Planted and Blooming: Summertime...and the living is a lot of work.

So we bought a house with a nasty, dirty popcorn ceiling, mint green paint and brass hell-bent on keeping this house in the 70's. The track lighting, however, brought it from 1977 to 1989 - bonus! The day we moved in we had Mr. Joe out to see the house and schedule a day to paint it for us. He told us that painting the popcorn ceiling would be no trouble at all. Well, that turned out to be less than true as I started googling this whole popcorn business. Once the plumbing exploded and we realized we ought to save our $1500 for things like flushing toilets, it was an easy decision to paint it ourselves. "And why not just do the ceilings while we're at it?" we asked. Why not, indeed...

Here is the living/dining area "before." Unloved, thrown together, mint green. Yack.

Mmm....built-ins...

All-in-all, something of a disaster. So we threw sheets over the furniture and decided to give it a go. Luckily, we had already scraped the ceilings in the breezeway and the kitchen. (Calm yourself - you'll see them when they're closer to presentable. I know, I know, now you feel left out, don't you?)

We started staring at gray paint samples a week or so before the scraping started. THAT was tough. I really liked the bottom right, but agreed it was too dark for such big walls. Nina liked the top right, but it was too purply. No one liked the bottom left. It was too "eh" and cold. Everyone liked the top left, mostly because it was called "Elephant Skin." That's hardcore. Nobody messes with elephant skin. We actually brought in two more after this picture was taken and decided on Ashlar Gray (Valspar) for the longest walls and next to the fireplace, and Elephant Skin (Behr Ultra Premium) for one wall in the breezeway and the big wall at the end of the living/dining. You'll see the dining room later. The big wall is still green. We're having a hard time letting go.

So we picked a random night, grabbed our putty knives and razor blades and got moving. I really had no choice but to deal with my fear of ladders - you can see me in the background, and I guarantee my belly was turning over and over. Ugh.

Here is the thing about scraping popcorn ceilings. Once you've made sure they're not asbestos, (google "EPA testing labs" in your area!) all you really need to do is prepare mentally. With two small running children and a breastfeeding baby, the amount of plaster seemed to multiply itself. We had little plaster-dust footprints through the entire house. We're still finding dust in corners. It doesn't matter what you mask off or how much you clean. It's everywhere. The most important tip in remodeling with young children about is to just "let it go." We covered what we could and just prepared to have the messiest, dustiest house in the county. And it was. Now that it's all over, I suggest renting a shop vac or borrowing one from your dad. It'll make a world of difference in the cleanup.

Claire spent plenty of time in her swing, watching us scrape and whimpering for an inhaler. When we put her to bed on this night, we were so itching to scrape that we forgot to move the swing. It reminds me of Silent Hill. Creepy.

Oh, the plaster...we filled trash bag after trash bag, and it seemed like it would just never go away. What's sad is that in the entire ceiling refinishing process, scraping the ceiling was actually the fun part, and that was torture. So...yeah.

Here is Andrew giving the "Molly thumbs-up," as you'll see in a minute. She's cute, but she has no idea which finger is which.

We put the girls to work doing all sorts of things. Lucy loved sweeping - she felt like such a big girl!

Molly carried her little brush around and climbed on whatever she could find. She's so cute that we really had no choice but to let her run the show.

We were really very lucky that we didn't have more surprises once we got under the plaster. We had a few problems in the kitchen, but our logic was that whoever did the living room would have been able to use full sheets of drywall and would have had fewer opportunities to screw up the joints and seams. Our logic was mostly correct, save for a little water damage in the corner and what looked like a wiring patch. You can also see the track light wiring in this picture, along with the ceiling fan wiring. I think we're going to ditch the track lighting and refinish the ceiling fans. We will probably do the fans this weekend, so stay tuned!

I know, I know...who would cover up a green like that?? You can see a peek at our Elephant Skin here, as it starts on this wall and extends down the hallway. It's just gorgeous. Well, we expect it to be once we paint up to the ceiling.

The only real problem we had in the living/dining area was that the house had shifted since the seam between the ceiling and the wall were taped, and the tape was looking a little wonky. So we pulled all the tape off and taught ourselves how to use joint compound and drywall tape! And wouldn't you know, Andrew rocked it like he was born wearing a toolbelt. My incredibly skilled hunka-hunka-burnin'-love.

Here we are alllllmost ready to paint! We were itching to get down off that ladder and do anything but scrape and sand. The first thing we had to do was prime all of the now-bare drywall, which is a must when you're going to paint, as drywall will seriously suck in your paint and turn to mush if you don't prime. (My Home Depot 1-2-3 book taught me that. Thanks Mom and Tim! I am ashamed to say that I read the 1-2-3 book more than I read the Bible.)

And the priming begins. Back-breaking, thankless painting. Ugh.

I'm fairly certain that our necks will never be the same. (And look at that Elephant Skin! Doesn't it look just like an elephant's leg???)

Mmmm...drywall dust and tacos from Rosa's!

Here's a small taste of what we were looking at and walking through for almost two weeks. Gag.

We estimate that we spent almost 30 hours scraping, sanding, puttying, sanding, sweeping, priming, painting, vacuuming and grumbling before we could really say we were "done" with the tough work. We still have to do some small touch-ups and paint all of the trim, and the dining room is barely touched at this point, but here's a look at the nearly-done living area. We're so in love with the paint choices and our incredibly smooth ceiling! Talk about 30 hours very well-spent!

We have yet to rehang the lighting, as we need to paint the fans and flip the blades. We hope to get that done this weekend, but we're taking it slow from here on out. We're both a little pooped from all of the painting, so we're taking a little break before we hit the dining room or start on the trim.

We're eventually going to cut away the front of this cabinet and just have a floor to ceiling bookcase here. We like the built in, but the cabinet has GOT to go. It'll also be refinished in an antique white to brighten up the room a tad.

These aren't the curtains that we're planning on keeping in here, and I'd like to sew something a little more unique, but they were hanging in Claire's room and we REALLY needed to block the morning sun, as it's been about 110 degrees every day. They'll do for now. They don't look bad, but I'd like something with some metallic in them to really help the room sizzle a little more. It's cabiny and cute now, but I know adding the right textiles can bring it up a little more.