The 2015 spring redecoration projects are underway

Joe has been staying for a few days last week and this week as he has painted our hallway. The hall is a big job: we think that it hasn’t been touched decoratively speaking since the house was built back in 1991. It has 13 doors all except one of which have now been repainted, and that meant lots of architraves to do as well, plus all the skirting. The ceiling had to be done first and needed three coats. The walls need four - a sealer over the wallpaper, and then three top coats.It should have been two, but read on for why three was the magic number ...

Joe gets to work doing the scotia first. You can see how dingy the cupboard doors look and the wallpaper is a grey-blue.

Joe did the ceiling on his own, but given the woodwork was such a mammoth task, I did the skirtings and some of the doorframes. Getting three coats on plus sanding prior to each coat took a lot longer than painting the ceiling, that is for sure! The third coat was finished this Monday, and Joe went on to putting the sealer on the walls. I did fear for his life given how horribly SMELLY that stuff is! We had as much ventilation going as possible without letting the fumes into the lounge, kitchen or bedrooms, but I still made sure Joe wore a mask and also went outside to breathe clean air every 10 minutes or so.

Once he was done, we set up a fan in the hallway blowing down to the open front door. Surprisingly, the fumes dissipated quite quickly – when I’d first smelled it, I had planned to call Bruce and Gary to request sanctuary at their place for us all overnight. However it proved not to be necessary.
 
Dee, my lovely sister,  had arrived on Monday for a couple of days, and hadn’t brought painting clothes – good job, as it meant I could legitimately bow out of the work once the woodwork was complete and I'd put back all the door handles. So off she and I went to buy plants and paint. Our friend Joy had popped in to see us and told me that Gus Evans had miniature lilacs on sale – it had to be done and we bought daisy bushes as well for the driveway.

Purchasing the paint for the hall and sun room was next – ten litres of low sheen Otorohanga Quarter. The first coat gave me a fright - it wasn't as buttery a colour as I had seen with the test pot - we decided that was probably the effect of the grey/blue wallpaper beneath it showing through. So the second coat was to be the test. That improved things but we decided that a third coat would be required to totally remove any thought/hint/possibility/hallucination of a greenish tinge. After all, I was wanting a buttery yellow, not a lemony one.  

OK, I have to confess that I had been dithering about what colour to use, but last week I consulted Joe and Rob when he was here gardening. The hallway has very little direct natural light and needs to be lifted by its colour scheme. It also needs to flow well with the other rooms that open off it, particularly the lounge and kitchen. Even part way through the painting job, we had noticed that the bright vivid white of the skirtings and doors made its presence felt (they have been transformed from what was white originally, I guess, but has looked decidedly dingy brown), so I was looking forward to seeing the pale yellow with it.

So it is now completed - Joe got the third coat on the walls this morning and this afternoon we removed all the masking tape, did the touch-ups, and got the furniture back in place with bookcases and hall-stand screwed back into the walls (earthquake measures). Then up went the paintings and ornaments, and now it looks absolutely fabulous.

It's all back together. Chickens have been relocated to the hallway, paintings are up and the whole thing looks cheery.

The hall stand contrasts wonderfully with the light colours.

We love how the Michael Smither prints look on the way to the kitchen.

The colour is not what I would have selected - it is definitely more lemony than the buttery colour I expected from the test pot colour, but it totally works! All of the paintings we have put back up have sprung to life against the new backdrop - they just pop. And the amount of light generated by the white and the yellow is amazing. We love it!!

Next job is the sunroom, and Joe is coming back to do that in a week or so.

Once that's done it'll be time for new carpet throughout the house ...