Mauve Madness - A Painting Story

I have a love/hate relationship with interior painting. I enjoy being able to completely transform the feel of a space with color and also the satisfaction of doing some work that requires a little bit of elbow grease. Tragically, I also have a horrible habit of changing my mind when it comes to colors... most of the time AFTER I've already painted the entire room... I know, "Let me get that neck." Just ask my roommates. If you were to take a cross sectional cut from the drywall in my living room, it would bear some resemblance to the layers of the earth's crust, taking you on a geological journey through the 4 year history of my residence here. This posting, however, has nothing to do with my house.

This year for xmas, Jess (my girlfriend) and I decided that as a gift to her parent's, we would paint their living room and kitchen for them. They are preparing to put their townhouse on the market, but it needs a bit of work before it's ready for show. For 16 years, they have silently suffered under a pinkish/purpleish, comatic haze cast by the MAUVE walls in their living room. Real T. Between the silver carpeting and the pink walls, this living room brings me straight back to the 80's... and for some strange reason, Marley Station. Anyway, we decided to handle this while they were out of town this weekend. Jess' mom didn't specify a color choice, but told use to just pick something "neutral." Typically, this means beige... in our case, it came in the form of "Vanilla Brandy." We took a trip to Lowe's (my second home) and picked up some Olympic Premium Paint. I typically use Valspar because I like their color palettes better, but I wanted to try this ZERO VOC stuff from Olympic. It was pretty cheap at only $15 per gallon, so that was nice too.

Here are some "Before" photos of the living room. Take note of the lovely mauve tone contrasted by the DARKER mauve of the trim... it really sets it off!




So, the first order of business was to hit the trim with a fresh coat of some bright white, semi-gloss paint. Typically, I am a maniac about masking everything before I paint. I end up spending twice as long masking as I do actually painting. We decided to just go ahead and paint the trim and not worry about being neat and tidy with it, since we were going to be doing the walls anyway. Plus, the ceiling has that rough, plastery finish, so you really can't put tape on it. I'm just going to go on record and say that the mauve didn't go without a fight. It took 3-4 coats before there were no traces of pink. After that was done, we started rolling the new paint on the walls. Luckily, our new paint was able to mask the mauve without the help of any primer.

Here are some photos of the work in progress.




Here you can see the original mauve on the door, the new white trim, and the new color, Vanilla Brandy. Yum.


Here is the finished product, unfortunately, the poor lighting really doesn't do it much justice... not to mention the living room is still turned upside down.

We had originally hoped this project would take Friday evening and then the morning/afternoon on Saturday. Nevertheless, Sunday morning we found ourselves back at Lowe's to buy another gallon of paint. Two wasn't quite enough to defeat the great Mauve. Painting the kitchen was an impossibility at this point, so instead, I decided that I'd use some leftover paint from my house to paint the hallway half-bathroom. So after a few more hours of final cut-in and touch ups, we were finished. I'm actually pretty pleased with how it came out, so hopefully Jess' parents will like it. They still have a lot of work left to do with the house, including more paint pretty much everywhere, new flooring, and a handful of other things. No big deal.

The final product.



Oh yeah, and the bathroom. Baller, right?