I love this paint job so much, I eat dinner in this room - yes, on the floor.

I can not believe how much I love the change that a teeny tiny bit of paint has done to this room! I adore it. I want to eat it. I come into this room now - now that the Chinese New Year red has gone - and I just turn on the lights and look at it. Then I turn off the lights and look at it. Then I turn them back on - this whole process goes on and on - I'm just so pleased with myself.

Let me confess, this transformation did NOT happen overnight. I posted the murder-scene-red picture only yesterday - but this room has taken me a bit of time. I do have three little boys and a fourth boy that I mention every now and then as "hubby". They require inordinant amounts of time - so this room has taken a bit to get at. I say that because I didn't want anyone to feel bad. Feeling bad is the enemy of being a Do-It-Yourselfer. Guilt can crush a project. The truth is DIY takes time when you have a life - and that's okay. I just did bits and pieces - mostly an hour at a time.

Here's my experience. After the whole "Barley" yellow incident - where I purchased an entire gallon of paint based on a 1 inch sample - and the small fortune I spent at Benjie Mo., I decided to go get some paint chips at Home Depot. I needed a fresh outlook on this room if I was ever going to finish it. Having learned my lesson, I did buy a little tinted jar of paint and discovered that it too, was the wrong colour. Then, back to my old ways, I found a much lighter paint chip called "Eldorado Tan" in the CIL line and just went for it. CIL also makes a paint and primer in one paint, called CIL Smart, for a fraction of the cost of Benjie Mo's product. Truthfully, it didn't cover the brilliant yellow colour that the room had turned into, but it was super easy to paint with and after 2 coats is beyond lovely.
I need to confess: I hate painting cedar paneling. I am hoping to never do it again, but I know what the family room holds. I am not finished with this paneling yet. If you look at this pic, you can see that the edges are super bright and the body of the wall is still in need of another coat. That's because this is just primer/sealer paint to cover the bare cedar panels that were in here. I still have to prime the edges of all of the cedar paneling one more time and paint around the NEW light fixtures that hubby installed (good boy). Then I am going to paint again with a regular white paint - semi-gloss. The nice paint man at Rona (I'm a bit of a store trollope - I just go from place to place) told me that I needed a semi-gloss on the wood to brighten it up against an eggshell finish on the smooth walls.

So there. I've tackled it. One hour at a time. I'm going back in to look at it.

If I can do it, you can too,

Project Mama