Floors done…...but have I made a mistake?

Thursday 1^st February 2013

Quite a bit of progress today.

I finally feel that things are moving past the preparation stage – yaaaaay!  There was still a lot of preparation: last night I painted the interior walls and ceilings with gesso, today I sanded them off and gave them another coat.  The walls that were interior walls I was then able to sand off again and give two more coats of gesso.   The ceilings then received their first coat of white paint.  It’s just ordinary flat house paint like you’d use on walls.  I have a 1L tin of it and find it covers quite well.  I really like to have a good white surface on which to wallpaper – the white shows up the colours of the wallpaper better, and having a good smooth surface means that the wallpaper has a better finish.

After some experimenting with different browns I’ve also decided on the colour for the flooring of the house.  I want to have them quite dark and I’m using paint, not stain, in burnt umber. I did the ground floor tonight, and also the stair treads ready to glue onto the staircase.  I painted the risers and the bannisters on the staircase in light ivory.

  

For the interior I only have a couple of the wallpapers so far, 

Kitchen: Robin Betterley ‘Green Leafy Tile’

Bedroom 1: Robin Betterley ‘Cottage Rose’

I do have more on order, including the paper I want to use for the hallways.   

I’ve still not decided on the final colour scheme for the exterior.  I am drawn towards browns but also towards greens……

Here are the greens, though they don't really show up properly on this sample.

I was thinking that the weatherboard could be in the lightest green (sage green mixed with white) that is second from the bottom - it could actually be a bit darker than it is here. 

The railings on the verandah in the darkest shade (dark forest green), 2nd down.

The window ledges in sage green, which is the bottom colour.  And maybe the trim that's on some of the outside window pieces too.

The trim and little brackets in light ivory, which is the top colour but isn't as white as it looks here. 

The roof shingles in burnt umber

What do you think? Does it need another contrast colour?  Should the weatherboards (siding) be the darker green and the railings a different colour?

Sunday 3^rd  February 2013

Floors done…...but have I made a mistake?

We had lunch at the nursing home with my mother again today.  She booked the activities room and they set up a nice table there for us and our meals were served there.  We had the place to ourselves and spent several hours there, having an enjoyable time. Then we had a birthday tea at home and some birthday cake.  White  mud cake - my favourite.  Yum!

In the afternoon I varnished the floors.  I’d painted the rest of them on Friday, then sanded them off and given them a second coat on Saturday night.  They aren’t perfectly even in colour but they’ll be okay once walls are erected and furniture is in. You can see a glimpse of the tower floor in the photo below.

The staircase looks really nice now it’s all put together with the treads painted in the burnt umber, then varnished.  I used Jo Sonja’s satin finish varnish.

On Saturday night I also painted a whole lot of skirting boards in the light ivory.  I would have preferred to have had all the woodwork in the burnt umber but I had gone ahead and done the interior window and door frames in gesso and the burnt umber didn’t go well over that.  I should have thought about that first and just filled them with wood filler then painted them.  Another thing that occurred to me is that the reason I had ordered the flooring for this house was because I want to light it, and having the flooring makes it so easy to hide the wiring.  So now I need to decide whether to still light it or not.  I have been looking online for half scale lights and haven’t found much of a range locally, but if I do light the house, it will mean fitting the flooring around all the little nooks and crannies that this house has.  I think I’ll have to do more research on the Greenleaf forum and see what other people have done.