A Fireplace Painted, a Media Room Reborn

Last week, we bought paint at the Benjamin Moore place over in McLean.  Our colors we chose for the den are the Ruby Dusk (henceforce, referred to as RD) color we used as a 'pop' color in the New Space, and 2 colors that are really close together on the Ben Moore Palette one called Twisted Oak Path (henceforce, referred to as TOP), which we used in the foyer and hallway, and the other called Marble Canyon (henceforth, referred to as MC), which we used in the Dining room cove space and the wall of the peninsula in the Kitchen.  Our vision (after much deliberation) was to paint the wood paneled walls MC in a flat latex, the wall behind the sofa and on the wall where the TV nook is RD also in a flat latex, finally on the blah brick fireplace, we would us a satin semi-gloss finish of the TOP color.  Now, I am really not a fan of painted brick, especially when it's interesting brick, but our fireplace was placed in the corner of the room, so it's not a focal point and never can be, and while we use it occasionally, its a highly inefficient gas fireplace that we will have to replace eventually, and it's really hard to light...so it's practically unused.

We spent all day on Saturday painting, M focussed on the fireplace because it had to be primed first, and I started on the walls.  We finished up at about 5pm and went to a neighborhood party.  It was a Miami themed party replete with Cuban food and a Latin jazz combo!  They even played my favorite "Girl from Ipanema"!  

I bailed on church on Sunday, thinking that Providence would forgive me because I had a goal in mind...even though I was working on a Sabbath.  I was able to finish the walls and apply a first coat to the fireplace before noon when M got home.  After lunch (a squash and pepper fritata with the last squashes and peppers from the garden this year :-( [sniff]  ), M went to work on a second coat on the fireplace and I spot painted and started putting the speakers and the room back together.  One caveat that I didn't discover until I was about half way done with the fireplace, the guy a Ben Moore's mixed up the paint can tops, and he put the TOP lid on the MC, and the MC lid on the TOP can.  So our fireplace is actually MC and the wood paneled walls are TOP, the colors are so close that it's not a huge deal, certainly not enough to redo it.

Follow me downstairs and I'll show you:

This is heading down to the den from the hallway.  Monday night I covered the speaker wires in an ivory colored wire-concealer that blends fairly well with the TOP, so the wires are sort of hidden now.  I have pics of that below.

That's the stairwell down into the den, and part of the RD wall.

This was taken Monday night after I'd put the speaker wire in a concealer, no dangling wires, however when I removed the tape that I'd been holding up the speaker wire with it pulled the paint off the white trim, so I'll need to do some touch up on the trim.  You can tell how close these colors are here.  The MC is a fraction darker than the TOP, the only bummer to me is that I really wanted the brick in a semi-gloss instead of a flat paint.  Oh well.  The mantel came off really easily, it was held on by that bevelled strip you see below.  M wants to stain it and polyurethane it.

Here's the wall behind the sofa in the RD color.  I really like this color, it's bold and warm.  The windows are currently covered by dirty, dated vertical blinds.  Our next BIG chore is to order wooden blinds and get rid of these hideous things.  Eventually, we need to do something with this couch, but it's ok for now.  M cleaned it really well after the construction was done.  We want to replace the cushion and pillow fabric with something less "southwest-y".

That box below in the corner is our electrical junction box.  I wanted it to be the RD color so it wouldn't draw as much attention to itself.  I am going to hide the wires on the other side of the room tonight.

Finally, heres our TV in its nook.  The room is still not 100% put together, of course.  As I said the wires are going to be concealed tonight.  We still need to install the quarter round to finish the floors (there goes another Saturday!). But we feel like we're over the hump now, that the painting is done downstairs.

We'll that's all for now. Have a great week eer-one!

S'all for now,

cc

Finished Fireplace

Alan stopped by yesterday and finished the Slate fireplace surround.  He installed a tile topper that I'll tru to show in the next picture.

That's not a great shot but you can kind of get the schmoo. 

He added a final coat of a finishing compound, that gave the whole thing a unified sheen.  It's lovely.

Thoughts?

cc

Crouching Ardvaark, Hidden Wombat

Hey folks. I know it's been awhile.  We've been on vacation, and I am finishing up a course at our local community college...time is precious.  So I won't waste your time either.

We received the bamboo flooring from Lumber Liquidators the weekend  before Labour Day, and we journeyed all the way out to Chantilly to get it..packed a lunch and everything!  It's  really close in color to the red oak floors we have. 

M was absolutely convinced that we could do it ourselves, and I sort of believed him.  We lacked mitre saw and a table saw, and the know-how and what not, but that wasn't going to stop us from trying.  Actually we'd bought the mitre saw for  the base of the wall unit so we had one of those, the table saw was purchased last Friday night on a desperate foray to Home Depot...another Ryobi product...only $114, and I still have all my digits, so it must be ok.

Saturday it took us all day long to get the area prepped and ready to go for the install.  I had to dissasemble all the A/V stuff down there and keep it safe until we were done.  M and I had to clean, and move all the furniture and boxes out of there except the sectional, which would have been a screaming horror to move.

After we actually started we did have to make one final trip to Home Depot to buy a $12 rubber mallet, which we forgot we needed until we'd started...at 4pm on Saturday.

Below is the lovely green and black laminate flooring which is probably the original 1955 floor finish.  Yecch.  The previous home owner had covered it with a carpet remnant and it was passably ok to look at if you didn't look closely.

The blue stuff is called Quiet Step, its' made from 'recycled materials' (prolly old Pampers and used Kleenex!), it's about a 1/3 of an inch thick and a bitch to  unroll and cut (a working box cutter would have helped but we didn't want to make another trip to Home Depot).

Here's the first box of planks, the rubber mallet really made things cruise.

I think this is around box 4.  We were really getting the hang of it.

The area behind the pantry/closet area were tricky.  It all ended up looking ok, and it's behind a door, no one will look too closely.

Around box 6 or 7 we had to move the first part of the sectional to the other side.

This was about box 8 or so.  It was 8:30pm.  We broke for dinner, and had two tough steaks and a baked potato each.  All that chewing revived us. 

After dinner we had to move the other sectional to the done side of the room.  Our friend Bobby and Marti Brom (along with son Carson and friend, Colonel Tim) dropped by and offered Apple Crisp and lots of encouraging words. 

Nearly done here, it was about 10pm, at this point. 

Cutting to Chase.  We finished at midnight.  M was concerned that the saws were making too much noise, and we were pretty much toast.  All that lifting,  crouching, sawing, hammering, etc, had this 47 year old carcass a'hurtin.

This bit won't show, because it will be behind the TV, but it still looks good!

Cut to Sunday afternoon.  We get it all back together, mostly.  M used a co-workers' shop vac and went over every inch of the couch.  I put our A/V system back together, and [sniff] put our 46" Samsung LCD HGTV back in it's rightful place.  The rug is a family piece that is on loan to us for the last few years from M's brother in law, I have always liked it, but I think it goes down here fairly well.

The next BIG project is painting, we're going to bring some of the colors upstairs, downstairs, and try to jazz it up in here.

Thoughts?

S'all for now.

cc

The Slate is partially installed

Alan brought Duke the tile guy from outer darkness Virginia, over to do the slate surround yesterday.  It isn't finished but you can tell that it's coming together.  It's different than I pictured it but we like it. 

I didn't picture the slate as being 1 inch thick slabs.  It was the one thing we didn't see a drawing of before hand.  Its still unfinished, but there will be another piece at the top.  Currently theres a brace up there to keep the pieces together.

You like?

Thoughts?

We're headed to Seattle to visit our buds Kurt and Craiggers.  We'll be back on Tuesday.

Chat laters, taters.

Cc