Dining room paint. Ahhhhh.

One sizable house project I wanted to get done while Drew was away racing the Transylvania Epic was painting the dining room.

Here are some before pictures of the dining room.   

November 2005, shortly after I moved into Drew's house. Holy hell! Look at that hideous wallpaper border, the bachelor bike storage, grandma loveseat, ridiculous glass dining room table, and the blow up monkey for heaven's sake!! (I loved that monkey, though, and the dining room table was mine, so I have to take responsibility for that.) Wow.

The only cool thing about the before pictures is the nice bikes. And the fact that this no longer exists.

 

Drew did the hard work of peeling the wallpaper border off in March 2007. Seriously ugly border.

So from 2007 to 2010, we had semi-gloss cool white walls and glossy white ceiling with a band around the top where the paint was less faded because of the border.  There was no lack of holes and scuffs from an estimated 20 years of living since the last paint job.

During the summer of 2010 while the nightmare of our home addition was being constructed, we ran off to Europe (for a bike race, what else?) and meanwhile, the general contractor taped plastic to the ceiling, walls, and floor between the old kitchen and dining room. Drew changed it to a contractor-grade barrier when we returned...

Looking toward what would be the new kitchen in July 2010. Dining room bay windows on the right. And yes, that is a microwave on the right.

...but not before sticky duct tape residue adhered itself to the ceiling and walls and took off the finish on the floor. That left us with a gray sticky line and really banged up walls. I had not been in a hurry to paint because we intend to strip the white paint off the woodwork, which would be better to do before painting, but my psychological well being was suffering every time I looking into the dining room.  It was time for paint.  A few months ago we had a dry wall guy patch the worst of the holes left from moving lighting fixtures.  There were a few more holes to patch and I had to do something about the thick duct tape residue.

The line of grayish yellow duct tape residue runs on the ceiling from the doorway to the upper right corner of this photo. Lovely. I had already tried sandpaper, mineral spirits, rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover, Goo Gone, and mayonnaise(!) to remove the residue.  I finally just scraped off as much residue as I could with a razor blade.  

Getting ready to paint. Old shiny white on old shiny white.  Max is prepared to help.

Max decided painting was too hard and instead discovered a cave underneath the plastic covering the couch.

Some progress.  Here the creamy butter color is cut in and the flat dover white is done on the ceiling. The butter color is in this photo is the best respresentation of how the final color actually looks.

I gave up three gorgeous May afternoons and a couple of social engagements to do it, but now it is done, calming, and beautiful.

The duct tape residue line is only visible to Drew and me because its location is burned into our retinas.  If you know where to feel for it, the ceiling has a bit more texture along that line too.

The dining room will stay this way until we attempt to strip the woodwork.  That might be a while.

One more time now. Before:

 And after:

After is better!