happy 4th

Hope you all had a great long 4th of July weekend!

We watched the Macy's Fireworks last night from a park a couple of blocks away from where we live that is overlooking the Hudson.

Of course we tackled another project this weekend - we painted our upstairs hallway. Finally no more peach colored walls in our house! We used the same color as in the downstairs hallway, Horizon (OC-53) by Benjamin Moore.

Now we have to do something about the door situation. Most of the doors on the 2nd floor are cheap & crappy. One already is gone for good. Notice the classy sheet solution on the right opening. We got rid of that door pretty much right after we bought the place, it was so bad. But my parents stayed in that room when they helped us work on the house and move, so we gave them the sheet for privacy. And more than a year later it is still here...

Next step is painting all the door/window frames and the baseboards. And of course find new doors...

feeling peachy

The peach colored hallway is no more. I painted it last weekend. Now the hallway feels more like a part of the house. The color is Horizon (OC-53) by Benjamin Moore. You can see that the dining room on the right is slightly darker, it is painted Stonington Gray (HC-170) as is the living room to the left. We chose a lighter gray for the hallway because it doesn't get much light, as you can see in the pictures.

Finishing the hallway means that all the downstairs rooms are painted and are just waiting for the finishing touches. Yay!...Ok, the powder room isn't painted yet but I only use it to clean my rollers and brushes and don't really use it for anything else right now.

Also I discovered that the paint on one side of the vestibule door is coming of in big flakes when you gently peel it away, so much easier than stripping.

vestibule - update

I was working a little bit on the vestibule this weekend - changing the light fixture and painting the walls.

First was taking off the booblike light fixture with blue painters tape still attached from the previous owners painting the ceiling probably years ago. I wanted to use a ceiling medallion to hide some imperfections in the ceiling, which I already bought and also primed a while back.

We didn't pick a light fixture yet so for now I used a simple porcelain lamp holder that I spray painted black. Could end up being a more permanent solution too...We'll see...While spray painting the lamp holder I used an old light bulb to keep the thread (?) clean. To make the finished project look a little bit nicer I used an "Edison" bulb I bought at West Elm.

After installing the ceiling medallion and the light fixture I painted the walls (raccoon fur by Benjamin Moore). Next week I want to paint all the trim and base boards white. Then I want to paint the closet door the same dark color as the walls and add another piece of trim above to frame it, right now it looks like it is missing something. After that I hopefully will be able to install the flooring...

peek-a-boo

Let there be light! At least a little bit in the hallway...

This is the door leading from the entry vestibule into the hallway. I was always curious if the small panels above the door are glass. They are painted and when I tapped them they sounded like glass but there was only one way to find out. Before I started working on the fireplace last Saturday I put some stripper on one panel and let it sit for a couple of hours. And it is glass underneath the paint. Why would somebody paint it? It made the hallway look so dark. Can't wait to start making that door pretty again. Right now it is quite beat up although you can't really see that in the pictures. And the hallway needs to be painted too...

I was also able to finish some other little things in the living room on Saturday. There was a big area that had been patched on the ceiling and wasn't painted yet. Also there were some smaller water stains on the ceiling of the bay window that needed some touch up paint. The source of the water coming in had been fixed a while back and I already primed the stains with oil based primer. It is official now that every surface in the living room has been painted.