Lessons in Painting and Emergency Preparedness

When we bought the house, the master bedroom was a lovely shade of neutral, the kind of color that all the magazines tell you to paint your room. The walls were dark and there is no direct natural light, which made the room darker. I have often wondered how much it costs to put windows into walls, because sunlight filtered through the sunroom into my bedroom is really not like any light at all. I told Corey that we were going to have to paint the bedroom because I could feel the Seasonal Affective Disorder coming on mighty strong, and was told "Corey don't paint."

Sometimes he only speaks in Third Person Cro Magnon.

Darkness before furniture. The carpet probably does not help.

Darkness and bad lighting for photography.

Abort the mission I did not, because that is not my style, so one day on an unspecial trip to Lowe's, I picked up a quart of semi-gloss decorator's white andd started on the trim. I painted all the baseboards and door trim I could reach without moving furniture. When that was done, I bought some sample pots and picked myself a wall color - Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore. Then, in half-hour increments, I started cutting in around the baseboard and the doors.

When Corey asked me what I was doing and why I was doing it like this, I told him that my intention was to get the hard part - the cutting in - out of the way so that I only had to ask him to roll the walls and the ceiling, and...

He agreed.

So Easter weekend, Friday and Saturday looked like this.

I did all the cutting in and the trim painting and Corey did all the rolling. Edgecomb Gray is about three shades lighter than what we had before. It is not gray but it is not tan. It is both and neither. The room is big and everything required two coats. I cannot say how long it took to do the painting, because I had done 75% of the white trim in 30-minute productive bursts for two weeks. We worked for about seven hours on Friday and about six hours on Saturday on the whole room - moving furniture, cleaning, painting, etc.

We used satin paint on the walls and did the moulding in the same color but gloss. The ceiling was a mix of 75% classic white and 25% Edgecomb Gray. The house already has high ceilings but using the same color for the trim and a lighter tone on the ceiling makes the room feel like it does not have a ceiling. You do not notice it. I highly recommend this trick for illusioning high ceilings.

The picture of Corey rolling the walls is the best illustration of the change in color, but here's a comparison that you do not have to scroll for:

We also splurged for new doorknobs. I had thought that handle knobs are too much flourish for my traditional style, but it's just the right amount of sophistication. At $30 per door, it is going to take a while for all the doors in the house to have knobs that match these.

I have been playing with the light settings on my camera, and got this picture, which is probably the most accurate as far as demonstrating what color Edgecomb Gray actually is.

I never show you one whole wall of my bedroom because there are two wingback chairs of which one is always covered in clothes and one stacked with pillows. There is also a bookshelf full of items that has yet to be styled. And I do not have the art right. You can wait. I have big plans to redo the curtains in a sensational stripe I found that matches the bedding exactly, and I am thinking I will likely use remnants to help the art on that side of the room.

Even though I had to go up and down on a ladder more times that my ass cheeks or my fear of stairs was comfortable with, we are really happy with how much lighter the room is. And what a good job we did painting like grown folks. Our handyman quoted us $450 plus paint to do it for us, and we spent $250 buying the paint and all painting supplies. Now that we have the rollers, pans, brushes, etc. our next painting adventure (the boys' room) will be less costly.

What Allbritton family project would be complete without a small level of disaster? Certainly not this one. Despite his cantankerous objections to fooling with anything electrical, I convinced Corey that he could change the power outlets and light switches from bisque to white. And, I am not just saying this to temper his bruised ego, the wiring in our house is wonky. We have ceiling fans not hooked up to switches and switches that do nothing. So we were non-plussed when changing out three light switches cost us the power to outlets in two rooms and the carport. Two different professional visits later yielded a diagnosis of a broken wire in a bad splice in one of the light boxes, and it just so happened to be the one and only wire supplying juice to the master bedroom, sunroom and caport outlets.

Five nights in the guest room and $115 later, power has been restored to the outlets and I will never get Corey to touch a switch or plate or outlet ever again. This is the second time he's tried it and the second time it has gone awry and I cannot convince him that it's not him, it's the house.

Bonus: I did learn that if he ever electrocutes himself, I should hit him with a chair. That may not be exactly what he said, so do not rely on this safety measure at home, but that's what I heard and the advice has now been seared into my emergency knowledge bank. The title of this post is not meant to tease you with disclosures of family emergencies, but to provide a teaching moment. Because the extent of my knowledge of What To Do When Someone Is Being Electrocuted was not to touch them. I have many skills. Safety may not be my strongest skillset.