salmon eradication

Not the fish, the paint color from our living room. Here's a progress update so you can see where things stood last weekend (as of today, I'm done painting the walls I'm working on here). The going is slow. Nap times make for pretty short windows to get anything done. Helps a ton when Sean can watch Josephine on Saturdays and in evenings.
Below are pics of how it started. Except for two mustardy brown rooms, the whole house was painted either this salmon color or a dark green. To give a more accurate description of this space, an equal length is behind the camera (dining and kitchen area), creating one long room. All of which was salmon. That's a lot of salmon.
We also sold the Texan star themed fan on craigslist and installed the white one you can see in the top photo. Learned all about spin saws and vaulted ceiling fan mounting kits in the process. I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that a spin saw should not be necessary in order to replace a ceiling fan. The color is a little off in the photo below; the salmon is most accurately represented in the first old photo. But in this one you can see better the paneling on the back wall. I tore that off, which resulted in a lot of drywall work to get rid of mildewed sheets from previous laundry room leaks (which my parents fixed when we first moved in). Then I had to spray texturing back onto the wall to even things out. I had recently acquired an air compressor (long story), which led to me learning 4 things, since my previous texture work was only through some aerosol cans.

1) Buy the pre-mixed texturing. Total waste of time mixing it yourself, and nearly impossible if you don't have a drill mixer attachment, which at the time, I didn't (now I do-- that's another long story). (Most of my renovation stories are long, which is why I rarely post anything about them. I only WISH they were short and straightforward!)

2) The plastic hopper guns are lousy and you WILL end up with texturing in your hair and everywhere if/when it clogs (again with the poor mixing situation), but they seem to be the only option.

3) You achieve WAY better results with a compressor and hopper than you do with the expensive aerosol spray cans, and it is virtually odorless compared to the horrible chemical smells of the aerosol version.

4) Most importantly, you CANNOT store your self-mixed texturing in a container for a few weeks if your project gets put on hold. It will begin to smell like rotten milk. And that smell will NOT dissipate (insert tears) after you stupidly use it anyway. Your house will smell like a garbage can for weeks, despite repeated febreezing treatments and airing out. Not wise. (Thank goodness this situation has finally resolved. I waited quite a long time, until you could only smell it if you were right near the wall, then finally moved ahead with priming and painting-- and now no smell remains).
I'm sure I learned other things, but it's an exhausting experience to re-live, and no one wants to hear the gory details anyway! Back to the present: one of our favorite parts is how much brighter the ceiling is with fresh white paint on it. Previously the ceiling and all the trim were an off white and cream color. In short, every last inch is requiring paint and every seam requiring caulk,* in more ways than one. Sometimes I'm tempted to start a separate blog detailing the house renovation drama that I live out every day, the way Sean divides his material between his funny blogs and his gardening blog, etc. But with all the detailed explanations, writing it all out would only take time away from getting it done, and in the end the blog would likely just sound like one long rant. So for now I'll stick to the occasional griping overview. :-)

*A side note on paint and caulk: to paint contrasting walls without your color seeping under your painter's tape in the inside corner-- here's some advice I found on-line that has worked very well for me.
A) Paint one wall. Let it dry thoroughly.
B) Put painter's tape along the inside seam, approx 1/16" away from the corner, on the wall you just painted. Don't put it all the way into the corner because you will need to do the following:
C) Smear a VERY thin layer of painter's caulk into the corner, covering the edge of the painter's tape. Let it dry thoroughly. This seals off your tape edge, which your contrasting color would otherwise seep under. Make sure the layer over the edge of the tape is very thin (the closer you put your tape into the corner, the harder it is to keep the layer thin).
D) Paint your contrasting wall. Pull off your tape (no need to wait for paint to dry). So long as your caulk layer was thin, it will tear off with a fine, clean line.
E) Cheer.