Prep, Prime, Paint, Repeat

This week was focused mostly on finishing the living room (because we want to get the couch out of the kitchen) and small bedroom (because we have company coming in two weeks and need to have a place to set up beds).

Each room needs a lot of prep work before we can prime. Since the house is over 50 years old and the previous owners were pretty rough with it, there are a lot of holes, dents, and divots in all the walls.


In the living room, there was some water damaged plaster on the ceiling from a previous leak. Chris had to remove a pretty big area of plaster to be able to fix it properly.


The window trim also have a lot of holes from blinds and curtain rods and some big gashes and gouges. We have used quite a bit of paintable caulk to fix these.


On Sunday, we were able to paint the ceilings and walls. We think it makes a huge difference. We were apparently in a very bold color mood when we picked these colors but we think they’ll look great with our furniture. The living room is painted “Sahara Shade” and the small bedroom is “Utah Sky.” All that’s left to finish these rooms is the trim, radiator covers, and doors.







I also was able to replace the light fixture in the small bedroom – a 5 minute job that makes it look much better! Unfortunately we could only find “daylight” bulbs and with the light on, the Utah Sky is practically glowing!


We have also been working on moving the mulch pile from the left side of the yard so that we can seed it this fall. We took back a few truckloads this weekend – if we do it a little bit at a time it won’t be too overwhelming.

Our highlight of the weekend was going to the dump. Throughout the last nine months we have been collecting a lot of garbage. This is all construction materials that can’t be placed out with the normal trash. On Saturday morning we took a truckload of garbage to the local landfill. This trip was mostly the debris from the front porch wall, tile from the condo, old fencing, and some old (stinky) floor boards.


At the landfill, after we unloaded, we decided to get a load of compost to work into the soil before seeding. The landfill composts all the yard debris from the county. This was one hot, steamy, pile of black gold! We also picked up a couple bags of lime on the way home to throw on top (this bare area of yard is where all the big pine trees were removed – very acidic soil).


We found a really great yard sale on our way back with the compost. We ended up with four big items – an antique sewing machine, woodburning stove, metal cabinet for the garage, and a bookcase for the living room. They all need some work but we couldn’t pass them up!






This week we hope to finish the living room and small bedroom, paint the dining room and start unpacking!