Progress!

Our first whole week is in the books! This week has been a mad-dash to get the house (or at least parts of it) ready for flooring. Scott had Monday off and I don't know what we would have done if he had to work. He spent an entire day removing the popcorn ceiling from our room and the soon-to-be guestroom/craft room.

Once the popcorn was gone that meant we weren't far off from painting, so as you can see, I started some swatches on the walls to see how they'd look with our flooring.

The flooring we chose is from a company called Calibamboo, it's LVP (luxury vinyl plank) and I'm BEYOND excited about it! We originally looked at wood-look tile flooring thinking we'd pay to have it installed. The cost of the tile isn't bad, but with install about twice the cost of the flooring, it was a HUGE chunk of change. Plus, our house is old, and not level, so tile would require a ton of prep. The LVP will still take prep, but it comes with the underlayment attached, has a 50 year residential warranty (30 years commercial, so even if we go crazy on this floor it'll last well beyond our time in this home) and we can install it ourselves.

If you're wondering what paint color we chose, it's the one on the right. It's a Valspar paint called "warm putty" (ew, I know, right?) that I picked out of the stack of paint swatches. How I got a good one so quickly, I'll never know. We chose an accent color that you'll see soon called "Hidden sage", also a Valspar color, but this one Scott chose from a book of paint colors I brought home.

With the popcorn ceiling down we sanded, and sanded, and sanded.

(I know, we're very photogenic)

The dust was THICK, and there was a lot of it.

Not a farmer's tan. Just my arm covered in drywall dust.

We spent several days just prepping the ceiling/walls. Filling holes, sanding, more sanding. We also took down all of the shelving in our closet. It was old, and not in the layout we wanted, and it was... not as clean as I would've liked.

Finally it was time to paint. We broke out our handy paint sprayer and it made QUICK work, like, super quick, of painting a coat of primer on everything. I don't fully know if this was necessary, but I wanted a coat of Kilz on everything to seal it, cover any stains, and just give us a nice coat of primer. So we primed both our room and the guest/craft room, including the closets.

Just having the kilz on the walls was a HUGE improvement.

If you can't tell from the photos, we worked all week, well past sun down trying to accomplish as much as we could. We took down the ceiling fans so we didn't have to paint around them, so we had an awesome work light Scott's brother and sister-in-law got for us that has been our saving grace!

The color went on the walls with the sprayer too then we rolled the accent wall and the ceiling. I don't remember the levels of hell in Dante's Inferno, but I'm positive one of them included people painting ceilings for all eternity. If it didn't, it should have, because it was AWFUL.

What an awesome transformation the paint made! Once our room was painted, Scott got to work putting up the ceiling fan. I purchased three of these fans on Amazon, the other two will be going back. It looks great, but install was a pain with inaccurate instructions and honestly just more hassle than it was worth for the small amount of light it puts out. Nonetheless, it'll work for our room.

We also put in new blinds and replaced all of the outlets/light switches. While I tried to convince Scott that the old ones were "vintage, with some patina" he decided they were actually old, and gross, so new ones went in.

While Scott worked on some final ceiling patching/painting in our room I did the outlets in the guest room. I'm definitely no electrician, but with a dose of caution, and the proper tools, I believe anyone can take this project on.

I love that red handle-thingy (technical term), it allowed me to man-handle the outlet into the electrical box so that it was straight. No big deal, but that last pic shows that I hooked that outlet up correctly, the very first time.

With the outlets replaced, Scott got to work on the ceiling and my parents and I went outside for a little trimming. Just a tiny bit (insert *eyeroll* here).

Yes, I realize they look like sticks now, but those giant bushes were growing through the pool cage and the leaves were clogging the gutters, so by cutting them down, we are hoping they will bush out, and less "up". The last picture shows a window, that up until TODAY was unable to be opened so that room has been in darkness all week.

Mom and I bound and dragged all of the branches we cut down out to the curb for the pickup later this week.

A small recap of everything we accomplished this week:

Master and guestroom:

popcorn ceiling removed

primed and painted

new outlets/switches

new blinds

Master bedroom new ceiling fan installed

Outside bushes trimmed/removed

The final pic is of our ponytail palms out front, as we were leaving Dad said "take a pic of the ponytail palms, they're blooming". I know we still need to trim the other two, but they ponytail palm is pretty cute!

On to the next project...