Day 339's weekend update

It was another busy weekend at the Newlywed house! Between visiting with friends and family of friends and seeing the Sex and the City movie (okay, that was just me), Wes and I painted the living room, the dining room and the TV cabinet (which is pictured above).

Paint colors (and colors in general, for that matter) are always a hotly-debated topic, as I am perfectly content to swim in a sea of neutrals, and Wes likes things to be a bit more, well, colorful.
In the end, we painted both rooms Benjamin Moore's Grant Beige (thanks for the suggestion, Erika!), which is a lovely taupe that leans on the gray and green sides. It's not a dramatic change from the pale yellowish-though-sometimes-bright-green that was in the room, but the subtle difference was all I was looking for. And yes, per Wes' request, I'll be spicing things up with some colorful accent pillows and such as soon as the budget allows.

Remember our ugly Wal-Mart TV cabinet? It is now sporting Valspar's Sumatra Blend on the outside, with the wall color on the inside. I think it kind of gives it the appearance of a built-in.

Aside from another lesson on the role of compromise in marriage, I think we've figured out this whole painting thing, and I thought we'd pass along some of our "knowledge."

Cover twice, paint once. Preparing a room to be painted is no fun, but it really shouldn't be skipped. No mess-ups means no touch-ups.

Speaking of tape, buy the widest painters' tape you can get your hands on. One errant stroke of the brush and you'll be glad for that extra margin for error. And if you're sans crown molding like we are, extra-wide tape on the ceiling will allow you to get right up to the top of the wall with the edge of your roller, eliminating the need to follow up with a brush -- a major time-saver!

Step it up. Our step ladder is definitely in the Top 5 Most Useful Random Things We've Bought For the House. I doubt a project has been completed without it's help, and it's sturdiness underfoot was much more comforting than one of our rickety dining chairs when I was stretching to paint as much as possible without moving.

Be a big spender. I thought I could save a buck or two by using rollers that didn't cost as much as the ones I used in the bedroom, and discovered the extra dollar or two was definitely well-spent. The cheaper rollers splattered paint to kingdom come and I was covered head to toe in speckles by Sunday night.

Live in prime time. All of the walls in our house were pretty freshly painted, so we haven't felt the need to prime them before painting. But we have primed all of the furniture we've painted, and it's definitely made a difference. No paint would have adhered to our particle-board entertainment center without a coat of oil-based Kilz underneath.

This is probably pretty obvious, but don't paint in clothes that you like. I know this, and yet I continue to wear things while painting that I would like to be able to wear in public. So if you see me at the gym with my paint-splattered (expensive!) running shorts and pink tennis shoes (from spray-painting a bed red at the lakehouse), please point and laugh so I'll learn my lesson.


Before and after pictures of the room coming as soon as I finish pulling down the painters' tape and putting it all back together!