First Impressions

Now that the house in Florida has sold, I wanted to devote the next couple of blog posts to the changes it has experienced in the last 2 years.  I have attempted to bring it out of the 80’s.

Previously, I shared with you the kids bathroom project.  The house was previously owned by a sweet older couple in their 70’s. The whole house had a warm comforting grandma feel.  However, I am not that old and the wallpaper had to go!

We all know that the entry to our home sets the tone for the entire house. The before picture above is from the house listing when we purchased it.  I had not taken pictures of this area until we were moving out (note the room on the right that is full of boxes).  To the foyer I did the following:

1. Remove wallpaper
2. Paint
3. Resealed the tile grout
4. Painted the trim

The wallpaper was the first thing to go.  After trying some of the chemicals and online ideas with little success, I opted to use a steam wallpaper remover to loosen all of the glue.  It was not overly difficult, just time-consuming. It was the best $60 I could have spent.  With the amount of wallpaper in the house, the chemicals would have cost me much more.

Removing the wallpaper did cause a little damage to the wall surface.  I used drywall mud to smooth out the surface before priming and painting the walls.  The light gray is the same gray used throughout the house, including the kids bath.

After tackling the walls, I realized how bad the grout was.  I did not change the tile, but did recolor the grout.  I used a grout refresh that not only sealed the grout but also changed the color.  This was much easier than I realized and we were able to complete the task in one afternoon.

This left me with fresh clean walls and floors, but I had dark trim.  The entire house had real wood baseboards and trim. On the advice of our realtor, I did paint them a bright white.  I began this task with a ton of reservation.  This was a monstrous task and the carpet throughout the house did not make it any easier. My research showed there was two ways to go about this option 1 – clean with mineral spirits or 2 – sand.  I realized there was no way I could sand all the grooves in the baseboards so I cleaned them all with mineral spirits.  Each area required three coats of paint with primer included.  Four gallons of paint later and more hours than I can count, the job was finished.

I was amazed at the difference the paint made. It made the entire house look so much cleaner.  I regretted not doing it sooner. When we moved out, I noticed that anywhere the furniture bumped the trim while moving out, the paint came off.  The lesson I took away was while white baseboards are pretty. It requires a lot of work and should be sanded.  The mineral spirits just did not do the job.