Living/dining roomlopnik completed, or, I can now go back to doing normal things with my free time.

"ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com" (ita97) 04/29/2019 at 13:28 • Filed to: Houselopnik

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Baby gate to keep the Head of Household security from shopping when we’re not home. She likes to pull books and DVD’s off of shelves and nibble on the corners when we’re not there. Baby gates are her kryptonite, she won’t go near them.

This past weekend I wrapped up updating the 1990 out of my living room/dining room area. White walls, pink accents, frilly details, bad carpet, shiny brass hardware, mismatched outlet and switch covers, it was all there for the fixing. For those that have been following my house lopnik posts, since we bought this house a year ago I’ve been updating the 1990 out of it room by room. At this point, only the master bathroom, kitchen and laundry room remain. The kitchen will likely wait until next year, and the master bathroom (paint, nice vanity top, light fixtures and hardware) will probably happen in a couple of months, which means I can finally go back to doing normal things in my free time, like keeping the cars in a much more Svended state than they have been for the last year.

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Like the rest of the house when we bought it, the living room had a stepping back into 1990 feel to it, and the frilly headers on the otherwise period and correct for the architectural style vertical blinds were terrible. Also like the rest of the house, it was due for fresh paint regardless of everything else. The cheap, worn carpet was also no bueno. I actually didn’t mind the parquet in the dining room, but it was probably closer to being ready for a refinish and I wasn’t going have two different wood floors in the same room on the finished project. Mostly emptying out the living room of furniture meant there was stuff stashed everywhere else in the house, which made this room a bit less fun than some of the others.

Tearing out old, worn carpet is always cathartic.

And I was always closely supervised by the Head of Household Security.

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The painting started off with a coat of bonding primer on everything, because there was a fair amount of uncertainty as to what all of the existing paint was, and there were a lot of old cans of oil-based interior paint in the garage left by the two previous owners. The ceiling was painted in floral white to match the rest of the trim and ceilings. It was no fun. It was tall, and big, and it seemed to never end. The ceiling showed no signs of having been painted since the original quickly job by the builders with sprayer, and I now understood why no one had since felt a strong enough urge to paint it. Trim and then walls were painted to follow. Wall color is a greenish/bluish/grayish color called beach glass, also used on entryway, hallway and bathroomlopnik. We really like the color, as it is a more interesting variation than the light gray on white that seems to have become the new beige, and it is warm enough to work with the pink marble around the fireplace and pink tile at the entry ways that is staying. Many gallons of paint were used.

Cutting in around the edges by hand gives a deeply satisfying result that tape can never match, but there were a lot of edges on this project. I used up all my zen that day.

I ended up painting the lower part of the dining room the off-white ceiling and trim color below the chair rail. It wasn’t originally planned, but it felt like the thing to do. I ended up liking how it broke up the the wall color and made the dining area feel a bit more formal. The chair rail and differing texture were original to the house, and I think the idea was to be some kind of accent wall type thing. This felt like the completing the measure.

Laying out the laminate flooring was up next, followed by baseboards. Fortunately, this area is basically a large rectangle, so the floor laid out remarkably quickly for the large area. It also marks the fact there is no longer any carpet in the house, which makes us very happy. Baseboards sucked, but they always do. It is amazing how something so small take s so much time, and in some kind of fluke of physics, baseboards never fit back together exactly the same way.

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There’s still a few things I’ll do at some point, like replacing the light fixture and ceiling fan with new ones with a satin nickle finish to match all the other hardware and light fixtures I’ve converted to in the rest of the house.

To quote a friend of mine who has probably summed up the transformation of the house best, “your house no longer feels like it’s about to have a baby.”

Svend > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 04/29/2019 at 13:47

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Looks fantastic.

I keep thinking ours needs doing and it’ll look good, but It’s the doing it and all the prep before hand, we’ve junk absolutely everywhere.

Well done for s taying committed and seeing it through.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 04/29/2019 at 13:47

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Looks good!

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 04/29/2019 at 13:55

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Two-tone worked out nice!

I did a two-tone for my daughter’s nursery before she was born but my wife didn’t want a chair rail. Man that was a pain in the ass to get the line right!

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Svend 04/29/2019 at 14:02

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Thanks. I didn’t highlight as much in the post as others about houselopnik, but the prep work is the killer part . Rolling the paint on the walls is only like the last 10% of the job.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner 04/29/2019 at 14:02

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Oh man, I can’t imagine trying to get that line right without a chair rail.

Svend > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 04/29/2019 at 14:46

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Ye’, I hate the prep. Finding places to put things, masking off areas, sugar soaping the walls to clean them so the paint will adhere, then the cutting in, living in a work zone until it’s finished, etc, etc... 

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 04/29/2019 at 15:06

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Oh it was brutal. Especially because the house is around 45 years old now and all the walls are warped/crooked. I was like I’ll just grab this stick to the wall laser pointer and i’ll be set...shit it only goes about 2 feet on the wall before the wall changes shape. I rigged up a home made level that kept it an exact distance from the floor for consistency. Lots of time went into the tape for that line. Then I pulled the tape and did a little touch up.

Oh and the room was a ridiculous set of colors when we bought the house. Being in Metro Detroit the kid was a big Tigers fan and did alternating walls of bright orange and dark navy blue. Let me paint you a picture of the process (yeah I said it) :

Went with this color scheme because we didn’t know if we were having a boy or a girl, it now features some nice purple curtains and some “girlier” artwork.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner 04/29/2019 at 15:33

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That came out nice. I can relate to the process. The first bedroom I did in this house was baby blue walls and hot pink trim. It seems that room had always been kid’ s room, because removing trim plates revealed that room had been, since 1990, white, mustard yellow, bright purple, hot pink, pink and baby blue with pink trim . Even worse was the various colors of paint that had run over onto various parts of the anodized window frame (and window itself) and wood doors, and all the outlets and switches . Between the bad painting, and the colors, it seemed like someone had turned a 12 year old girl loose with a paint roller and no supervision in that room , repeatedly .

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 04/29/2019 at 15:45

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Thanks man! And I feel you on that one. This house had all kinds of crazy colors buried under boring neutrals to be able to sell it (including the above tigers room, a neon green and white room, and bright red living room). They only covered the living room.