July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
'Trading Spaces' overload (7/16/03)
Dear Reader
“You’ve been watching ‘Trading Spaces’ too much,” said Pam Brown in our Dunkirk office.
She’s probably right.
But another home improvement project had already been set in motion.
This time, it was the family room. We’ve liked the color on the walls for years, but we’ve never been happy with the way the color was accomplished. The room’s a deep green (not to everyone’s taste, I know), but we’ve tried two different wallpapers over the years and haven’t been satisfied.
Our old house has hot water heat, so it’s a little dry in the winter, not a friendly environment for wallpaper. Inevitably the seams and corners become more noticeable.
Paint seemed the best answer; and since Connie and Sally have had success with techniques like sponge painting in the past, that was the route we decided on.
Like most — no, all — home improvement projects at our house, this one took a little time to get off the ground. To the best of my recollection, the paint was purchased last fall. It didn’t make it on the walls until June.
Finally, with Sally gone for a couple of weeks, we decided to give it a go, dedicating a full weekend to it in true “Trading Spaces” style.
As anyone who has watched the popular HGTV show knows, the first step is to “clear the room.”
At our house, that’s no easy matter. There were magazines and catalogs to recycle, collections of stuff to be put away, paintings to be taken down from the walls, and heavy furniture to move. It all looks easy on TV, but in real life it’s tedious and makes a mess of the rest of the house. Getting the family room clear meant making the living room unlivable.
Eventually we were down to just a loveseat and a dry sink in the room, so we hauled them to the center and covered them with plastic.
The plan was to strip the wallpaper, prep the walls, lay down a base coat of a moss green, then go over the base coat with a sponge treatment of a spruce green.
Simple, right? But exhausting.
Most of a Saturday was consumed with stripping the old paper and cleaning the walls. On Sunday, after a second cup of coffee, we gave the walls one more serious cleaning. And after lunch we started painting. By 4 p.m., the base coat was done and looked great.
But the weekend was over, and two rooms of the house were still a mess.
Monday night, while I stayed out of the way, Connie started sponging on the second color. About an hour later, she decided she didn’t like it. I agreed. There was no point in messing up the green we liked.
So Tuesday night, with the project now running several days from its start, it was time to paint over the small section where the second color experiment was made.
By Wednesday night, with some strenuous exercise, the room was put back together.
It looks great, we think. But after all that effort, it’s almost exactly the same color we started with.
Pam’s right. We’ve been watching way too much “Trading Spaces.”[[In-content Ad]]
She’s probably right.
But another home improvement project had already been set in motion.
This time, it was the family room. We’ve liked the color on the walls for years, but we’ve never been happy with the way the color was accomplished. The room’s a deep green (not to everyone’s taste, I know), but we’ve tried two different wallpapers over the years and haven’t been satisfied.
Our old house has hot water heat, so it’s a little dry in the winter, not a friendly environment for wallpaper. Inevitably the seams and corners become more noticeable.
Paint seemed the best answer; and since Connie and Sally have had success with techniques like sponge painting in the past, that was the route we decided on.
Like most — no, all — home improvement projects at our house, this one took a little time to get off the ground. To the best of my recollection, the paint was purchased last fall. It didn’t make it on the walls until June.
Finally, with Sally gone for a couple of weeks, we decided to give it a go, dedicating a full weekend to it in true “Trading Spaces” style.
As anyone who has watched the popular HGTV show knows, the first step is to “clear the room.”
At our house, that’s no easy matter. There were magazines and catalogs to recycle, collections of stuff to be put away, paintings to be taken down from the walls, and heavy furniture to move. It all looks easy on TV, but in real life it’s tedious and makes a mess of the rest of the house. Getting the family room clear meant making the living room unlivable.
Eventually we were down to just a loveseat and a dry sink in the room, so we hauled them to the center and covered them with plastic.
The plan was to strip the wallpaper, prep the walls, lay down a base coat of a moss green, then go over the base coat with a sponge treatment of a spruce green.
Simple, right? But exhausting.
Most of a Saturday was consumed with stripping the old paper and cleaning the walls. On Sunday, after a second cup of coffee, we gave the walls one more serious cleaning. And after lunch we started painting. By 4 p.m., the base coat was done and looked great.
But the weekend was over, and two rooms of the house were still a mess.
Monday night, while I stayed out of the way, Connie started sponging on the second color. About an hour later, she decided she didn’t like it. I agreed. There was no point in messing up the green we liked.
So Tuesday night, with the project now running several days from its start, it was time to paint over the small section where the second color experiment was made.
By Wednesday night, with some strenuous exercise, the room was put back together.
It looks great, we think. But after all that effort, it’s almost exactly the same color we started with.
Pam’s right. We’ve been watching way too much “Trading Spaces.”[[In-content Ad]]
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