Our Dining Room has barely been touched in the nine years since we’ve painted it aside from the occasional touch up. Now that the kitchen renovation work is done, it is in need of some love. We aren’t changing the color, but the walls need cleaned, the trim and ceiling need completely repainted. We were a bit fatigued from painting the kitchen, living room, and all the trim so we’ve been holding off for a bit.
Tonight was the first foray into kicking off a formal clean-up. As I did for the Living Room, I bought and installed brand new white outlets, six in total, to replace the black outlets that were there. Now the outlets don’t look like reverse Oreos with white wall plates and black outlets. I need to return one outlet because it has both side and back wiring (to continue the series of outlets and wire in the back yard light switch) but doesn’t have large enough holes for the back wires coming from the wall. Otherwise they are all replaced.
I also started on the trim by painting over and sealing the knots that are in the trim. Our Dining Room trim isn’t nice Colonial-style trim; it’s just rectangular trim that suffers from really bad wood knots. They were visible when we moved in so I painted over them. Six months later they bled through and we’ve had a “rustic” looking dining room ever since. I’m using Zinsser B-I-N Primer Sealer, a shellac-based primer that specifically designed to seal out wood knots and stains. I used it on the Living Room ceiling and it worked well.
Next step is to clean seven years of food off of the trim and fill in the nail gaps so we can paint. Step by step…
Relatively Ambitious 