Today I ripped out more cabinets and did a little painting. All of the cabinets are out except for the sink one, because I need the sink to clean paint stuff. We ran into a nasty problem…the paint color for the accent walls is not uniform. It appears that the original paint I got from Home Depot was a darker shade. I’m almost positive it was supposed to be the same color. I went back there and the guy had no idea why it was different. I had him look in the computer for the order but he couldn’t find it. I’m gonna go back with the receipt with the date/time and see what I ordered. I’m guessing the paint person maybe heard the color wrong and mixed a different one. If I can’t get the original color, I’m gonna have to repaint a whole room plus a wall. Hopefully, we can get the original color and all will be well. After we ripped out all the cabinets, my dad patched up a bunch of messed up parts of the wall with joint compound, which takes quite a while to dry. I was hoping to paint the kitchen today, but the stuff was not dry. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll post some pictures of the gutted kitchen tomorrow, and also the paint line trick worked really well, so I will post some pictures of that.

The painting is almost “complete”. Everything has the first coat except the kitchen. We won’t finish tomorrow, but we’ll be close. I am really looking forward to doing the cabinets, because they should improve the look by a lot. Here are some pics:

…and you can see here we started removing cabinets in the kitchen, the one above the fridge is gone:

The pale cabinets are so boring with the wall and appliance colors. The darker ones we’re gonna put in should make it look much more “warm”. I’m also thinking about replacing the fluorescent light in the kitchen with some recessed lighting for a more warm color, but that’s probably a ways off.

The painting is now down to the stairs, master bath, kitchen, and touchups. I think we may be done by Thursday so we can start working on cabinets this weekend. I came up with the idea to build a paint-can-a-mid, although I already threw away a bunch of cans. Here’s the start…

The bathroom will be a pain, but I already got it mostly masked. The mirror was really heavy and Mike wasn’t around today, so I was too afraid to try and move it myself. Here’s what the other bathroom looked like when masked:

Fun stuff. I was particularly proud of the masking on the toilet.

Now, all of the rooms have been painted with at least one coat except for the kitchen, stairway and one bathroom. Tonight, we can hopefully finish up a second coat on some or all of those. The stairway has some really tall parts, so I’m going to try to find this fabled “sponge on a stick” device to get the corners. The roller on a pole should be able to get most of it. In the kitchen, my attack plan is to rip out all the cabinets except the sink one before painting, so it is easy to paint. Then, once that is done, it will be time to pick up the new cabinets, which will be one of the biggest purchases so far. My plan is to do the Akurum cabinet series from Ikea with Adel medium brown finish. I’d link to them, but the site is broken right now. I need to finalize the layout before I buy those. Once the paint and cabinets are done, the tile can start, which will be exciting.

So, one of the only major decisions I have left to make is what to do with the bathrooms. Since I’m going to replace the kitchen cabinets, it would be pretty ghetto if I left the bathrooms alone. The shared bathroom would be easy; it is a standard size (37″), plus it is next to the toilet, so I could use a different sized cabinet/counter if I wanted. With that in mind, I have a wide range of options. In the master, however, there is a 71″ counter with double sinks. The standard size for a double sink counter is 61″. They have some pretty cool corian ones at home depot for under $300, but alas I cannot use them. The counter has walls on both sides, so I pretty much need to find something that is 71 inches long. That basically leaves me with two options. Tile the counter top or order a custom one for $700+. Lowes has a granite single sink custom counter for about $700. I need to get more info, but it seems like a decent deal for granite, but still lots of money. Tile would be very flexible and probably pretty cheap if I do it myself, but lots of work, and I’ve already got a lot of work on my hands. So, there you have it. I’d love to hear any other ideas or opinions on which would be better. I also have yet to shop for cabinets for the bathrooms, so I need to do that.

We keep painting and painting and it never gets done. I think all of the ceilings are done as of today, except for the living room needs a little work. I got there today pretty early, so there was a little daylight left, and I could see some spots. Once the light was gone, it was hard to tell with artificial light. I’ll have to run over there right away after work tomorrow and take care of it. I started the walls in the master bedroom, and got the first coat done. The window was a bit of a pain since there was lots of masking. Here’s a pic of what it looks like, although its hard to really get an idea of the color from this photo:

You can see the flat white ceiling, which looks pretty cool in contrast. I tried a new trick on the corners to help get sharper lines between colors. I was talking to Anbar a few weeks ago, and she had some secret technique, but I couldn’t remember what it was, so I went looking online. I found a couple things, but the easiest seemed to be this…you mask around the edge of the ceiling, then paint the ceiling color over the tape. That way the ceiling colored paint bleeds under the tape and makes a “seal”. I couldn’t remember if you were supposed to wait for it to dry, so I gave it like 2 hours, cause it seemed like the seal would work better if it dried. Then you paint the corners again with the wall color. I think this wall is going to need a second coat, so I left all the tape in place, but we should see the results tomorrow.

So that is that room, and one other room is completely done with paint, except for the closet. Here’s a couple pictures of the accent color in action:

Hopefully with the ceilings finished tomorrow, things will start moving faster. The bathrooms and kitchen could be a pretty big pain though.

After Saturday’s painting bonanza, we had most of the ceilings covered, many of them with two coats. We also got some more paint samples and switched up the main wall color to “Natural Taupe”.

Yesterday, we figured we’d get started on the walls. We went to home depot and picked up some more paint for the wall colors. Five gallons of the main color, and two gallons of accent. We wrapped up most of the second coats on the ceiling, but there are still some bad spots, so I think we will still need to add coats in some places. We’ve gone through 7 gallons of ceiling paint so far, although 2 of them went bad. Anyway, we also finished some of the accent walls. One whole room is accent color, and that has a full coat now. We’ll have to do a second coat on most of the accent walls, but they are looking good. I think I’m gonna take today off from working because I’m getting pretty sore. There are lots of new pics in the gallery.

We also looked at some cabinets at home depot…I found some nice ones and they are all right around $3k for a “sample 10×10” kitchen, which I think is a little smaller than my kitchen. That’s about $1000 more than Ikea for the sample kitchen (Ikea also includes countertops, so the difference is really bigger than that). I’m planning on going to Ikea to check on the quality of theirs this evening, but I think the home depot ones are way nicer, and I could maybe get all the cabinets I need for about $4k. They also had some cool Corian counters, but they were almost as expensive as granite.

Today we got a lot of painting done. We are almost done with the ceilings. I got stung by a scorpion and a big glob of paint in the eye, so it was lots of fun. There are a bunch of new pictures up on the gallery. I’ll have to elaborate more later.

Today I didn’t have much time to spend on the condo. It was my mom’s birthday, so we got together for dinner. I stopped by home depot after the festivities and got a 5 gallon bucket of white ceiling paint, and 3 sample quarts of various colors. I also got some painting supplies, and checked out the bathroom vanity tops. I need a 71 inch one in the master bath with two sinks, which seems to be a custom order item everywhere. The best price so far seems to be ~$700 for a granite one at Lowes. It’s not a bad price for granite, but I don’t think I want to spend that much.

After picking up the paint, we picked up some poster board at Fry’s to paint samples on so we can move them around. We arrived at the condo at around 11 and my sister Lucy painted the posterboard. I think the main color is too light, and the darker brown is definitely better, but I have to wait to see what they look like in the sunlight. We hung around until about 12:45 and did some paint prep, masking some of the trim and removing outlet covers. Mike, Paul and Jac also removed some more linoleum and trim from the kitchen. Tomorrow morning we should start painting ceilings, and hopefully we’ll be able to start on walls tomorrow as well.

I am also trying to come to a decision about whether or not to redo cabinets. I was looking through an Ikea catalog last night to see if they had any good paint schemes, and noticed their kitchen cabinets at least look pretty nice. I looked at them a bit online and downloaded their kitchen planner program. It looks like it would be about $3000 to replace cabinets and counters with Ikea gear, but I’m a little worried about quality. I’ll have to go to the store and take a look. My uncle has Ikea cabinets I think, and he seems to be pretty picky about quality, so maybe they are good.

I have no pictures tonight because I forgot my camera, but I will take some in the morning to show the color samples and further progress.

So, as you may have heard, I recently purchased a condo. It came with a bunch of money for redecorating expenses, so I was planning on doing some work to make it nice. It turns out the people trashed it, and it needed to be pretty much gutted. I took pictures of the place for record and they are here if you want to see the extent of the nasty.

I, along with a bunch of helpful family members have been spending the past week or so cleaning things and ripping out flooring, etc. It is already looking much better. Tomorrow I hope to start painting. I am going to paint the ceilings “ceiling white” and the rest of the tile/paint selection can be seen here:

The top two colors will be the paint colors. The right side will be the main color, with the darker color being an accent color on various walls. I’m not totally decided on any of this, but those are the choices for now.

I’m going to try and post daily or whatever and update on the progress. You can see the full gallery of photos here.

So, for today, Mike and I started working early and started with the bathroom. We installed some new faucets in the master bathroom earlier, but finished hooking up the drain levers today, so they are fully operational. I also started dismantling the toilet in the master bath, which will be replaced after the tile goes in. Then, I started washing all the walls while Mike worked on removing moldings where tile is going in. We will paint and lay the tile with them off, then clean them up and put them back on. He also pulled out some remaining tack strips where carpet is being replaced with other flooring, as well as some tile in the living room which will be replaced with the new tile. I finished washing almost all of the walls, so I’m pretty happy about that. Here’s a few action shots:

Mike just finished removing the tiles from around the fireplace.

Me scrubbing the walls