paint my living room

It’s not painting, and it’s not even in the living room. But it’s progress toward painting the living room because it’s one more thing crossed off the list of “Half-finished Projects/Projects That Went No Further Than Buying Supplies”—a list that needs to be worked through before we start another project. _{That is, of course, an unwritten list.}

Anyway, today S put up the new light fixture in at the bottom of the stairs! Ooh, it’s beautiful! Ooh, it gives good light!

This is the one I discussed with Crazyinagoodway recently: The one we’ve had in a box for two years, and which has now finally replaced the etched smoked glass fixture.

It’s going to make me happy every time I come down the stairs now.

Before we can begin on the living room, other painting projects need to be done.

For my birthday, S gave me the promise that he’d finish off some of the half-completed projects, but with him juggling the responsibilities of two jobs and the holidays, this has gone nowhere (and I can’t/don’t blame him). He hired someone the last day before the Christmas break, and the holidays are now over, so hope for progress returns!

So my next step will be to find out what I can do, given that it was a gift to me that he’d do the incomplete things. At the very least, maybe I can do more than half the cooking, freeing some evening time for him to work on the house.

thanks to S’s hard work.

We sincerely regret adding chair rails and molding. Well, it looks great. But it took forever to do. Fortunately, the living room has too many doors and windows in addition to the fireplace. A chair rail would be too busy an element in the room. So the living room should be easier.

However, we first have to:

• repaint the hallway because before we got the new roof, we had a leak there, and the repaired parts look good but the color doesn’t match

• repaint the wall in the upstairs bathroom where it got torn apart when we got a bigger window put in

• add new trim around the new window in the family room, then repaint that room

• finish repainting the outside of the house. We got about 2/3 of it done before it got too cold in the fall. We need to finish the back and do one of the short sides, and we need to do it as soon as it is warm enough, and before it gets too hot out. And, unfortunately, we’ll have to paint the foundation too. I don’t know why they chose to paint it in the first place, but the tan foundation looks very odd with the now-blue house.

Once we’ve caught up with all these patchy-looking spots, we can think about the living room. Right now its only fault it that it’s a boring off-white color. But at least it is all one color, unlike these other areas.

The dining room has butted in. We’ve been here 3 years and I just got sick of seeing the ugly border in there, so I ripped it down. Beneath it was another wallpaper border that had been painted over! So I’ve got about half of that down now too, with elbow grease and bad chemicals that I feel guilty for using. Sigh. At least this is the only place in the house that there’s wallpaper of any sort.

Anyway, the living room just got bumped down the list. It’s easier to ignore beige there than the ugliness of the border that was in the dining room, I guess.

and it is the first room people see when they come in the door. I really want it to be done. should not be so hard. first need to pick paint….