WIP Wednesday: Painting The Living Room

So, I haven't gotten much finished lately on the yarn front. I did finish something up a few weeks ago that I still haven't blogged, but I've been busy with actual responsible activities instead :) I've been painting our living room! Just to clarify, this is what it looked like when we moved in:

It's much more filled with crap now, lol, but that horrible red/brown/mauve color has is still on this wall. We painted the two walls to the left of this photo before we moved in and when you're sitting on our couch an watching tv, you don't see the red so it was really easy to just let it sit unfinished. Until now!

First, I had to move all the crap furniture out of the way and Kilz the daylights out of the whole wall. I'm not kidding you, this took 3 coats of Kilz to make it white. I wanted to make sure it was very evenly white before putting on the actual paint because it's a light gray and I didn't want any of that awful red showing through after all the problems we had picking a color. So, I have done this mostly by myself after my husband goes to work at night. Between switching from cutting in and rolling, plus the 3 coats, it took me 4 nights to get it looking like this. I finished the last of the Kilz on Saturday night, so I was able to use real paint on Sunday to make it look like this:

lol I know it doesn't look much different than the Kilz at first glance, but just look at the base boards in this photo and you can tell it's gray. This is Sherwin Williams' Super Paint in Sedate Gray. I still have to do inside the upper edges of the bay window, paint the bay window ceiling white, and paint the baseboards, but it's at least a nice gray color :) Even though I still have one more enormous wall left to paint, it's really amazing how much this has changed the feeling of the room. I can stand facing the front door and it's all nice and evenly gray - I Love It! Tonight I will be doing the base boards and the bay window - fingers crossed that I get it all done.

Even though it's not finished yet, I can't tell you what this has done for my home reno motivation. Here's a perfect example - I used to always look through the DIY & Crafts Pinterest boards when I was bored, now I'm addicted to the Home Decor boards. I have all kinds of plans for several rooms now. I'm trying not to get too carried away with plans though. I don't want to start too many things again and get burnt out like when we first moved in. Once I get this area back to normal, I will either do that last wall (this plan depends on when I can borrow my parent's big ladder since that wall has a 14 foot pitch at the top), or I will finish my cabinet doors for the kitchen. We're having other kitchen issues at the moment, so we shall see. For now I'm just thrilled to have made some type of progress.

In other news...

There's a cat in my house! I never thought I'd say that, to be honest. Not that I don't like cats, quite the opposite, but I'm always afraid they will tear up my furniture/house. This one was abandoned a few blocks away from our house - her owners moved out almost 2 weeks ago and the neighbors said the cat has been hanging out on the front porch meowing to be let in ever since. We couldn't just leave her, so we brought her inside and put her in the empty spare room. We kept her in there last night to make sure she could use a litter box and whatnot. I happened to have a sample pack of cat food from my couponing days, so I poured that in a bowl an no joke she ate 3/4 of it last night. She just purred loudly while she ate and then rubbed against our legs in thanks. She even likes the dog! And the dog likes her, which is weird, but we'll take it. So this morning she graduated to being let out downstairs with just a few rooms closed. She loves our den! It's like a cat paradise because there are all kinds of stacks of boxes and stuff that hasn't been unpacked yet sitting in the back corner. Anyway, at the moment, we have a cat :) I'm going to take her to be checked over tomorrow and make sure she's disease free, and we will see how she does with scratching furniture. As long as all goes well, she will get to stay!

THat's what I have going on this week. To see what others are up to, check out Tami's Amis' blog.