When you buy a house, you often purchase it for its functionality, mostly ignoring the decor. We, on the other hand, purchased our home for the 33-acre habitat, mostly ignoring the house other than checking off 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a basement. The outside is nice enough, though we’re not fond of the yellow.

The interior is extremely, um, colorful. We have a sunflower yellow laundry area, a forest green kitchen and breakfast area, pink/off white/cream living room and family room depending on the light, a spring/lime green bedroom, and various wallpaper, all paired with almost Kelly green carpet.

The room that really bugged me most was the purple master bathroom. Don’t get me wrong, I like purple. It’s my favorite color! The shade of purple used in the bathroom was actually one of my wedding colors. It had to go.

Anyone that knows us, understands that we are more into neutral tones–browns, mild greens, barely blues, and the like. I picked a lovely shade of white-blue called Wispy Cloud from Glidden (No, they didn’t pay me to tell you that), and commenced operation repaint bathroom, starting with the wallpaper border around the top of the walls. That was pretty easy and only took about 1.5 hours to take down.

Armed with rollers, brushes, and 5 gallons of Kilz2, I started painting on the first day of the kids’ Spring Break. Yes, I started this project in March. I put layer after layer, after layer of Kilz on the walls. I tried the brushes, hoping for a thick coating. I tried the roller. It was still purple. After 2.5 days of Kilz, I felt defeated and abandoned the project for a trip to Texas. The bathroom has been in this condition ever since; lights detached, half purple, and reminding me that the walls had won.

So, we decided that since we had plans to paint the entire house, we should invest in a paint sprayer. We ended up with this Wagner sprayer for all paint and stain types–versatile and a good deal (nope, not paid for that one either). It’s handy and we like it.

I will be changing the trim color, because the off white does not go with the bright white-blue color. And because there is over spray/brush on the trim, caulk, tile, cabinet, tub, and everywhere else, so there is still evidence of purple that I will need to remove.

We also purchased 5 gallons of original Kilz, mostly by accident, which actually offered much better coverage than Kilz2. The paint went on in a shade of white, but seems to have “blued” over the last week. So while not fully completed, we have tamed the purple and are loving the results.

I even found a couple of flowers for the pitcher that belonged to my great-grandmother. It’s been waiting for this home.

Lessons we learned along the way:

1. You can/should include the kids if you don’t mind fixing something that looks like this after they get bored (be sure to put down a LOT of plastic):

2. Original Kilz offers much better coverage than Kilz2, but you better put in some serious air circulation and ventilation. That stuff is strong! But it took one good coat with the sprayer and we were done.

3. When the paint sprayer instructions say cover the entire room, it means it! We will be scraping floors, the mirror, the shower…

4. Quality of product is far more important when using a paint sprayer. We ran out of one bucket of Kilz and attempted to use another partial bucket that had been stored in extreme weather conditions, both hot and cold. Bad idea! We now have texture where it wasn’t previously, but I don’t mind it so much in here.

5. When using a new tool like a sprayer, always start in a room that is not likely to be seen by company. We also picked a room that we know we want to remodel in 5 or 6 years.

I think CAT is also extremely happy to have that project under our belts and “done” with a few exceptions. It means we can move on to the kitchen and getting the green carpet removed. Or we can get back to playing on the tractors and fishing.

~Mouse