We are on the home stretch with updating our first home! It’s been a crazy month spending every night working at the house, but it’s starting to come together. This week, we got our light fixtures and cabinet hardware delivered, so we’re very excited to install the final touches soon.
Spraying Knockdown
One of the bigger tasks this week was spraying knockdown in the living room with the vaulted ceilings. To reach the peak, we used these telescoping ladders. My dad let us borrow his and also gave us one as a house warming present. They worked really well for the tall ceilings, especially with the scaffolding planks. Matt would spray the texture and after waiting about 10 minutes, come back with the knockdown knife. Then he used a sponge to wipe off the knife as it got full of the mixture. We’d clean out the sponge with a bucket of water and keep on going!
Since the ceiling project was pretty messy, we were very thankful to have a month overlap with our house and apartment. That way, we could do all the work in our house and then go to our apartment to sleep in a clean space. In addition, we batched the work of applying the knockdown texture to two Saturdays. This allowed us to get all the ceilings scraped beforehand, let them dry and sand them, and then go from room to room applying texture.
Painting the Basement
For the basement, went with Behr’s Paint and Primer in One Cotton Grey. We really liked this paint for our basement because one coat already covered the old red and yellow walls so well, even without primer. There are still touch ups to be made around the ceiling, plus another coat we need to apply, but it’s a big improvement.
We’ve been so thankful during this month to have so many people help us with the house! From parents, to siblings, to friends, having people come over to help with various projects has made the long nights more fun and helped us get done in time.
Installing Light Fixtures
Last week, we picked out all of our lighting. We ordered it on Sunday from Amazon and it was at the house ready to be installed by Tuesday. With the light fixtures, we knew they needed to be updated, but we also didn’t want to break the budget on lights. The fixtures we found were just the right thing that we could get quickly and were in our price range. Plus, they look SO GOOD!
This semi-flush mount light over the kitchen sink makes SUCH a difference. Before, there was a super low hanging pendant that blocked the window and got in the way when washing dishes. Now, the light is out of the way of the window. It will tie into the black pulls on the cabinets.
Clean Up
By Wednesday, exactly 4 weeks since we closed on our house, we were ready for clean up. The ceilings had been primed and painted and it was time for the plastic to come down. With all of the painting, scraping, and knockdown, there was a lot of dust, so cleaning took awhile. Once the plastic came down and the cardboard was out, we were reminded how much we loved the house! It was so fun to see each room slowly come back to normal and we can’t wait to move in and start making it feel like home.
