Paint It Black

No, I didn’t actually paint my kitchen black, but the Rolling Stones CERTAINLY captured my mood during this past week.  Actually, Paint It Black is one of my favorite songs of all times. Nope, not because I did a presentation report on the Rolling Stones in 8^thgrade [which I did], or because it is one of the records my dad played for me when I was little [which he did], it is actually because it was the first song I ever got a perfect score on Guitar Hero [on the highest level, I might add]. Yep, there’s my hidden talent folks, you can all go home.  It had been 8 years since I had picked up a “guitar” and I still got the high score at Knoxville’s Main Event last fall.  So if you ever are in need of a Guitar Hero ringer, I’m your girl. There is absolutely no discernable reason that I should be any good at this game, as my husband reminds me, but alas, I’ll take any chance to trash talk a random 15-year-old boy at an arcade. 

But seriously, painting has officially been the hardest week of the entire renovation.  I absolutely did NOT expect for it to be so paralyzing. So, to set the scene, we are painting everything on the main floor. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.  The ceilings, walls, trim, windows, doors, vents…etc.  Our painters were the ones recommended by our contractor, and after looking around [and repeatedly hearing they were the best] I didn’t really have a reason not to use them. They started on a Thursday, prepping everything. I was shocked to come home and see my floors completely wrapped.

Ok cool, so painting would be done on Friday, in time for the weekend.  Nope.  Came home on Friday to MORE prep.  It is obvious now why my painting jobs are so terrible, I never took this much time to prep, tape, and fix wall blemishes.  If you had asked me before what quality the walls were in on a scale of 1-10, I would have said probably a solid 6.75.  They didn’t have any major damage, some nail holes here and there, some unevenness too them, what you would expect for a 40+ year old house. Well, apparently I was living in a house that had such horrible walls, it ultimately took FOUR days to prep, fill, and re-sand the walls.  

When I say the wrapped everything, that includes all my cabinets, refrigerator, and any usable surface on my main floor. 

Not only were we going to have to eat out for dinner every night, we were going to have to eat out for breakfast and I have no possible way to pack my children’s lunches.  There is a strong possibility I wouldn’t have turned into a storm cloud if I had prepped my life as much as they had prepped my walls, but I didn’t see this one coming. 

Wednesday of that week was Halloween and my children have a half day of school on Halloween [insert eye roll here]. Halloween just happens to be the day they are ready to prime.  Now again, something I was not aware of, primer fumes are basically chemical warfare. 

My main painter, Edgar [which is an unbelievably fitting name for painting on Halloween, nevermore], did warn me not to come home while they were spraying primer.  So now I have two kids out of school at 11:30am before naptime, and can’t go home until after 5:30pm, fantastic.  Not going to lie, I took the longest route possible between each playground we visited and got some much needed Mexican food.  

Once we finished dinner we ended up going [costume-less] to a friend’s house for a little-person Halloween shindig.  Yep, we all looked as festive as you imagine.  

8:30pm rolls around, time to head home and pass out. 

Holy hell what is that smell.  Edgar warned me of the fumes DURING painting. He did not tell me that 3 hours later I would be subjecting my children to nerve damage. We ended up staying in the house, but stuffed towels around all the doors and did our best to air out the upstairs. I felt horrible that I didn’t know this was going to happen, and was sure Steve was blaming me for putting our family in this unbelievable situation.  Officially the worst night of this renovation.  But we got through it, and my daughter woke up with a new tooth the next morning. Probably mutually exclusive, but we’ll never know.

Fast forward until that Saturday and they are done. We left the house all day and didn’t come back until that evening after they finished up. I can see my floors again and remember how much I love them. 

One problem. The longest wall in our house is the wrong color. Please note that I am the ONLY client they have ever had that gave them a spreadsheet of paint. 
I also taped little paint chips to the wall so they would have a color reference.  I have NO idea how this was over looked.  I put on my renovation smile [which is my head up, eyes closed, big smile, deep breath in, don’t cry] that I’ve had to use multiple times and decided I would worry about it in the morning once the sun came up and I could double check that it wasn’t magically the right color, since of course, all the lights were taken down.  

It was supposed to be a very neutral warm beige that matched our front room, it was painted  white. So now the trim, wall, wainscoting/paneling, and baseboard are all the same color white.  But, as if I had enough checks in the “went horribly wrong” column, the reno-gods gave me a break with this one.  I actually really like it white.  Steve likes it white too.  Plus, with the crown molding now white, it couldn’t be more striking in person. I’m 80% sure I’m going to leave it white and not have Edgar go full Raven on me if I ask him to repaint it.  We are going to finish the texture accent wall and then revisit. 

Hiring a professional painter changed everything. I cannot imaging doing half [even a quarter?] as good of a job if we tried to do this ourselves. I am also 100% happy with the colors we selected.  Granted, there were only 4 [and one was white], but I think it accomplished the look we were going for with the old colonial.  Can’t wait to show everyone the complete finished product!