Painting The Downstairs (Some More)

Well, amongst the other craziness of November, here's the biggest reason I haven't been able to blog every day...home improvement! My sister Jocelyn and her family will be visiting our home for Thanksgiving, so Nathan and I decided to get most of the downstairs painted in anticipation of their arrival. Granted, this wasn't the most convenient time to start a painting project, but sometimes Nathan and I need a good kick in the pants to get working.

So we've spent the last three weekends turning the downstairs upside down, moving furniture, cleaning floors, rearranging stuff, and generally leaving the house a huge cluttered mass (which makes me very jittery, as anyone who knows me well will realize).

As you may remember from several days ago, we first painted the wall behind our television, as well as our small "side" walls around the closets & bathrooms:

The next two weekends were a bit more complicated; it involved moving around both our living room bookshelves and our old TV stand. First, we decided to paint the fireplace column, which would be a different color from the rest of the room. At first, we thought to paint it a bold, dark brown color; ultimately we decided to go with a pale, sky-blue type color (to match the blue tiling around the fireplace).

This blue was originally going to be on the surrounding walls, but Nathan's parents convinced us to limit the blue color to the fireplace column. A wise move; it probably would have been too overwhelming otherwise. Instead, we painted the surrounding walls the same brown as the rest of the downstairs:

Nice contrast! Nathan pointed out that the blue in the fireplace column makes the tiles appear almost "transparent"...it's a neat effect!

Here's what it all looks like once we put all our stuff back in place:

It makes the room look cozier and more "professional" (if that word applies here).

We spent most of the next weekend painting the kitchen...the room we dreaded doing more so than any other room downstairs. We hate painting around cabinets!

We chose a gray color, and at first I worried it would clash with the fireplace color. However, it all blends together very nicely!

Climbing all over the cabinets to reach the ceiling (and moving the fridge to paint behind it) was quite annoying. But thankfully, the walls aren't very long, so the job only took one (frustrating) weekend. We even had game nights each weekend we painted, so everyone could see our crazy messy house! We'll have to plan for that better next time.

But at last, we finished the job, packed away our painting supplies, and put the kitchen back together.

Looking good, kitchen!!

Now all that remains in the downstairs are two white walls (the west wall in the front room and the long south wall in the kitchen/dining/living room area). We want to paint those with a matching, yet fairly basic color (white? Off-white? Light gray? We're not sure yet).

Then, at last, I can put up some CURTAINS downstairs! I am pretty sick of our vertical blinds falling onto the ground every time someone sneezes in their general direction. Plus, I would like the kitchen sink window covered, so the neighbors can't watch me cook any more. But all that will come soon...we're hoping to have our downstairs decorating finished by the spring!

So, gentle readers, this is why I haven't been writing much. Granted, we've only been painting on the weekends, but painting on the weekends in addition to all the other usual November craziness has added up to be quite a lot going on. I still have more pictures to share; they're coming soon!