Pain(t)

In a stunning cliffhanger, I mentioned in my last post that we finally hired someone to do the drywall finishing work for us: “They started today, so fingers crossed that we don’t regret it.” I know you were all waiting with baited breath to hear the results of our latest foray into subcontractor work. Wait no longer!

The final product was stunning, but as is our standard takeaway when working with subcontractors, it was a bit of a pain to get there. They started nearly a week late because their previous job took longer than anticipated. Once they finally started showing up, only 1-2 people showed up for a few hours and spent more time smoking than actually working (seriously… how does one person smoke a whole pack of cigarettes in 5 hours?). John started hassling the guy in charge and we finally got a full crew. While they were extremely capable, they often got lazy unless John was driving them. He did a thorough lap of the house and made them fix up spots before and after doing the final texture. In the end, our walls look beautiful; however, we again left it with the desire to avoid hiring people whenever possible.

John rigged up some classy cardboard ventilation to allow us to keep the house warm for the drywall finishing while protecting the final cover

We missed a light when putting up drywall. The finishing crew spotted the slight bulge right away, although we had a little trouble finding the exact location…

We decided to get knock-down texture everywhere. I was initially a little skeptical, since I was only accustomed to seeing texture on ceilings and the style is more prominent on the west coast. However, the slight texture makes it easier to hide seams, and – in my opinion – looks even better than smooth walls.

From there it was time to paint. In the interest of complete honesty, I have to admit that I hate painting. A lot. It’s boring, it’s tedious, and it hurts your arms, shoulders, and neck. However, nothing makes a house feel more complete than painted walls. We used 25 gallons of primer throughout the house, 15 gallons of white paint on the ceilings and closets, and 20 gallons of gray paint on the walls. At first, we taped corners where two different colors met, but it was slow and the wall texture cause the paint to seep through. So we quickly became experts (well, passable) at cutting the edges free-hand.

John using his hip to reduce shoulder stress while painting ceilings

Turns out John and I are too timid in our color selections. We decided to do all the walls in a light gray, and then use a slightly darker gray for some accent walls. When placed right next to each other, the difference between the two colors was obvious. However, once we actually painted a whole wall (and the color change happened at a corner), the difference just looked like the natural variation caused by the angle light hits each wall. So we spent extra time painting accent walls that are almost completely unnoticeable.

Regardless of our as-good-as-absent accent walls, the important thing is that it looks fantastic.

When painting on the white primed walls, the gray looked incredibly dark and had us a bit nervous…

…but the paint color looks so much lighter with everything done!

Can you spot our accent walls?