Category: DIY Projects

Good morning, dear friends! We have had two back-to-back snow days with an Arctic freeze welcoming in the month of February 2023!! The second for us this winter. Since I had the time and some paint left, I finished the baseboard moulding around the floor of the laundry area, so now that room is completely done!

But let’s take a look at where we started…

As some of y’all may know, when we bought this house here in North Texas in 2019, the whole thing was painted this taupe color. Even the ceilings were painted this color! I was happy to not have to paint upon moving in, but it’s too contemporary for me. Slowly, I have been going room by room and painting all of the rooms into a softer grey color, more of what I like.

The last home I lived in with my parents (1976-1987) was built with pecky cedar stacked logs. These logs were squared off, 8″ thick, and all of the walls inside that house were a dark rich reddish brown and when it was freshly oiled it was lovely!

I was okay with brown then because most of our rooms as my bedroom had big windows which let in a lot of light. I also didn’t know that I was affected by seasonal affective disorder (winter depression from lack of sunlight, for anyone who isn’t familiar with this term). I was always an outdoorsy kid, so it wasn’t a problem growing up. We were either at the beach on weekends (the four years in Hawaii during the 1970’s), I was cycling everywhere on weekends, plus I raised goats for milk so I was out milking them and soaking up sunshine daily. California is blessed with over 300 days of sunny skies each year, too. Great for keeping away the blues!

Here in our Texas home

We are surrounded by four oak trees and a fruitless pear, so it is fairly dark indoors most of the year. In winter, we have a lot of light because the leaves are down, but come spring, the leaves will magically appear and it’ll become a cave indoors.

Okay, and also my eyes and hair are brown (well… now silver and brown, lol!). And, I used to wear a lot of brown, but I am SO OVER brown. I wear a lot of color to combat the brown look. 😉

Repainting all of these walls to something lighter was a necessity for me. I have been painting with Valspar “Comet Dust,” which is a color I last used when we renovated the kids’ bathroom upstairs at our last home. We opened up the area between the vanity and the rest of the bathroom. You can find those two posts here and here.

“Comet Dust” is a pretty silvery grey with blue undertones, depending upon the light. It sparkles in the sunlight! I painted these walls in eggshell (Valspar 773956 eggshell here in Texas rooms; satin in California).

Here is our bedroom in progress. I pulled out our 12′ ladder to paint the ceilings then switched to a long broom handle and painted from the floor for the last of three coats of paint. The ceiling was sooo dry that it needed three coats to really cover the taupe and to get rid of any streaks in my painting skills. 😉

Painting the Skylight Chimney

This next photograph will show you the ladder I used to get up into this chimney area. Thank goodness this ladder Mr. Ethereal picked up a year ago at a Black Friday sale is super sturdy as I sat on its top to paint this small area’s insides. It is designed so you can do that, too, btw.

This ladder was also great for standing on and turning around as needed to scrape the old paint off the skylight. Those paint marks drove me crazy whenever I’d look up! Sorry, I am a perfectionist that way. 🙂

A little scraping, Windex and some paper towels took care of that. I just needed to have the right ladder to get it done. 😉

Werner Multi-Position Pro 375 lb. Ladder

This ladder is one of those ladders where you can extend it, you can use it as an A-frame (pictured here) or as an extension ladder all one length. It can shorten. It can bend into a 3-sided “box,” if you will, so you can stand on it. Also, you can put two of them near each other and run a board across to use as a scaffold. It is really multi-functional! WORTH the money. (*not sponsored, just like the product a lot.)

Lowe’s isn’t carrying the exact model anymore but I found this one and it close. Ours is made of aluminum and this type linked is made with fiberglass. Maybe there were problems with our model (?), but so far Hubby has used it fully extended to fix a light on the upper roofline of his mom’s new home (while she was gone over Christmas; I held the bottom but didn’t really need to), and we had no problems. Once locked in, it’s solid. I felt perfectly safe sitting on top of it. It didn’t wiggle at all, like our six-foot A-frame ladder does.

Overall, it took three weekends to paint the whole area, minus the doors which I will hopefully remove this spring and paint all of them outdoors with a sprayer.

You’d think a smaller area would take less time to paint? You’d be wrong on that thought. It takes the same amount of time to paint this as a larger box room because of either having to move things around or just maneuvering in tight spaces.

We didn’t move the washer or dryer out because the gas and water lines were fully hooked up and it’s a pain to re-install them. Especially the gas line! Just didn’t want to cause an issue or get sick from low-lying propane not getting out of the house.

I was really careful stepping around that yellow gas line and obviously when moving the ladder legs around it. 🙂

Our surprise score!

When my mother-in-law and I went thrift shopping for items for the Odd Fellows Poker Tournament gift baskets towards the end of November or early December, I found this hanging rack! Coincidentally, I found the exact same one at Lowe’s this past weekend for $25.99. Great score!!

Originally I thought about using it in our bedroom closet so hubby could hang all up all of his baseball caps, but then I realized I loved it for the laundry room. It is larger (wider) than the cheap metal one the previous owners left up and ever prettier. The other was more like a broom hanging rack, like you’d put up in your garage. Gag…

This one is a little more modern and it really pops against the light grey walls. I love it!!!

And yes it is brown. 😉

We are really happy with how the laundry room turned out. Just after I had painted the ceiling, Hubby commented how much brighter the whole room looked even then.

It really looks nice now!

And here is our laundry room all put back together. I love its fresh new look and its ethereal French paint job!

Thanks for stopping by today! Leave me a comment about how you liked this post, if you would. SYS will be up later today in our Double-Header Wednesday.

Now it’s game-on to the dining room!

Barb 🙂