Green Acres Weekend Update

Although the bulk of our renovations have been put on hold until Other House sells, there comes a time when staring at dingy, trimless, off-white walls begins to tamper with one's sanity.  So even though there's a possibility that our plumbing supply lines will need to be replaced, I threw caution to the termites this week and began to paint.  At this point, patching a hole or two that the plumber leaves is about as frightening as a housecat.  I just want a home, and winter is the perfect time to paint.

Prior to moving to Green Acres, Byron and I had renovated and decorated two houses...though not quite to this extreme.  We've (I've) chosen some, um, interesting colors, and we've both gone from a very modern taste in furniture and decor to appreciating a more eclectic mix of antiques, original photography, and a touch of modern.  Both time and experience have guided us in choosing colors and making renovation decisions much more carefully this time around than we have in the past, so that in the end, we hopefully won't be paying for our mistakes...aestetically or fianancially.

As of this morning, the parlor is almost compeletely painted.  We chose a shade of deep red, and happened to have an extra can each of both red paint and gray primer that we'd bought last year for a project that didn't happen.  I took the paint back to its place of purchase and had them shake it up for me, and was told that it should be fine as long as it hadn't been frozen.  Since we've always kept our paint indoors, that wasn't a problem.  The problem with red, however, is that the primer needs to be either pink or gray, and it takes about two applications of the final coat to achieve appropriate coverage.  True, there are paints out there now that combine paint and primer into one with the promise of one application...even for red.  My brother and sister-in-law were sucessful with this.  But since we had the paint on hand already, it semed wasteful not to use what we had.

This area was gutted a few moths ago due to extensive termite damage.

The benefit to having ripped up your trim in order to remove and re-install your floors: little to no edging!

We also made another big decisioin this week.  Remember the photo of the dining room I posted before Christmas?  We're going to make that room the study and use the sunroom - which is now our study, playroom, and homeschool room - the dining room.  Both are right off the kitchen, and we've congragated to the sunroom because it was virtiually the only living space in the house that hadn't somehow been damaged and because it has wonderful views of the orginal farm.  I'll post a photo when it's a bit less cluttered.

Decisions, decisions...more to come on color choices and I'll also be researching environmentally friendly paint!