We've been in our house for just over a year, and we hadn't done any major home improvements because we were overwhelmed at the size of the house, and what to do about all the honey oak in the house that made it so dark and dated. Should we paint with colors that would go with it, tone it down, re-stain it to a darker color, tear it all out and start with something new, or paint it all white? Whatever we would decide to do, it would be a lot of work! There is so much woodwork in this house! So we delayed, we avoided making a decision, because we couldn't decide what to do, and weren't looking forward to all that work.
M finally forced us to make a decision. She decided over Labor Day weekend, that we were just going to commit, rent giant ladders and start painting the biggest room, and get it over with. So we rented two ladders (14' and 12') and did a three day intense marathon paint. We painted seventeen foot walls in the main room and front entry, tricky angles over the stairs and an art wall, plus a seventeen foot wall of doors and windows. Even then, we didn't finish painting. We got all the really high walls done, then I spent most of my free time for the next couple weeks finishing the lower parts and all the white trim.
We decided to paint the walls a light gray to lighten up the room, and began painting most of the woodwork white. So all the trim around the windows and doors, and the baseboards, went white. We're waiting to hear back from professional wood refinishers about staining the stairs, spindles, and bannisters, because we know that job is beyond our skill set. We're hoping to match the stairs to the cherry floors elsewhere in the house.
Eventually we plan to rip out the rug in this big main room and put down wood floors to match the other floors in the house.
So we're getting there, and next I will begin working on all the other downstairs rooms to update the paint colors and update other features of the house, now that the worst job is out of the way.
