Paint and Rain Don’t Mix

Paint and Rain Don’t Mix

It’s been a crazy week jumping from one project to another and making offers on 2 other properties. We started to paint the exterior and got rained out on day 2 of a 3 day rain. We did however get 2 coats on the eaves painted with Benjamin Moore’s Monroe Bisque.

Then we got 2 coats up on the body of Benjamin Moore Tate Olive before the rain started. We are doing a 4-color scheme here but the 2 additional colors are used sparingly on window screens and accents.

If you are ever painting and it starts to rain STOP immediately because the paint will not dry! I still have a day or so left on the trim and columns but it looks like we are due for a sunny week. The green body color came out sweet.

 

 

 

benjamin moore tate olive

 

was simultaneously spraying the interior trims and doors with High Gloss White. This is tricky business because you can’t have any runs but need complete coverage.

It’s very similar to painting a car (or in my case a beach cruiser frame with spray paint). Multiple thin coats is the trick. Halfway through the day the clouds rolled in and it started dumping so with the moisture in the air this paint just sat there wet and wanted to sag.

We quickly got lights and heaters to speed up the drying, whew, close call. So we are ready now to put the color on the walls, which I’ll cut in with a brush and roll soon.

New Paint

 

 

 

 

 

New Paint

We still haven’t pulled the trigger on cabinets yet. An old friend that I reunited with on Facebook this week has a cabinet shop in Houston and can order from several manufacturers and have them delivered right to our job site. I am choosing white shaker style cabinets from Woodmont called Hearthstone.

For the price that I would have gotten cheap Ikea cabinets I can have these better white maple ones. The cabinets might take 2 weeks to arrive so in the meantime I’ll tile the bathrooms.

I finished all the hardibacker floors and shower walls since it was raining so I’m ready to tile now. We finally decided to go with 18” travertine on the floors but white subway tile for the tub surround and shower with glass tile accents we found online.

There’s a great site called glasstilestore.com that offers free shipping on some items in case you want some glass tile for a backsplash or accents.

Hall Bath

 

 

 

 

 

Hall Bath

Gettin’ there

Gettin’ there

The interior is nearing completion. I finished the trim carpentry this week, hanging doors for the pantry and laundry & putting in the kitchen baseboards to match the existing ones. Inside the kitchen pantry I made some custom shelves as well.

The baseboards are 1 x 8 pine with a shoe molding. All the original trims had to be sanded and primed with oil base, as they were originally oil-based paint. If you’ve ever tried to paint oil based trim in an old house with latex, you know how it will just peel right off.

I like the Zinnser oil based primer product better than Kilz. It’s extremely difficult to work with, you have to slop it on, move fast smoothing it out and don’t go back over old work.

All that’s left now are all the windows and casements which are extremely flaky, this is going to take a lot of prep work this week to smooth them out and get them in primer. I just passed the 8-week mark for this project, looks like about 1-2 more weeks and the inside will be done.

I’m still on track with the budget however I’m expecting to go a little over on landscaping and the rear deck. I’m not too worried though as the neighborhood comps are showing that my original sales target price was conservative a bit so I’ll list now for $19,000 higher than initially planned.

Sage Green Kitchen!

Sage Green Kitchen!

We got the A/C roughed in this week, it has all new ducts and we relocated the furnace up into the attic. After a couple of tries we also nailed down the paint color for the kitchen.

It’s a Benjamin Moore color called Spring Valley but we went to Home Depot and had them match it in Behr because we would never pay $50 for a gallon of paint. As we said before, we really want to do something different with this house since it’s a 1920s bungalow.

By using green in the kitchen it gives it a more authentic 20’s feel and the color turned out exactly as we’d hoped. We went with the white cabinets that have some glass front doors and fluted lines.

We got most of the upper cabinets hung on the wall and started on the lowers as you can see in the picture, it’s starting to look really cool. Keep in mind that we’re going to refinish the original long leaf pine floors in the kitchen.

We’re thinking of using black granite on the counter tops and stainless appliances. White appliances would probably look really good and more period-correct but most buyers today are still looking for stainless.

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