And Now, To Watch the Paint Dry

(And this post might be about as exciting as that activity.)

Everyone, your attention, please.

I have finished painting. I repeat, I have finished painting.

Well, as much as I'm going to finish before we move into our new house by the end of the month, anyway. 

I don't know how many hours I've spent total, but almost every Monday and Wednesday for the past six weeks, as soon as I put Poppy down for her afternoon nap, I would rush up to the new house, paint madly as quickly as I could, then rush home again in time to pick up the boys from school.

It was kind of stressful, actually, and also very tiring. But I knew that once we were moved in, I wouldn't regret a single bit of paint I had gotten on the walls.

I got the living room done, the dining room, Poppy's bedroom, the entryway, and the hallway. I did not paint any of the bedrooms besides Poppy's, the two bathrooms, or the kitchen, although they all could have used it. 

I also didn't do as careful a job as I might have wished. I just did not have time. And in this case, done is definitely better than perfect.

I'm pretty pleased with what I did get done. Wanna see*?

Let's start with the living room, shall we? And its infamous paneling.

Those afters actually don't show the finished product, because I painted the brown baseboards too. Close enough to get the idea though.

Now, Poppy's room. Remember how I said the whole thing was covered floor to ceiling in paneling even uglier than the paneling in the living room? This is it.

Seriously, what is up with this? It looks diseased.

I couldn't get a good after picture because there's no natural light in there and it's too dark. This was the best I got. At least you can tell the paneling has been covered up.

Next, the dining room. I wasn't going to bother painting this, because at least it didn't have any gross paneling in it. It did, however, have flat white paint on the walls that was covered in spots and stains. The whole house was painted in flat paint, as a matter of fact. Flat paint is impossible to clean.

Plus, it looks, well, flat.

I don't seem to have a picture of the whole thing done, but here's the progress picture.

Yes, that light fixture on the right is broken. That's on A.'s (very long) list.

I didn't take a picture of the entryway, but it had the same flat white paint as the dining room, and also had that same ugly border thing near the ceiling that the living room had. Now it's the same yellow as the dining room.

Last, the hallway. These walls had more flat paint, this time an odd pinkish white that just looked kind of dirty. I painted it a kind of ivory color. Though it's still a narrow hallway with nasty brown carpet.

All this paint, incidentally, was custom-mixed by me. And the reason it was custom-mixed is because the former owner left behind some paint that I decided I might as well use. Unfortunately, it was a kind of ugly orangey-yellow. So I pretty much just mixed that with white paint in different combinations to make various shades of light and lighter yellow, or just mostly white with a slight yellow tint.

As I told A., it means all the room colors are very harmonious, because they're all in the same color family. Sounds legit, right?

Of course, it also means that I can never touch anything up without painting everything all over again, because I'll never to be able to match the current random colors.

Anyway.

The painting is done. For now. There may be some more at some point--like those bathrooms, or maybe Cubby's room--and probably also some brown carpet remediation, but for now, I'm calling it quits so we can work on actually getting moved in by December 1. Wish me luck.

* I spent a minute trying to get the before and after pictures side-by-side before giving up and figuring you can get the picture (ha) as is.