The yellow monster

Soon after we moved in with my MIL, my husband and his brother decided to paint the living room. The first problem was that my MIL picked an awful yellow color. It is not necessarily a bright yellow, but not pastel either. Between the yellow and the wall that is paneled with wood and mirror, it just bad. The second problem was that my husband is not a very handy person let alone a patient person. He is a very hard worker, but not when it comes to this kind of job. So in the end, the trim was splotchy, you could still see the original color through the yellow paint near the ceiling, and I found pieces of the scotch tape they used along the trim years after they painted. Then my MIL hired someone to paint all the doors and window frames white. He not only did a horrible job, but also used some type of enamel paint that peels off.

My MIL was planning on going to visit family in the Philippines for three weeks and I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to repaint the living room. We agreed on a creamy white for the walls and chocolate brown for all the trim work.

I started the work a week before she was due home thinking that would be enough time to paint, touch up, and clean everything. Boy was I wrong. Because the trim had all been painted with a latex/enamel paint, I spent hours sanding and stripping it. I could not even prime it until every trace of the original paint was removed due to the fact that anything painted on top of it peeled off. Without even touching the base board or the doors to the hallway, it took me a week of slaving away after work and even taking a couple of afternoons off. The day before she was due back, my husband and I hurried to touch the trim up and remove any paint we spilled.

Luckily we only had one fight during the project which was probably because we were so frustrated with having a mess hit us in the face every time we walked in the front door. Eventually he understood that I was just trying to do the project the right way so that we would not have to deal with any problems later.

The day she was due home we cleaned up until the minute we left for the airport and luckily she loved it. It looks so much bigger and brighter and we are all really happy with it. There is still work to do, like paint the base board, but I will take my time on that.

He are some pictures of the whole process for you to enjoy!

I did not remember to take pictures until I already started covering up furniture and everything was a mess.





This next picture is an example of the paint I had to remove from doors and frame work. It took forever and was such a mess.


Everyone was getting tired of the mess, including Sunny and Simba. Sunny no longer had her lookout by the front window and Simba's bed was shoved into the middle of the room where we were constantly walking.


The living room just looks so much airier now and a lot cleaner. I will admit that most of the artwork and awful artificial flower arrangements are not something I would put up, but we have to chose our battles. I won the fight against the yellow monster and I am extremely happy with that!