Painting Updates and Time Expectations {Spoiler: Much Longer Than You Think!}

Well, this past week has been very exhausting! And productive too, I guess.

Since last Tuesday I've managed to get all of the baseboards, crown moulding and door trim painted a nice shiny white in our family room. And let me tell you, painting trim is no joke. As in, takes at least 4 times longer than you think it will. Maybe even 6 times longer, if you're dealing with dark wood trim. And I'm one of those people who already doubles what I think for time estimates. As in, I think I'll be ready to go in 5 minutes, so I say I'll be ready in 10.

But no, trim is the hugest PITA ever. I dare say, even worse than the popcorn ceiling removal! Well, less messy, but soooo much more tedious and time consuming. Turning the dark wood trim in our house to white took 4 freakin' coats of primer and paint (2 of primer, 2 of semi gloss) to adequately cover it. Sigh. I am suffering from claw-hand syndrome, from gripping my trim paint brush so much!

But let me show some before, progress, and "after" (aka, as good as it's getting before we move in this weekend, but still not a true after, since a lot more work is needed) photos, before I share some painting tips I found useful.

The very, very before, with grandma-pink walls, back when the railing and post were still dividing the dining nook from the family room:

Progress, with blue walls, and of course, the smooth and popcorn-free ceilings:

And now, with pretty and modern white trim!

Even though we're leaving the beams natural for now, until we put in walnut hardwood floors and see if we want to then paint them white or stain them to match the floors, the white trim really brightens up the room. I'm just loving how much it makes the blue paint (Labrador Blue by Benjamin Moore, in case you're curious) look softer and brighter at the same time, as compared to when it was against all dark wood.



You can see from this angle that the pantry and hall to the far right aren't painted yet, and neither are the built in shelves to the left. The shelves weren't painted because we're going to rip off the dated curved parts, and re-trim the whole thing, so I didn't want to paint it when it was just going to get messed up when we do the updates. But the hall and kitchen aren't painted yet because all of this took me soooo much longer than expected!

Just to do the crown moulding, baseboards and door trim in the ~28' x 13' family room took a total of 12 hours JUST PAINTING TIME. Yes, you read that right, for the little trim. 3 hours for each trip around the room, times 4 coats. Not to mention all of the prep work. Washing the wood with TSP, sanding rough spots, recleaning it after the sanding, etc, etc. Trim prep work is serious business, as you can see in the step by step process outlined here. And you have to go slow and be careful about not leaving brush strokes when you're doing the actual painting, as detailed here in this really helpful trim painting guide. 

And here, I thought completely resurfacing the walls in the kitchen was a lot of work! I've just got to keep reminding myself, since we want to paint all the trim in the entire house eventually, that it's worth it in the end for the bright and cheery look.

So, that was the "fun" I was having last week while my husband was traveling. Then, this weekend I decided I needed a break from trim painting, and that I would tackle my office/closet bedroom on Saturday, then finish the hallway, nook and kitchen trim on Sunday.

HAHAHAHA, oh, how naive I still was. Still thinking my best guess at how long this painting business takes was actually accurate!

I was at the new house on Saturday from about 10am to almost 3am, and managed to get the office walls painted, and two (of the necessary 4) coats of paint on the trim. Then on Sunday I was there another 9 1/2 hours, where I was able to finish the trim in the office (but not get all of the tape taken down), and get three coats of paint in the dining nook only.

Yeah, so I accomplished barely half of what I set out to do. And I worked on it for 26 total hours this weekend!

Le sigh. I'm beginning to see why people hire professional painters. Although there is something extremely satisfying about touching and changing every single surface in a room all by yourself. The end result, again, is worth the pain.

My office before, with the same grandma-pink walls that are in most of the rooms in the house:

Ready to paint the trim:

Clean, fresh and modern grey with bright white trim!

You'll notice that I used tape for painting the trim, which a lot of the online tips I read said you didn't need to, you just needed to have a steady hand. Well, that might work when you're only having to do one or two coats of paint. But I found that even with the time it took to tape off everything, it was still quicker to tape things than having to paint super slowly in straight lines, 4 times around the room.

You'll notice that I didn't paint the inside of the closet, because I've got other plans for it. This bedroom has the smallest of all of the closets, but the other (soon to be guest room) has a pass through in the closet to the attic storage area, and I didn't want to have my clothes getting the way of our attic access. So even though it's a small closet, it's going to hopefully be pretty cute when I'm done. You know, eventually, in all of my free time!

So anyway, the moral of the story is: painting, especially trim, is tedious and hugely time consuming. So when planning out how much you can get done within a certain time frame, take the amount of time you think it will take, and then go ahead and multiply that times 4. Or maybe even 6. Gah!

The good news is, we've got three rooms pretty much move in ready (although we do still need to caulk where the crown moulding meets the ceiling in the family room at some point). Which is good, because we're moving this weekend. Which reminds me, packing....better get on that!

Have you ever painted trim before? Did it take you way, way, way longer than expected?