A New Coat of Paint: My Sewing Room

Before we found this house, we weren't really in the market to buy a different one. We were actually thinking of starting to look for some wooded land outside the city to build a dream house, complete with a nice big kitchen, a cozy library, and a room just for me to be able to do my sewing and other crafty stuff.

Lo and behold, this home fell into our laps, and my dreams of having my own workroom were all but gone... until we started figuring out what all of the rooms would be used for. The dining room was obvious, considering both its proximity to the kitchen and the chandelier. The same went for the kitchen and the four bathrooms. The rest of the rooms, however, could be whatever we wanted them to be!

I've always wanted my bedroom to be in a turret, so that determined where our bedroom would be. We wanted the baby to have his room near ours, so that solved that one. We had another entire bedroom set for our guest room, but it wouldn't fit up the stairs to the third floor, so we had to have that on the second floor as well. This left me with a choice between the last two rooms on the second floor, neither of which had closets. I chose the smaller of the two, mainly because of its relatively square shape. The other room is more conducive to be used as a playroom for all of the future Lenz kids.

Once I decided that this room would be the home to my sewing machine, my yarn bins, and the plethora of other crafts odds and ends, I got right down to business. The first task was to take up the carpeting and get the floor refinished. After that was accomplished, we were able to schedule painters to come out and brighten the room up a bit!

The original paint color was a peachy-tan color. Not what I had in mind for a room that I'd be spending a lot of time in, so I decided to go with a light lavender color. The color in the photos looks a little darker than it turned out. The crown molding and ceiling are both white, even though they look lavender in the picture. It was a bright sunny day when I took the pictures, and there was clearly some reflection going on!

The original color.

After getting it painted! It's not that dark in real life.

We got our paint for the kitchen, my workroom, and the 2nd floor bathroom at Parker Paint in Green Bay.   

A New Coat of Paint: The Kitchen

Sometimes, a new paint color or even just a fresh coat of paint can have a dramatic impact on how a room looks.  Take our kitchen, for instance. It used to be this greenish color:

One of the first pictures we took of the house after we bought it.

After getting the ceiling fixed, we wanted to see how much of a challenge it would be to have all of the trim in the same color.  Before we started the ceiling project, we had beautiful maple crown molding up. The rest of the trim in the room, however, was painted over with white latex paint. Knowing that we'd eventually have the windows replaced, we decided to take the white painted trim down from around the windows.  We also took off all of the white baseboards. 

Now, this is what our kitchen looks like:

After painting.

I am excited to have this nice cream color for our walls.  It brings out the warm tones of the maple cabinetry and crown molding. Plus it no longer competes with the slightly different green color of the adjacent dining room.

A corner of the kitchen before painting.

After painting.

We got our paint for the kitchen, my sewing room, and the 2nd floor bathroom at Parker Paint in Green Bay.

Watch for a future blog post on our new window trim! 

Who Puts Carpeting Over Hardwood? Oh Wait...

As we completed our first walk-through of the house, I was curious as to why only one room on the 2nd floor had carpeting. After ripping up the carpeting once the home was ours, I saw why. Years of neglect and bad patch-jobs of the wood left the floor looking pretty sad. The previous owners must have thought they had no other choice but to put carpeting over the top of it.

This blurry picture was a snapshot taken from a video I took 

of our first walk-through of the house. 

I only have the above picture of the carpeting. I was too excited to rip it up before I realized that I had completely forgotten to take a before picture!

I started in one corner of the room. I got a corner of the carpeting pulled up, and as I peeled it back, the lovely green-and-yellow speckled carpet pad greeted my eyes. After getting a large section of the carpeting pulled back, I got to work with the razor knife. I wanted to cut the carpeting up into smaller pieces so they'd be easier to carry out to the curb.

Carpet fibers flew every which way, and before I knew it, the carpeting was rolled up and gone! Then I made short work of the carpet pad and those pesky carpet staples.

Clearly, the floor had seen its better days...

The Shop Vac was used to vacuum up pieces of carpet pad and staples. 

What a mess!

There must have been a radiator or a floor vent in this room before, too, because here's a patch of newer flooring that was put in where a hole must have been:

A new patch of flooring.

While we had Ralph's Hardwood at our house working on our other big flooring project, we decided we'd have them tackle this room too.

The floor post-sanding and pre-finishing.

I was really pleased with how beautifully it turned out!