Tag: painting

The Smokey House Rehab (Part 4)

We’ve made some good progress on the Smokey House rehab.  For the past few days we’ve been concentrating on painting the ceilings and some of the trim.  Boy has that been a painful task!  Painting ceilings is super hard on the neck, shoulders, and arms.  But the transformation has been incredible!  See for yourself!

It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but Steve painted the ceiling on the left, which is above the living room, and the ceiling on the right (over the dining room) is unpainted.  You can tell that the ceiling on the right has more of a yellow tinge to it.

This might be a better picture to show you just how yellow the ceilings were.  See that area around the base of the ceiling fan that’s really brownish yellow?  That’s what the entire ceiling looked like!  It’s amazing what some paint can do.

Here’s what Steve’s face looked like after a day of painting ceilings. 🙂

And here’s what Steve looks like after a day of painting ceilings, while holding Lazarus, and without a shirt on. 🙂

He also painted this door.  You don’t realize just how yellow all the doors are until you paint one of them white.  Incredible.

Here I am painting the trim, which also had a yellow tinge.  Maybe I should have named this house the Yellow Tinge House instead of the Smokey House.

(Holy Cow!  After seeing this picture I can tell how badly my roots have grown out!  I need to make a hair appointment quick!)

Here’s a great before and after picture.  The door frame on the right has been painted, the one on the left…..obviously has not.

It’s just amazing that this is what smoking in your house does.  If that’s not a reason to quit smoking, or at least to smoke outside, I don’t know what is!

We discovered a leak in the laundry room.

It started out as just a tiny bit of water around the wall below the hot and cold water pipes that the washing machine connects to.  We didn’t think much of it because a little water had dripped out when we removed the washer, so we thought that was what it was from.

But when we returned a couple days later, it had gotten much worse.  Luckily we found a plumber at a VERY reasonable price that will be fixing a leaky toilet, sink, and this leak in the laundry room.

It’s been a very tiring and painful couple weeks….

But at least I have this handsome man to keep me company.

I Guess I’ll Paint

I woke up a little earlier than normal today because Steve was expecting a delivery that needed to be signed for, and I didn’t want to miss it in case they delivered it in the morning.  Well, it’s 5:20pm and it still hasn’t arrived.  Since I stayed home from work to wait for the package (one of the nice things about owning your own business), I decided to make myself useful.  First I cleaned up the house a little bit, and then I remembered the canvases and paint I had bought the last time I was at Joann Fabrics.  What a good day to paint!  I was a little nervous at first because I’ve only ever painted at Sips ‘n Strokes, which is a place that you can go by yourself or with friends and they teach you how to paint while sipping on your favorite beverage.

But I found the courage, and decided that if I messed up, I could always just throw it away.

So I got all my supplies ready and squeezed a little acrylic paint into my plastic paint holder thingy. (What’s the correct name for that again?)  I only bought the basic primary colors because I figured I could always mix them to make whatever color I needed.

First I painted the blue background, making the edges a dark blue, and the center a light blue.

Then I used pure black paint for the tree trunk and limbs.

Next, I combined green, yellow, and white to make a light green, and painted some leaves.

I added more dark green to the mixture and painted slightly over the light green leaves to add some dimension.

Next I made a light pink by mixing red and alot of white, and painted some large flowers.  I went back over the flowers with the same color and just kind of dabbed my paint brush around to make smaller looking flowers.  Then I used the same technique with a little white paint.

The last step was to add small black dots to the centers of the large flowers, and then sign my name!  I hope you like it!  I’ll probably end up hanging this in our bedroom, since it needs a little color.