The remodel – slowly working on the little things

Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference. In our family room we had some old skylights in a large white frame, cut into the dark wood ceiling. I’ve always hated the clunky stark white framing around the skylights, which was very obvious against the old, dark wood.

Our original plan (which is probably still our long term plan) is to replace that white frame with wood slats to match the rest of the ceiling. But contractors don’t like bidding on unusual projects because they invariably take longer than expected, and John hasn’t had the time to do it himself. So we decided for now to just paint it dark brown to blend with the ceiling.

Meanwhile, the door going from this room into the garage was a harsh white. It was designed to be painted, and we just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. For months. (We had painted the wall around it, just not the door itself.) Why not? We didn’t have the paint, didn’t know what color to paint it…there were just a few too many little obstacles and we just hadn’t gotten around to it. If this door had been the only thing on our to-do list, no problem. One Saturday and we’re done. But we have hundreds of these kinds of little things to do in this house. How many years is 100 Saturdays?

Finally on a recent Friday night we stopped by Lowes, and I spent approximately one minute choosing a color that I thought would blend with the wood ceiling as well as complement the reddish brown tones of the floor, brick walls, and other red-brown items in that room.

In the past when I’ve needed to choose a paint color I’ve brought home dozens of paint color cards, which I’ve taped up around the house and contemplated for days on end. But we’re getting to be old hands at this, and weary of the whole thing. This time I picked a color without a moment’s deliberation and we bought a gallon on the spot. No messing around with sample-sized containers and coming back for more later, nope, not for us. Mix a whole gallon up now and we’re out of here.

The next day, John painted the door. Isn’t he cute? Lol. I love a man in a painting suit!

It looked a little purplish going on when it was wet, but it dried a nice rich brown. We used the same color as the door on the frame around the skylights.

We painted the interior of the shafts the same off-white beige tone as the room walls. You can’t see the color of the shafts in the previous picture because it’s washed out by the light from the skylights.

For this next picture I set the exposure as low as I could, so you can actually see the inside of the shafts. Taking pictures of skylights is not easy I’ve discovered!