our first splash of paint

We did it, we picked a color, made the commitment and painted the whole dining room. WOOT!

Before I begin with the painting process, I wanted you to see where we started. Stage one included simply putting things in the room where they belong and making it look as homey as possible. You can see my attempt to look settled by setting the table and hanging one measly curtain in the far right window; my attempts were in vain. Stage two included adding some more furniture, hanging art and adding some substantial curtains. Definitely a step in the right direction but still unfinished and lacking in depth. The gold curtains and the mustard rug with all the wooden furniture left the room looking like a golden cave, a bit "dull" for our taste even with the white walls.

Before this dining room, the only rooms I had ever painted in full had been those in our previous two apartments. If I'm being completely honest, I didn't care much about straight lines because we only had to deal with my paint job for less than a year! I'm not saying that I did a terrible job painting in our apartments, it was still home for us after all, but trying to get a perfectly straight wall/ceiling line was virtually impossible.

This time I did my research, found out the best ways to edge in and paint and got the proper equipment. My favorite home renovation blog is Young House Love. They are full of such great ideas as they are working on their third house in about five years! They have tips and tricks for us first timers and they make us laugh in the process. Thankfully we were starting with white walls and while some people would still use primer, we decided to simply wipe down the walls and let the paint do the covering.

     

     

After I gathered everything I needed, I began edging in with my new brush and used my trim cup to make it easier to keep my paint close while laying on the floor for the baseboards and on a ladder for the molding! One thing that I learned from my "research" is to keep paint only on the edge of the brush that is facing the molding - that way there is a clean line and no worries about pulling paint and leaving some wall uncovered.

     

Let me just tell you that if you have small hands like I do this brush is PERFECT. I'm sure anyone can wield it well but with that small flexible silicone handle as well as the nice stiff bristles, it was made for small handed people like me - I was hard pressed to go "out of the lines!"

It took me about 7 hours to edge in and go back over all the borders of the room. It only took me about 2.5 more hours the next day to paint the full walls with a roller! Two coats was all it took for a nice clean finished look!

We are so happy with the paint and color that we chose: Benjamin Moore "White Water", Super Spec in Eggshell Finish. Not only is it a beautiful color that looks great in the room but we snagged it for a mere $10/gallon at our local paint shop due to a mis-order! The price might look prettier on the walls than the paint does, ha! 

After only about 10 hours of painting we are so satisfied with the final product... Drum roll please! 

We love it, it makes all the golds and browns in the room really pop and completely negates the gold cave feeling we were having before. What a welcome change!

We accomplished some big projects this past weekend and are looking forward to starting some more soon! If you want to keep up with what we are crossing off the list you can see all that we want to do and have already done here!

As always, thanks for reading and following along with us!

Until next time, Lindsey