So, which end of the paint color picking spectrum are you closer to? The ‘any ol’ color will do’ or ‘I can’t paint anything until I find just the right shade of perfect’ end? I would have said I was closer to the end where as long as I liked the color I was fine with it … until this house. I’ve never really been stuck with analysis paralysis when it comes to paint, but I have two strategies that have worked basically fool-proof for me over the years.
OK, where did we leave off? Oh right, we have a high board and batten wall!!! Have I mentioned we love it?!? Yes, it is the only finished wall in this place, but we are still in love. To get all of the background on this wall and how we learned that part of it used to be a hallway and how this board and batten (some call it wainscoting) is the perfect solution to cover up all her imperfection go here. This is going to be a full rundown of how you, too, can design and create your own accent wall that can serve the purpose to cover up an unsightly wall.
Oh yeah! We’ve actually “finished” a wall around here. :) And it’s a feature wall with board & batten even. And the feeling is … well, awesome!
Because I begged and pleaded and told them about my secret crush on them, Kilz is my primer sponsor for our Key West conch home remodel. I love them to pieces and am excited to share with you why. I will never write a word about their products I don’t believe 100%. You can find my full disclosure here. Confession time. I’ll go first. We bought our first house in 2001. A cute, cute little brick ranch in Indianapolis, Indiana. That had been owned and lived in for over forty years by the same old couple … who were smokers. The house was literally stained with smoke. There were squares on the wall where pictures had hung and the ceilings were more of an ashy grey than the white they had started out. It sounds so prehistoric now, but we hadn’t jumped on the digital camera bandwagon yet so we don’t have any digital photo evidence and I can’t even find our old photo albums to try to scan some pics for you. (I can’t imagine why.) But here’s the outside, hiding all of that smoke stain and stank inside. Cute, right?!?! Well, what is not cute is my personality after painting the same ceiling 5 times. Yep. It was our first house, and we were young and ambitious and bought a little bit of a fixer upper, in the form of all-smoke-stained-surfaces-needed-help.
Have you ever been known to do something? Something that seemed weird to others? Or may not even really seem like a good idea to some? Something that you yourself even question at times? No, I’m not talking about frequenting strip clubs. Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about spackling over cracked paint. I will admit that this is a technique I’ve used since we bought our first house and has always seemed just a bit … I don’t know … like more of a shortcut than a real solution. Even though it always works. Don’t feel like stripping that cracked paint? Just spackle it. Don’t feel like working out to get rid of that extra inch around the waist line? Just put a sweater on. Those two solutions seem like a similar approach. You know?!?! So when I recently went into our local home improvement store to inquire about the best way to paint over cracked paint (not chipping or peeling) on our newly uncovered Dade County Pine ceilings I was flabbergasted to hear the suggestion. Just spackle the crackle.
We’ve definitely transitioned from a few small pieces of molding on the floor to a full-scale demolition in our lining room (you know that room, the living / dining room combo room). Here’s the full house tour video {before} for a glimpse into where we started. It was so fun to hear from those of you who watched the video … we’re excited to see the transformation, too!! Knock on wood … because there is an abundance of it around here … but we’re pretty happy that we haven’t had to take any walls all the way down to the studs … yet. We’ve uncovered Dade County Pine on every surface (walls and ceilings) so far. Luckily we love the wood slat look. :) Now, we aren’t necessarily the ‘define a plan’ and ‘follow the plan in order’ kind of DIYers. Especially when it comes to these older homes. We’ve learned to never get our heart set on one idea, because you just never know what you’re going to find when you start uncovering the changes the previous owners have made over the years. Hello old front doorway hidden under paneling. So when we first brainstormed ideas for this combo room transition I was in love with the idea of vaulted ceilings. We have high ceilings in most of the house, but this weird shorter ceiling in the very front, where you enter. This front 5 feet of house was the original porch. And we love the added square footage the previous owners created by enclosing that porch and then adding a new porch to the front of that. But we don’t like this weird ceiling line it created. And that it is so short right when you walk in we think it makes the whole room feel smaller, even though the … continue reading
Hey y’all!! Happy Monday to you!! I hope you had a great weekend. We were finally able to dive head first into living room demolition around here, and man did it feel good. Well, not the stepping on staples after taking down the drop ceiling because I was walking around with bare feet, or getting debris in my eyes as I was trying to tear down drywall because I wasn’t wearing safety glasses. Those things really didn’t feel good. And as I was taking a few ‘action shots’ of some of the steps of our demo … a thought occurred to me.
Now, that title doesn’t really leave much to the imagination. I was trying to come up with something fun and came up with squat. :/ Because seriously, when I think of mold it’s hard to be all fun and jokey and hahaha. That stuff sucks! There’s really no two ways about it. But lucky for us (I’m not sure in what world this situation constitutes lucky exactly) we’ve actually had to deal with mold on more than one occasion. So I’m going to give you a little play-by-play of what has worked really well for us in the how to get rid of mold category of DIY. I’ll start by saying that we’ve never had to deal with mold inside. So, in that arena we are lucky. And that means that everything you are about to see is specific to how to get rid of mold on the exterior. A not really interesting point of reference is that I have pretty severe asthma. As in have been hospitalized a few times … once I was in the hospital at the same time as my 96-year-old great-grandmother and my situation was so bad she was the one who had to come visit my room. So I’m pretty sensitive to breathing concerns, and you might know I’m a huge fan of upcycling ideas, so I’m always looking for ways to stay green. With all that said, sometimes you just have to go with what works.
<a href="http://thespacebetweenblog.net" title="the space between"><img src="http://www.thespacebetweenblog.net/wp-content/uploads/12Apr-button-with-white-tree2.jpg" alt="the space between" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
