Post 18: Dining Room Part 6 -- Prime and Paint

Today, we'll show you how we finished up the dining room project!

We left off with a textured room.

To finish the room, we needed to prime and paint everything.  Alan started by ensuring that all holes and seams in the trim were patched and sanded and then we got to taping the room.

We bought a paint sprayer and wanted to try it out by priming the room with it.  To do this, we needed to make sure EVERYTHING was covered that shouldn't be painted -- including the entries to the room.

We taped the window and the floors really well.

Here are a few last looks at the unpainted trim:

I wish I could have gotten pictures to help describe the paint-spraying process, but the room was sealed off and I didn't want to ruin my camera!  Alan filled the sprayer with primer (he did this several times to coat the room) and slowly walked around the room, coating each wall.  He wore long sleeves, long pants, a hat, and a mask to keep the paint off of him and out of his lungs.  After about 15 minutes, the room was coated!  Not bad to paint a whole room!

The weight of the paint did pull down some of the plastic on the windows, so we got some over-spray, but this came off easily with a blade.

We sure are glad we hung the tarps, though!!

There was a little white mist for a few minutes after Alan sprayed the room with paint, but after that settled, the room looked so clean and bright!

It was so clean that we though about leaving it white... for about 2 seconds!

On to painting!  We started by painting the trim a glossy white.

These pictures serve as proof that I really do help with projects (and apparently didn't brush my hair)!

After the trim was painted, we let that dry before beginning to paint the walls and the ceiling.

We knew we would use the same beige on the walls of this room that we had used in our bedroom -- Sherwin Williams Kilim Beige.  For the ceiling, though, we wanted to do something a little bolder.

We took the same Sherwin Williams paint swatch that we used for our living room and moved one color darker from Rainwashed to Quietude.

It looked so dark when I first started painting...

...but as it started to dry, I knew I would love it!

On to paint the walls!  Alan had been working outside all day while I was painting the room.  He was so great to come in after a long day and finish up the ceiling and the walls!

Remember this?  We started out with a ceiling fan, mirror, doors, and old blinds in our dining room...

...and ended up with our biggest transformation yet!

(Don't mind our table and chairs -- that's a project for another time!!)

I love it!  Now we have a place that we are proud to bring our guests.  What do you think?

Now that our dining room is complete, we were ready to move back to the kitchen to tackle one of our biggest annoyances.  What is it?  Find out here!

Post 17: Dining Room Part 5 -- Texture

Texturing.

We've only had one experience with it so far -- read more about it in our entryway post!  With as much wallpaper as we have in our house, though, I think we will get pretty good at it!

After pulling down the wallpaper in our dining room, we were ready for our second texturing project.  We didn't want to get texture on anything but the upper half of the wall, hence, our funny tape, newspapers, and drop cloths everywhere.  These helped tremendously!

Alan mixed the mud to a milkshake consistency and then used the hopper that my dad loaned us to get to texturing!

In about 10 minutes, the job was done!

It's hard to see, but the walls are textured in this picture.  You can see the drop cloth on the left pulled away a little because of the weight of the mud.

Here's another view.  The chandelier is wrapped up because we were getting ready to prime the whole room.

Next, we'll show you how Alan used his paint sprayer to prime everything but the floor (and most of the window)!  Click here for the details!

Thanks for visiting!

Post 16: Dining Room Part 4 -- Crown Molding

Today's post is a short one.  After installing beadboard on the ceiling in the dining room, we had to add the remaining molding in the room, fill the nail holes and seams, and sand to get ready to paint.  Below is a reminder of our starting point with the room and where we left off:

Alan and I started by installing crown molding to cover the edges of the beadboard.  

When we priced the molding, we saw how this could quickly become a HUGE expense, so we used a trick we learned on Pinterest to make our molding look a little bigger -- we took a piece of half round molding and installed it a few inches below the crown molding.

Once the molding was nailed into place, we filled the seams and nail holes with caulk and then got to sanding everything.

To see more on crown molding, check out our master bedroom project!

Sanding above your head is NOT fun...

...and it takes FOREVER!!!

But I'm glad we did it.  This step was going to make painting look so much better!

Our next step was to texture the top half of the walls where the molding was so that we could move on to painting.

Here are a few more views of the room before we textured:

Getting closer -- read more on texturing and painting here!