THEHAWKINSHOUSE.NET

It has been an unusually full couple of weeks. We have gotten to spend time every single day with good friends from near and far. All the visits and activity just seem to have converged at once! As we are heading into Thanksgiving this week, I am feeling very thankful for so many good friends and family that can fill up a couple of weeks so completely! Winning the prize for longest distance traveled were Kirk, Jenny and Sadie who were in town from Hawaii. Ali and I are very excited to return the favor and go visit them in a couple of weeks. Sadie and Ali were born one week apart, so Jenny and I went through pregnancy and early motherhood together. Obviously, we are now bonded for life through those experiences!

After a year and a half apart, it was fun to see Sadie and Ali together again.

Ali was fascinated by Sadie’s long beautiful hair, and Sadie loved Ali’s toy train.

I feel so blessed not only to have many friends who I feel very close to and loved by, but also that Ali is already learning  how to be a friend too.

Amy

You know how it is with any project. When you think you are 90% done, you are really about 50% done. The finish work and touch ups can go on for quite a while. We spent most of the last three days hanging out with friends, but in between we worked on those finishing touches. I expect we will be working on finishing this project into next year, but I am putting my “after” photos out there today anyways because it would be ridiculous to wait until we are actually completely done.

Everyone who has come into our house has commented on how much more bright and open it feels with the light (let’s face it, white) paint. While we agree that it is brighter in the room with the new lights and paint, the main contributor to the open feeling is that several pieces of furniture are still in the garage. In the meantime, we are loving our new curtains and chandelier, and also the mirror that Matt gave a fresh coat of paint.

Since we did not repaint our living room, it looks a lot more finished with new curtains and throw pillows!

And life is back to normal because Ali’s toys are accessible again. They may not be all that stylish, but to me they make the room feel complete.

Still to come, eventually – finish the second coat of cutting in way up at the highest most inaccessible points, replace the baseboards that Nala ate when we first got her, and maybe even paint some of the furniture which is still residing in the garage.

Amy

The primer layer in our dining room is complete. We still don’t have a paint color picked out. We do know with some confidence that it won’t be one of these.

The are the three testers of color that we bought today and we did not like any of them on the wall. We will try again tomorrow. It is a  pain to paint those big walls and we really want to try to get the color we want right.

Since talk of risk, VOCs, sustainability and other such topics are part of my daily life at work, I really wanted to get low VOC paint. I had planned on it with some certainty. That quest turned a shopping trip that should have lasted about 1 hour this morning into a 4 hour event. It was not successful.

I had looked up paint in Consumer Reports. Not only did they provide rankings from their tests, but they also provide the stated VOC levels. Most paints have the Cal EPA maximum concentration, those that had significantly less I counted as low VOC.  The first low VOC paint on the list (highest ranked) cost double what others cost. The next low VOC paint on the list is not carried anywhere in our area. We went to a retailer for the next one down, and were disapointed by the 5 cans of paint on the shelf and few color options. The next one down the list said it performed very badly (full black circle) for mildew and mold. That is not going to work for us.

At that point we gave up, went to our local big box home improvement warehouse and picked up our paint samples. Definitely disappointing, but I can only push these things so far.

Here is the end of the day photo from Day 2.

Primer – isn’t it beautiful?

Amy

PS, I am concerned that the photos of the final result may not be all that spectacular. Don’t be disapointed when it is pretty much paint on walls with our same light fixtures and everything – we are enjoying our project, but this ain’t HG TV.