feelings on the choices I made - remain with the 1930's feel when the house was built - keeping everything in proportion, somewhat small but bright, with fine details like the mirrors, and toile curtains makes it all look very put together. The light golden yellow in the kitchen is going to calm that room down quite a bit. I am still amazed by what even a little old fashioned style chandelier can do for an old house to give it personality and gentle sparkle.
I have my seamstress making curtains for upstairs bedrooms and they are about 1/2 done. I replaced that square mirror tile in the small upstairs toilet with a finished round white mirror, and combined with the round white light fixture Jerry installed, it is looking much more normal, and discrete.
I was looking at this month's copy of House Beautiful magazine and was not too surprised to see that my golden tone on tone color choices, shapes and styles, such as hanging curtains up against the low ceilings to generate a feeling of height, well placed mirrors, right down to Jeanette's grandmother's old French tapestry were in an article about how to transform small rooms into larger looking ones. I guess I have learned the designer's tricks well.
That place is beginning to glow and when we are finished someone will have a bright, artful, fun, easy to live in place with a fishpond in front and an enclosed hot tub off the back deck. I always feel better when I end the day with a good soak with some of Jeanette's custom made bath salts, like "Jazz", and when I am done I can go inside and watch the paint dry.
Renovation
Seattle
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