About Painting

Our painted ceilings

So a few months back, I predicted that painting the walls would make the house feel more like ours as opposed to any other house or another rental. That prediction was correct. I don’t think it really felt like our own house until I painted the guest room ceiling pink and the walls in our room green. You wouldn’t get that in a rental. And, I have to say, I love it!

I have now painted the ceiling in our hallway a fun colour, too. We chose a light blue and I am so happy with the final result. Now we’re just missing the decor. 

I am really enjoying the fun, quirky colours. I thought maybe it would be too much, but so far, I don’t think so! There’s enough white around the place to tone it all down. The colours are only experimental at this stage, anyway, because we’ll be knocking down a lot of walls upstairs to re-jig the layout - sometime in the next 2 years. So, we’ll be repainting the rooms in future. For now, we’re taking this opportunity to test out some colours and see how we feel about them. It’s been fun!

I’m really enjoying the planning and the interior design aspect, but the execution (the actual painting) has not been as fun as I’d expected. Annoyingly, the tape we use pulls up the paint along the edges, so we have to edge free-hand, which is not my forte, mainly because it requires patience, something I lack. But I do love the end result. It is incredibly satisfying to stand in a freshly painted room.

I’d love to share some tips and tricks for painting walls, but I don’t think I’m qualified! I’m still learning myself! Maybe by the time we finish renovating downstairs, I’ll have something useful to share.

A friend of ours gave us a tip. You can use painter's tape and acrylic caulking to create sharp lines. It did work for us. YouTube also recommends using FrogTape for even sharper lines. Here’s a link to a video explaining this trick.

Oh, actually, I did notice something! Painting the ceiling white and the walls a different colour seems to open up the space. Our bedroom feels bigger than before. In contrast, painting the ceiling a darker colour than the walls made our guest room feel smaller and cosier. Maybe something to keep in mind?

We finally finished painting the walls in the front hall and hallway. Together, these two spaces have 11 doors. Why? And honestly, how? It’s not a long hallway. I decided to use the tape and caulking method to edge the skirting boards and door frames, and oh my gosh. One roll of tape only did the front hall and half the hallway. It’s too many doors. In our plans for the upstairs, we managed to get rid of 7 of the 11 doors. I can’t wait.

Painting this space was quite a bit of work and a workout, actually. As I wrote the initial draft for this blog post, I could feel my angry quadriceps muscles punish me for being so inactive for so long. If you think about it, I would have had to go up and down the ladder at least 2 times for each door - one for taping and another for painting. And, before these two steps, I had to sweep and wipe down the walls and ceilings, fill the cracks and then sand down the plaster and re-wipe down the walls. I feel like I’ve been exercising regularly since our trip to Ireland, and half of it has just been prepping walls and painting. 

I also know how I’d like to style the two spaces, but I need to order a couple of things first. Follow along on our Instagram to see the progress in real-time!

Luke has finished the half bath! I love it! It’s so quirky but suits the house so well. I’m really glad we decided to embrace the retro. This bathroom has been quite the journey. The original colour turned out a lovely tennis ball neon yellow… I painted over it, and it’s giving the right kind of retro vibe I was hoping for, now. Luke installed the light fixture, and we found a wood trim that fits the little notch above the tiles perfectly! Luke cut the corner pieces, cut the trim to size, stained them and fixed them into place, and voila! Sounds reasonable, right? Well, this was our third set of trims, so third time lucky!

I think that sums it up, folks. If I learn anything that I feel confident enough to share, I will write about it. Otherwise, I’ll just share progress photos and videos in our stories and posts on Instagram. I am enjoying the learning process, though! I missed that.

See you soon!