Painting the Livingroom

VOC-free primer and a patient toddler

Have I ever told you how ugly our house was when we bought it? Serious case of the uglies. Well - it was beautiful if you love dark, fake wood paneling, old carpeting, and lots of built-ins in random places. (LOTS of them)

But paint (and a crowbar) fixes a lot of ugly. Take the living room - remember this demo? That made a huge difference in the room. I still have some patching to do with trim in that corner, but in the meantime (aka over Christmas break) Max and I painted the walls.

Can I just tell you how much of a job this was? I was all, oh, it's not that big of a room, it'll be fine. Um, yeah. There's also a staircase, three doorways, two columns, a built-in bookcase, and four windows. It took a while. But it was totally worth it. Check out the before and after below -

Huge difference, right?

And the stairwell where I ended the paint for the upper hallway (no, you're not imagining that it's a different wood paneling color):

Some in-progress photos:

packing tape works great to protect carpeting, tuck it in tight with a putty knife

the corner where the built-in was

one of the columns supporting the beam

And - the walls are done! I even hung up my pretty mirrored star that I've had sitting in the closet for months, waiting... And, yes, I obviously did not pick up the room before taking my after photo. Whatevs, I'm just happy I got the walls painted!