Painting the Bathroom Cabinets

A few posts ago, I showed pictures of the new Baltic Brown granite bathroom countertops. And in this post, I (think) I mentioned that the cabinets would not remain white for much longer.

Yeah, I know. Why would we change those cute dingy not-so-white cabinets? They have such nice mismatched hardware, too... :-X

So the first step was buying paint. I went to Lowe's (which I never do, this was my first time buying paint from them) and picked out a few colors.

Deep Earth vs. Dark Granite

Mike and I had originally picked "Deep Earth" by Valspar, but when I went to go buy the quart of it, my wallet had a change of heart. So, I tried to find a close match in the Olympic brand, which is 5 dollars cheaper per quart than Valspar. The color I picked was "Dark Granite", which seemed appropriate.

Something amazing happened while I was waiting for my paint to be mixed. The girl at the counter made a huge mistake.

She accidentally mixed a gallon of it. SCORE! Instead of Oops!-ing it out and remixing my quart, she just marked it down to the quart price. So now, I have more than enough for any thing I want to paint Dark Granite in the house.

Since the cabinets we're white, I didn't have to prime them. I did wipe them down and steel wool them were necessary. Then I got to painting. It took almost 3 coats to get them to look the way I wanted. I'm going to say that that was due too the semi-gloss sheen of the paint, and the glossiness of the previous paint.

This would be the end result.

Its kind of crazy how much better it looks. We still have to get new hardware, but this is pretty amazing so far.

Just Me & My Paint Roller

You really don't realize how creepy a place is until your their by yourself.

Today, since Mike had to work, I decided to attempt to get as much done as I could alone. No need to waste a whole day, right?

I painted the kitchen. Well kind of. We bought a quart of paint (for both the kitchen and the bedroom accent wall) thinking that a whole gallon might be wasteful. That ended up being true for the bedroom (as you'll see), but not so much for the kitchen.

A quart is really small. I mean it did one coat. But with this color (Caribe by Behr) two coats are necessary. I did as much as I could, minus the backsplash area (tile will go there), but we will need to go back and get another quart.

Ignore the filthy kitchen

We really are very clean people. I promise.

After I finished that, I moved on to the master bedroom accent wall. I was SO excited to do this. I got really tired of staring at the gross Kilz splattered wall, next to its freshly painted neighbors.

Before, taped off and ready to be accented.

After, which is just as amazing as I hoped it would be.

The color we used is Blue Agave by Behr. This is one coat of the flat Behr Premium paint I wrote about before. Its amazing.

After that, I tackled repainting the trim in all of the rooms. It was all pretty dingy and nasty (from a combination of the dirty previous owners and our not-so-perfect painting skills). I just repainted everything with Kilz, and it made a crazy difference.

The Guest Room

The Office

Side, note. Look how amazing these rooms look!

Seeing this really kind of made it feel like we're doing something. Like I can actually almost visualize this house being done.

All that is left in these rooms is the laminate flooring.

In the middle of my painting, my daddy stopped by and brought me refreshments :-)

He also helped me move the fridge into his proper place.

This actually kind of looks like a real house now.

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.

The DIYers Second Home

People told us this would happen. And we kind of believed them. Kind of.

We figured they were just being dramatic. Home Depot? Everyday? No way.

We lose.

Not only have we been there every day, but I think we kind of like going... I think. What did we get today?

• A new garage door opener, since the current one is deceased. And also allows entry from a very random outside button (see right).
• Rollers, extenders, trim buckets, tape, etc.
• A brushed nickle peephole. The old one is brass, with cracks in the glass.
• A new brushed nickle door knob and deadbolt.
• Eco-friendly light bulbs for the garage.

Once we got back, it was time to prime two more rooms: the guest room and the kitchen. The guest room was previous painted baby blue with a dark blue accent wall. Sounds nice in theory, but not in application. So it had to go. The second room to be primed... the obnoxious red dining/living room.

Don't worry, the floors are leaving too.

 We finished the dining room and called it a day. It was hot and we were hungry. And we felt like we had maxed out on accomplishments for the day.

Scenes from a DIY Rennovation...

We CLOSED!

I was so tempted to start a bonfire with these signs.

Finally, after what seemed like a year (but was actually about 2 months) of back and forth over this house, Mike closed on Friday, the 20th. With NO incidents, which was amazing. Considering that closing had been pushed back twice already. If he hadn't closed, we would have to file a second extension, but thankfully we avoided that.

So, as soon as today came, Mike (who had the day off) got started on the DIY renovations. First step: Paint.

Mikey and his paint sprayer.

 Since we had to prime a LOT of walls with Kilz, Mike bought a paint sprayer (this one by Wagner) and got to work. He started with the strange dark green accent wall in the master bedroom.

Things were going well. Really well. He managed to finish the whole wall and spray the trim before it started making this ridiculous sound. Almost like it was choking to death. It completely died right around here...

The wall that killed the sprayer.

 We decided that since we were new in the neighborhood, it would be easier to make friends with people if we DON'T keep them up all night wrestling with a dying power tool.

So we moved on to another project. Taking down all of the awful wallpaper in the kitchen and half-bath.

How awful you ask?

Green cheetah print has always inspired me to cook.

And images from the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock have always inspired me to... nevermind.

So we started tearing it down. Using a sponge, warm water, a box cutter (my tool of choice) and a putty knife. The kitchen was a piece of cake. It all peeled off with little effort.

Our new trash pile.

Working hard.

 Oh, and by the way... did I mention that the AC unit stopped working as soon as we started work? Yeah, it was blowing ice cold every time we toured the house before closing, but it's almost as if it new that we had closed, and it no longer had to perform. So it was near the temperature of hell in this house the entire time we were there. Which is evident in Mike's shirt. But despite this, we finished!

Goooodbye green cheetah.

After that triumph, I felt pretty ballsy. So I decided to tackle the half-bath's (terrifying) wallpaper. Piece of cake, no? No.

Is that lead?

This wallpaper may or may not have been applied around my date of birth. And under it? 4 more THICK layers of paint, that may or may not predate the birth of my parents. Needless to say, this was not easy. And I gave up. I tried, really hard. Got about 3/4 of the wall... but after peeling away a new color of paint every time I tore the paper... I was over it.

We're both off during the week... so maybe Nicole v. Pilgrims will continue tomorrow.