Project 14: Painting the Living Room (Part 2)

Remember here when I was painting my Living room? Well I'm finally done...kind of. :)

Last I left you, I had painted the walls but the trim still needed to be painted.

Well, trim doesn't just mean trim, it also means the built in desk, shelves and folding doors (behind the TV). Here they are primed and ready to go, after the walls had been painted.

I used high gloss for the trim. It is durable, cleanable, and makes the trim stand out even though the walls are the same color. Once again, they didn't mix anything into the can, I used pure white.

I discovered painting the trim and built ins was way more work than painting the walls. The trim is small so it has to all be painted by hand using a small brush. I'd much rather use a big roller to cover a wall in paint. For the doors and built in desk I was able to use a mini roller (4") for parts, but there was still a lot of parts of them that had to be hand painted. It took three coats (and that's not including the primer), which means it took FOREVER. When friends would visit they'd want to see what I was working on; it was always "well, I'm still spending weekends working on the trim." No joke, it took over a month because I couldn't spend every hour of every weekend working on it, and the process was so painstakingly slow when I did.

But eventually I got it all done, and I think it turned out nicely.

I was so excited to finally be done with this project and then I started to take a picture of the built in desk for a before and after...

Oops!!! I totally forgot to paint the drawers! I put them in another room while I worked on the trim and then totally forgot about them. That's why I said I'm kind of done with the living room. Now I have to get the primer out again...ugh.


Let's see those before and after pictures!
Before:

After:

It is crazy to look back at the old dark paneling. After living with the white for a few months it's hard to remember anything else. And you may be distracted by the giant chase lounge currently in our formal dining room covered in a blue blanket... that's because the top of the lounge is all torn up and I plan on recovering it. It will be my first attempt at recovering anything, so stay tuned!

But wait, there's more!

Now that the room is painted I was able to bring in something I bought almost a YEAR ago...

My rug!!! yay!! (can you tell I'm happy about this?)

We rolled it out and put it in place and then put some extra laminate boxes on it to help flatten it out/relax it.

I really like the way it looks with the couch and white walls.

Of course, now the room is very bland - all gray and white, so we'll have to spice it up with some color soon.  And I'll have to get rid of that horrible yellow in the kitchen... barf. But for now the living room is finally starting to look like a living room. :)

Project cost: $100 - I had to buy 3 gallons of paint plus supplies

Time: It's hard to say exactly because I spread it out over many weekends, but I'd say if you were able to work on it every weekend it would take about a month to paint the primer and three coats of both wall paint and trim in a room this size.
 
Difficulty: Moderate. The only reason I didn't say easy is because the primer is a little harder to deal with than paint (doesn't wash off the same) and the task of painting all the trim by hand just can't be under the category of easy.

This project is concluded here.