On Saturday morning Ben + I took Malakai to visit my in-laws while we got some work done on our home. Ben's goal for the next few hours was to get the new kitchen faucet in place. Mine was to prime + paint all the patched holes in the dining room and living room.
Ben did some prep work and then had his dad come over to help him remove the old faucet. The removal alone took 3 hours. Something about a corroded washer and the right wrench. The actual work to get the new fixtures in took only 20 minutes!
Meanwhile, I washed the walls, primed the nail holes and patched a few others. These nail holes have been ugly white dots on our walls since we moved in. Something we have just gotten used to. While the primer was drying I scrubbed the baseboards and lower half of the walls in our living room, dining room and hallway.
Then Ben asked that I touch up some spots on an edge where two paint colors meet. Our once lavendar living room became a lovely shade of tan called "fresh linen" the night before we moved in. Because it was such a rush job, there were a few errors here and there. One that really bothered my husband was where the tan bled over to the green on a corner in the hallway.
We had asked the homeowner's to leave all the paint in the garage and they obliged. Over half of the house was painted in a lovely sagey green color that we left because we liked it and it actually matched some of our throw rugs perfectly. There was only 1 quart of this green paint in the garage, from 2002. I mixed it up anyway and began to touch up the corner for Ben. As it went on it looked great. I finished the corner and moved on to the dining room and living room {which is basically one "big" room}.
As I was painting I said to Ben + his dad, "Well this looks perfect, there's no doubt that this is the right color of green!" and continued on my way.
As the touch-ups dried I went to remove the taped edge from the corner and it tore off the tan paint! I mean, we were using some fancy painter's tape which is made specifically not to do this. There was a huge lavender splotch underneath and I panicked because we had nothing leftover of this color. So, I called up Ben's mom to say I was going to be late picking up Kai and ran to the nearby hardware store to pick up a quart of Dutch Boy's Fresh Linen.
When I walked in the door, I saw this...
Now, both Ben + my father-in-law are colorblind and when I called them out from under the sink to look at this, they were both stunned. We have been living in this house for SIX MONTHS and had no idea until this mishap that these two walls were different shades of green.
I could list all sorts of explanations as to how we didn't notice until now, but after the work that ensued, I don't have the energy for excuses. This disaster was obviously bigger than that of the small purple spot on the other side of the house. I began checking all my patch work and only 2 walls were this lighter shade of green. This one, and the one on the end of the hall that I had just painted the entire edge from floor to ceiling.
Needless to say I was distraught. This whole project was supposed to take 3-4 hours so we could pick up Malakai and put him down for a nap, then move on to other smaller projects.
Oddly enough Ben and I had just been talking about painting this very wall a dark shade of grey some day in the future. So I figured rather than ordering a whole gallon of this dark green we might as well paint it the color we wanted. I grabbed all my paint samples and magazine pages and we chatted about shades of grey. I also tore off a piece of wall where we already had this lovely eye-sore to match the light green for the end of the hallway.
The faucet turned out to be faster than the painting after all and I'm so happy with how it turned out.
By 2pm we finally picked up Malakai and he crashed immediately. Ben stayed home with him and I ran to Home Depot {my least favorite store of all time, but we had store credit there}. This post is getting long, so I'll spare you the exhausting details of the issues I had with the employees in the paint department. I grabbed a patch repair kit for the gaping hole in the wall, a quart of the custom light green, and a gallon of Glidden "seal" grey.
When I got home we ate a super late lunch and got right to work. Ben patched the hole while I started cutting in with the dark grey. He rolled the rest of the wall while I painted the edge down the hall for the second time. I tested a small patch and let it start to dry before doing the whole thing. It looked great, so I continued to repaint and then came back in to help Ben with the dining room.
When we looked at the hall again...it wasn't such a great match after all.
I wanted to die. We were both so exhausted from the morning project turned entire-weekend life sucker. With our house in disarray and too much toddler-height wet paint, we went to my parents' place for dinner to let things dry until Malakai's bedtime.
At 9pm we put the 2nd coat on the entire wall, and the first coat on the patched hole. We had also decided to paint the entire end of the hall in the dark green to cover up all the mistakes. I painted that stinkin' edge for the 3rd time that day as I grumbled about having 4 shades of green {including Kai's room} on our walls at that moment.
Sunday after church we put the 2nd coat on the patched part of the grey wall and I meticulously fixed the edges {another painter's tape fail} and we called it "good enough".
{yes, I painted with a toothpick}
Here is the semi-final product of our new dining room wall {awaiting decor of course}.
I really love how it turned out {despite my worries the entire time that it somehow looked purple}. My favorite part is how the red + black decor contrast with it. I can't wait to put something bold and red up on the wall!
Now...on to more projects in preparation for our housewarming in T-minus 5 days!
