Finally - The Dining Room!

I finally got started painting the dining room Monday. I didn't get it done, but that's okay - just getting it started will give me the momentum to keep going till it is done.

Here's the wall I was working on Monday, before I started. That dark, dreary paneling had to go!


Two coats of primer.


And, first coat of paint.






It was very hard to get this to show up well in a picture, but it's a pale green ... I don't remember the name of this color, but it's very similar to a color I had my dad paint my bedroom walls when I was growing up, which was called "seafoam green" - so that gives you an idea.

I was very concerned about this color ... we thought and thought for weeks about what color we wanted, specifically what shade from the dozens of paint chip samples we'd picked up. We finally settled on this, but when it was mixed and the guy showed it to me, I was worried - it looked a little too "minty green" to me just then, almost like some type of 'candy green.'

But once it was on the wall, it looked much better. Actually, I'd have preferred something just a little 'greener' - more of a sagey-celery color, but this color is really good. It's actually got a tiny, tiny hint of a blue-green in it in certain light, which is also reminscent of the sea, so I'm happy.

It almost covered completely in one coat (it looks much better in person than in these pictures), but later we did notice some thin spots. We decided to wait till the whole dining room is done, then go back over all the walls with a quick second coat, just to even things up and cover those thin spots - I thought that sounded better than trying to spot touch-up. I waffled a long time about what paint to buy, too, and the salesguy talked us into the more expensive Valspar Premium, but it was worth it - it really was a dream to work with, went on very easy and smooth, and almost covered in one coat - probably would have covered in one coat if I hadn't been in kind of a hurry because I was axious to see how the whole wall looked, done - and the light is so bad in there, it's hard to see what you're doing. There was almost no paint smell, too. (and it wasn't *that* expensive - it was $20-something a gallon, whereas the cheaper stuff we were considering was something like $17 or $18 anyway; I'd heard of paints costing $40 a gallon or more, but this didn't).

Ironically, we bought 2 gallons of paint and only one of primer, and it's the primer we're looking likely to run out of, while I doubt we'll use anywhere near even one whole gallon of paint. We can't return it since it was custom tinted, so something, somewhere, is going to be seeing a lot of this green. That's okay ... it's a nice color, we'll find a use for it. (The Imaginarium comes immediately to mind).

The dark window-thing in the middle of the wall - that's tricky. It was probably originally an actual window (as this room used to be a porch) which was turned into a pass-through into the room next door, closed by two shutters. We're leaving it, mostly because I don't want to go to the expensive of having someone patch that big hole in the wall. We decided we'll leave the shutters as they are (they're actually a pretty wood) and paint the inside of the opening with one of our trim colors, then use that for something - I'd suggested putting shelves across it, and using it as a little knick-knack cubby or something.

Just this wall color alone isn't enough to 'fix' this room, but we have Plans. The room is going to have a 'beach house' theme, so this color is a great base for that. We're going to be deciding on trim and accent colors (I'm leaning toward a cream color, and either a melony or yellow contrast color). Eventually the carpet's going away, and we'll have some type of tile put in. New curtains, a new table and seating (I love this table, but we need a bigger one; this one will go live in the Imaginarium), add a little wall decor (some of which we already have, stuff we found this summer and knew would be perfect for this room), and the room will be done, and will look 175% better than it has since we moved in!

I'm psyched. This room needed the most work of any place in the house, so it's nice to be getting it done.

We're also having a guy in tonight to talk to us about the insulation issues upstairs (the house is an over-sized Cape Cod, so the Imaginarium has those half-walls and slanted ceilings, behind which there is no insulation to speak of; the upstairs was freezing last winter, and I'm determined to fix that before this winter).

So some significant progress is being made now on the more important things, and that makes me happy. Once we get the bigger stuff out of the way, we can settle into the fun little details.