Painting Party!!!

We had several friends come out to help, not many with prior painting experience but hey... no complaining about free labor. We managed to paint about 75% of the interior walls.

So here are some pictures after day one:

One idea that we had was to paint one of the walls facing the kitchen as a chalkboard.

After lots of pressure from our friends, we decided to make it a magnetic wall too! I do think it turned out pretty well, though the paint kind of went on a bit like tar. Not much fun to wash off.

In the end we wished we were able to smooth out the wall texture first and that maybe the 'magnetic-ness' was a bit stronger. We are only able to get thin magnets to work but it is still a neat feature. We use it for grocery lists, notes and occasionally for our friends to let out some of their imagination and creativity.

And here are some pictures after day two:

First thing is first

So first thing is first, do we paint or do we redo those horrible floors? Painting the whole house is a daunting thought so who better to help us out than some good friends who want some free food and drinks. Maybe drinks afterwards... 

We decided painting first, so then if things get a bit messy it won't be a total loss, since the floors need to be sanded and re-stained anyway. Boy are we glad that we made THAT choice. 

One nagging thought though, what is under the linoleum in the kitchen? Not that brown square linoleum isn't Gorgeous... Crossing our fingers that we find some of the original hardwood floors that we fell in love with.

No such luck...particleboard...Particleboard? Particleboard?! For serious? 

Half of the boards came up WITH the linoleum! Ugh. So there goes an extra couple hundred bucks to put in new floors.

You can also see some of the work done by our flooring guys to replace the ...ahem... particleboard. They did a pretty good job at matching the original floors. Lets hope the stain color looks as good.

Kitchen SketchUp Color Schemes

This post is meant to act as sort of a tweener; to be a follow up to the painting update post, but with enough new stuff to warrant its own. We had forgotten to mention how we arrived at the decision of what color to paint.

As we are fairly indecisive when it comes to color, Brian mocked up the kitchen in the 3d modeling program SketchUp, and rendered a variety of options, which are shown below:

Option 1. Existing cabinets, black counters, paint color: blue

 Option 2. Existing cabinets, black counters, paint color: magenta

 Option 3. Grey lower cabinets, white counters, paint color: orange

Option 4. Grey lower cabinets, white counters, paint color: green

So, which one is your favorite..?

Option 1 is what we liked the best (for now), while option 4 is we think we ultimately want to be. We both really like the look of the grey cabinets, paired with the espresso floor, grounding the space, while the white, doorless uppers vertically lengthen it; see below for an idea we've seen:

 SketchUp proved to be a valuable design tool, as it allowed us to explore a variety of options quickly and visualize the final product.

So, what tools do you use, and how can they make your DIY jobs easier?