We have been in our home for a year (wow!!!) and I have just started tackling a BIG project. See, our poor home has a dirty little secret:
Dirty, banged up, in-bad-shape trim. Literally throughout the
entire house.
In a perfect world, I would pay someone to come in for a couple days and paint the trim and be done with it. We quoted this out when we had our ceilings scraped, but it's expensive! Typically it's more expensive to have the trim done than to have an entire room painted. Which is understandable, it's time-consuming.
But if there was ever a job that was easy to save money by DIY-ing, it would be painting trim. The entire project just costs your time and a gallon of paint!
I started the lonnng process of painting the trim in our home this past Saturday. It was easy and I got (almost) the entire living room finished. I was blessed with a steady paint hand, so luckily I don't need to bother taping.
Look at what a difference a coat of fresh paint makes!! The newly painted trim is on the left and the old, banged up trim is on the stairs.
It's the little things in life. The fresh, white trim makes me so happy.
Glossy and smooth... love it.
These are the only two things I used for painting trim:
This paint is
the best paint I've ever used. It's waterbased but covers like an oil. I just recently discovered it and I am so glad I did. It's worth every penny.
And the color I used for the trim:
After updating the laundry room and our master bedroom (which is almost done), I'm working on projects that are free/super inexpensive until I can save my pennies to do tile in our two upstairs bathrooms.
To keep me motivated, I wrote out a trim to do list:
This post brings up a question I've been wanting to ask. You can see details of our hardwoods in the pictures. I have plans to
someday either re-finish the hardwoods or replace. The hardwoods are engineered wood, and I'm pretty sure they are floating. They have never been refinished before but are in pretty bad shape. I hate the color, but I do love the grain.
So my question is -
has anyone had their engineered hardwoods refinished? (I've been told you can do it, but only once). What can I expect for the cost? Also, I was planning on putting unfinished hardwoods with the same grain in the kitchen, and having the old engineered hardwoods and the new unfinished hardwoods stained at the same time so they will match.
This is waayyyyyy later down the road (a couple years?), but I'd love to hear anyone's experience with this because I'm wondering how much I should save/budget. My other alternative is to scrap the refinishing idea and just tear up what we currently have and put in something inexpensive and new where the current hardwoods are + the kitchen. (maybe even a nice laminate since we will eventually have a child in this house and there will be toys, etc. And maybe install it ourselves if it's easy). I'd love to hear any experience you guys may have!!! Thanks!
