Work Begins!

Over the past two days since Closing, we have visited The Home Depot a few times and have had sticker shock over the cost of improvements -- ahhh the joys of home ownership! :)   One job that we thought would be reasonably affordable now appears to be budget-busting, meaning we're re-prioritizing our wishlist.

First things first, painting the ceilings of the Kitchen/Dining/Family Room!  We knew we needed to put Kilz on the ceilings because there was evidence of previous water staining (they repaired the roof, but didn't bother with the interior drywall).  So, we started by removing the recessed lighting trim and a/c vents, and taping off the light fixtures that were too time consuming to take out.

Removal of hardware and cutting in around the openings:

We also did the cutting in around the corners and openings in the front living room:

While the trim paint was drying, I decided to clean some of the dirty spots around the house in preparation for future cleaning:

 Backside of the front door:

(BTW, did you see that the doorknob and the deadbolt that the bank put on are different tones? So even though we just shelled out $120 to rekey the house as part of our closing costs, now we have to do it again, just to get them to match. You might also notice that the sidelight panels, top and bottom, do not match.  It will drive me crazy enough to do something about it someday, but it's way down our list of things that need to get done.)

And the digustingly dirty section of wall where a former canine resident must have scratched and rubbed against the wall:

I took a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (love those things!) to all of the dirty spots, grime, and goo and it all came right off.  Like Magic! :)

And then, once the paint cutting was dry, it was time to roll!  We painted the living room ceiling with Kilz No VOC primer and it surprised us by taking 1.5 cans of Kilz to cover it, it just soaked right in.  So before starting on the Kitchen/Dining/Family Room ceiling, we decided we didn't have enough primer to do the job and went back to Home Depot to buy more.  While there, we stumbled upon this awesome Kilz ceiling paint and primer in one! We thought it might save us from having to roll each ceiling twice, so we thought we'd give it a shot. We bought three cans with fingers crossed to keep up with the job.  And let me tell you, we found product of the year!  Kilz and paint in one, and it's No VOC!  This stuff is fantastic:

We rolled the entire Kitchen/Dining/Family Room with only one can of this paint/primer. It's thinner than the other primer and it dries super fast.  We were really impressed with it.  See Darrell rolling the room:

Darrell was rolling after I did the cutting-in.  We like being each other's eyes, so in this case he rolled and I told him where he'd missed a spot and where he'd left his wet edge. 

So that was the past two days.  Now it's Christmas Eve and we're going to spend two days with my family in Venice, Florida.  The paint will dry really well and hopefully we'll come back to the house with a renewed excitement for the job at hand!  Merry Christmas!