painting without color

We were very fortunate to be able to start painting and working before we officially closed on the house. Seriously, we are feeling our age lately. Work full time jobs and try to do all this monkey business on top of that? We have a long way to elderly, but somedays .....

The home we purchased is an older home. Many of the windows are small and don't really contribute a whole lot of light. First order of business ... remove all the blinds. I may regret this but I have an aversion to cleaning those things and this property is incredibly private. Unless someone wants to scale a wall ... they're not seeing in. I'm covering them with washable curtains instead.

Paint. The helpers came to pitch in a bit! Their Papa has a lot of patience with these little guys. They were able to help him until he started rolling walls.

Nearly the entire house was the tan of this room (better seen in one of the following photos) and I am done with tan. Done. Done. Done. The carpet and tile are tan. The dirt outside is tan. The dust on my car is tan. Everything but my legs are tan. Mind you, I'm just realizing how much of my furniture is brown after putting it into different colored spaces. No tan on the walls. Period.

I wanted white and gray, both paints without color. Two sample colors yielded something I didn't like at all. I've used the second one from the left on furniture, but much too blue looking when it hit the wall. To Pinterest I went and learned something about picking paint colors. I'll share that in another post. We went with the far right to complement our white.

The window in the living room is 4 feet wide. That's all the light that's in here. For now. The plan is for the window to take up most of the wall. Light should be streaming in at some point ... just not yet. Hence my desire for white and bright.

The fireplace? Finally!! I keep looking at houses with fireplaces and Jari doesn't like them. Take them out is his feeling. I want a mantle. I want a hearth. It is staying without a fuss. And... I want it white. What I would really like to do is strip off all the plaster stuff and have white washed brick but that sounds like a project for some other time.

Dining room ... let the sun shine in!

Arches that will someday go away ...

Jari spent many evenings painting after work .. one piece at a time. It was so fun to watch the change happen each day.

An hour before we sat at this table and signed paperwork making this our new home ... it was done. The trim hasn't been painted yet because we aren't exactly sure what we are doing about all that yet. The walls were ready to move into! And I was in love with the change!

Time to get packing in earnest!