Out of Dark and into the Light

Our current family room was originally a dining room when we purchased the house. We quickly decided having a family room off the kitchen and turning our large living room in the living/dining room made the most sense for our family.

We got changed out the chandelier in what quickly became know as the "pine panel room," for obvious reasons, for a ceiling fan.

Then we added a smaller chandelier in the new dining area of our living and dining room.

Not the best photo comparison, but this isn't the focus of the post,
just the background information.






We lived with our "pine panel room" from February through the fall. I will admit, I hated it. I loathed it. I despised it with the passion of a hundred furies. But is was there, and a full on removal and replacement with drywall was not something we had the time or money for. So there it stayed, week after week, month after month. With me hating the room. The room the funnily enough, we spent the majority of our time in.

For watching TV:

And napping

Don't get me wrong. I love pine paneling in the right setting, such as a cabin by a lake. But in your everyday house, it makes people think dated and old. Jeff liked it because "it reminded him of his grandmother's house."....My point exactly. I'm no where near close to a grandma. We are young 30 somethings living in our second house with a 2 year old. I wanted light, bright, and fun.

The paneling always seemed to have an air of dinginess about it.

After research and sharing some pictures with Jeff. I talked him into the much less expensive "reno" of a couple cans of paint. I couldn't hate it more, and if we didn't like it we would replace the paneling in a few years anyway.

So I got to work on a test wall. First, I cleaned with TSP. Then I filled in some of the scratches and gouges from the previous owners dogs and rough living. As I did that I began to realize why the room felt dirty and shabby. The walls were filthy when I cleaned them, and though the might not have stood out, I thing your eye might have picked up on a scratch or two.

After sanding the patches, there was priming. A lot of priming.

Then to pick a color. We had a few choices on hand.

After a lot of debate, we decided to pick the color of the half bath, but a shade lighter. I was terrified of making the room seem dark, and since we had 2 shades of gray, yellow, and the blue-green color I didn't want to add another color to our downstairs.

It was so pale, we could hardly tell there was color. So, out came the paint, and we did the original color.

Much better! We lived with it for a week, with not knots bleeding through or peeling, so I felt comfortable starting the rest of the room. I went through the process wall by wall, so we could continue to use the room. This equaled out to 22 separate painting "sessions."

It took about a month of nights and weekends working on it. Even with a final push assisted by my mom. The trim took 2 coats of primer and 2 coats white semi-gloss and the walls took 2 coats primer 2 coats Behr paint plus primer in Mountain Falls. But it was COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's so bright the window made it hard to get a picture!

The biggest proof of the change is the comparison from when we first moved in to now below. It is now one of my favorite rooms. For about a month, whenever Jeff and I walked in the room, we would say "I can't believe this is the same room!" I really like the texted of the coved detail between the boards. Unless something happens to it, we are going to keep the paneling. Never thought I would say that!

To close this very long post, I will say the biggest proof of the change is the comparison from when we first moved in to now which I will leave you with below.

February 2016

December 2016