Almost 4 months later :)

It's been so long since I updated my blog, it's been that hectic here. We have all the remodeling done, all the painting (except trim work in a few rooms but that can wait) we are taking a break for a little while. It's nice to not have someone in our house for once. Our contractor guy was super nice and great but everyday coming home to someone here wasn't relaxing.

So from August to November we

• Painted the upstairs kitchen, eat in area, and living room/stairway

 **finally put a picture in that picture frame yesterday using one from our trip to Area 51 in 2008

I still need curtains!!!!! This picture is too dark but you can see Haystack's glowing eyes :)

• Sun-room and Family room -ceiling and dry wall redone in a lot of spots, the previous owner did not use tape when putting the drywall up or used such a little amount in spots that the drywall eventually started to split and cracks were showing thorough.

•  Downstairs bathroom ceiling redone and new shower put in-then Tom painted it Behr Green Crush Eggshell (I wish I would have used Semi Gloss).

• Deck finished off, the previous owner spent over $10,000 in Trek deck and installed it himself but never finished the bottom part and also when we took the hottub out that was there, the underneath had to be done, so we spent a ton just to get the materials to finish it, it looks a little off right now because new beside the older but the weathering will eventually even it out. (too much snow covering it for pictures right now)

• My bathroom was completely gutted out, I tore off 3 layers of wallpaper and the dry wall was so damaged underneath that it needed to have new drywall, so we redid everything including the floor. I love how it came out. We used Behr Venus Teal -Semi Gloss.

I love how he did the tile work

Finished (picture using Panarama on Iphone)

• Tom did almost all of the painting and I did trim work. We had a nightmare in the Family room, I wanted to do 2 walls in Behr Sunny Summer which a super bright yellow, we bought the primer and tinted it properly but the yellow would not cover the wall, yellow paint is transparent so even with 6 coats of paint and 1 coat of primer, it still would not cover the dry wall patching which was white. For 1 coat it took 4 hours so Tom spent 28 hours that was completly wasted because we had to start over.  So we decided to do the whole room in Antique Tin which took 1 coat of primer over the yellow and 2 coats of the Antique Tin.

Sadie jumped on the window with the paint still being wet

Tom covering the yellow with the gray primer

Family Room Finished

We just finished painting the sun-room a few weeks ago and it took 3 coats of the Behr Ultra paint in Summer Heat, we did one coat of primer and we used white primer instead of tinted. I love the color!

Haystack my sweetiepie

Still Busy with Remodeling

It's been a crazy few weeks with painting and working and trying to get everything done. We finished the downstairs bathroom the other day and now we have the family room and sunroom to paint, then we have to go back and paint all of the trim in all of the rooms. I plan on posting pictures when we are all done, hopefully that will be in the near future.

Until then I need to go vacuum because as you can see below my little Miss Haystack likes to chew apart her box and spit out the remnants all over the place, lol.

Oh and we bought my 16 year old son a car! Very exciting!

I wanted his first car to be a big car, something safe. We found this beautiful 1994 Chrysler LHS in Ohio, an older man that had just passed away this year had treated this car like a baby and it shows. It's in beautiful condition and it was very well taken care of. There are only 71,000 miles on it and the body has NO rust. He is happy with it too. We didn't want to go out buying him an expensive car for his first one. It has so much room and is SO comfortable. I already said we should stop renting cars for our weekend trips and take this one :)

Things are looking better now in the Painting world :)

A week ago today I had discovered that all the hard work I did had to be started over, but this past week we have a lot of progress and things came out very well. Sometimes you just have to bite your tounge and start over and hope for better results. As I get older I am realizing, getting so upset, and stressed out over everything and letting it really ruin my day doesn't do anything but harm, so I just tell myself let's fix this and we did.

We sanded the whole wall down, 1 long wall, Tom and I together for a few hours, sanded and sanded. There was black dust everywhere, we used a pole sander, little rubber hand sander thingy and I found that just holding a piece of sandpaper in my bare hand worked the best for me. I had the paint dust in my eyes, nose, mouth. I was stupid and didn't wear a mask. The next day I still had the dust taste in my mouth, and coming out of my eyes and nose, not good. It took a long time to get everything clean and I am still wiping up the black dust in spots I didn't realize it go to. Thankfully my furniture was already covered from painting.

 Before we started sanding, Tom put the first coat of the medium gray color which is Cobblestone Path by Bejamin Moore on, this went on perfectly with no problems.

See my kitty Coffy on that box, that's one of the boxes my chairs came in and I don't know how I am going to get rid of it, he loves that box.

We went to Home Depot and bought the new paint and primer for the Dark Gray wall. The paint color I picked was Behr's Pencil Point. For the primer we used Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer Sealer that someone from Home Depot recommended. When stirring Tom this glob of stuff, we called Home Depot they said if we want to bring it back, they had no idea what we were talking about. I wish Department Paint stores would put experienced painters in there, there are a few, but all of them should be. Luckily the guy who is doing the work for us here happened to be here and told us it's completely normal and to just take it out.

 This primer goes on very runny compared to the paint. Some spots wouldn't even hold the primer and we started to panic, but then just rolled over it again. We let it dry overnight and it was ready to paint.

Here is a quick picture of the wall with my table and chairs. I LOVE IT! I can't wait to get art on the wall and some decor around it. I ordered 1 more green chair to even them out. I love having so much more room at the table. We finally sold our other table after posting it online a few times.

Behr paint was on sale last week at Home Depot so I picked my colors for the downstairs family room. Behr's Sunny Summer (the brightest yellow I have ever seen) and Behr's Espresso Beans, a very dark brown. I wanted to go with dark gray and yellow so much but even though I do have a gray couch in the sunroom, I have the dark brown couch in the family room, I am regretting this as I type it, I wish I could have just bought the dark gray and moved my couches. In the sunroom I have a burnt orange color that we are going to go with a bright orange and I thought my dark gray couch would look good with that. Dark Gray is my favorite paint color. If I have any yellow left, I will do one yellow wall in my bedroom and the rest dark gray.

My office at work is painted bright yellow, one shade lighter than Sunny Summer which I thought was the brightest yellow ever lol till I picked this one. The one in my office is Behr Bright Star.

Painting Nightmare :(

So we waited for weeks and weeks for the appointment we had made with a professional painter to paint our kitchen, dining area, living room, stairways up stairs and down and then the time came, we were so excited! First he spent a 6 hours on a Saturday doing the ceilings and it looked great, we found a few spots and he went over them, things seemed to be going good. Then the next day he came to start the bright lime green paint in the kitchen. He had said he needed to use a tinted primer to go over the wine color and we would only need 1 coat of the lime green paint. When I saw what he had did when priming that's when I started to worry. He didn't go over all the wine color with the primer as you can see in this picture where my husband is removing the curtain rod, he left it like that and had just lightly went over it missing SO many spots, so then on the next day he gave me the gallon of primer that he had only used a very tiny amount of (not sure why he didn't just buy a quart) we were paying for Benjamin Moore paint so it's not cheap. When he gave it to me saying he was done with the primer, I knew then something isn't right, why would he prime only certain spots and such a light coverage. I let him do his job, the lime green paint, he said he had to use a brush for everything because of the cabinets and stuff, I wondered about the little rollers but didn't say anything. When he was ready to leave after he said he had the first coat on, I told my husband to have him pull out the refrigerator because you could see the wine paint color behind it. Then I started looking where he had not even put primer and missed it with the paint, so many little areas by the cabinets and the side of the cabinet he told my husband he would not be able to get to! I then got so mad after he left and told Tom how can he not get to it, I picked up a small paint brush and showed how easy it would be to paint in that area. I went around taking pictures as you see below of the mistakes and missed areas, I thought about it that night and the next morning and after showing people at work, I decided NO more, he wasn't coming back and I would pay him for the ceiling and paint and we would do the painting ourselves. This guy was very nice, but nice doesn't matter when it comes to doing something right.

See above where there are so many spots of wine color not covered in primer

After he had given me back the primer and said he was done with it, he put on his first coat of green paint and this is what I found :( not good

hard to see but this is the side of the cabinet that he said he couldn't get to so the wine color was visible, all it took was a small brush

this is an example of patch work he did

so many brush strokes, wall looked a mess!

 On Thursday evening I started the primer on the wall that we were making dark gray. The color we picked was Benjamin Moore's Ashland Slate. The painter had already had the tinted primer and paint mixed up for us. I didn't open the paint but when I started the primer I thought this looks darker than the paint swatch so I then opened up the paint and saw it was. I finished the primer since I had it almost done. I thought I did a great job, I was in a great mood goofing off while Tom did the green paint, I kept him entertained by talking and singing and pretending I had my own paint show, it was a great night. It took me 7.5 hours to do one wall in primer! I did the edge work so well with a brush and no tape. I was very proud of myself. I did this between Thursday night and Friday night. I decided to go to the paint store and question the tinted primer before I started the paint. The guy told me that it was a mistake and the primer should not have been that dark. I asked him to please remix a new gallon of Ashland Slate to make sure that the colors weren't mixed, I thought maybe they made the primer the normal paint color and the paint the tinted primer color. He showed me the paint color was correct but offered to darken it more so it went over the primer better. I agreed and the color was great. I went home and started painting. I did all my edge work first and then the rolling, then the nightmares began. I noticed right away the edge work was darker than where I rolled, even going over it again, it was darker. After googling this, I found it's called Hatbanding or Picture Framing. It's where you put a heavy coat on the edge work then the rolled work isn't as heavy. Also I had did about 3 inches of edge work but still took the roller close to it. My husband then started rolling over the still wet paint and caused SO much texture on the wall. We used Wooster rollers and Purdy Brushes. We at first thought it was the roller but then realized when he rolled over the paint that was still not set, he pulled up the first coat causing the texure. The walls are dry wall and supposed to be smooth so this was so upsetting. Not only did we have texture, we had the hatbanding picture framing thing and also streaks all over the wall. Some parts would not even out at all. It looks so bad. After 4 coats of paint the walls are a mess, we have no choice but to sand everything off and start over. I am so upset, SO many hours wasted on 1 wall. Today he is starting the medium gray paint on the other walls. He wanted to put a 5th coat on the wall and I told him NO. Let's wait and go to the paint store and see if they can help us, the streaking makes me think something is wrong with the paint, too much oil or something in it. We have Eggshell finish on all the paints. Tom had ended up putting 2 more coats of the lime green over the 1st coat that the painter had did. The other thing that made me question the painter was he thought he would only need 1 coat of paint on all walls with the tinted primer, I was told at the paint store, 1 coat of primer 2 coats of paint on all colors but sometimes certain colors need more.

This is the wall on Thursday night that I primed

Friday night all the primer was on the wall, very dark chalkboard color which I love

This is the difference, I had painted the paint on the wall on the left side, this is the swatch held up beside it, but you can see the difference in tinted primer vs. paint how dark the primer is.

I thought my 111 Navy Chair looks great against the green and better with the darker wall

this is the texture now that is all over the walls from rolling it when the 1st coat was not set :( We have no choice but to sand it down

Haystack came into the kitchen when Tom was painting and must have rubbed against the wall

such a pretty girl :)

this is the wall last night with the streaking, uneven paint and tons of texture, I am so unhappy about this :(

So I don't know what we are going to do. The guy who fixed all of our dry wall problems is coming tomorrow night to finish the shower install and I am going to have him give us advice. I know we have to sand the wall to get it smooth again and this will take DAYS and DAYS. It's only 1 wall but it's very long. Any advice on painting and painting dark colors would be great. I did my son's room in dark gray, medium gray and light gray and never had a problem. I even went over purple with 1 coat and no primer and it turned out awesome, that's what makes me think it's the paint when it comes to the streaks and uneven coverage.