Painting woes, part II and house update

First, responses to your comments:

Yes, we completely agree that the arching wooden trim has to go- we’ve already removed that.

I am definitely not completely sold on the idea of not painting our wooden trim- but those of you who are aghast at the idea will be relieved to know that we probably won’t have time to paint it for awhile. They are generally in good condition, but wood trim just isn’t my favorite. Also, it bugs me that the previous owners did not use tape when they last painted- so there are paint marks along the window frames and trim that I couldn’t remove without damaging the finish. And I’m a perfectionist :).

We have already been working with the decorator type person at our local paint store- and she’s doing our best to help us without actually seeing the room. I brought her the same photos I posted here. And Spools, we’re using Sevens on 29^th and we LOVE them! They also offer a six month discount to new home owners :).

We've gone through a few color samples for an accent wall and have found two favorites: a deep slate blue and a deep red. Although Bryan and I both love the idea of having red in our kitchen we have decided to opt for the blue for two reasons. The first is that we think the blue will match nicely with the gray carpet and will do a lot to tie the room together. The second is just a time constraint- red paint is notoriously difficult and generally requires extra coats. We just don't have the time for that right now, so we're going to use the red in our dining room instead- beneath the chair rail. The other three walls in the kitchen are probably going to just be a boring white as I've not had any luck finding anything else that works in the room and I'm not willing to spend any more on those cute little paint jars.



In the meantime we have pulled up the carpet in two bedrooms and a hallway on the main floor and have gotten to work refinishing the hardwood underneath. This has turned out to be a huge undertaking but I think we'll really love the final results. Good news- our bedroom is no longer neon blue! Once we removed the deep blue carpeting our walls settled down and are now a nice soft blue :). We've also spent a considerable amount of time on wall repair in the dining room and kitchen area. (Thank you, Bryan! You're my wall scraping hero!) The dining room is now all patched, primed and ready for paint. The kitchen area is getting there. Our biggest struggle in there is figuring out how to get off the old wallpaper glue without completely destroying the walls. We've tried a friend's wallwik product, fabric softener and TSP. Trying to sand off the glue only gums up our sandpaper. Today I'll be trying warm water and vinegar and I'm really crossing my fingers it will work!

(p.s. sorry about the font issues in this post, I will try to come back and fix it later!)