This September, Jason and I bought a house. We had been searching fruitlessly for awhile before that, and were pretty discouraged. Thankfully, we stuck it out a little longer, and ended up in a great (albeit cosmetically dated) 1950s one-story in South Minneapolis.
By “dated” I mean: dark blue trim in one of the bedrooms. Barbie pink trim in the living room, dining room, and another bedroom. Wood paneling in a third bedroom. That kind of thing! Much of this fall has been consumed by the exhausting but satisfying task of fixing the house up and making it our own. (To anyone else who has painted trim: I feel your pain.) Since this has been such a big part of my life over the last three months, I wanted to share a little of it here on The Marjorie.
KITCHEN:
We painted over the dull, dirty yellow in the kitchen with a bright avocado green. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law went above and beyond and, in addition to the walls, also repainted the inside of the pantry and cabinets. Every time I open a cupboard door and see that fresh bright white, I feel grateful!
BEDROOM:
The walls in our new bedroom were BRIGHT blue, like a little boy’s room. And all the trim was dark navy. Why?? Who knows! We immediately painted all the trim white. For the walls, we picked a calm blue/gray.
GREEN OFFICE:
For the bedroom that was to serve as my office/a guest room, we were faced with sad yellowed-white walls and that bright pink trim. After painting the trim white, we painted the walls a fresh minty green.
GRAY OFFICE:
Jason’s office was the biggest challenge. The walls in this room were wood panelled. There was nothing underneath them, so the cheapest, quickest solution was to paint right over the panelling. But holy COW was it a lot of work! This room has two doors, a closet, and a large window, so the trim alone was an enormous undertaking. There’s also a large built-in bookshelf (formerly one of those little built-in wall desks) which required further coats of white paint. By the time we got to actually painting the walls, I was exhausted. Still, this one was totally worth it. It was such an extreme transformation.
We still haven’t painted our living/dining room, which means the pink trim lives on…for now. I’m looking forward to tackling that space in the spring. But for now, I’m happy to take a break!