Our family room... I can finally post something up, and it is long!

A little bit over a week ago I posted an instagram picture, where I announced that I was going to post about the family room the next day. I have been asked where the new post is and believe me, is not that I did not want to post about it, the entire family room situation just got out my hands.

The instagram picture

I have a regular 9-5 job but my commute to work is about 5 hours a day, that makes it 14 hour days (70 hours a week) that leaves with just a couple hours before I go to bed but I try to do as much as possible when I get home, I thought the house will be painted in the past weekend and then over the week I would have time to work in details, boy was I wrong!

When I came home 2 weeks ago with ONE gallon of Valspar primer + paint "Like Butter" the first thing DBF told me was, we are going to need one extra gallon, my answer was, of course no, use used 1/2 gallon in the dinning room and I think since we are doing the ceiling the same color we should use about one can, so no, we will no need another can. Little did I knew I was totally wrong, again.  

Above is the dining room the first day we ever walked into the house, I never got over the fact that it has an slanted ceiling, of course I would have loved if it was a cathedral ceiling, but slanted? there is no symmetry. The picture below, makes the shape of the room so much worst,. I have no idea what the box is, it sits right under the stairs to the second floor, yet, it has nothing to do with it, is one of the great mysteries in the house that I can not wait to decipher.

 Here I was sampling the color to see how it will look through different times of the day, by the lights, against the lights, etc.
The reason I choose yellow for the room is because is a color full of energy and since we will be spending most of our time in here it seemed like the way to go.




To the side is what I call, a spackle mess, our guess is that there was a french door where there is now windows and the former owners didn't finished the job, there are little holes and spackle all over the place; my guess is also that they had a very deep love for nails, push pins, safety pins and anything that can go on a wall, as I started to fix the mess I realized more spackle was needed to conceal all the miniature holes int he walls, there must have been about 100 of them, I think they used to just hang all  papers with a push pin.  A reveal of our yellow ceiling,  yes, I mentioned before how I really don't like the slanted ceiling so having some knowledge of color and shapes, it was discussed and decided that to make it look more even to just go with one color in the entire room was a savvy choice.

More and more tiny holes all over the places, can you see?? 

 This is when fate came in to prove me wrong, at about 1 am on that Saturday night and we ran out of paint after just doing the ceiling and that one little corner. All embarrassed to admit I was wrong, "because I have helped or painted every single place I have lived in since I was a little girl" I called DFB which was at work, his answer, "I told you so", don't we all love to hear that? Ha.

Frustration settled in, I made drinks for my mom and my cousin which were helping me, (cousin painted the entire ceiling) and we all agreed that one more can should be enough, right?








Within the next few days, DBF stopped by Lowes to pick up another can of paint, got on to work, came to bed in the middle of the night to tell me: Honey, we ran out of paint! so I was WRONG again. The next morning when I was getting ready to work, I ran downstairs thinking that I must have had a bad dream,  and "surprise" an empty can and a mess all over the place, how can this be possible, how?? 2 gallons of paint and the walls were not even entirely covered. He must not know how to paint? I cant be wrong that many times. Anyway, that same day, he headed to the hardware store, grabbed a third gallon of our now-hated "Like butter" and to attack the walls again. That night I was so anxious waiting for him to come over to tell me how gorgeous our walls looked that I couldn't even sleep, I was about to get up to get ready when he came to the room to announce, I am finished but I don't like the way the walls look, once again, I went downstairs, observed the walls and decided that after the paint cures I should be all fine.

After 2 days, the paint is supposed to have cured already. I don't know if you can see how bad the walls were after 2-3 coats,  it looked  dirty, grayish , a nightmare!

Yesterday I got up bright and early and told DBF that I was going to apply another coat to the walls, he just looked at me and told me: "You will need to get to Lowes again", I swear I almost passed out: 

Me: in disbelieve, why, the rollers are no good anymore?

Him: no, we need paint.

Hahaha, should this mean I was wrong 4 times? I had no other solution than to get in my car and drive to pick up our 4th and last? can of paint. While in the store, no one was around the paint department and the store manager came to help, his first reaction when I told him I want just a gallon was surprise, he then asked me if I have already applied tow coats of primer and that I will need two to three coats of that paint,  (doing the math, that is 5 coats). I asked him why primer since the paint has the primer on it so he said it is in the instructions because of the type of color it is, I almost wanted to kill scream at the guy that mixes the paints, this was our 4th gallon and I was just learning about this warning that comes up in the screen when you are about to mix the paint. UGH! 

 

 The god news is that we are finished painting the walls, and I am in love, I like the color so much, is so vibrant, exactly what I was expecting, exactly like what I envisioned when I said I wanted yellow, I want a butter yellow, and I was able to find a color called just like that - Like Butter. The slanted ceiling is still there, but since is the same color it doesn't bother me that much.

Tino totally approves the color, that has been his spot  once we moved the sofa and started painting, I wonder if he understand what is happening or if he is just thinking that we humans are crazy.

The bad news is that the family room is not finished, not even close to be finished,  we still have to deal with the windows frame, to apply and paint molding, to find furniture, to do "build ins" and to frame the fireplace.

I have already started with the fireplace, took the doors off because I despise the gold trim around the doors,  they are going to get my spray paint treatment. I also removed the "mantel" they had before which to my understanding it shouldn't even have been called a mantel.

And finally, below are two drawings of what I have envisioned the family room will eventually be, like with the rest of the house, the drawings where made to entertain me and calm me down during the almost 8 months we waited to close in the house.

Until next time,

Sobe