Living room part 4 Paint Prep

It's been a while since I talked about our living room, here's a reminder of parts 1, 2 & 3.  Once we decided on the colors (valspar ultrawhite and metropolis), we bought all the supplies. I mean everything, we didn't even have a paint brush.  The first paint job is expensive! Holy Moly! Our living room isn't small, the walls are textured and were dark and we needed to paint the ceiling too. How much paint did I need? No idea, I took a guess. I bought 2 cans of white, 2 cans grey and 2 cans of primer.

Before I could even think about painting I had to caulk everything. All of the trim needed filling and caulking. What a process! I did quickly get the hang of it and once I started it was a breeze!
I primed everything starting with the ceiling, just painting the ceiling made a HUGE difference in the how bright the room was. The walls went pretty quickly but the wainscoting was pretty slow going. It took 3 coats of primer to mostly cover the red. 3!

I was pretty eager to get the grey on the wall after priming for 2 days. It covered really well and went up quickly! 2 coats and I was done (with a few little touch ups here and there). Painting the trim was a whole other situation. It took a lot of paint to get decent, even coverage. I think the trim took 5 coats and the wainscoting took 4 even with primer. Thats a lot of work for the bottom half of a room!

The best idea I had while painting was to paint that black ring at where the wood stove attaches to the wall. I primed and painted it the same as the wall. Looks much better now!

A few weeks after I finished painting, we got a new thermostat and moved it out of the living room. Look at that huge hole! It was about half an inch in diameter! Huge and unnecessary! But you can see the color. 

I always under estimate how long it takes to paint. I didn't think it would take nearly 6 hours to paint the ceiling, but when you think about it the room is huge, cutting all the edges and trying to get an even coat on a texture surface all while looking up!

It has been less than 6 months and I'm mostly happy with the results. The baseboards are a little dinged up from the kids and the dog. I think I'll have to do some touch ups this summer but over all I'm happy with it. I've been starting to notice some missed spots in the texture, a friend of mine said "Welcome to textured walls, you'll be seeing spots for the next 5 years!" I think she's right! Every time I go to touch it up, I can't find them!

We currently have nothing on the walls, the wood stove has become a catch-all for frames and other breakables that I had no where to put. We purchased a credenza for the TV and things. We were hoping for something old and antique but after months of try and searching nothing met our size requirements. I'm very happy with the piece we bought!

I'm really happy with the colors we picked, when I walked in the living room the next day I said "This doesn't even look like the same house!" You can see the fireplace in the reflection, the big black ring is painted and has disappeared into the wall.
Our mirror update is here

Up next will be decorating. I'm trying to be patient and only get things that I love but with two little kids the things I love aren't always realistic!