Maplewood Cottage Home-Lessons
• Oct. 1, 2008 - Painting the Great Room
We don't have a very large home. I actually call it ' MAPLEWOOD COTTAGE.' We have 1000 sq.ft. with one large room about 25x20 that is used for everything... I can't call it a living room simply because frankly we don't have any living room furniture in it!
We have a computer, a u-shaped table in front of the bay window that is our nature observation window, two small computer desks for the boys -soon to have computers set up on them, a low preschool table for blocks and puzzles, a few smaller tables for printers and I will be obtaining another all purpose table in a few weeks that I hope to use for a sewing table and to simply put children in different areas when need be. I have to forgo the shelving being placed on the wall I chose because since putting up the anchors the home improvement store has changed the brand and design of the hardware for this shelving and we need to find a source fore the previous brand they carried for compatible hardware... So I will place the cork boards and chalk boards over the area for now.
So very close to finishing!
Yesterday, I did a substancial amount of painting! I will continue on each day this week to completion... unless baby decides to come! This really is proving to be a great calming project for late pregnancy. The only stressful thing is keeping the kids occupied and out of the paint!
Yesterday, I was done with a certain area and cleaning my rollers and sponges ... when I came back into the room I discovered the girls had come downstairs and started painting the lower part of the wall that was finished... thankfully I'd done that a while back and it was dry and glossy so I washed most of the 'new' color off and will only have to touch up... and our floor is just cheap tile that wipes up easy.
Here are some photos of the progress. I'll add more soon. THIS IS PANELING THAT WAS PAINTED DARK GREEN AND OUTLINED WITH BEIGE
BY THE PREVIOUS OWNER. NEEDLESS TO SAY AFTER A WHILE I FELT LIKE WE WERE
LIVING WITH TURTLES! SO I THOUGHT I WOULD PAINT A GRAY COAT AND DO DETAIL
WORK TO MAKE THE STONE LOOK REALISTIC. BUT THAT PROVED TO BE KINDA
INTIMIDATING FOR ME AND I KNEW IT WOULD BE TIME CONSUMING SO I WAITED AND
PRAYED. I THEN FOUND A SPECIAL TEXTURING TECHNIQUE KIT AT A LOCAL GOODWILL.
THIS KIT HAS HELPED ME WITH SEVERAL AREAS OF THE HOUSE. AS WE HAVE WALLS
WITH DIFFERENT TYPES PANELING THAT COULD BE REPLACED THEY ARE PAPERED
AND PAINTED MANY TIMES OVER AND HAVE YEARS OF HOLES FROM HANGING
PICTURES ETC... I NEEDED A WAY TO DISQUISE ALL THOSE FLAWS.
SO HERE TO THE LEFT IS THE NEXT ATTEMPT TO ADD TEXTURE -IT TURNED OUT TOO MUDDY LOOKING. SO WHAT I DID WAS APPLY SOME BEIGE THROUGH OUT THE PANELING WITH A SPONGE AND WENT OVER IT AGAIN WITH THE TEXTURE ROLLERS WITH THE TAN AND GRAY.
I AM FINISHING THE OUTLINE OF EACH STONE -TODAY.
I AM ADDING SOME MORE COLOR TO THIS EXPERIMENT WITH SPONGING THE UPPER PORTION OF TWO WALLS AND THEN A MAPLE LEAF MOTIF THROUGH OUT -TODAY.
I sent the kids out in the morning to get some leaves to use as shapes... I was gonna do just maples but there were so many beautiful ones coming in the door I had to include others. Our neighbors have oaks so we get some of their leaves. And then there were some mystery leaves that had blown into the yard that were pretty too.
I decided to keep it simple and just make the shape/ shadow of the leaves with no detail work. Also since our walls will have shelving and cork boards on them it didn't make sense to put too much more work into this idea.
I allowed the boys to help paint the leaves... they were really excited about what I was doing and I have felt we needed to do something special together to break up the business we've had. I traced the design with pencil onto heavy paper and then onto the walls to then outline with green using a small brush so they could use a slightly larger one to fill each one in. To keep the project from taking too long I am just having them do the lower portion and I am stepping up to do the higher portions. Of course I went back and touched things up but I was surprised how well they were doing as they really haven't used paint often! I just reminded them that these would be on our walls for a long time and to do a really good job!
I wanted to mention that we 'collected' many colors inexpensively by shopping the 'mistint' clearance sections of several stores over a long period of time. I was able to buy cans from $2-$8. I almost never have bought full price except for a large bucket of white. Not bad huh?
Oh, the boys also made these leaf creatures at the table. Aren't they imaginative! |
Post A Comment! :: Send to a Friend!
|
|
|
|
|
