I haven't been on in forever because we were hard at work on some major projects.
Our tiny (one bedroom, one bath) condo home had a couple of issues after we moved in. One of the most difficult was our dark living room. It has windows, but outside we are surrounded by trees. It also had one puny track light that did not give light to the entire room.
Below is the only before pic I have from the very beginning. This was before we even moved in while we getting the house move-in ready. Notice the mint green washed-out walls and concrete floor. Also, that's the Sage husband leaning over the counter.
I call him The Sage because A) he seems to know everything and can do almost anything B) I'm not sure I've ever seen him do something truly stupid (unlike me, who does stupid stuff pretty much every waking moment of my life. For some reason, it never seems stupid until after I do it. C) He's just wise, man!
We spent most of our time in this room, so we needed to make it brighter. We did several things to help solve the lighting problem. Before we moved in, we installedthese beautiful high gloss laminate floors. These reflected light and helped brighten the space some. However, it just wasn't enough. (notice the puny little light in the right corner)
I started to do some research and found this awesome post by Brittany Bailey over at www.prettyhandygirl.com. She talked about brightening up a dark space.
One of the things she did was paint the walls. B and I did some research and chose a lovely ice blue. We had heard that you needed light walls to have a bright space. The walls were currently a very light mint green. We painted our light blue on a piece of cardboard and put it up in our living room to look at it in fake light at night and in natural light in the daytime. I loved the light blue in the light, but hated it at night.
We went back to the drawing board. I had actually read somewhere (now I don't remember where) that putting a darker color on your walls actually warms your walls and adds its own light to your room, so we decided on a darker blue than the ice blue that I had originally chosen. We did the same process, and I loved that blue in natural and fake light. Doesn't it look great and brighten the space?
We loved the new blue and the new room. However, it was still too dark and the popcorn ceiling was UGLY!!! Now that my walls were so pretty and blue, I hated to look at the ceiling. Plus, we knew this light fixture wasn't going to work. It was positioned almost all the way to the right in the front of the fireplace and the fixture didn't give off enough light.
Luckily, the Sage husband can do electrical work. He told me that all I needed to do was pick a new fixture and he'd move the light and the new fixture to the center of the room for me. However, there really was no point in doing that until we removed the spackled, popcorn ceiling.
We knew this would be a major undertaking. To be honest, if I had known how much work it would be, I probably wouldn't have started the project.
Either way, we wanted a brighter room. The post above from Britanny talks about how much popcorn ceilings darken a room. After we looked at it, we could tell why. The uneven surface of the ceiling creates little shadows all across the ceiling and instead of reflecting light. It sucks away light.
We decided to take on the popcorn ceiling. It took 3 full days. (We worked about 15 hour days each day with just the two of us.) We covered about 400 sq ft because unfortunately our foyer, kitchen, dining room, and living room ceilings were all connected and had to be done at the same time. After 72 hours of living in a house that would make Dexter squeal with delight, we finished the process. It is filthy and exhausting to live like the pictures below for 3 days.
However, we did finish it. To be honest, it didn't take a rocket scientist, just a lot of elbow grease and patience. Anyway, it was totally worth it.
The ceiling process will be documented more thoroughly in my next post. This is the gist.
Day 1: Cover everything in plastic, Remove spackle from ceiling, using water and a scraping tool
Day 2: Sand the imperfections, mud major holes, sand again
Day 3: Sand again, paint the ceiling (used Ceiling White by Benjamin Moore)
After we finished the ceiling, The Sage put in my light. It was so exciting! The room looked so fantastic.
Here is a recap on what we did to brighten the space:
1. Added high gloss floors
2. Painted the walls a darker, warmer color
3. Moved puny, 2 light track light away from the fireplace to the center of the room and changed the fixture
4. Removed popcorn ceiling and painted ceiling
Look at the results! They speak for themselves.
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