Okay… all that pink-turned-white spackle is sanded, and when you use a whole container, you get a lot of dust. This whole room is now about two shades lighter than it was before I started sanding. I mean this place is COVERED. Everything in this place has a layer of white powder on it. I will be vacuuming tomorrow night after work in order to get up most of the dust. Then I will also be wiping down a lot of my stuff as well, since the dust got on everything, and we want everything shining again when this project is finished. For that matter, I am also covered with it as well. But I can fix that with a shower and a change of clothes.
And it’s interesting… the walls’ appearance’s lowest point was when I had just finished removing the pictures, the nails for the pictures, and the videotape wall shelves. Now that the holes are patched, despite the walls being off-white and the holes being eggshell white, the place looks a little bit better.
After I clean up this massive amount of dust in here, then we really start improving the appearance in here. You see, after we clean, we paint. And I’ve selected the color for these walls. It’s a gray color called “Manatee”. Why gray? Well, first of all, it’s not white. I’m tired of white. But why not a color other than gray? I still want a neutral color, and this is a medium-to-light shade, just to lend a little more contrast between the ceiling and the rug and the walls. Painting it the Baker-Miller Pink color crossed my mind, but if you’re exposed to it too long, you start to get depressed. I actually did a bulletin board in March 2003 in Potomac Hall about the Baker-Miller Pink color called “Jailhouse Pink”. Take a look…
And I put it on the male end of the floor, too. Very manly. And the one at the female end of the floor that month was orange, if I recall correctly.
But still, I’m going with gray.
And it’s amusing, too. Dad sure knows how to do home improvements when he’s not doing the work and not paying for it. He said to me, “Are you painting the ceiling?” I told him that no, I wasn’t going to. He highly recommended my painting the ceiling. My exact response was, “Are you going to pay for that?” I didn’t budget to paint the ceiling. And besides, I told him, if I was going to paint the ceiling, I’d paint it a color like Frank on Trading Spaces does. I’d have painted it a lighter gray than Manatee, but still a gray, and definitely not eggshell white. He wasn’t too comfortable with the idea of not painting the ceiling white, and so he accepted the fact that I wasn’t doing the ceiling. He also wanted me to paint the trim with semigloss in the same color as the walls. For that one, I had two problems with that. First of all, same as the ceiling: “And who is paying for that?” Secondly, I reminded Dad about the decor in the rest of the house. In our house, all the trim is white. We’ve painted all the rooms in the house except the laundry room, the garage, Sis’s room, and my room. All of them have white trim. I think Mom would kill the both of us (Dad and me) if I painted the trim. The way I got to keep the trim white was by showing him his own bedroom, and how I’m trying to make my room somewhat match his and Mom’s.
And speaking of parents, they still think I’m nuts for redecorating, but they will indeed be proud when I’m finished. Trust me, they will.