Can you say Projects?

We are one week shy of being in our new house a month.  We still have unpacked boxes (I know that must come as a shock to some of you) and our formal living room has become a dumping ground for the items we have yet to find a place for. It is a constant reminder how much there is to do.

It is my fault; I have never adapted well to accepting someone elses decor even when it is temporary. The day we moved in, I headed to our local hardware store to purchase primer to paint over the sea foam green in the laundry room, the tan in the kitchen and my personal favorite, the deep mauve in the family room.    

So, for the past month we have been painting....and painting.  We have painted the family room and the kitchen, including the ceilings, baseboards, trim and doors, which proved to be a much larger project than expected.  You can only imagine how many coats of an ultra-bright white paint it takes to cover tan baseboards, trim and doors. Ugh.        

Then in the middle of our marathon painting, I decided we should tackle the breakfast nook as well, after all, it adjoins the family room and the kitchen.  It only made sense to do it also.  Luckily, we had help from my mom and Jerry for this project, as it was the biggest headache to date.  My stubborn self insisted on removing the vintage floral wallpaper, which turned out to be a disaster with the steamer we rented breaking and leaving us to using home remedies.  (Note to Self: Listen to husband next time and paint over the wallpaper.)  

We eventually got the majority of the wallpaper off and painted over the rest with an oil-based primer to be able to move on to the next step; texture the wall.  I don't even want to go into this disaster, but it was resolved with the purchase of a texture sprayer. (Note to self:  Go with gut and never trust your local home improvement clerk when he tells you to purchase texture flakes to add to your paint...I knew it sounded too easy.) 

Next, came the Wayne's coating, which my step-dad gets HUGE kudos for.  He made all the precise cuts to fit perfect around the window moldings and attached everything to the wall, so I could finish off the project.  What I thought could be accomplished in a few days, took me a full week to finish, but it was well worth it.  The Wayne's coating is a HUGE improvement to this room and makes me smile every time I pass by. I even have plans to add more around the kitchen bar...shush don't tell my husband.

Here are a few before and after photos of our progress so far.  We still have a long way to go to complete these three rooms, but I am happy with the progress we have made so far.  I know in the end it will be worth the blood, sweat and tears (as of now there hasn't been any tears, but there have been a few choice words)!

This is the living room before.  (My flash brighten up the baseboards and the mantle, they are really tan to match the fireplace I am guessing?) It was really dark in here.

Here is the Living Room now (still in progress).  This is after two coats of primer.  The color we decided on is called "Drumskin" it is from the Valspar paint collection at Lowes.  It lightened up this room tremendously.  The mantle on the fireplace has been painted the same ultra-bright white as all of the trim and base boards.

We have a list of plans for our family room.  One of them involves the fireplace.  We are bouncing around a few ideas, but haven't decided on anything solid yet. The paint alone was a huge improvement!

Here is the kitchen.  It was recently updated by the previous owner and at this time we are not changing much.  Once again my flash brightened up the photo.  The color in here was a dark tan.  We ended up carrying the same color from the living room to this room. 

Here is the kitchen with the new paint, not a huge change but it is brighter.  Our near future plans are to add a tile back splash and put up Wayne's coating around the base of the bar.  We eventually want to do something with the cabinets (they are really nice, just are not our style).

And here is the before of the breakfast nook (need I say more).

After here it is now (still in progress).

We are still working on this area, we want to hang crown molding, change out the blinds, update the lighting and purchase a round table.  We will eventually replace the door as well, but it works for now.  The color on the walls may change (Danny's doesn't know this yet), but it's a little brighter than I was expecting.  It's called Lake Breeze from Lowe's Valspar paint collection.

Well there you have it, the first round of photos.