No More Purple Walls

There has been a lot changing in the house this spring and summer. This spring, I finally got on the ball about finishing the removal of, and refinishing the hall-way closet that I had knocked out in November of 2015 when we couldn't get our couch down the basement stairs.

The original hallway and closet, as well as the purple fireplace wall.

My handiwork to
open up the closet so you could get furniture down the stair easier.

Looking at the opened wall from the basement stairs.

This May, we hired a local contractor to finish removing the closet, add a recessed light, and re-drywall and texture the new alcove.

We also asked them to take out this beam that "separated" the dining room from the kitchen.

As it turned out, that beam was housing some electrical wires running into the garage, although I never found out exactly what their purpose was. So, to stabilize that partial half-wall that houses ductwork (and has the refrigerator and kitchen on the other side), they built it the rest of the way up to the ceiling. Thankfully, they were able to also run those random electrical wires up through the new wall into the attic and back over to the garage to continue serving their purpose.

By the way, this is the basement couch that started the entire tearing out and remodel project. Even though the couch comes apart, there was one piece that would not fit around the corners and down the stairs without taking out that closet wall. Jason and our friend, Shaun, spent a few hours trying very hard, and even took off the entire basement door frame, hand-rails, etc. in their efforts. Not to mention the times Jason and I tried by ourselves to bend the couch around and down the corner into the basement door. That should be a lesson to everyone to measure furniture, and every travel path in your house, before buying furniture, just to make sure it will fit.

The former closet and now finished alcove, which so far we have really liked. I have plans for coat hooks and a little shoe-holding bench to go there.

The finished beam removal and wall partition, which we think makes the living and dining rooms look and feel bigger. You can also see the end wall which I have primed, again covering up another shade of purple. We haven't picked out a color for that wall yet.

Sometime prior to the contractors starting work, I painted the purple fireplace wall a dark gray. This picture, I believe also shows the new color of the living room and hallway walls. They, too, were a purple, though much lighter than the fireplace wall. I just finished painting them a week ago and they are now a very light, light, gray - almost white, but not. It makes the hallway and living room look much brighter.

This is the mostly finished, newly painted hallway. My friend, Shannon, came over and helped me prime the hallway and living room, which was a HUGE help. I was not looking forwards to painting all of this area by myself, as I had just finished painting the upstairs guest room which took a while.

The original colors of the guest room were two shades of purple/periwinkle.

I changed it to a light gray on top and the fireplace dark gray on the bottom. I used these two colors because I had them leftover from painting the office room and fireplace wall.

Trying to do stripes on a textured wall is not fun. I probably would not have done the two colors, and the stripes, if I didn't have so much dark gray paint leftover. (I still don't know why I bought an entire gallon of the dark gray paint when I did the fireplace - I should've realized I only needed a quart!)

The light gray in the guest room was leftover from painting the office room. This room was originally a dark-ish green with all the critters on the wall. It took two coats of primer and two coats of paint to cover all that up and not still have shadows of animals haunting you from every wall!

The new office room color. We also changed the light fixture which really brightened up the room. There is now so much light in there! That is also in part to getting rid of the room-darkening curtains. We got a new curtain rod to replace the plastic one, and so far only have sheers hung in there. Getting real curtains is a loooong way down the road right now. But, with the sheers, people can't see into our house from the road which was something that bothered me.

The other side of the office room. We actually hung things on the walls! So far, this is the only room that I feel is "finished," aside from organizing and putting things away.

That about finishes up the first 2 "segments" of our house re-modeling program. I, and Jason, are glad to not have any more purple walls, although our bedroom is still purple. I think I might wait and tackle changing that color next year. Our next segment involves the kitchen, which I will work on posting about next.