Thursday, May 12, 2016

Maintenance

Both DH and I have officially lived in this little (too large) house of ours for longer than any other address in our entire lives. That's significant, folks, and we are enjoying every minute of it. We moved into a brand new house where all of the decisions with respect to paint colour, fixtures and finishes were already decided. The designer involved picked neutral brown tones for the paint colours and they were fine for our first five years.

Hallway before.
Then we put in our stove and the chimney stone wall and things started to darken up a little in our open concept home. Now almost 6.5 years into living in our home, it was time to paint. The marks, dents and holes from little boys may have hastened that decision as well...

Hallway before.

DH is a lovely man (have I said that recently?) and is the official wall painter in our house. I love to paint as well but my talents lay largely with stretched canvas and pieces of wood. Walls? Boring. So, DH is a sweetie and has done the majority of the painting in the rooms of any home we have ever owned.

Painting out from the hall. 

I have been really drawn to a Scandinavian and European style of white walls and that's the colour (non-colour?) we chose for the upstairs hall and main open living area. DH is slowly working on it as he has time and we are living quite comfortably in the chaos in the meantime. So far, nothing has been terribly inconvenient and I'm so proud of how much he has done. With such a large space, the concept of painting it has been a lot wee bit intimidating.

One of the hardest parts to paint - the growth chart!

One of the most difficult parts to paint over was the growth chart I'd started on one of the walls when we moved in. I'd never intended for that section to become the official growth chart but it did. Don't worry though. We took extensive measurements and pictures so that we can replicate all of the information on something like this which is totally more my style of painting.

Hallway after.
The furniture in the living room has been moved around several ways since we started this project. One option was to have the couches closely surrounding the fireplace. Both DH and I liked that arrangement as it was SO nice to be able to stretch out on a couch right next to a roaring fire at the end of the day. Before, the couches were more within viewing distance and not close enough for good warmth it seems. We've moved the furniture into some pretty funky positions which has been fun for the short term.



I've also been playing with updating the decor in the areas that are finished using what I already have on hand and no financial investment so far. That has been great fun and I look forward to playing with the living room once the final wall is complete.

Hallway after though the decorations aren't yet complete.
We're slowly getting there. Most recently, DH got a lot completed on the ceiling and next he's onto the right interior wall in the picture below. After that it gets a whole lot more finicky as he heads to painting around the kitchen cupboards and such. Slowly but surely and the colour is certainly brightening up the space just as I'd hoped.



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