PAINTING A BREAKFAST NOOK

Hey, hey, hey!  I’ve been doing more home improvement projects than I’ve written about!  In all honesty, I’ve been hung up on 1. time and 2. search engine optimization, but I’ve decided to say “screw it” and just write, or rather photo dump all the pictures I’ve taken of the City Hood Home projects.  Today’s photo dump is of painting the breakfast nook.  Let’s look at what the breakfast nook looked like when we moved in:

 

Back in December, I painted the wainscoting:

 

 

Once I had the wainscoting done, it was time to paint the walls… and the dreaded ceiling.

PAINTING A BREAKFAST NOOK WALLS

 

From the picture above, you can see the walls were a fairly neutral beige.  It’s a safe color when selling a house, but I wanted something a little crisper, so I decided to go with Benjamin Moore Moonshine, using their Ultra Spec paint line.  It’s a barely-there gray and I love it.  The Ultra Spec paint line is a low-splatter paint, so it’s great if you are lazy about putting a drop-cloth down, like me!

 

 

I did two coats along with a couple of touch-up spots here and there, but for the most part, the process was pretty straight-forward.

 

 

Once the walls were done, I decided that the ceilings were more off-white than white and since I was going for the crisp, clean look, I decided to paint the ceilings too.

PAINTING A BREAKFAST NOOK CEILING

 

After debating the zillion shades of white, I landed on Benjamin Moore Decorator’s White.  I really didn’t have any main draw to this shade versus the other shades of white, other than I read good reviews about this particular shade.  Honestly, I don’t know if I would have been able to tell the difference from all the shades of white other than they were more pure white than what was currently on the ceilings.

 

FYI, painting ceilings sucks.  I actually like to paint.  I find it rather relaxing and really rewarding, but ugh, I can’t say I feel that way when it comes to the ceilings.  It’s flat-out uncomfortable.  I even had the roller on a long pole, but I still have to arch my neck up and dig the pole into my hip for leverage and pressure.  I’m not really looking forward to painting the ceilings in the rest of the house, but I know once it’s done, I’ll be so happy.  If anyone has any good tips for painting the ceilings, I’d LOVE to hear them!!

 

 

I unscrewed the faceplate of our pendent light over the table so I could cover every possible inch while painting the breakfast nook ceiling.

 

Can you see the difference?  Before I took the tape off, Nick thought I was painting the ceilings the same color as the walls.  I assured him that they were in fact two totally different colors.

 

HARD WORK PAYS OFF WHEN PAINTING A BREAKFAST NOOK

 

Yay!  The breakfast nook is “done”!  At least with the painting…. for now… until I decide to change my mind and redo it all. But for now, I’m still in love with the change, so Moonshine and Decorator’s White will be sticking around for a little while.

 

See, the ceiling and walls ARE different colors!

 

 

I think it looks a thousand times better than the painted-to-sell shade of beige!

 

 

What do you think?

LESSONS LEARNED FROM PAINTING A BREAKFAST NOOK

 

Before I go, I wanted to share one quick lesson I learned from painting the breakfast nook:
Paint the ceiling BEFORE you paint the walls!  I find it a lot easier to paint the walls versus the ceiling and with that, I also found that I made more mishaps with the ceiling.  In other words, I ended up painting the walls the ceiling color at certain points (drips through the tape, me just being careless and I carried the roller on a pole around the room).  Since I painted the walls first, I had to go back after painting the ceiling and re-touch-up the walls.  Moving forward, I’ve learned my lesson and will be painting the ceilings first, that way if I have any mishaps, I’ll be painting over the walls in the next step anyway, so I’m spared the re-touch-up step.  I don’t know if that will work for you, but I know it will help me as I move forward.
Happy painting everyone!