Switching out Switches (and Painting!)

We’re back! Hope you guys had a good week (as good as it could be, without Plaster & Disaster in your lives)! We enjoyed a brief respite from posting, which allowed us both to focus on particularly busy weeks at our jobs. But I’m excited to be back and sharing the continued progress in the kitchen. I *don’t* have floor and counter updates to share like I thought I might, because I had to reschedule the counter install for this week and the Magic Flooring has arrived but I’ve had zero time to install it. But here it is ready to go!

Sorry the photo is so overexposed, but the space has suddenly gotten a lot harder to photograph because we painted it white last weekend. Whew, that’s one big project checked off the list!

Originally I wanted to install the floors before painting in order to ensure that we picked a paint color that worked with the floors, but then my mom pointed out that painting would be so much easier before we get our new floors and counters in so we wouldn’t have to worry about drips. Also I was getting anxious waiting for the floors to arrive and wanted to feel like we were making progress, so I decided to take the plunge and paint the kitchen and sunroom walls Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace (which we used in Sam’s study, the guest room, and the gym, and is Naomi’s go-to white as well).

First I removed the trim, since I planned to do that anyway before installing the floors (I’ll put it back one top of the floors once they’re in). I just used a hammer and screwdriver, and there were only a few places it needed to be done since we have baseboard radiators along most of the open walls in the kitchen and sunroom.

In one corner of the kitchen, I found this under the trim:

I’m *dying* to know what this house used to look like given this discovery and the flooring we discovered a few weeks ago when we ripped up the ceramic tile:

I mean seriously, what?!? As much as I don’t love some of the design decisions our seller made when she renovated the kitchen, the more I discover under the surface the more I realize how much of an improvement she made. I’m soooooo curious about what that room must have looked like with those walls and ceilings…almost curious enough to make a photoshop rendering, but not quite.

Anyway, back to painting. First I needed to touch up the ceilings, since parts of them were new sheetrock from the wall construction.

I just used standard ceiling paint. Painting the ceiling is not super fun, but it would have been so much worse once the new floors were down so I’m glad I did it now. You were right, Mom!

Sam helped, and we were able to bang out two coats in both the kitchen and dining room (what I’ll be calling the old sunroom from now on!) in an afternoon and part of the next morning.

Watching the lilac disappear was so satisfying.

The only parts we didn’t paint are where we expect to put up wall tile eventually.

While we had all the switch plates off for painting, I decided to take on another project, which was switching out our ivory outlets and switches for white ones. The ivory just looked so dingy next to the white walls:

I had a lot of switches and outlets to replace, including three-way switches and dimmers. However, with the knowledge I gained helping with the new wiring in our kitchen in March, I felt comfortable with this pretty straightforward task. It took awhile, but I just methodically worked my way around the room taking out the old fixtures and putting in the new ones (after turning off all the power, of course).

Dimmer switches that work with LED lights are quite expensive — the most inexpensive ones I could find were $17.99 (Home Depot).

I needed three, so it definitely adds up. Fortunately the rest of the fixtures and switch plates were pretty inexpensive ($1 – $2 apiece).

I still have a few left to do, but I made a lot of progress!

And the white looks so much better against the walls. Here are just a few shots of the new outlets in action:

The only obstacle I encountered is that I could not for the life of me get my new GFCI outlet to work. I tried wiring it a million times and successfully rewired the original ivory GFCI to confirm that I was doing it right, but it just wouldn’t work — I’m not sure if it’s my fault or a faulty fixture, but it’s really annoying. For now, I reinstalled the old one. It looks ridiculous.

Anyway, let’s just focus on how much better the rooms look overall. First a reminder of the before — a lilac/sheetrock kitchen, and a tannish/greenish sunroom:

And now:

Can we get a close up on that cat, please?

This chair is Murphy’s new favorite place.

Okay so clearly until the floor is in, everything will continue to look very unfinished. But it’s progress, and I plan to do the floor this weekend!

Oh and in other news, this past weekend was my triumphant return to running!

And by “triumphant” I mean “strenuous and risky,” but fortunately it worked out! Long before getting injured, I committed to running Ragnar, an overnight 200-mile relay race with a team of 11 other awesome people.

To give myself maximum time to heal before the race, I decided not to run at all in advance — 8 weeks and 4 days, to be precise. So when my turn came to run my first leg (of three), I had no idea what would happen. Best case scenario I would just be totally out of shape, worst case my injury would flare back up, either immediately or at the very least by the end of my third leg. Fortunately, best case scenario prevailed! Running three times over the course of 24 hours, driving 200 miles in a van, and not getting any sleep was definitely an intense way to test out running again, and obviously I have lost a lot of fitness. But it was so inspiring to be with such an amazing group of talented and crazy runners, and I’m just so relieved that I can run again!