I Got the (Baby) Blues...

Let me start by saying that baby blue is not the worst color in the world.

There are many much more horrible colors. Burnt orange... 70's Appliance Olive Green... the dirty Beige of too many renters gone by... even black glitter glaze.

But baby blue? In most applications, not offensive.

Except in an entire living room... next to a turquoise kitchen and a blood red dining/living room.

This is another day I have been anticipating. Being that this is the first room we have to see when we enter the house. Walking in here for the past 3 weeks and still seeing this awkwardly painted room has made me felt like we haven't done anything. That feeling of course is nullified when I take two steps upstairs or forward, but still.

So yeah, this was an exciting day. And here is the before and after. We used the same color as all of the bedrooms upstairs, Roman Plaster by BEHR. Once again, amazing coverage. Minimal touch-ups needed.

Mike did a great job organizing the laminate boxes.

View of kitchen.

View of front door from the living room.

Looks amazing, no? Now, we just have to get those floors out of there.

The Big Red Elephant

Ok, not an elephant. Just a big red wall.

Well, more accurately, 8 red walls.

I remember hearing somewhere a long time ago, that if you paint all of the walls in a room red, it will make you crazy. I don't know if I can attest to the validity of this claim, but all of those red walls definitely made me feel a certain way. Cramped... angry... full of rage... but, crazy? That's a little strong.

As I mentioned before, I was so excited to cover these walls with Kilz. But I probably wouldn't have been so excited had I know the length of time I would have to stare at the blood-red-Kilz-covered walls.

At first, it was nice. Even with the Kilz it was so much brighter in the room. What I failed to realize was that in order to get to point where a move in is possible, the upstairs rooms needed to be worked on first.

So for days and days, I would have to see these walls. Yes, progress was being made upstairs, but I still had to see this on the way up the stairs... and thru the kitchen... and out to the patio.

Until today.

I, alone, and with lots of determination and one severely abused paint roller, finished this room.

Below is a before and after. From the original, pre-closing red, to our color choice of Castle Path by BEHR.

I went back in an painted the edges and what not, but naturally forgot to take a picture. It's epic though, trust me.

Review: Behr Paint & Primer In One

Product: Behr Premium Ultra Paint & Primer In One
Price: $30.98 - $33.98 (1 Gallon, Home Depot)
Rating: 5/5

I mentioned in a post before that we decided to use Behr's NEW Premium Plus Ultra, since it has the Paint & Primer feature. We have a lot of dark colors in our house that need to be covered in the worst way. And since I abhor priming and any use of Kilz (read: lazy), I thought this sounded awesome.

This picture is epic, isn't it? I wish I took it.

I had wanted to try Velspar's "cover the zebra stripes" paint... I watch a lot of HGTV, and Lowe's pushes it almost every commercial break... but the reviews were HORRIBLE. So, I dodged that bullet, and instead stood in front of the fast approching Behr Bandwagon...

And you know what?

I'm SO happy I did.

This paint is GREAT. We truly only need one coat in most cases. I will be honest and say there are a few spots that I need to roll over again, but that's only because I'm crazy... most people probably wouldn't even be able to see the spots I see.

I took some pictures! Below, is a swatch of the color "Roman Plaster" (this is one of their new colors, introduced with this new line of paint), over a swatch of "Caribe" (again, from the new line). These colors have no place together in our home, but I figured using such a light color to cover a dark color would show you how amazing this paint is.

Left: One Coat. Right: Two Coats

Do you see that? The second coat was barely needed.

I almost must say we used this paint in the flat finish, which I think goes on very opaque as a standard... but I'm still very impressed.

Here are a few more swatches, with captions explaining.

Dark Olive. Left: One Coat, Right: Two Coats.

Baby Blue Paint with Black Glitter glaze, covered with Kilz. One Coat, then Two.

The same Olive wall, covered with Kilz, One, then two.

Verdict: If you're on the fence, go for it. It's been worth every penny so far.

Now we're making progress...

During the past two days of renovation, Mike and I have both felt this overwhelming sense that... well, nothing was happening.

We were priming, tearing down wallpaper, cleaning up... but the house wasn't really changing. It was getting hard to visualize this project ending...

Until today.

Yes! Now it feels like we're making progress.

We chose the Behr Premium Paint + Primer. We figured it was the best choice to combat all of the awkward color combinations in the house already. This, plus Kilz, should be a winning combo. Below are the colors we picked (the swatches are from Google Images and may be a little inaccurate).

FYI, Roman Plaster is a LOT lighter in real life.

So ...we started by trying to pick the color for the accent wall in the master bedroom.

Since we decided that the color of this accent wall would also be the color of the kitchen, this choice was a hard one. We decided that the left color (Behr Blue Agave) would be great for the bedroom, and the right color (Behr Caribe) would be better in the kitchen.

 Before we got started painting, we handled the gross task of changing the air filter. It seems that this one hadn't been changed in at least 2 years. We have probably been inhaling plenty of gross, and semi-harmful germs a dust particles... but that's OK.

That's pretty gnarly, huh?

We started in the rooms that don't have lights installed yet, so that we could take advantage of the natural light while we had it.

The first coat of Roman Plaster in the guestroom.

That meant testing just how well the Behr paint covered up the baby blue and navy guest room walls... and I have to say, we probably will be able to get away with one coat in most places. I'll try to get a better picture of this when we paint one of the darker rooms.

Next up was priming the horrible Gothic-style bathroom. We were both really excited to NEVER see this strange wall treatment ever again. But with as many weird patch jobs as there are in this house, we should have known it wasn't going to be as simple as slapping some Kilz up on the walls. This is what was behind the mirror...

I don't even understand why...

We find ourselves asking the question "Why did they DO this?" over and over, every day. There are so many strange things in this house. This is no exception. But even though we now have to patch that up with a piece of drywall, we were so happy to get rid of that paint.

Even if we left it like this, it would be better than it was.

After that was done, we decided to call it a night. We ended up finishing all of our priming and 2/3 bedrooms upstairs. Pretty good even though we got kind of a late start.