I See Your True Colors

After living in our house for four years now, Aimee and I decided it was finally time to paint our walls with something better than the flaky-thin white "toothepaste" the builders had used to cover them. They are now covered with a much more durable semi-gloss. I must say that I enjoy painting quite a bit and would have enjoyed it even more if I didn't get interrupted every day by such a small thing as my job! I started painting the bathroom in late May and just finished our bedroom on July 3.



When I finished painting the living room, we realized we needed to purchase another lamp as the colors had darkened up the room quite a bit. The dark red wall color is deep garnet, and the light brown wall color is brown teepee.

The stairwell was the trickiest part to paint. Since I am not fond of heights (especially when ladders are involved), I graciously agreed to hold the ladder for Aimee so that she could paint the areas in the stairwell that I could not reach on the ground or on a chair. She did a great job and was very patient with my perfectionistic suggestions. The color of the wall that sticks out under the plant shelf is called belgian sweet.

Cassie Khotmanivong gave us the suggestion of having the deep garnet on the wall in the living room play off of the rapture (the brighter red) on the wall in the dining room and kitchen. Aimee and I both really like how it turned out.

By the time I got to painting the bedroom, I was pretty much a pro painter! Having Wimbledon (the actual tennis championships and not the movie with Kirsten Dunst) on while painting the bedroom made the time spent painting even more enjoyable.

Aimee and I found the bedding at a swapper's meet up in Annandale, Minnesota, while visiting our friends Steve and Mandy Rowland. I am proud to say we got the entire king-size bedding set for $35.00 (thanks to Steve's bargaining ability). We got the curtains at Linens-n-Things during their going-out-of-business sale.

The color of the two green walls is mount olive, and the color of the two brown walls is belgian sweet. After painting the first coat of the mount olive, I was not sure I was going to like it. However, similar to our reaction to the living room, we were both pleased with how well everything coordinates in the bedroom.

Thomas and Cassie Khotmanivong joined us at Bed, Bath, & Beyond and helped pick out the piece of artwork in the bathroom along with our new shower curtain, towels, and rugs. I also got rid of the towel rack that sat on the floor and installed five hooks for the towels. The color in the bathroom is slightly lighter than the brown teepee in the living room and is called pecan sandie.

Even though the bathroom was the smallest, it seemed to take the longest amount of time. This was probably due to the fact that I tried caulking for the first time in my life...and NEVER again! What a disaster that was! After trying to cover up my sloppy caulking job with self-adhesive caulk stripping, I decided that the caulk stripping looked terrible as well and ripped that off after a couple of weeks. I then bought caulk remover and removed all of the caulk. This left the areas of the walls where I had removed the caulk and caulk stripping in pretty sad shape. Thus, those areas had to be filled with spackling paste, sanded, and repainted. After that, I was happy with how the bathroom turned out!