Working on some details

When Benita at Chez Larsson posted this, I knew I had to cover up the old paint that shows under the molding in the kitchen. I was really lazy when I painted the wall and did not remove the moldings, but instead I taped the edge and that was not the prettiest way to do it. Ofcourse the old greenblue paint shows from between the wall and the molding and it just looked bad.

Not the wisest idea not to do everything well on the first time, since doing things in smaller segments takes more time than as a whole, but none the less things get done that way too. It really did not take long to remove the molding, paint underneath it and screw the molding back. I'm really pleased I finally did this.

(And apparently I had not removed the molding even when I painted the wall greenish blue.)

More painting - corridor

I must have complained to A that I have nothing to do because he suggested that I could paint the corridor while I'm on the maternity leave. And so I did. Besides it desperately needed painting. It had holes and scratches and it looked quite horrible. Under is an example.

Prep work started with removing the moldings and spackling the holes. Once the spackle was dry I sanded those and then washed the walls. Then I taped all the egdes and covered the floor. The taping is something I hate, it takes such a long time and usually the paint egdes do not end up that nice even with the tape.

Next day I started to paint, first the edges, then the bigger areas with a roller. I usually paint the edges first twice then the main wall, then again the edges and once more the main walls.

Third day was spent to attaching the moldings back and placing the picture ledges back. (The picture ledges by the way have pictures of our family. I've made a post about it long ago, it can be found from here. It is still missing A's photo, he has not chosen a photo to show.)

Loving the crisp white. Wonderful to have that done. And don't you just love our ceiling light in the corridor? Changing the light fixture has also been on the to-do list forever. I wonder when I find something there.

Bedroom painting is done

Remarkable, only a week and the bedroom is all painted. Wohoo!! Last week I wrote a post about starting the painting. So I removed the moldings and teared the loose wallpaper away. I again did not remove the wallpaper fully. From the experience from the office I know it just is too much of a hassle. Besides the result with the wallpaper under the paint is not bad at all, maybe the edges can be seen a bit, but that fine for me.

I spackled the edges and the holes of the wallpaper and then sanded the spackle smooth. The amount of dust from the sanding was overwhelming, luckily I had covered the bed with sheets so it did not get dusty.

Then some covering of floor, taping some edges and then finally painting. I almost run out of paint so I had to water it down a bit for the last wall but the coverage was still good, so I was lucky that I did not have to get another bucket of paint. I had chosen a very light gray colour for the walls.

The window wall did not have any wallpaper and it was originally painted white, but after I had painted the wallpapered walls the window wall looked really dingy. I tried washing it but it did not help, so I painted that too. But I used plain white on that wall.

Once all the painting was done I attached the moldings back. I was luckily wise enough that I had written on the back of the molding which piece goes where. The molding were originally nailed on the walls but I prefer screws, those are much easier to handle especially if those ever want to be removed and put back again. 

Bit murky picture above but there is the corner of the window wall painted white and the wall painted light gray. The gray I chose does in my opinion have a slight green tone, which was not my original plan. According to my sister all the walls are white and according to A the walls are gray, but once I mentioned the green tone, he said that he might see it there. So maybe it's gray enough.

So above the bedroom wall first with the light on and then with the ceiling light off. The pictures are a bit grainy, sorry about that. And underneath is the wall before.

One room per summer?

Last summer I had a project to renew the office, now I started to work on painting the bedroom. One has to have projects, doesn't one?

Broom stick reborn

 

I still haven't foud a good place where to keep my exercise equipment, but I did change one of the equipment to a more handy one. I previously used a long aluminium handle from a mop, it's on the left in the picture. But it was way too long, I was afraid I would hit something with it while I did my exercise. Then I remembered I had an old broom stick from a broom that had broken long time ago. I cut the stick into a good lenght and then painted it white. That is in the picture on the right (obviously). Way more handy to use and to store too.

New night stands with painting disaster

So... the night stands, or the lack of them that I mentioned here are now ready and on their right places. This Ikea hack I made with the new night stands didn't seem to first work out at all. I bought two Expedit Cubes that can be attached to the wall (I can't find the cube from Ikea's webpage? Whaat!?) and the drawers to go inside the cube. My point on getting new bedside tables was that I wanted something that could be attached to the wall so vacuuming would be easier and also I wanted the new night stands to be slightly smaller ones than the old ones. Also I wanted them to be shiny white, the old ones we had were brown.

I forgot to take any proper before photos. But here you can somewhat see what we had before in the bed room. The picture is taken on spring when I was doing the spring clean.

Also I took a photo of the cabinet which I used when I placed the cabinets on sale in the web.

Dull thing was that the cubes I bought did not come in shiny white like I wanted but instead in the mat yellowish white. Also on the cubes the top and the bottom was supposed to be attached with screws through the boards. That would have meant that the screw head would be visible. Which meant that I needed to do some hacking.

I don't know what went through my my head when I started to assemble the cubes. Because for some odd reason I desided to attach the parts with plugs instead of making a deeper hole for the countersunk screw which I could have then spackled over. That would have been so much easier.

Anyway I was a jackass, because of course I was unable to put the plugs exactly on the same line so the sides of the cubes are now just a tiny bit closer to each other than they should and now the top drawer in the cube does not slide as well as it should. I would have never thought that the tolerances in Ikea furniture is this tight.

Once I got the cubes assembled I desided to spray paint them to shiny white. I started with a primer. I had bought one primer and two shiny top paint cans. The painting was a total disaster! It was just horrible! The primer spread out everywhere, luckily it didn't stick to anything I didn't want it to stick but the dust spread all over. And the smell, awfull!

Then I started with the top paint, it would have been okey, but from somewhere I got dust on the painted surface and the result was just bad. There were tiny pieces of dust on the surface and it looked horrible. Also I run out of paint, two cans was just too little. I had killed half of my brain cells in the smell and the result was horrendous. I was so annoyed that I didn't even take a picture of the horrible finish.

Then after listening to some advise from my colleaque I returned to using regular paint. I sanded the spray painting I had done and painted with furniture primer. I sanded again and then painted with shiny oil based paint with a mohair roller.

And the finish was so nice! I love the result I got when using the regular paint, I didn't have any dust problems either. Just look how shiny it is.

Then was just left to hang the cubes on the wall and assemble the drawers. I would have wanted to hung the cube just a bit lower but under the other cube is a socket which defines the hight.

Because I did not paint the underside so here you can see what the screw would have looked like if it was on the top.

After all the trouble I still do think the painting was worth it, I do love these cubes. I love the airy feeling they have because they seem to float next to the bed. If I would have been happy with the shade of white the cubes were I think I could have just covered the top to hide the screws. Like a glass plate that has a painted underside or a painted board.

All shelves are painted

 
All the shelves are now painted! Finally! 

It took way longer than I thought. I assumed it will take me about one week to finish each side of the room to  paint the walls and the shelves. But it took more like one month to finish each side of the room. Huh, but now they are ready. How amazing is that!

For these shelves I needed to buy quite a lot of paint. I used branch varnish on places where I was afraid the resin would show through the white paint. I think I could have gotten a lot of shelves from lets say Ikea for just the price of the paints. But these shelves we had are expensive brand and they are quite versatile and good quality so it was no point getting rid of those. And new Ikea particle board furniture won't last for decades like these shelves have already done. These are the paints I used.

• branch varnish 3 desiliters (did not need as much, but it was the smallest jar I could find)
• primer 3 liters
• finishing paint (semi-glos) 2 liters

I painted twice with the primer and one time with the top paint. I had to paint the edges two times, the paint did not stick as well on the edges as on the bigger surfaces. The bigger surfaces were sanded by the belt grinder and the edges by hand and I think there was still more old varnish left on the edges so the paint did not stick as well.

What I did horrible wrong with the painting was the scheduling. I had not realized it takes so long for the top layer to dry, which was three days. The paint will feel dry after few hours, but there was this sticky feeling to it and that was only gone after the three days. I also made the painting more tiring for me because I did it actually in 5 sections

1. sanding and painting the first shelf from the other wall
2. sanding and painting the new shelves I bought used
3. painting the vertical support piece that I used as a drying stand
4. sanding and painting the second shelf from the second wall
5. painting the vertical support piece that I used as a drying stand

This makes me realize why it took so long in the end to finish all of the shelf. But it would have been quite difficult to empty all the shelves at the same go, but I atleast should have bought the new (used) shelves earlier so I could have combined painting them and the first shelf at the same time. Well... live and learn.

Ah, but how I do love them! Maybe I love the shelves even more because of all the work the painting included. I'm so happy.

Walls are all painted!

Hip hip hurraa! All the walls are painted now. Yippee! Those are so beautiful, so white, so lovely. This wall needed three layers of paint as did the other wall. I still need to wipe that wooden valance, since I used it as a support while standing on a stool painting the top parts of the wall and now the valance is covered in finger prints.

The rest of the room looks like this. Still some painting to do with the shelf and a lot of organizing to be done for all the stuff.

One shelf is up!

Hihhey! The shelf for the painted side of the room is now dry and assembled! Yay! It's white! So pretty.

I must say the assembly was not pretty. I placed the top, bottom and middle shelf on the vertical support pieces, which was freakingly difficult because I didn't have anyone to help me. A is in Shanghai for two weeks and I did not want to wait putting the shelf up.

I had the shelf lying on the floor and then tried to measure that the shelf would be straight before I screwed the cross support on the back. I lost my nerve when I made the measurements, the measuring tape just did not stay on place and my arm didn't reach anywhere and I got really mad. Also I made the mistake of starting to put the shelf together while I was hungry. I guess my blod sugar was too low because I started coursing to the shelf. Now I've eaten and the shelf is also up and not crooked so I feel lot better.

That table top that sticks out from the shelf will be A's work surface. A tends to pile stuff on horizontal surfaces so I thought to prevent that he should not have as much space for it as before. And we will get separate work areas, so his stuff wont slide onto mine.

The shelf under the work surface is for collecting the cord mess, I plan to tuck all the excess cords there and maybe also the external hard drives. I hope the shelf does not hit his knees. The bottom shelf on the right most likely needs to be moved away since I think it will be on the way of A's feet and also the computer tower needs to be placed somewhere.

But it's up, Wohoo! Next I need to move some stuff on the shelf to make room for the other side of the room so I can paint that side and the shelf there.

Shelf is drying

Thank you Alana for suggesting to use a roller when painting the shelf parts. The painting has been fast and smooth. But what hasn't been fast is the drying. The finishing paint feels dry after couple hours but the jar says that the paint is fully hardened after three days and before that nothing should press the paint. So I'm waiting and I've never been good at that.

As you know I still have the other shelf from the other wall to disassemble and paint, but I also bought more of that same shelf. Like I didn't have enough to paint before!

Painting and drying stand

Usually I paint either in the bathroom or outside, but the shelf painting takes up so much room that it does not fit in the bathroom. Also painting the shelf outdoors has not been an option since even though it has been mostly sunny we've got some rain showers almost daily. This meant that I had to create a painting and drying area in the office.

I also wanted to speed up the painting process so that I could be able to paint all the sides of the shelves on the same go. The furniture paint also dries up slowly so I needed a place where I can leave the shelf parts to dry without having to move them all the time.

So I created a painting and a drying stand. First I placed an A-ladder and a stool on some way from each other. Then I covered everything with plastic and also placed a sheet underneath to keep some weight on the plastic and to catch any drippings. Then I placed the vertical support piece from the shelf on the stool and the ladder where I can then slide the shelves to dry.

The painting stand I made using couple pieces of wood and four big nails. I attached the stand on the office table with bar clamps. I also covered the table with the plastic and a sheet.

Here you can see the stand in detail. Now I can flip the shelf on the nails and paint the other side and then place it to dry.

One of two walls is painted

Yippee!! The first one of the two walls I need to paint is now done. Actually I got it painted already on Friday but I struggled putting the skirting and the light switch cover back. Well it wasn't really a struggle I just didn't bother and I was busy sanding the shelves.

Here is the intermediate state, where I was removing the wall paper. 

After some taping and covering the floor and then two layers of paint.

And the other side of the room looks like this. Bit difficult to take pictures when there is just a long path way to stand in.

But now after three(!) layers it's painted and ready and looking very nice and fresh. Love it! Next the other wall...